Major Kin Groupings: (II) Feminal Kin, Tha:Thiti

Those people who are related to an individual through all links of marriage with that person's phuki members form a large group with

amorphous outer limits called the tha:thiti .^[43] This is a heterogeneous group. At the center of it are the members of the mother's natal household and the husbands and children of one's own household's out-marrying daughters.^[44] For a man, all tha:thiti are related through a woman at the proximal link, and this is also the case for a woman, with the important exception that she becomes related to her husband's tha:thiti through her marriage to him. In this case, however, it is a woman's movement out of her natal home that creates the link. All these links involve the medium of a woman who has married either into or out of the patrilineage. Mandlebaum (1970, 148) suggests the useful term "feminal kin" for this kind of cluster.

Each married individual has a unique constellation of tha:thiti , and the potential ramifications are enormous but are, in fact, generally limited to at least moderately close connections whose extent varies with the particular reason for using or gathering these kin. Newars say that the close contact with a large circle of tha:thiti for whom they feel familial "love " (maya ) is an important way in which they differ from the Chetris.

"Tba:thiti " is sometimes used as the only available term of reference for an affinal relative who has no other specific kin term of reference, or whose "proper" classificatory name is unclear to a particular individual. The central core members of the tha:thiti have ritual functions in rites of passage of household members; some segment of the wider group is invited to certain of the household feasts, nakhatya , those that are centrally characterized by the return of married-out daughters to their natal homes.