NOTES AND QUERIES
203
or as it was known prior to 1587, Sham Tin (), was the recognized source of all branches and sub-branches of the Tangs. This clan, which eventually settled and dominated large sections of San On (**) and Tung Kwun () counties of the Canton prefecture, established Kam Tin as the "administrative center" of the unofficial government of the Yuen Long Tung(A).
2. To be more precise, Kam Tin can be regarded as the heung ha (F) of the male agnatic descendants of the first, third and fourth fong "hived off" the central trunk originating with TANG Hung-yi (**—more below).
3. It is not surprising, then, that the researcher finds himself confronted with a long and rich social history consisting of a corpus of written and oral tales. Nor is it surprising that, in attempting to bring to, or impose on this corpus an “alien” order, the researcher finds himself grappling with a number of theoretical problems which question the very foundations of Chinese anthropology and local history. I will illustrate this last point with an example.
4. The very notion "clan" has been, and to a large extent still is, defined with reference to a "founding ancestor" (hoi chuk cho (M **)). That is, a clan is treated as a corporate group whose membership is regulated by the fact of agnatic descent from a "common founding ancestor." Maurice Freedman, whose early works tend to confirm this basic assumption, departs from this view in his 1966 volume on lineages entitled Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung. In this work, he stresses joint ownership of a common estate, rather than “demonstrated descent,” as the defining characteristic of "higher-order" lineages, Freedman's new term for the older, more established (hence vague) term “clan”. "The difference," he writes "between a system of physically dispersed segments of a single corporation and a network of historically—or at any rate genealogically-related but independent lineages turns upon the maintenance of common property and the ritual obligations and privileges entailed in that property."* According to Freedman, both corporate lineages and "non-corporate" clans exist in China, and demonstrated descent from a single, common founding ancestor is crucial to neither.
5. I might add that this is, at least implicitly, the view adopted by the New Territories Administration (N.T.A.). Clans are defined
* Freedman op cit: 21.