In the context of the trend in kinship studies towards an emphasis on native understandings, L. Holy has proposed a definition of kinship as a culturally specific notion of relatedness deriving from shared substance and its transmission. This paper examines the case of the Dangaura Tharu, Nepal, among whom relatedness is thought of less in terms of substance than as a system of relations to divinities for which men and women act as vehicles in different ways and through different aspects of their substance. It is suggested that an emphasis on the sharing and transmission of substance may sometimes reflect our own assumptions rather than indigenous constructions of substance and relatedness.