Normative culture and kinship : essays on Hindu categories, processes, and perspectives 9780706922677, 0706922670

Citation preview

NORMATIVE CULTURE AND KINSHIP

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/normativecultureOOOOkhar

Normative

Culture and Kinship Essays on Hindu Categories, Processes and Perspectives

RSKhare

VIKAS PUBLISHING HOUSE PVT LTD

Qp" W) Gp Y5 VIKAS PUBLISHING HOUSE PVT LTD Regd. Office: 5 Ansari Road, New Delhi 110002 H.O. Vikas House, 20/4 Industrial Area, Sahibabad 201010 Distt. Gbaziabad, U.P. (India)

Copyright © R. S. Khare, 1983 ISBN 0-7069-2267-0 1V2K7313

Printed at The Central Electric Press, 80-D, Kamla Nagar, Delhi-110007 (India)

Preface

Written last, I shall make use of this space for a quick reconnaissance over certain larger features of the territory this study attempts to cover. It is as much a study of certain consti¬ tuents of the Hindu system as it is of what kinship culturally amounts to. Kinship is viewed as an aggregation of certain cultural categories and systemic principles, and this inquiry, though limited to considering only the normative culture, is oriented to discover a macrocosmic cultural plan within a microcosmic one. I shall pursue this goal through a set of essays where each, without pretending to offer any comprehensive case study or an exhaustive account, will extend a consideration of some indigenous categories, processes and perspectives on Hindu kinship. However, when approaching the normative Hindu culture there are certain obvious conceptual and methodological problems encountered. They range from terminology to thematic heteroge¬ neity, to multiple schemes of organisation and interpretation, to divergence (assumed or actual) between text and context. Terminology in this approach, for example, does not simply mean giving a smattering of indigenous words from one’s field notes, according to one’s best judgement. It is rather an involved process of first distinguishing critical categories and then studying their popular and textual formulations in terms of each other, with full attention to whatever guidelines one’s field informants (ordinary ones and specialists) may have to offer. Since each source is singly necessary but insufficient, all the three channels of information become important to an anthropological analysis. Thus, while it may be useful to know Indological concepts, ideas and terms on various occasions, it is neither sufficient nor the always equally significant avenue for the anthropologist to rely upon when study¬ ing the contemporary Hindu’s indigenous system. He may find corroboration of an Indological formulation by the popular culture

VI

Preface

as informative as its modification and disputation. Indological accuracy can improve our understanding of the basic cultural paradigm the contemporary Hindu follows, but the classical culture alone seldom offers the total cultural scheme to the anthropologist. While it is a necessary and important caveat for pointing out the limited scope of these essays, it also makes the point that anthropological focus in India must nurture ethnography and Indological studies in a mutually relevant manner, and that ethno¬ graphy must remain a necessary guide for determining the social significance of Indological information. Conversely, no Indological information could be assumed arcane or irrelevant out of hand for a cultural study of the Indian system. This would be so even if the information may sometimes be of unequal and indirect sociological value. A recognition of this analytical fact forms the dominant premise of the essays that follow. Though the normative Hindu culture is comprised of a diverse range of ideal and ideal-typical principles and values, it must connect itself with a vital and irreplaceable domain of classical categories, processes and perspectives. It is proposed that this last domain continues to carry a deeply moral and expressive power for most Hindus. This property has been a part of the social reality for millennia and it continues to be so in a major way. Moreover, the ordinary Hindu authenticates himself on the basis of these ideals; it is the core of his cultural identity. As ideals such formulations are held non-contingent, they do not get eroded by flux of time, space and events. Yet they are also there to guide and evaluate actual personal and social behaviour. And it is this double performance of the norm that interests us in this exercise. It promises us to be anthropologically significant and indigenously meaningful. It also speaks to two fundamental moral conditions that Hindu kinship, to be significant, must address itself to : the “conventional” (vyavaharika) and “ultimate” (.paramarthika) realities before the Hindu system. Within this system, normative Hindu kinship is a creation of conventional moral conditions, personal as well as cosmic, and it dissolves into a moral holism that the Ultimate Reality can offer. Since this holism finally upholds the Hindu’s conception of order, change and continuity, the kinship domain is also found to be impregnated with the same systemic properties. If conventional reality renders kinship dualistic, the U ltimate Reality must encode it with an unqualified non-

Preface

vu

dualism. How this occurs within the Hindu system is sociologically significant to study; it may hold clues to the sociology of knowledge in India. The following essays will reflect such concerns (under the given limitations), enabling us to explore what kinship is, and what it is about. Conceptually, therefore, if I refuse to characterise normative Hindu kinship as either totally dualistic or non-dualistic, it will be to accommodate the subtlety of a rich and full process of moral transformation. It will not be because of vacillation. Similarly, there will be no place in the indigenous analysis for action/value and practical/ideal dichotomies, not at least in a simplistic, static form. If the cultural system recognises or erases them in a certain way (and to a certain extent), the exposition will attempt to present this process of the normative scheme as faithfully as it can. But, given the limitations under which these essays have developed, we will be able to do so only in a prelimi¬ nary manner. For example, developing its analysis around a set of classical-yet-popularly shared cultural principles and categories, this attempt is about explicating kinship as coterminous with culture (and culture as the “model of and for” kinship) by uncovering interrelationships among selected classical foimulations, ideal prespectives, popular norms, rituals and practices. To study kinship this way is to treat it for what it most importantly offers to the Hindu system—a moral condition within the larger moral whole. It is a cultural construction which reflects certain irrefutable concerns of the Hindu macrocosm (brahamanda) as well as the microcosm (jivatman). In this perspective all practical considera¬ tions become bracketed within a moral irrefutability which the normative schemes maintain. But to be morally irrefutable is now not the same as what it is to be socially necessary and sufficient, the pragmatic considerations carry a significance along as well as across the moral scheme, and we will recognise this condition in the last chapter. However, as long as the secular forces cannot significantly dislodge and replace the traditional moral order for the majority of the Hindu society, the premise and propositions of the normative must retain their irrefutability and necessity. Analytically, a study of this domain is significant to us as much for its internal consistency and parsimony as for its transformational approach to questions of the general and the particular, and the abstract and the concrete. The Hindu systemic schemes do not only categorise

via

Preface

and separate but also establish bonds of “reversible transformation” between them, enabling them to propose that if A and A’ are two distinct categories or conditions, then A’ could be shown to derive from A, and that A’ can also retrace its steps and return into A. This is not merely a procedure but a way of thought and cognition with the Hindu which culminates into his synthetic, holistic world¬ view. Since it unfolds unimpeded from within the Hindu system, it is cogenial as well as instructive to anthropological theory and method. The Hindu kingship idioms follow this model as they generalise and particularise moral interrelationships. Thus, categories like father and mother must encode a scheme of moral transformation and they, irrespective of all the diversity of events and conditions, must normatively be found obeying the larger moral scheme. Thus conceived, a simple category like father will never simply be a particularised relative and an empirical person but he will also reflect a general moral order and a construct of fatherhood (.pitrittva) in it. Locating the general within the particular this way is both endogenous and inescapable to the Hindu scheme. Its examination may offer us an important conceptual tool (being analogous to the approaches cytology and microbiology offer today) which microscosmic analysis within anthropology might especially gain from. Such an analysis carefully selects and examines structures of those highly symbolic (and hence abstract and general¬ ising) constructs which process and convert cultural messages from several sources (or loci) and direct to several others. These constructs, though located in a microcosmic order, show how they communicate to, as well as negotiate with, the concrete, the diverse, the underlying, the ideal, as well as the conceptual whole. Admittedly, my essays are directed towards exploring this problem. While I have found its pursuit rewarding within the Hindu kinship order and it is worthy of further careful study and formali¬ sation, perhaps initially by South Asian experts, any final verdict will be premature at this stage. More and diverse studies will be needed to reach such a conclusion. Not only should more cultural data be analysed, but the Indian systems of logic, epistemology, and meaning (whether classical or those popularly evolving) need to be studied for sociological reasons. Equally importantly, a comple¬ mentary programme of research needs to be outlined for handling the Indian approach to the practical, the pragmatic, and the

Preface

ix

practicable. It needs to be seen as distinct from, as well as in relation to, the Indian conception of practice, a domain hardly investigated on its own terms. A rich, insightful ethnography would have to remain a close ally of this entire anthropological programme. I reiterate this point despite the fact that the following essays remain directed almost exclusively to normative cultural formula¬ tions and their structures of signification. Actually, a definite level of abstraction and modelling has been consciously introduced and maintained in them, since their general purpose is to bring into focus certain systemic properties of the Hindu person, society and cosmology. Kinship is repeatedly viewed as a platform for studying “profound questions” of the Hindu order. Thus, while methodo¬ logical and conceptual stipulations would have to be compatible with the general goals of this study, they need not (and, I shall argue, do not) reduce the significance of ethnography for discover¬ ing reliable new knowledge as well as for reaching certain irrefutability in observations on cultural-norms, conceptions and practice. Further, my presentations of normative categories, this time as well as before, are seldom merely an Indological or philological exercise; much less could they be speculations on Brahmanical formulations. Instead, they are most often approached because an ethnographic enquiry has brought them to attention, and very often because definite ethnographic direction or guidance stands in the background supporting a particular conceptual discussion. (But the purpose and scope of the enquiry has precluded that it become ethnographic in an explicit manner.) Finally, the qualifier “Hindu” employed in this study is neither merely group-specific nor geographic (while it is of course not parochial); it refers to a rather composite cultural construction most naturally available to an ethnographer in my position who needs to group a host of interrelated cultural norms under an appropriate, time-honoured label. This remains, however, essentially an approximation, for, first, “the Hindu” itself is found to be a heterogeneous label as we trace it to the earlier periods in Indian cultural history, and second what is usually termed “the Hindu” also has some major affinities with the social values of Indian Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists. That is, the “Hindu,” under a connotative configuration, becomes culturally coextensive with the “Indian,” provided we stipulate that the latter, as a technical term,

X

Preface

refers to only indigenous (largely recorded) traditions of the sub¬ continent, and is not employed as an omnibus cultural term the same way as it has been in the recent past, particularly after Independence. The issue so raised is neither only terminological nor peripheral to the larger concerns of this enquiry. It is about labelling that cultural whole which makes Hindu kingship as it is, and it is about reaching a domain where cultural consensus in norms and conceptions is obtainable, despite the proverbial Indian diversity. It is therefore vital for this study to emphasise that its subject matter is never only kinship rules, terms and behaviour in the conventional anthropological sense, but that these conventional concerns will be reformulated under a cultural construction that patterns itself after certain profound concerns of the Indian system. To study kinship this way is to study certain distinctive properties of the personal and social worlds of a people and their processes of systematisation and signification. The first three chapters in this book were written on different occasions and for disparate purposes. In order to develop the conceptual convergence inherent among them, I have supplement¬ ed them with “interpretative notes.” These notes summarise as well as extend the discussion of the preceding essay in ways suitable to the general scheme of the book. On the other hand, Chapter IV, which was independently written during 1978-79 and became the basis for putting this book together, bears a close resemblance to the Introduction, which was written after completing the last chapter. Such a development of this book has introduced certain stylistic diversity and some unavoidable repetition, especially in the Introduction and Chapter IV. Hopefully, it is not without any explanatory function. The last chapter, I must remark, is not an attempt to handle pragmatic aspects of Indian kinship in all of its complexity and range. This book's scope and emphasis on normative culture could not afford such a plan, though the topic is obviously such that it deserves separate, full-scale attention. The purpose of the last essay is just to show that the Hindu normative is neither without an indige¬ nous conception of practice nor is it insulated from the surrounding complexity of the contemporary Indian society, including secular forces. I purposely leave the discussion there, since the conceptual plan of the Hindu normative leads us at that point into another—

Preface

xi

though inseparable—domain of inquiry. The book employs technical words from Sanskrit, popular Hindi and Hindustani (even Urdu), and a few words from the rural dialect prevalent in central Uttar Pradesh. I have not undertaken a uniform transliteration of all of these words in the standardised Indological style. The differences are a significant part of the heterogeneous cultural expression used in the region and they are preserved here as a part of anthropological data and analysis. I have also knowingly dispensed with a standardised “glossary” in this book. It is not to render the discussion obscure or less accessi¬ ble, but to make the point that when complex, multivocal cultural categories are at the centre of the stage, their single-line explanation becomes a farce. These categories are neither mere words nor even terms in the usual sense. They are best explained by the context of use. The reader is repeatedly offered glosses for them throughout the discussion. It should help accurate reading when categories carry several overlapping meanings, and a simple glossary cannot do justice to them. We need to make an adaptation suitable to the requirements of a particular analysis, Following a convention just for its sake may not do any more.

'

Acknowledgement

The two previously published chapters, I and III, are reprinted here only slightly modified, with permission from Contributions to Indian Sociology (New Series) and the American Institute of Indian Studies, respectively. Professors T.N. Madan and Sylvia Vatuk, as editors of the publications in question, also offered their permission and I am grateful to them. Chapter II was written in 1978-79, essentially as a variation on my Kanya-Mata paper published elsewhere. The interpretative notes offered at the end of the chapter reflect this overlap as much as does its content. An acknowledgement to the discussion at the Harvard conference held in December 1976 is therefore in order. Directly and repeatedly helpful were my educated informants in the Lucknow-Rae Bareilly region during 1978-1980, and my students in Indian social structure seminar at the University of Virginia. My 1976 and 1978 summer trips to India stimulated me to write the last two essays (Chapters IV and V). Their purpose was to extend the normative cultural concerns Chapters II and III had brought forward, and to examine a basis for indigenous interrelationships between the normative and the practical. Once again, as the known LucknowRae Bareilly families offered me a view of “kinship-in-action” in contemporary India, I benefited greatly from vigorous discussions of the desa-kala-patra (situational) ethic from the vantage point of the orthodox as well as Westernised informants. Their life experien¬ ces, when juxtaposed with a discussion of the normative (textual as well as oral), helped me see Hindu kinship on its own terms. These informants repeatedly offered me occasions to think about the indigenous-category approach within Indian social anthropology, showing its necessary usage, depth, as well as social pervasion. They also illustrated a fragility that classical principles and cate¬ gories carry within the contemporary social circumstance. They helped me see how the classical formulations symbolise deeply,

XIV

A ckno wledgement

influence the Hindu cognitively, often preside over the normative, but still remain insufficient specifiers of social reality. For such learning (and much more which cannot be summarised here), I remain most grateful to a known group of informants-cum-discussants: most of these have been mentioned by name before (e.g. see Khare 1976a), though I must add that a small new group (educated in the thirties) of informants had also emerged in 1978. Professor David Schneider had commented helpfully on Chapter I in 1974, and had again offered comments on my work during a conference on kinship and caste at Harvard University in late 1976. His writings, as my bibliography shows, continue to stimulate me. This intellectual influence appears in the context of those coming from Professors McKim Marriott (essentially for exploring Indian indigenous categories on their own terms), Louis Dumont and Rodney Needham. Equally important have been the influences of some Indian thinkers but they cannot be detailed at this point. However, my approach to all these influences is entirely my own, as also are all the ensuing responsibilities. Several funding agencies have been involved over time in suppor¬ ting my work on these exercises. Those major ones supporting fieldwork and writing are American Institute of Indian Studies (1972, 1979-1980), American Philosophical Society (1976), Center for Advanced Studies, University of Virginia (1976, 1978), and the Small Grants Committee of University of Virginia. The last one had, on two separate occasions, helped me with typing and manus¬ cript preparation. The Sesquicentennial Award (1980) of the University of Virginia freed me for doing some of the writing presented here; it was undertaken at Wolfson College, Oxford. My immediate family in the U.S., and the extended one in India, have sometimes helped me review and understand my own kinship experiences, with learning from the familiar. Their role in this study has therefore been indirect but unavoidable. Their perceptions and perspectives have also been mine, though in such a study as this one these perspectives must become a matter for conscious examination for me. It is here that their help was invaluable, especially that coming from Manjula and Sudha.

A Note on Transliteration

Because of the involved and costly use of diacritical marks in Indian presses, I have decided to follow these procedures: The text will employ only phonetic spellings of Sanskrit and Hindi terms while a list of transliterated words is offered below (alongside the phonetic version) to guide comprehension and pronunciation. shakti aupacharika

uncha-nica Isa

cahein Dharmasastra brahmacarya

sharira shraddha shraddha Varnashrama nishkama chacha chachi chachere drshta lokachara lakshya chahein Dharmashastra brahmacharya

acarya sulka swastivacana

acharya shulka swastivachana

ghi moksa sadacara caugune asraya

ghee moksha sadachara chaugune ashraya

sristi amsa paraey asramas vi^wadeva jyotisa sistacara acara-vicara vacana niscaya sancita bhaicara sacca citta jnana bacce pravrtti nivftti prakrti purusa or Purusa rni

sakti aupacarika sarira sraddha sraddha Varnasrama niskama caca cacl cacere drsta lokacara laksaya

uncha-neecha Isha srishti ansha paraey ashrama vishwadeva jyotisha shishtachara achara-vichara vachana nischaya sanchita bhaichara saccha chitta janana (gyana) bacche pravritti nivritti prakriti purusha or Purusha rini

A Note on Transliteration

xvi dhan! adhyatamika paramarthika jiva atman or atma samsara

dhani adhyatamika paramarthika jiva atman or atma sansara

mangalam

mangalam

varapaksa

varapaksha

kanyapaksa

kanyapaksha

sapinda

sapinda

iccha

iccha

The commonly used and popularly recognised Sanskirt or Hindi words will neither be italicized nor supplied with diacritical marks.

Contents

Introduction I II III

IV V

1

‘Embedded’ Affinity and Consanguineal ‘Ethos’

20

Transformation of Kinship Categories

42

The One and the Many : Varna and Jati as a Symbolic Classification

80

Towards a Cultural Perspective on Kinship

109

An Excursus: Some Considerations Towards Pragmatic Kinship

149

Bibliography

165

Index

171

.

.

■

Introduction

This book follows a rather unorthodox1 approach in studying Hindu kinship in its wider cultural placement. As it brings together four of my previously written essays, it hopes to show that each successive essay is an exercise in moving towards certain basic kinship formulations and their placement within the cultural system as a whole. These four, taken together with the last ex¬ cursus, aim to offer a culturally comprehensive and conceptually generalising perspective on kinship. Each exercise will be contri¬ butory rather than self-sufficient, and each succeeding attempt will build upon an aspect of the previous one for furthering the general goal of a cultural interpretation of Hindu kinship. ^The approach may be unorthodox since (a) it does not confine itself to the traditional anthropological study of either kinship terminology or usages; (Jb) it does not limit itself to some of the classificatory features the recent studies of Indian kinship bring out (while it learns from their enormously significant body of empirical information and analysis); (c) it seeks to take its partial inspiration from the rather nascent approach of “cultural analysis” while firmly locating its domain of enquiry in indigenous ideas and categories; (d) it is con¬ fined neither only to Iogico-empirical concerns nor to structuralism nor to symbolic interpretations, while it may translate all the three approaches to suit the requirements of the Hindu order; and (e) it is after a generalised (and/ or a generalisable) perspective on the Hindu system as a whole, where the microcosmic methods and perspectives are allowed to “unpack” themselves to yield those “building blocks” (i.e. those structures of certain critical principles, norms and categories) of which the macrocosm is made. The last point is important for explicitly stating the approach of this study to kinship. It is a logical culmination of the preceding four stipulations and alerts the reader on what to expect (and not expect) from such a study. It is there¬ fore not a usual study of kinship; neither is it only about kinship. It is most often a study of certain Hindu cultural formulations, interrelationships and values conducted through, and handled in relation to, a rough domain anthro¬ pologists call “kinship.” As I shall show later on, since this is perhaps the most natural way one could study “Hindu kinship” on its own terms (lest one

2

Normative Culture and Kinship

These essays are basically prompted by a question debated recently (e.g. Leach 1961, Schneider 1968, Needham 1974) in an¬ thropological circles: what is kinship? (Or, what is it that kinship is not?) We find that these questions can be adequately approached only if we are prepared to ask: What does kinship mean, and what is its significance within a cultural system? It is so because human kinship is mainly what a people’s cultural system makes it to be. Without knowing the indigenous order it follows, even the best analytical generalisations could turn out to be “half-truths.” If kinship refers to a language of signification which carries on criti¬ cal communication and coherence among people for various reasons, it is also equally often about the individual’s value relations towards the collectivities, requiring a careful study of correspond¬ ingly critical categories. However, this property could remain ethnographically evasive and contextually implicit as long as the relevant cultural categories are not systematically investigated for what they signify within a system, now and over time, and how they recombine under certain fundamental principles and relations. My approach to kinship in these essays is accordingly not institu¬ tional; it is neither merely empirical. It is basically symbolic and interpretative, involving different levels of abstraction with respect to cultural values and structural relations. I am almost entirely concerned with “normative Hindu kinship” in the first four chapters, reserving the fifth chapter for considering the place of pragmatic dimensions. This is so since my main aim is to decipher how kinship might be variously conceived within the Hindu systemic whole, and what could possibly be learnt about the cultural system from such a procedure. My concern will be most often with selected constructs (e.g. as with the constructs of mother and “motherhood” in Chapter II) and their representative “conjugations” towards the whole. My attention will also be towards their connotative, symbolic and meta¬ phorical meanings (e.g. refer to the varna and jati discussion in

decides arbitrarily to disregard the distinct reality of a cultural and civilisational order), including the point that its reality is recognised under the Hindu conception of “conventional morality,” I feel justified in neither dissolving outright the domain of kinship as a “non-subject” nor in embracing all and sundry “explanatory distinctions” the usual “kinship studies” are jammed with. Logically flowing from the above premises, “kinship” will mean to us most basically whatever the Hindu cultural system directs us towards.

Introduction

3

Chapter III). It should let us identify some of those shared symbo¬ lic mechanisms and models which secure intelligibility (amid diversity) and generalisation within the Hindu system. While doing so, however, I would extend the signification of categories as the system does it (or will permit it), not arbitrarily.2 Further, these essays, altogether, will not offer a comprehensive, much less a complete behavioural study of any particular kinship system of the Hindus, nor is there an intention to handle even the normative system of Hindu kinship in an exhaustive manner. The attempt is highly selective for analytic reasons, and will try to be expository in most respects and suggestive (and hopefully instigative) in certain others. It will be limited to mainly idealist’s categories from the second to the fourth chapter, and will attend to significant expressive and moral considerations throughout. I admit that these are severe limitations but, given the complexity and enormous variation of the Hindu normative (textual and contextual), there was no other option but to narrow down the domain of enquiry as severely as possible. 2This is a vital technical and terminological consideration bound to appear in the following discussion in several guises. It introduces a complication in the picture which is perhaps already amply illustrated by “kinship” as a cate¬ gory and as a controverted object of study. At least four distinctions are readily available to us in the usage of this term : (a) kinship as the traditionally recognised area of anthropological study and a universal institutional category of social organisation; (b) kinship as a less universal (i.e. less distinct and more controverted) subject of logico-empirical study and as a category of culturally relative definition and generalisation; (c) kinship as a “non-subject” by itself, and an arbitrary analytic category of anthropologists applied to congenial clusters of indigenous constructs and relations; and (d) kinship as coextensive and coexistent with the cultural whole (i.e. the only was to do a proper study of kinship is to study the properties of this whole, whether it be considered a “non-category” or a “fleeting set of markers” within the system). If the term kinship should be kept reserved for the first two (a and b), which is conventionally true, “kinship” could cover the latter two distinctions. However, there is no convention here to hold on to, except the point that (c), a relatively recent formulation has already employed “kinship” as a subject label and there is now some force of usage behind it. This leaves (d) as the formulation farthest from (a), and a logical reformulation of the thesis present on (c). My essays concern themselves with (c) and (d), with a movement from (c) to (d) as we go from the first to the fifth chapter. In other words, while our usage of the term kinship will mostly illustrate these two positions, it will also somewhat contextually vary. Since kinship-in-quotes may be the most appropriate expression for us, we shall treat it as a point understood from the

4

Normative Culture and Kinship II

This limited concern will be actually pursued as I approach Hindu kinship through certain methodological and conceptual issues the three different topics of Chapters II, III, and IV offer. Since the first exercise, completed first, offered me a basis for attempting the rest, the topic of the second exercise, a cultural transformation of the kanya (virgin) into mata (mother), followed directly from it. It may illustrate a representative procedure of category transformation within the Hindu kinship system, for what the kanya-suhagin (married women)-mata (mother) transformation instructs us may be similar to that encountered in the putra (son)-pita (father)-pitra (ancestor) chain. More generally, the same procedure might be found to recur among other constitutents to reach “the Whole” that the Hindu system upholds. But such a step towards generali¬ sation needs a brief explanation. Since the internal coherence of this study is based on such a formulation, let me explicate it in brief but general terms to func¬ tion as a frame of reference for our later discussions. Fundamentally the conventional Hindu kinship assumes a dualism in value concep¬ tion and social usage. If it is concerning interrelationships between those related by birth and/or marriage, it is also about managing “I” and “you” (egoism and altruism), “we” and “they” (our group and their group, including a smaller group in relation to a larger one), and “ours” and “theirs” (i.e. possession and distribution). These dualistic concerns—the “web” (Jala) of kinship—handle themselves according to the basic cultural patterning available. The

beginning, requiring minimal use of quotes in the text. Further, technically speaking, “kinship” within the Hindu context will stand for varnashramadharma in such a way that it would most generally refer to “the householder’s worldly relationships and attachments.” What we have analytically exemplified through kinship as a term is also essentially true about some cardinal Hindu concepts like karma, duty, vyavahara and paramartha. The same may be true even for “glosses” of primary kinship terms, though “consanguinity” and “affinity” offer a rather particularly difficult case for a sudden translation into indigenous formulations. In order to avoid unmanageable complications, I shall give up the usage of both these conventionally honoured terms after the first exercise, letting the indigenous categories and terms take over until a brief discussion of the general problem is taken up again in the last chapter.

Introduction

5

Hindu system, we propose, offers its deepest (and time-honoured) patterning when we study its categories under the cultural formula¬ tion of “parts” and the “Whole,” when we let kinship appear as a creation of moral duties, conditions and consequences, and when we allow the normative procedures of categorisation, transforma¬ tion and signification to take these over in an appropriate way. It is when the symbolic, the metaphoric and the analogic are allowed to play their roles alongside (and even through) the logico-empirical. Since most of the Hindu cultural schemes postulate an unyielding all-surpassing holism of moral nature, the dualisms kinship rela¬ tionships manage must also transform into it in an authentic way. The Hindu system, we may logically expect, should be prone to establishing these transformations (i.e. from the Whole to parts, and vice versa) in a convincing way. If, however, such transfor¬ mations are not encountered in an analysis, we should check whether our formulations could be either misconceived or mis¬ handled. Thus, for example, the normative constructs of mother (,mata), married woman (suhagin) and virgin (kanya) may readily illustrate a transforming chain. Here the third category is subsumed in the second, and the second and the third are in the first, making mother a cultural archetype. However, once this archetype gets subsumed again under such a divine personage as a goddess, and the latter under a universal principle like maya (illusion) or prakriti (nature), or shakti (power and energy), an outline of progression towards a moral holism begins to appear. Some pro¬ portional symbolic formulations become readily available in such a case—mother : seed :: shakti: creator :: vowel : consonant :: expressing : expression : : similarity : difference : : dependence : independence : : prakriti (nature) : Purusha (Supreme Being). But such a “proportionate” chain is a symbolic alignment of categories under a progressive covariation. It may represent an important property of the way the Hindu system handles symbolic interrelationships between different constituents and the whole. It is a chain of several successive but partially overlapping reformula¬ tions of categories. Translated in the Hindu cultural language, it may normally yield such an underlying scheme essential to kinship as the following (where = stands for the “actor’s” emergent positions and || for intervening transforming agents). Moral agent (karta-bhokta, jiva) — relative and his karmic conditions ritual “transformers” (e.g. samsakaras, yajna-mantra

6

Normative Culture and Kinship

prayogas, karikas, and puja paddhatis) = the relative as creditor (dhani) I debtor (rini) going through his worldly obligations = the performer of conventional householder’s rites and duties (vyavaharika dharma)j jspmUxdd (adhyatamika, paramarthika) “transfor¬ mers” = the jiva atman moving beyond the sansara (cycles of birth and death). We may note that the above scheme somewhat anticipated the discussion undertaken in Chapter IV (and it should be read in the background of the later chapter by those who need clarifications). But for our present purposes it may be sufficient to recognise that the normative Hindu kinship authenticates itself only by getting properly connected with the Hindu values of “conventional reality” (vyavahara) and Ultimate Reality (paramartha). It concerns itself with the spiritual welfare of the moral agent (a jiva or a kartabhokta) and of the Moral Cosmos in the ultimate sense, and to upholding of the everyday worldly duties in the immediate sense. If the first represents a concern with the Whole, the second is about that which must commensurately handle “parts” and “part-Whole” interrelationships. Though all the five chapters respect this overriding concern, it is increasingly represented in the discussions developed in Chapters II and III, and further elaborated in Chapter IV one way and in Chapter V the other way. This underlying coherence towards an issue, however, does not alter the fact that the first three chapters were written for a specified reason, and with a limited analytical aim at the time. Thus, in order to facilitate transitions between them, I have added short “interpretative notes” to these three. This is done with minimum alterations in the text (including notes) of each essay, letting each maintain its separate character. But at the same time the purpose of interpretative notes is clearly to expand upon such implied or associated conceptual properties which would help us reach out to successively wider issues of the Hindu system. While the first chapter is nearest to certain categories and concepts of the conventional kinship analysis, the last one is the farthest. This is a movement that was consciously planned. The issue of symbolic classification, handled in Chapter III, we may particularly note, is deliberately undertaken in terms of varna andjati, a classical yet undoubtedly flourishing scheme of social organisation. The choice of this topic could be labelled as “odd”,

Introduction

7

unless attention was clearly kept on the symbolic and procedural issues Chapter II (and its interpretative note) yields, and those that Chapter IV must build upon. In (anthropologically) technical terms, especially when a simple taxonomic view of Indian social organisation is taken, one could ask: if the varna-jati (i.e. a socially larger) order “houses” Hindu kinship (i.e. a smaller order), how could it be discussed as a segment of kinship itself? Our answer evidently is that we have not taken such an approach to kinship. Instead, it is, as note 1 draws attention to, transformational, symbolic and culturological. In this view whatever is Hindu kinship is so because it is a variation of the same holistic structure of the Hindu system on which must also rest the authenticity of the varna andjati order. And if the varna and jati orders are as integral to the Hindu system as kinship is, both must also share an equally genuine structural basis, reflecting equally the systemic orders of moral relations and meanings. Both kinship and varna-jati schemes, at one level of cultural formulation, must therefore be a mirror image of the antecedental order of fundamental values, symbolic classifications and meanings. We thus also expect that the same parts-and-the-Whole question which kinship attends to must also receive the primary attention of, and an explanation from, the varna-jati order. This is best approached as an issue of symbolic classification, offering us a discussion of the archetype and archetypic classification” within the Hindu scheme. Moreover, the symbolic procedures employed in this classification may help explicate that whole domain of expression and experience that kinship is to the Hindu. A central implication of such an exercise is that a symbolic interpretation of kinship is found integral to the Hindu explication of “moral facts.” This procedure lets one treat the varna-jati paradigm as ultimately representing a moral “kinship between the Cosmic Man and the humans assigned to their respective duties and karmic destinies. Kinship, in this view, is a moral fact of cosmic proportions at one end, and of personal and individual karmic concerns, at the other. Such an enunciation of our subject matter is necessary at the outset because this is perhaps the most comprehensive way its truly holistic premise could be uncovered within the Hindu system. Undoubtedly, this perspective will be uppermost in our mind, shaping our approach, selection and analysis of data. We hold that

8

Normative Culture and Kinship

such a distinct reformulation of the subject matter, including con¬ sistent attention to cultural meaning and reasoning in Hindu kinship, is necessary if the anthropological study of a social organisation has to be for reasons meaningful to the people who live in it to experience and to know. Actually, if our clues from certain most perceptive and generalising studies of Indian kinship (e.g. Karve 1968, Dumont 1975 [while also recalling his series of studies published since 1957]) may encourage us to take up such a direction, we, admittedly, need our cultural analysis to be increasingly more refined and persistent. Ill While the above comments may offer a reason for publishing the following four papers together, they will still not produce a complete cultural account of the structure of normative Hindu kinship. The organisation for such an inquiry would have to be significantly more comprehensive, though the present essays, considered together, should form a limited, minor contribution towards the same goal. But, simultaneously, we must not overlook, as Chapter V offers, that the contemporary domain of Hindu kinship encounters forces other than those the indigenous moral or the normative schemes release. The domain is becoming increa¬ singly diverse and heterogeneous, accommodating ever-more practical and conditional rules, and hybridising a duty-based kinship order by those provisions instituting secular criteria and civil rights (especially after India’s Independence). We will be unable to discuss this vital aspect in equally great detail, not since “moral facts,” as Durkheim had observed long ago (and as Chapter V shows), cannot serve utilitarian and eudaemonistic ends, but because they introduce additional considerations the Hindu moral system brings into these contexts on its own, and that they deserve a full, systematic field research in relation to the noimative properties taken up here. We may, however, safely surmise that the moral and pragmatic considerations of Hindu kinship occur in the context of each other, utilising some avenues °f pragmatic adaptation traditionally available, and others new. Still, there is little doubt so far that Hindu kinship has retained its dominantly moral (i.e. duty and obligation-based) character, and that its demands surround an ordinary Hindu’s daily life more

Introduction

9

completely and pervasively than perhaps from any other social quarter. , This massive “social reality” of Hindu kinship is matched (and even surpassed) by its moral reality. However, the Hindu system simultaneously introduces an ironical paradox through the latter. If this system “aggregates” kinship under the “conventional” (vyavaharika) ethic, it “disaggregates” the same under the “Ultimate Reality” (paramartha). Thus, if Hindu kinship is “real,” it is only conditionally so. If it is real, it [is not really real (in the Hindu’s sense). However, if it still is, it will be there only to repre¬ sent the karmic biographies of relatives (i.e. moral monads). Conversely, Hindu kinship symbolises a partial reality; it is a transitory moral means towards ultimate moral ends. It is neither nothing nor totally real.3 3These properties raise important theoretical issues within sociology, which need to be more fully discussed than so far. For example, what the normative Hindu approach to kinship (or caste, for that matter) means is that while the “social” is rendered “moral,” it is not accorded full and ultimate moral reality. The social and the societal are assigned lesser moral reality since the moral is considered to be more than the social. This obviously complicates a full and direct “application” of Durkheimian sociology to Indian society and culture, even if the moral is also the societal in the Indian circumstance. What does this complexity mean, and how should it be handled? Basically, since the source of this complexity lies in two different sets of conceptual assumptions about man and his moral existence (perhaps as analogously represented by the pre-Kantian schemes in the West), these differences will have to be respected and understood in terms of what they stand for. Forcing the Durkheimian idea of “social fact” (which is post-Kantian in formulation) over that of the Hindu's moral fact (where the infiniteness of man through his self, absolute perfecti¬ bility, intuitive knowledge and “the holiness of our being all pre-Kantian features—are kept intact) would but distort the enquiry as well as its resulting explanation. A better approach might be to see where (and how far) might there still be a partial overlapping-a conceptually shared terra firma—between the two conceptual positions and what their “language oi congruence might signify. For example, it is striking that “obedience to duty” is one such stand which the Hindu order upholds from one side and the Kantian and Durkhei¬ mian schemes do (fairly similarly) from the other. Nowhere could therefore be a basis for some “cross-cultural” (civilisational) communication, but we cannot draw too much out of it unless the exercise is sysmatically undertaken. Comparatively, the Weberian position, where religion, simply put, determines the morphology of society, may at first seem to be better attuned to the Hindu assumptions on primacy of the moral over the societal, actually this issue has neither been rigorously identified nor are the theoretical underpinnings of Weberian thought any more systematically examined in this context than

10

Normative Culture and Kinship

This brings us to a related property. The culturally profound and the highly utilitarian concerns exist only a step away from the rules and customs which comprise the everyday content of Hindu kinship. If the concerns of self and God (atman aur paramatman) underly different activities (vrata, yajna, and dana) and events (e.g. samsakaras) constituting kinship, highly practical and utilitarian constraints also surround kinship activities and events at the same time. It means that the domain of customary rules and behavioural usages, the one the anthropologist has traditionally studied most, must offer only a partial picture of this kinship system unless the profound and the practical domains are also equally accounted for, and their mechanisms of interdependence (or transformation) studied. But to do so is to proceed in the same direction as we plan to: to amplify the scope and definition of what we mean by “kinship”; it will be to return a kinship order to its culturally holistic categories, perspectives and constraints. But studying the Hindu kinship system this way means yet another, whether direct or indirect, responsibility. It is to deal with concep¬ tual complexities that must necessarily reduce (up to a point) under abstraction, and yet also to universalise them on their own premises. Thus, for example, we quickly discover that certain specialised conceptions present in Hindu kinship (e.g. as karma, dharma, vrata, kartavya, yajna, and dana; see Chapter IV for their consideration) may really be, mutatis mutandis, shared by all major segments of the same civilisation. To conceive of kinship as a “moral fact,” as an ordering of moral duties and obligations, may therefore be as true with a Hindu as it might be with a Jain, a Sikh, a Buddhist, etc. Their internal differences could be as those between members of the same (cultural) “species,” not more. All of them, for example, may normally treat kinship under a dual ethic, one “wordly” and the other “spiritual.” Methodologically, therefore, Hindu kinship must acquire properties not only of a particular system, but it must also repre¬ sent the complexities (i.e. the informational codes) of an entire

Durkheim’s. However, this alternative (Weberian) route is worth exploring on such grounds. A template of deeper inter-cultural communication may thus possibly be discovered in the conception of the individual (i.e. the “moral agent for the Hindu, the einzel individuum for Weber, especially in his “Interpretative Sociology”).

11

Introduction

civilisation. Neither of the two levels can be unimportant to our anthropological account, since both render kinship meaningful and totalise it. Thus, as the regional or local or topic-specific accounts of Hindu kinship continue to “mop up” information, contributing largely towards the verification of the logico-empirical paradigm, we must, at this point, also get prepared to explicate from it some larger issues of social philosophy, moral purpose and symbolic significance. We need to be open-minded in exploring whatever such issues bring along, without taking refuge either in technical jargon or narrow definitions, or behind pet theoretical screens. A method appropriate for such an analysis of Hindu kinship may appear when certain critical categories (e.g. see Chapters I, II and III) are taken up first within the contexts and constraints of customary kinship rules and then successively generalised as the cultural system would allow. It is expected, however, that such a procedure should help reveal, as far as possible, a consistency (logical and symbolic) between different categories, and between different transformations of the same category. Thus, for example, the pita (“father”) of Chapter I, representing “consanguinity,” becomes pitra (ancestor) and putra (son) in Chapter II, and Purusha or Prajapati as the archetypic pater of all the Hindus in Chapter III. It is logically as A would become A’ under one degree of generali¬ sation, and A”, A’”, etc. under successively wider degrees. But the main point of such an exercise is that the critical category, at each such turn, informs more, conveys the underlying, and uncovers its own systemic proportions. Its each turn offers us an altered interpretation of the preceding segment and a projecting comprehension of the following ones, and of the whole, making such a pursuit rewarding in sociological terms. Obviously, the second stage of such an exercise, though much more complex, would demand considering a cluster of categories up and down an entire cultural (or civilisational) system examined against other similar clusters. Structures of category relations and meanings tend to move in terms of each other in such an exercise, provided the appropriate questions are asked and critical categories are reached (i.e. those eliciting cultural reasoning and significance). IV We still need to address a general question more directly and fully

Normative Culture and Kinship than we have done so far. What are the critical cultural properties of Hindu kinship, and how might this exercise position itself to approach the debated issue of “kinship studies?” Such a discussion is rather unavoidable when the following essays do not propose to be a conventional study of kinship (but one of only selected cultural constructs and their properties), and when a highly generalised (but only a partially “real”) conception of kinship is put forward. First, we may simply note that we examine cultural constructions of Hindu kinship pursuing either a particular issue in general terms or vice versa. But however we handle kinship, there are certain anthropological precautions already in vogue which we will observe (often implicitly): (a) not to remove it from the cultural properties comprising and surrounding it, including those of everyday life; (h) not to preconceive or import what is kinship and what it is not, but to follow indigenous conceptions as far as sociologically pregnable, (c) neither to over-reduce nor under-interpret (symbolic) formulations and (stuctural) relations, taking guidance from basic cultural principles and usages; and (d) not to uproot cultural formulations from their established domains of meaning and significance, and their ranges of relevance. Additionally, I shall avoid (or at least minimise) the introduction of any complex analytic terminology (since the more deeply coded it is allowed to be with external considerations, the harder it may normally be to reconcile it with indigenous orders of significance), though it would often mean supplying indigenous terms and suggestive glosses. These steps help reach certain properties of Hindu kinship vital to my entire exercise (while their conceptual consequences will be amply found woven into the analysis itself). For example, as all the four chapters will repeatedly show, Hindu kinship is highly ritualised just as it is highly responsive to the moral order. Its holism is recurrently symbolised and enacted in numerous rites and ceremonies. Rites are the cosmic order for the ordinary Hindu for they are seen with powers to create, to keep the created in its proper place, to “refine” it, and to pass it on according to its destiny. (This might be a thumb-nail sketch of how rituals germinate kinship relationships.) The Hindu makes much of his. rites because he tends to handle the necessary, the contrary and the disparate through them (e.g. rights and duties, spiritual and material goals, success and failure, the desirable and the undesirable, birth and death, profit and loss, help and helplessness). If rites condition

Introduction

13

his view of himself and his relationships towards relatives (and with other beings, even with his entire surroundings), rites also become vehicles for incorporating minor as well as radical changes (for example, as the traditional Hindu marriage ceremony would mean today when it is occasionally employed to marry an intercaste couple). Equally important, there is another property hidden behind this rite-based kinship. As the ordinary Hindu knows from his everyday experience, rites do not [always perform equally well; sometimes not at all even after repeated attempts. Questions of “efficacy” directly enter into the domain of ritual performance (e.g. compare Ahern 1979 : 1-17), admitting that rituals not only perform unevenly and selectively (i.e. for me, for others and even for the entire cosmos) but also that they may sometimes not perform. These are vital conditions to understand (and to deal with) especially in such a ritualised kinship system as the Hindu’s. That “rituals fail when they are not well performed” might only be an incomplete, highly dissatisfying explanation to the ordinary Hindu facing difficult everyday conditions. Critical rituals are not understood as merely wishing, intending, desiring and vowing, but also much more. They help us want, need, demand, force and uncover the Godgiven. The samskaras are good examples where all these motives variously recombine without reducing the overall seriousness of the Hindu towards the results of these rituals. For example, a marri¬ age site is deemed necessary because it leads to a proper marriaage and a morally responsible life. Thus, if kinship means a serious ritual affair, a passage through a mosaic of moral obligations involving all critical life transitions, how does the Hindu approach conditions of its failure (which he knows do occur)? The Hindu’s approach to such a failure is particularly revealing since the practitioner becomes intensely serious even when merely wishing, intending, and desiring through his rituals. His only recourse under the failing ritual is to locate its causation beyond (or pare) himself and his ritual performance— in his karmic biography on the one hand, and in God’s will (“Hari iccha as the Kanya-Kubja Brahmans, or perhaps all the upper caste Hindus put it), on the other. While both sources of causation eternally puzzle the Hindu (since they mystify as they explain), both constitute a strong loci of totally authentic causation (i.e. at once meaningful in relation to the Hindu as well as his cosmos),

14

Normative Culture and Kinship

downgrading the credibility of most rituals as “conventional” (vyavaharika) and “metaphorical or secondary” (aupacharika).4 Even so, the ordinary Hindu returns to locate himself in and identifies his social well-being (mangalam) with the customary rites and what they mean to him and his relatives. Births, marriages and deaths constitute the staple content of “kinship talk” in households year after year, not simply because they are vital lifecrises but since they are the most significant events of social wishing, desiring, vowing, sharing and sacrificing (in the presence of lesser gods, one’s karma, one’s ancestors, and one’s personal deity). “We really bare ourselves on such occasions,” was a pithy remark from one of my Brahman informants. The above may be sufficient to indicate how the issue of Hindu kin¬ ship is for us a logical invitation to enquire into the related cultural constituents of culture and their function and meaning. Obviously, to such a programme the conventions of kinship behaviour will be restrictive in scope at the wrong places and for the wrong 4This course of interpreting ritual “efficacy” has obviously no intention of closely examining Ahern’s (1979) exercise, but only to refer to the fact that her attempt, though concerned with strong and weak “illocutionary acts” in ritual terms, raises similar questions of correspondence (and non-correspondence) between ritual intentions act and consequence. We might observe that non¬ correspondence entails failure or rituals—a topic not entirely converse to the success of the ritual, and yet to be equally seriously taken up. However, given as ritualised a kinship system as the Hindu’s, it must handle it as a matter of practice, with a direct impact on his conceptions of, and attitude towards personal good, practical constraints and pragmatic ethic. Rituals may conjugate ideal and practical concerns as much by success as by failure. Either way, the performer derives a message “for the next time,” and so loads a ritual with his personal history. (In the Hindu’s case, it will be with his karmic biography.) The Hindu doctrine of karma has another implication on rituals, that they are, like any of his acts, always a serious affair. It is as if, in principle, the Hindu is incapable of making, intending, wishing and desiring “weak” acts in Ahern’s terms. For all of them are “written down” and will be accounted for— now as well as later on. It also means that even unintended acts can have effects on performers; conversely, there are no acts, ritual or otherwise, of the ordinary which do not carry “the problem of efficacy.” All Hindu kinship behaviour is, therefore, also subject to the same problem. Morally aware “performers” (i.e. relatives) try to recognise this problem and turn towards what the orthodox Hindu calls “detached acts” (nishkama karma). But this is to handle kinship under another ethic, that is, of the Ultimate Reality (paramartha). Normally, however, kinship, like ritual, is totally dualistic; it takes two to have a social relationship, and two for performing a ritual (see also Chapter IV).

Introduction

15

reasons, while a study of terminology for its own sake would be far too removed from the rich language existing between Hindu symbology and socio-cultural reality. This brings us to a brief consideration of the position of this attempt in relation to the present status of kinship studies in general. Our discussion of this issue had actually started with the four points already offered at the beginning of this section. Some com¬ ments useful to our concerns are available in Barnes (1980:293-303), though we may have a different evaluation and explanation of the recent shift away from ‘ the kinship studies” within anthropology. As I read the general situation, the single most important factor responsible for this development seems to be a severe wrenching away of kinship as a normally existent socio-cultural reality in the name of formalisation (and ever-remote technical specialisms developed under its protection). A particularly striking character¬ istic of this specialisation was perhaps evident in placing severe restraints on thorough ethnography and insightful ethno¬ logy in the name of “scientific generalisations.” Those who were swayed by it became speakers of little understood Latin (paraphrasing Gouldner’s similar remark on Marxism, quoted in Barnes 1980 : 298), and those who did not study kinship admired such a development, nevertheless, for its pro¬ posed superiority. It was sometimes for its science-like efforts, and sometimes because “major anthropologists” were perceived to be those who had something complicated to say on this subject. As a result, kinship became a subject of jargon and technicalities rather than of a critical socio-cultural phenomenon; and the ethnographer within the anthropologist, who normally guards the latter’s acute sense of proportion and sensibility as he models and theorises, was weakened. Though this is not the place to demonstrate how some peculiar specialisations of kinship (with their long, hot debates but little enduring to show) might explain most “allergies” now developed between sociology, social anthropology, and biology over kinship (the main topic of Barnes’ discussion), there is no denying the fact (as Barnes noted) that in order to make kinship studies significant we need to return where individual differences and group simila¬ rities are simultaneously considered, and where both “symbols” and “events” are kept under mutual examination. However, while Barnes’ solution also calls for stregthening of certain specialisms

16

Normative Culture and Kinship

(e.g. the “newly developed mathematical tools” and biology) found potentially promising, our reading suggests that all self-perpetua¬ ting specialisations should be very seriously examined, since this is where the problem started. This might be particularly true in the case of all socio-cultural approaches to kinship. We suggest this without assuming that all formalisation or specialisation is either unnecessary or harmful, or that all cultural complexity defeats formalisation. However, we do assume that the indigenous orders of the meaning of kinship need to be better understood for their explanatory contribution, and for maintaining a context-sensitive comparative goal in anthropological analysis. There is no a priori assumption here that kinship is always a fixed “entity” in every society with a single, uniform institutional or symbolic value accorded to it. A universal “theory of kinship” is therefore implausible unless it is also first a necessary and sufficient theory of human societies and cultures. Our exercise will accordingly have to be satisfied with a very modest goal: discovering that cultural basis and language of the Hindu system which must characterise its domains of kinship. To do so is to theorise that kinship is first of all and always, concerning questions of interrelationships between meaningful “parts” (i.e. moral units of social action), and between such parts and the whole over time and space. Since kinship logically accomplishes individuation (i.e. who is who, to whom?) just as surely as it orders primary social collectivities, and maintains both of them, the theoretical significance of the part-Whole issue should always remain evident, whether a society treats its kinship as a fact or a partial fact or fiction. This study proposes that for such a culture (with a civilisational past) as the Hindu’s, where certain deeply shared ideas, rules and ultimate values hold on to their own, even in everyday life, kinship is best handled, I think, as that fundamental cultural construction which should lead us towards “primary factors of human experience” (as Needham [1974 : 36] would say) on the one hand, and to a rich, sensitive analysis of pragmatic social inter¬ relationships (whether structuring or de-structuring) on the other. A rewarding consideration of Hindu kinship could thus neither be only a specialised nor a totally relative nor a generalised stance; rather, it has to be a purposeful journey through all of these, back

Introduction

17

and forth. Questions of individuation and collectivisation, likewise, might have to run through a suitable chain of such indigenous constructs (e.g. sharira-karma-atman-parmatman) which would comprehensively constrain identity, experience, action and ideals. Symbols would need to be considered in such an exercise not only for what they are about, but also what they are—intuited, “realised,” “experienced” (i.e. made a self-evident subject of janana, shraddha and anubhava) and strategically weighted. This is important since the Indian epistemology may render symbols “real (or unreal) for rather different reasons than may its Wes¬ tern counterpart. It may let appropriate symbols be a way to ultimate reality, and in some cases they may become that reality. Symbols transcend towards the Whole, as well as make the indivi¬ dual existenz possible. Thus, as we recognise that the Hindu symbolises like others but interiorises this process his own way, we also observe that the symbols and the symbolised may receive varied values of moral reality from him. If its one implication is that Hindu kinship could be found to represent more than one value of reality, the second one is that Hindu symbology needs to be better understood than so far. The point is important since it addresses the basic question whether the Indie or Hindu order symbolises (and how does it symbolise). In our view, as the above remarks indicate, the issue is not so simple and it cannot be decided by ad hoc theorisation (or improvisation) over long-standing Indian develop¬ ments in this field. Nor could the consequence be any more enlightening if Western symbology is applied with no questions asked. (If done so just for convenience, it offers a prospect of diminishing returns.) The whole issue is grounded in Indian epistemological and semantic theories (e.g. Prasad 1958), and it has hardly been systematically explored by social anthropology. (Actually, it may help open up some comparative assumptions of social sciences themselves.) V It might not be inappropriate at this point to draw attention to a previous context in which this study has developed. Though a more systematic discussion of this topic might be in order on

18

Normative Culture and Kinship

another occasion, only a brief allusion will be sufficient here. First, this study has developed in the context of other ones, especially those on the Hindu food system (Khare 1976a, 1976b,) and on the ideology and identity of the Indian Untouchable (Khare 1981). Second, therefore, there are certain consciously planned lines of enquiry shared between this study and the preceding ones. Most importantly, all of them concern themselves with a study of certain vital Hindu (or Indie) cultural categories and their structures and meanings in terms of the indigenous system and its holism. Third, there are some definite analytic concerns explored and interpreted within these interrelated lines of enquiry. Those perhaps most obviously shared with our present discussion are: (a) an explication of the cultural holism and individuation, or of parts and the Whole, (b) transformations of culturally significant relations from the a priori formulations to those a posteriori (and vice versa), (c) interrelationships between the ideal (or ideological) and the practical, and (d) an examination of modes of indigenous axiology and interpretation. Though the above is a highly condensed summary of some major concerns, these are best left in this form to let the reader pursue their explication in the following chapters. Our present discussion will also disallow any detailed consideration of another subject present in the above summary—detailed interrelationships between, and analytic reasons for, the selection of food, untouchability, and kinship as subjects of three convergent enquiries. However, put simply, they represent to me three co-varying exercises in Indian cultural construction (and “deconstruction” in Jacques Derrida’s sense) of ideas and actions. They light up the cultural whole from three directions represen¬ ting three critical Hindu (and Indie) conceptions—“life” (jivana, which is what food is ultimately about; consider “victuals” and its Indo-European root gwei, meaning “to live,” or Latin vivus and Greek bios, a suffixed variant of the main root), “duty” (grihastya dharma, which is what “Hindu kinship” is finally about; more widely, “kin” takes us to the Indo-European root gens, which means “to beget,” and is related to Sanskrit root ja), and “status” (sthiti or padvi, or parasthiti; again recalling that here the Indo-European root is sta, meaning not only “social standing” but also, in Latin, referring to “manner, position, condition, and

Introduction

19

attitude”). Reduced further, the three issues are found to be about the “passage” (i.e. janma, jivana, and sthiti) of the “moral agent (jiva, the karta-bhoktd)\ and to be concerned with such an issue in the Indie system means to be investigating a whole cultural order and its ontology.

I

‘Embedded’ Affinity and Consanguineal ‘Ethos’

i A kinship system is here approached as a system of articulate thought arranged in terms of a “language” of cultural symbols and social performance. A kinship system may also therefore be viewed as a system of information and communication, signifying a logic, a composite meaning and a mode of “transformation” opera¬ ting in terms of a fundamantal opposition between consanguinity and affinity. Terminologies are an integral segment of this communication system, providing a basis for discovering the “structure” underlying them. For Levi-Strauss, for example, the latter refers to the “unchanging” and “unchangeable” address of human mind towards all those symbols and relations that constitute a kinship system. Differences evident in contents and in contexts are reducible to certain overarching logical relations by successive abstractions. A study of kinship here quickly becomes synonymous with a study of the “structure” of thought, and this is what the anthropological enterprise is supposed to be all about. Reason, logic and relation are expected to explain all that the human mind is capable of structuring. Proclivities towards sentiments and attitudes are to be eschewed for “it is a mistake to think that clear ideas can be born out of confused emotions” (Hocart cited by Levi-Strauss, and also by Paz 1971 : 22), and Levi-Strauss, as Paz notes, “laments the modern predilection for attributing powers to affective life which it does not have.” More importantly, the reason, the logic and the relation on which Levi-Strauss (1966 : 262) bets are regulated by “history” when the latter is itself a category of reason and nothing besides. But there remains a “dilemma” between the logical and the ontological, and between history and evolution (Burridge 1967; 92ff). Levi-Strauss

‘Embedded' Affinity and Consanguineal ‘Ethos'

21

accepts “man in nature” and rejects “man as a product of history.” Structure is thus not historical but natural: and nature, “for its part, is not a substance or a thing, it is a message... .Now it is nature which speaks with itself, through man and without his being aware” (Paz 1971 : 89-90). As for kinship, Levi-Strauss describes it as a result of “one and the same desire to apprehend in a total fashion the two aspects of reality which the philosopher terms continuous and discontinuous; from the same refusal to choose between the two; and from the same effort to see them as complementary perspectives giving on to the same truth” (1963: 98-99). Whether a Levi-Straussian studies kinship, myth, totemism or caste, he sets out on the same basic quest—to unravel the work of the “Uninvited Guest,” that is, the human mind (see, for example, Mendelson 1967). There is a certain universal “sameness” and “atemporal logic ’ at work which fascinates him, leading him to discover analogic similarities across cultural contents and histories. 1 find Schneider’s “cultural analysis” of kinship (see Schneider 1968, 1969, 1970a and 1972), too, carrying a useful and stimulating set of ideas when placed alongside the Levi-Straussian approach. Though the latter has been set forth and considered in far greater detail, the two approaches tell us something wrhich they separately lack and remain mute on. If Levi-Strauss (1963: 37-38) views kinship as comprising a system of terminology and system of attitudes, Schneider (1968; personal communication, 9 March 1974) denies that there is a system of terminology “in the first place”— “rather that there are many words used in the context of kinship” which do not produce a “finite closed bounded list.” Further, it is Levi-Strauss who abandons the order of attitudes, for “we do not understand the nature of the interconnections between the various attitudes, nor do we perceive their necessity” for studying kinship. Schneider’s attempts, however, demonstrate that a cultural study of kinship systems involves both and, though logic, reason and relation are there in the symbolic thought, the quality of definition in human thought provided by Schneider, though largely implicit so far, is distinctive. It is more comprehensive because it seeks out and sorts cultural modes of significance. Dumont (1962, 1967), in comparison, as he observes about the North Indian kinship system, presents a more “progressive analysis from within French intellectualism (when compared to

22

Normative Culture and Kinship

Levi-Strauss) as he attempts to “open up” his study of kinship terminology to attendant “ceremonial (i.e. cultural) relations” for understanding the “relatively unsystematic character of the termi¬ nology” (1966 : 103). But Dumont did not seem to be prepared to accommodate all major implications flowing from metonymic and “ceremonial relations” of North India, and he declared rather too easily and too soon: “In our view, there is thus no ‘kinship system’ in a strict sense, as an extraneous principle pervades the kinship field and deprives it of its internal consistency in favour of a more complex arrangement...” (1966: 114). The Northern terminology is therefore no more “a largely non-conscious construc¬ tion of the mind for Dumont (1966: 103), and “with regard to the task which thus opens to us, we must admit that our approach is insufficient” (ibid. : 114). However, Dumont helped us identify certain logical properties of the dominant principles of the Northern system. For him, terms and behaviour of the system emphasise consanguinity and hierarchy, at times at the expense of a clear, binary opposition between categories of agnatic and affinal relatives. In general, his data (1962, 1966) from Gorakhpur, Vatuk’s (1969) from Meerut, and mine (1973a) from Rai Bareli present a set of common proper¬ ties of the Northern system, and we can start from such a convergence towards an alternative analysis. II The empirical information on which the following observations are based was collected between February and May 1972 from the town of Rai Bareli and five surrounding villages, located within a 30-mile radius, in Uttar Pradesh. The household groups studied for this purpose were predominantly of the twice-born category—KanyaKubja Brahmans (25 households), Saryuparin Brahmans (10 households), Baiswara Thakurs (15 households), and Kayasthas (5 households). Hence, unlike Vatuk’s (1969 : 95) and Dumont’s (1962, 1966) data, my information draws on both educated and uneducated, rural and urban peasants, and white-collar workers who spoke Avadhi, or standard Hindi or Hindustani or (rarely) Persianised Urdu. Informants (110), men (55) and women (55) were most often chosen from three generations, and their observations about the terminology and exact con-

‘Embedded’ Affinity and Consanguineal1 Ethos'

23

textual uses of chosen kin terms were recorded in detail on a tape recorder. Modes and accuracy of communication reached with selected affinal terms were studied under both normal and ceremonial circumstances. However, it is a body of data which I will hardly be able to present here in any great detail, except by way of summary observations and illustrations. While collecting the information particular attention was paid to the studies conducted by Dumont and Vatuk, not only because they discuss closely related geographic areas but also because they raise issues that obvously seemed to require further investigation. Their conventional terminological analyses were found helpful, but from our point of view they were either not carried far enough as, for example, is evident in Dumont’s consideration of sala (WB), sarhu (WSH), and mama (MB), or they retained what I call logical ambiguities as, for example, in Vatuk’s category of “quasi-consanguines.” Accordingly, as I choose for this study the same set of important agnatic and affinal kin terms (and relatives) as was discussed by Dumont and Vatuk—mama (MB) mausa (MSH), phupha (FZH), chacha (FB); sarhu (WZH), sala (WB), bhai (B), bahenoi (ZH); and beta (S), beti (D), and damad (DH)—I hope to learn more about some properties of kinship terminolgy the Northern system illustrates. While working in the Rai Bareli region in 1972, I decided to test my observation about terminological precision in Northern system by tape-recording hundreds of “pieces” of relevant linguistic expressions (words, phrases sentences, proverbs, etc.) used by the Brahmans and the Thakurs under actual conditions for identi¬ fying, addressing, describing, disputing and resolving properties of the above set of kin terms. The basic genealogical grid followed was similar to the one Vatuk (1969: 107) summarises in Figure 4 of her analysis. An attempt was also made to check and verify Vatuk’s (1969 : 98-100) list of kin terms. Her first two columns for “terms” and “genealogical referents” were closely corroborated by my data but her third column—“partial content of category”—posed a basic problem of systemic requirements. The native cognitive system neither required nor recognised such “far-fetched extensions as Vatuk listed. In pursuit of mapping the extensions of a terminolo¬ gical system, one can commit two interrelated mistakes . one may either underplay the power of specification of kin terms of the system unless recorded along with the larger linguistic context, and

24

Normative Culture and Kinship

non-!inguistic context or one may over-extend the power of classification of the systemic principles in those zones which neither the collective thought nor the social practice of the people supports. It is “not,” as Schneider says (personal communication), “in the heads of the informants and [with] the natives who use the system.” Ill Our central concern here is to examine the nature to opposition which social anthropologists customarily assign to the principles of consanguinity and affinity within the North Indian system of Hindu kinship. My exposition of the subject will also be my appreciation and criticism of certain previous studies and the findings thereof. Placing myself in between the “intellectuality” and “aflfectivity” arguments (see above), I shall raise doubts about the conventional mode of approaching the terminology, and the alignment between the two principles. This approach is only logical as long as we do not dissolve sentiment into structure as successfully as a LeviStraussian professes. Or, alternatively, how should one prove that intellectuality is freed from aflfectivity in the same manner as such an approach assumes? This position is also useful because if a kinship system, like any other system, is a system of information and communication (which I believe it is), and if the orders of terminology are an integral part of the system, the emotive compo¬ nent cannot be easily consigned to an apocryphal title of “confused emotions.” A terminological system is not “pure logic”; it is an arrangement of meaningful communication kept in place with the combined forces of logic and sentiment. This for us means that we look into the Northern system for a series of cultural—empiri¬ cally supported—distinctions which in our view would bring conceptual precision in our comprehension of, first, the Northern terminological system and, second, of the nature of the logical interrelationship between the two—consanguineal and affinalprinciples. On the first point I argue that there are several pieces of evidence which show that the Northern system is as precise (or imprecise!) as any other (cf. Dumont 1966); on the second, I point out that recognising a complementary and unambiguous opposition between the two principles is fundamental but it does not tell us all, unless it is found out how this exactly occurs within the Northern system.

‘Embedded’ Affinity and Consanguineal1 Ethos'

25

In connection with the first—precision-in-terminology—point, there are three major factors to be considered. The first relates to the terminology itself, but as looked in the light of a set of major distinctions that, I think, need to be more systematically explored than heretofore. The other two, considered in succession, would relate to the wider linguistic context and the element of hierarchy in kinship. Kin Terms: Masked Meanings

Kin terms which we employ as an integral part of kinship analysis are not fixed in their meaning but can have, as Schneider (1965 : 302ff; also personal communication) notes, extensions in meanings either within the “system frame of reference” or the “actor frame of reference.” The meaning range of a kin term, as proposed here, organises system qua system, for it is then helpful for a study of consanguineal and affinal principles at the systemic level. As a cultural property of the Hindu view of kinship, if there is an elaborately distinct “man-held” view of the system, then there is also an opposed (and complementary) “woman-held” view. Thus though the term is the same, pita (F) for a married woman does not mean the same thing as for an unmarried one. If the system predominantly looks to be consanguineal when viewed from the side (paksha) of the man, it is primarily a world of affinity when looked from the side of the woman. Thus, var (bridegroom) and kanya (bride) paksha (sides) may often offer two primary modes for organising systemic meanings of one and the same term. Logically, it may mean that the stronger the organisational principle of the system, the stronger is usually the “complementary differentiation” offered by the other—opposed—principle, and analytically more significant does a study of the opposed principle become for correctly understanding the total nature of a kinship system. Studying Northern consanguinity by means of the “em¬ bedded” conception of affinity is therefore an appropriate procedure. Thus, when the ceremonial as well as terminological charac¬ teristics are kept in mind, the Northern system, as supported by my study of the Lucknow-Rai Bareli region (see, for example, Khare 1976a for a detailed description of this distinction in transacting foods in marital ceremonies), offers four, empirically

26

Normative Culture and Kinship

verifiable, “views” of kin terms and of consanguinity and affinity within the system: (1) as viewed from the man’s side by men; (2) as viewed from the man’s side by women; (3) as viewed from the woman’s side by women; and (4) as viewed from the woman’s side by men. The system dramatises these views in a series of such “transformations” as (1) a pati (H) becomes a pita (F of a son); (2) a balm (SW) becomes a sas (HM); (3) a beti (D), a bahu (married daughter); and (4) a pita (F of a daughter) becomes a kanya dani (‘giver’ of a virgin in marriage), or a bhai (from sister’s pakslia) becomes a mama (MB). The purpose of arranging systemic distinctions in this manner is to bring to surface the complementary interrelationship that the principles of consanguinity and affinity display within the system. More importantly, this is closer to the view that the members within the system hold about the “interplay” between the two principles. This perspective helps us go beyond the notion of static dominance of one principle over the other, as it makes us aware of certain systemic distinctions which the traditional anthropological “tools’ do not pick up. For example, it is noticeable above in (1), (3), and (4) how the standard terminologi¬ cal devices do not let us recognise the full significance of the distinctions that the system makes between being the father of a son vis-a-vis a daughter. The distinction I am pointing out is neither structurally peripheral nor culturally perfunctory. As a fact of Hindu cognition, the above suggests that the consanguinity a father expresses towards his son is basically different in character than he can towards his daughter. Similarly, a son upon marriage brings up one notion of affinity, while a daughter, another. The two meanings of consanguinity and the other two for affinity comprise the primary set of distinctions around which the system is consistently organised. A full recogni¬ tion of these distinctions is particularly crucial when our standard piocedure lor recording kinship language stops at unitary lexical units, torn from their systemic cultural context. For example, we record beti for daughter but we do not record that she is simultan¬ eously considered parai (that is, “belonging to someone else”). The structural expression of her father’s “blood” is therefore ephemeral at best and “non-existent” at worst. The case of the son represents the complementary opposite; he is “the blood” of his father who is accorded fullest expression under the system. In regard to affinity, the system makes clear two sets of meanings that

‘Embedded' Affinity and Consanguineal ‘Ethos'

27

are again complementary opposites of each other. The first set is based on the Hindu idea of “affinity” (panigrihana, vivaha, etc.) where a son represents (for it is his “side” who ultimately controls it) the giver of an “affinal” bond (“holder of hand” : “giver of seed”) and a daughter its receiver. With prestations under the focus, however, a son is the receiver of gifts (varopacliar, the commonly called “dowry”) and a daughter represents an “occa¬ sion” (notice the metaphor the culture here adheres to) for the giving of gifts (to compensate for the affinal bond received from the var). The terminological system of the North, as is further illustrated below, carries forward these same sets of basic distinctions of “em¬ bedded” affinity. For example, mama means one set of “things”— jural, moral and effective—-to his bhanja (ZS) and another set to his bhanji (ZD). This is so though both are the offspring of his man and both are to be treated with special regard. As my data from Rai Bareli clearly suggests, mama offers one set of meanings when viewed from his “sister’s side” (iman paksha) and a comple¬ mentary set of meanings when viewed from his “own side” (bhaibandhu). For the first group, he symbolises a person from whom one receives gifts, courtesy, respect, voluntary social cooperation and certain expected ceremonial actions. For the second group, he symbolises a person who gives all such things in an ungrudging manner. In practice, however, there are two models followed—one orthodox and the other “less orthodox.” Under the first one, one’s man's children are treated like a man so that giving things to them at once becomes an act of jural as well as moral significance. “To give to one’s man's children is like giving dan to a Brahman observed most of my orthodox informants. Under the second model, however, affection, social nearness and informality in inter¬ personal relations are underscored, but not at the expense of jural or ceremonial rights and obligations. Some mama and bhanja may joke with one another, though it is quickly dubbed either as an “infection” from the lower caste model or as a consequence of shahar ki hava (urban ethos). In practice, accordingly, the Brahmans (both Kanya-Kubja and Sarjuparin) are found to treat the mama and bhanjajbhanji relationships most seriously, while the Thakurs and the Kayasthas demonstrate a greater relaxation across the board But even in the latter context mama-bhanji relationships

28

Normative Culture and Kinship

always underscore a strong sense of jural and moral obligations, which culminate in the bhanji's marriage but may be observed even thereafter. Briefly, therefore, my information from Rai Bareli on linguistic as well as actual behaviour suggests that mama as a kinship term undergoes a series of distinctions in meaning on the basis first whether he is being considered from his “sister’s side” or “his own, and second whether bhanjajbhanji were unmarried, marrying or married. Further, every set of meanings carries within it three basic stands jural, moral and affective—along which are arranged specific distinctions of information that are meaningful at the systemic level. Hence, mama yields two types of relationships within the system, one with regard to bhanja and the other in relation to bhanji. For the latter he is a symbol of “wife-giving” (man) relationship from the previous generation and he is therefore a very important jural link for establishing proper affinity for his ZD. His place is crucial for understanding the nature of affinity within the Northern system, for he not only reinforces the fact that his sister was properly married in the previous generation but that he consummates the affinal link for another group of “wife-receivers” who are his man's man. He is therefore most consistently a preserver of the man link, and in the process if he “acts” like a consanguine with his bhanja and like an affinity-conscious relative with his bhanji, he cannot be classified as a true consanguine. A true consanguine at the same level is chacha and he is a complementary opposite of mama. However, the type of affinity one’s mama represents is incomplete unless considered in conjunc¬ tion with the version that FZH (phupha) represents. The latter, again, carries multiple-meaning domains like that of mama As a wife-receiver he helps his bhatija (WBS) “receive” another wife in a generation that succeeds his own. Accordingly, if mama-phupha symbolise the true nature of affinity from one’s father's generation, one’s sala-bahenoi represent it in one’s own. The jural, moral and affective models for what is affinity within the system remains the same at both levels: “wife-givers” give and “wife-receivers” consistently receive honour, gifts and affection. The opposite is however true for the giving of an “affinal bond” (sanibandha). The point here therefore is that the internal semantic distinctions that are recognised by the people within the crucial kinship terms

1 Embedded' Affinity and Consanguineal ‘Ethos'

29

of the system suggest once again how to corretly conceptualise consanguinity and affinity within the system. Man and bhai-bahen1 are the two fundamental axes of the Northern kinship system, where internal semantic distinctions for bhai-bahen are as crucial to understand (though more varied) as for man.

Transformations of Terms The above distinctions take up further significance as they help us explain the question of what happens to the terms when they are examined, let us say, across generations in a “diachronic” manner.2 Hhe bhai-bahen concept, first of all, must be clearly distinguished as a kin¬ ship systemic concept. Secondly, the system demands that more distinctions be recognised between such meaning domains for the bhai-bahen usage as “non¬ kinship” and “non-systemic,” Active and pseudo, and metaphorical and hyperbolic. We must first distinguish along sage, sautele, chachere, mamere, phuphere, mausere categories of bhai-bahen, because all such distinctions are an integral part of the system, and not merely synonyms for bhai-bahen. Second, we must distinguish this group from that which is also addressed as bhai-bahen but is composed of “unrelated” properly ranked jati members. All of these are therefore a part of the “consanguineal ethos” who are either marriageable ones or will soon be so. Third, there are jati bhai-bahen who are not the marriageable ones; these fall under non-systemic and non-kinship category kept at the periphery either by pseudo or Active extensions of the bhai-bahen usage. Further extensions of the usage are purely metaphorical or hyperbolic and they cannot be our concern here, for they belong to a distinctly different order of cognitive “extension” and they can not be adduced as an evidence for or against the notions of consanguinity within the kinship system of ihe north (cf. Dumont 1966; Vatuk 1969). 2Schneider (1965), while commenting on Goodenough’s paper on Yankee Kinship, gives us an idea of how the American system handles the problem posed by what he terms the “fade-out principle” (p. 290). The Northern system, like the American system, places emphasis on “close-distant” dimension: relatives become “non-relatives” by this notion of “distance and consanguines become potential affines once again. The boundaries drawn between kin and non-kin become fuzzy with “distance” and are hard to locate, except on a case basis. Norms are variable and jural requirements flexible at these points. The “Famous Relative” idea, as in the American system, is an impor¬ tant marker for recalling a relative and locating one’s distance from him. However, unlike the American system, the Northern system varies in regard to what Schneider calls “the principle of unbalanced, dribbling dyads” (p. 292). It has “unbalanced” but no “dribbling” dyads and the principle of complete opposition and complementation works, once “unbalanced dyads” have been understood. In terminology and in significance, for example, pita (F) and

Normative Culture and Kinship As a sala (WB) becomes a mama in the subsequent generation, what does this change tell us about the way terms are “transformed”* * 3 in meaning and in structural significance, especially for demonstra¬ ting the precise nature of interrelationship between the consanguineal and affinal principles of the system. When studying the “transformation” of consanguinity and affinity within the system, as those closely related become distant and those distant become close (by marriage), we come across the Hindu notion of what we may call the “fading-out principle” within the system (cf. Schneider 1965). This principle in itself is not unique but its actual management may be, for the latter must sasur (WF) ev°ke “pure” kin-affine distinctions, each required by the other to set a clearly distinct systemic meaning. One’s sasur is fully distinct from one’s pita (and the latter outweighs the former) and therefore the whole issue of “in¬

laws which Schneider (1970b) later on generalises as a “nature” and “law” problem of “American kin categories” is not present in the Northern Hindu system. There is no exact cultural equivalence for the “in-law” idea in the Hindu system, but similar logical consequences of priority and gradation between relatives are however there. Further, the Northern kinship terms employ bare (elder), majhle (“middle”), chote (younger), sage (by “blood”) and sautele (“step ) for specification of distinct subcategories of relatives, but they do not carry “non-kinship” (e.g. “in-law”; particles in them. (See Schnei¬ der 1965 : 308, especially footnote 7.) 3As indicated above, my use of the term “transformation” is closely linked to the idea of “complementary opposition.” The use of this term here signifies an important property of the kinship system : As it helps its members arrange and rearrange various categories of relatives through the principles of “fadeout” and “distance,” it also demonstrates some basic feature about the native conception of opposition between the two, consanguineal and affinial, princi¬ ples. The Hindu intellect, here as elsewhere, seems to be more centrally interested in “converting” one moral category into the other rather than simply keeping the two in perpetual opposition without proposing systemic modes of transformation between them. For example, says Manu (IX, 8): “The husband, after conception by his wife, becomes an embryo and is born again of her; for that is the wifehood of a wife (gaya), that he is born (gayate) again by her.” Though it may seem a little far-fetched at first, here is a mode of transformation that comes very close to the mental operations in which a structuralist is genuinely interested today. See, for example, Levi-Strauss (1966 : 75-108 : particularly p. 108) who it discovers “logical subordination of resemblance to constrast” between some totenuc people and the parts of body of some eponymous animals, Manu (above) underscrores just the opposite-“logical subordination of contrast to resemblance”- to give a culturally consistent “genetic” connection between the principle and its expression across generations.

‘Embedded’ Affinity and Consanguineal ‘Ethos’ respond to the systemic distinctions and their logical and cultural requirements. Morever, a study of transformations reveals more closely the nature of complementary opposition which the terms and principles of the system can represent. The problem of mama in the North is a case in point. A mama looks like a consanguine in some ways and an affine in others (cf. Mayer 1960; Dumont 1966; Vatuk 1969). How is this so, and why does the system allow for this Ambiguity? Is the ambiguity struc¬ turally real? If so, in what ways, and what does it communicate to us? In terms of the sets of distinctions made earlier, first of all mama is not a true consanguine; he can never be since the “blood his bhanja/bhanji receives from his/her mother (or mother’s side) is fully devoid of any structural property that does not come from his/her father. One’s mother’s (by extension, one’s mother’s brother’s) “blood” is for nourishment rather than for social reckoning. (chacha in comparison, as shown before, stands in a distinctly opposed category.) More consistently, one’s mama is an affine of-one’s father, and so does he behave on all occasions that are structurally important. However, the “consanguineal ethos” gets extended to him (more today than in the past, as my orthodox Brahman and Thakur informants repeatedly asserted), “only to mean that his offspring are out of bounds as far as a marriage with them is con¬ cerned.”4 We may therefore observe that the ambiguity encounte¬ red in the context of the mama of the Northern system is more behavioural rather than structural. The system makes a series of logically consistent distinctions that do not allow the ambiguity to survive in any structurally crucial ceremonies. But at the same time, in comparison to his position as a sala (with respect to one s father), ‘When pushed further, it is pointed out by the informants that offspiing of one’s mama are “significantly differently classified” than, for example, the offspring of one’s chacha. Control cases demonstrating this difference are found out when, though anomalous and rare, one does decide to get marned with one’s MBD and the elders are found rationalising the situation by saying that “it was after all only a case of one’s mama's daughter.” Arjun-Subhadra marriage is brought in as a “legitimising case of sorts” with Krsna as the “go-between” for such a marriage. Obviously, however, such cases are hard to discover and harder to follow in the field, first because they are rare and secondly they are systematically “covered up” before the outsider. Yet they are not totally non-existent, and once encountered and followed up, they demonstrate the logical thinking of the people on certain conceptual issues that otherwise remain masked.

32

Normative Culture and Kinship

one’s mama represents a case of “faded-out” affinity. Mama (MB) and phupha (FZH), especially by their ceremonial participation during the marriage of a bhanji (ZD) or bhatija (WBS), fully dramatise the significance of such “transformed affinity” for the succeeding generation and complement the idea “differentiated consanguinity” between sage bhai (B)-bahen (Z) of the same generation. Under the transformational focus, mama of the North represents only one “limen” (a node of transformation) so that if a sala of the previous generation becomes a mama by the fade-out principle, a mama turns into a mamera baba in the following one, and only a “distant relative” in the succeeding one. Here a terminological quality evident from within the system should not be overlooked. Though the same set of transformational principles operate on chacha chachi (FB/FBW), phuphajbua (FZH/FZ), and mausajmausi, (MZH/MZ), as on mama\mami (MB/MBW), and though they, like mamajmami, are colloquially called babajdadi in the following generation, parbabajpardadi in the next one, the system provides for distinction, both linguistic and conceptual, to keep one’s (actual) apne babajdadi (FF/FM) and par babajpar dadi (FFF/FFM) distinguished from FFM, FFZH, FMB, and FMZH by supplying the latter with chachere, phuphere, mamere, and mausere prefixes. The distinction proposed in this manner by the system is more than a mere formality. If however one goes by the colloquial usage of babajdadi for all such relatives, the system demands an implied specification and understanding between the people communicating about such categories of relatives. The moment this understanding is lacking, proper systemic terminology takes over because jurally, morally and affectively all the four sets of relatives are conceived as clearly different from one another, and different from one’s own FF/FM and FFF/FFM. Yet there are two proximal reasons that seem to uphold the colloquial usage for “insider” : first, the progeny of all these ascending relatives remain unmarriageable (though, when closely examined, to a varying degree), and second the cultural idiom of according undifferentiated honour and respect to all those who are in the generation of one’s babajdadi is more adequately met in this manner. But the latter is an euphemism without having the power to undo the essential structural distinctions (including in such cases as between one’s Z and MZD, MBD, FZD, etc.; for

Embedded Affinity and Consanguineal ‘Ethos'

‘

’

33

calling a phuphere bahen only bahen is a sign of politeness). The above also means that the Northern Hindu system provides for simple as well as compound (for example, those given above; or a term like patnimata (WM)in Sanskritic context) kin terms, where the latter are formed by crucial lexemes brought together, and these, along with those considered below, help extend the culturally appropriate conceptions of consanguinity and affinity. Devices for Precision:

Linguistic

The Northern system also derives precision in its terminological usage by indicating direct or indirect, logically congruent meanings, by resorting to culturally standardised metonymy, metaphors, special phrases, special sentences and sayings. This has to be done in the system to distinguish a structurally necessary meaning for which the language does not provide a standard lexeme and may keep it masked. That a system should always distinguish in terms of kin terms alone is a wrong premise to start with (Schneider concurs with me on this point in a personal communication), for the system can employ several other ways for accomplishing the same end. Hence, as I indicate elsewhere (1973a) in some detail, the Northern system characterises, for example, sarhu (WZH) in the Rai Bareli region in the following ways : Metonymy: Sarhu=Iehngaha nata (that is “relationship of woman’s skirt”)=“ham-zulfa” (shared forelock”) Metaphor: Sarhu=kukur (dog) [in Sanskrit, pita (F)=guru (teacher)=anrcacfoa (employer)=bhaya-trata (protector) provide a metaphorical chain]. Special phrase : Sarhu ka nata na ghar ka na bahar ka (one’s relationship with his sarhu falls neither “inside” (consanguinity?) nor “outside” (affinity?) one’s home). Saying : Sarhu ke ghar sarhu ay a, manokukur ke ghar kukur aya. (Translation for sense: When one sarhu visits the house of another sarhu, it is as if one dog were visiting the house of another dog.) Similar “multiple expressions”(exist for all major relatives like sala (WB) and bahenoi (ZH), phuplia (FZH) and mama (MB), sali (WZ) and sarhaj (WBW), chacha (FB) and bhatija (BS), mama (MB) and bhanja (ZS), and bhai (B) and bahen (Z). Obviously, the idea here is to suggest that such ampliative linguistic devices, irrespective of

Normative Culture and Kinship

34

what their actual regional distribution is, produce more exact meanings of kin terms that otherwise remain implicit and vague. Devices for Precision: Extralinguistic

Several

more—extra-linguistic—devices

are

also

employed

to

emphasise the conceptual clarity inherent within the system. If ceremonial actions and relationships are a part of such expression (Dumont 1966; Khare 1976a), there are also equally important, and more frequently employed, dimensions of “silent language that one can systematically record in the field after some careful preparatory observations. This I attempted to do in 1972 in the Rai Bareli region and found informants according this sector of expression a uniformly important place in ceremonial as well as non-ceremonial situations. For according full significance to cultural signs and symbols which stand behind or besides kin terms, we study here signs, bodily gestures, moods and modulations in voice while speaking either to complement or to amplify what is implicit behind the use of a particular kin term, and behind the particular syntactic structure of a sentence, in which may also be embedded some unambiguous, culturally standardised messages. (With increasing impact of social change on the actual use of proper kinship terms, these extra-linguistic dimensions are acquiring an increasingly important place, either for specifying or for modifying the meanings of the orthodox terminological system.) As an illustration of the information that my Rai Bareli informants provided me in the above context, I reproduce below the actual language used (as it W'as tape-recorded) and the actual gestures employed (as they were repeatedly observed) in one case. (I cannot undertake here an analysis of these systems of com¬ munication, but those familiar with the Northern system may recall the consistency with which such devices are employed to specify the message.) The case taken up presents a mode of communica¬ tion recorded during a ceremonial feast in which a Kanya-Kubja Brahman’s sarhu, jija (and bahenoi), phupha, mausa and, jamai (damad) were sitting in two separate places in the host’s residence and they were being individually invited to join the feast by ego during the marriage of his son.

‘Embedded' Affinity and Consanguineal ‘Ethos'

I The person invited Jija

35

II

III Spoken message Bodily gestures Jija\ aiye bhojan karne (a) going up to the ke liye. person; (b) standing in front of the person; (c) bending a little from the waist; id) outstretching both arms while speaking; (e) slight bowing of head and shoul¬ ders as the spo¬ ken message was completed.

As a man, the person {jija) under invitation found the above message appropriate. There were several reasons. First the spoken message carried accurate vocal emphasis on aiye, bhojan, and ke liye. Second, the attendant five bodily gestures logically conjoined with the current Hindu conception of address for honour and formal respect. Third, all pieces of information in II and III, in structure and in meaning, reinforced a mode of expression which was found jurally, morally and affectively appropriate by the receiver of the message. However, if the spoken message would have read aiye ap bhi bhojan karne ke liye the previous structure would have been completely destroyed, rendering the use of the kin term jija anomalous. The structure of bodily gestures is not any less definitive. Take any two of the above five “gestures” out and the interpretation of the original spoken message is significantly altered. Though by no means restricted to kin or relatives, such conjoining modes of multiple communication help distinguish a jija from a damad (though both are man), and these two form any other category of kin or affine. Such distinc¬ tions are logically vital for the system, and so they are standardised to rule out the proposition that one’s bahenoi is “a sort of” bhai because he may be called bhai saheb. The latter here signifies “consanguineal ethos” rather than proper consanguinity, and the former is never allowed to substitute for the latter.

36

Normative Culture and Kinship

Also expressed in the above case is a gradation of relatives along the axes of “respectful distance” and “nearness.” Here, let us note reversible gradation is an integral part of kinship expression and the ideas underscoring it are fundamentally different from those that support the caste hierarchy. To confuse the two is to confuse the basic ordering of relations under kinship and caste contexts. Within the kinship system gradation is a proper device for expres¬ sing janma-jat equality, while hierarchy of the caste order proceeds to establish the opposite. If we suspect the first as merely being an extension of the second (cf. Dumont 1966), we must re-examine the moral sets behind what we have been calling “caste inequality.” Gradations postulated under kinship must cancel out within jati to yield a complete, unambiguous complementation of social exhanges and transactions, and of the consanguineal and affinal principles, at the systemic level. Such “tilts ’ are “constructions for a fuller and more precise moral expression rather than for producing “irreducible” (that is, those that can never be socially complemented by the opposite side) inequalities. Therefore, unlike Dumont (1966), I contend that the suspicion of caste inequality entering and destroying the internal consistency of the Northern kinship system is probably overly magnified and it requires a careful re-examination. Like gradations ceremonial symbols and actions are also devoted to a precise expression of the complementation between consan¬ guineal and affinal principles. (For a discussion of such an evidence in marriage ceremonies, see Khare 1976a.) However, the way this precision (as all others) is expressed assures that we learn about the Northern ideas about incest and marriage. Though there is a gap that one quickly discovers in the field between the rules and practices in incest avoidance, the fact remains that the Northern notion of incest makes it a logical necessity that the “consanguineal ethos” be extended bilaterally, but always in a manner that does not obfuscate the fundamental distinctions between essential categories of consanguineal and affinal relatives. For it is the latter that provides the primary structure to the Northern system irrespe¬ ctive of the actual shifts in the boundaries of the incest zone either with time or with caste, custom and regional differences. It is so because, in comparison to consanguinity, the Northern notion of affinity is actually (as the members of the system themselves repeat ( dly observe) far more revealing about the system and about

Embedded' Affinity and Consanguineal Ethos'

‘

‘

37

its “consanguineal ethos.”5 This is only logical, for, as Hegel put it long ago, one principle exists in its otherness” ( bUt rec°8nising that it is neither texts as the r/; A° y Suggestive of a dimension present in such as the Gnhyasutras. One wonders whether the same range of alternatives othd be allowed m the Dharmasutra texts. The point is analytfcahy sigmficant from one Ltm'the ^ m specification and degree of prescription om one text to the next but since it ultimately bears on the larger classic !I nol'ons about Will, freedom, alternative action and tolerance of variability

Some Considerations Towards Pragmatic Kinship

157

are increasingly evident these days. They may actually involve a reinterpretation of the fourfold normative complex discussed in Chapter IV. The pragmatic ethos demands that resolve, duty, sacrifice and gifting be placed increasingly under wide-ranging social (and not only ritual or sacred) conditions and evaluated for practical results. While the language of moral duty may have its hold on the system as a whole, and may dominate the domains of world-view, rites and ceremonies, it must now also yield to the language of the practical and the practicable in several critical domains. Today’s kinship behaviour of the Hindu thus calls upon the paradigms of moral duty (of the karta-bhokta) at one end of the spectrum, and then moves on to transform them into dis¬ tributive social responsibility, competitive accountability, and “personal rights and social independence” under emerging secular expectations at the other. This is obviously, a culturally hetero¬ geneous and socially diverse chain, but a real chain nevertheless. Most Hindus might “fit” themselves into it, telling us what criteria would dominate when, and for what good reasons. Actually, our above exposition of the pragmatic criteria as nurtured within the Hindu normative may help explain how the ordinary Hindu assures himself that all of his pragmatism, however removed from the norm, must remain within the ultimate bounds of the Hindu scheme. If analytically a dubious claim, it remains a cultural fact nevertheless. For example, an intercaste marriage registered in a court of law should symbolise a total violation of the Hindu normative of rites, sacrifice and gifting and its under¬ lying moral order. Analytically, it is so. But since the rare people who so marry are also found to retain most other qualities of moral unity of the larger system, they usually interpret this violation differently, essentially for evolving a “reformed” order out of the same system. One way, therefore, to approach the usual pragmatic pressures on kinship norms and usages may be to “measure” them in terms of three interacting (and variously recombining) factors—elementary, essential and significant. If the “elementary” factors stand for a minimal knowledge and observance of shared kinship rules among the members of a household and its primary relatives, the “essential” factors would be those that appear as the pragmatic constraints interact with those elementary. For example, while the principle of duty (kartavya) between husband and wife, and

158

Normative Culture and Kinship

parents and children would be elementary, its essential expression under behaviour would have to come through the practical (i.e. the sthiti and kala) constraints found operating on relatives. Finally, whatever transpires between the elementary and essential factors is not complete unless its cultural significance—both indigenous and analytical, and ultimate and proximate—is also derived. Unless aberrant or abnormal, most kinship conditions may be explicable by a contextual (and tactical) co-variation among these three factors. Morality, “goodness” (kalyana) and spirituality may, for example, be considered dominant in the elementary domain (as these values also offer a most rudimentary grid standing behind the issue of the conventional and ultimate values discussed earlier), while the pragmatic domain holds on to different forms of instrumentality (including economic, legal and rational efforts). What today’s Hindus consider essential to their kinship hehaviour is usually an interaction between these two “domains” (remem¬ bering also, on the side, that this term does not dichotomise thought from action). They mostly assess their social performance in terms of meeting their immediate householder’s responsibilities (e.g. as for upbringing, education, marriage and material welfare of one’s “children”—bal-bacche), and by ultimately evaluating their individual (i.e. the karta-bhokta's) performance in certain moral and spiritual goals. Exogenous Configuration

A discussion of pragmatic kinship of the contemporary Hindu cannot be left off at this point since it also has increasingly become open to a third configuration during this century, especially in the face of the legislated “individual” rights and responsibilities after Indian Independence. Though socially still peripheral, this configura¬ tion is sociologically significant. However, our present concern with this configuration is limited to a brief cultural characterisa¬ tion of the pragmatism this position might also bring to Hindu kinship. But this concern cannot be handled without clearly recognising the ideological fact that the Hindu system is in assumptions, values and consequences clearly distinct (and complete by itself) from what the legislated rules bring about and conceptually imply.

Some Considerations Towards Pragmatic Kinship

159

Though there is no space here to discuss the conceptual imports of legal changes, it follows that the basic formulations the two schemes bring to kinship must clearly differ from each other. The Hindu’s scheme, even when legal (in the indigenous sense of the term), remains morally ordered, with moral personhood (including as its criteria age, sex and status at the centre, where interpersonal relationships arid circumstances must remain a web of karma and duty. The “exogenous” (i.e. mainly Western) scheme, on the other hand, stands outside these formulations, where moral duty is juxtaposed to particularised accountablity, obligations to rights, moral justice to state-enforced distributive justice and moral individuation to economic and legal individualism (as evolved by Western history). Thus, an exogenous configuration of pragmatic kinship appears as these two schemes confront and interact by the force of everday circumstances. If the conventional and Ultimate Realities have engaged the Hindu householder for millennia, there is now another one to account for—the reality of the modern nation-state and its (visible as well as invisible) hand in personal and interpersonal affairs. The exogenous configuration is, therefore, mostly found situated within a variable accounting of the above three realities and their mutual problems. The pragmatic kinship under this configuration may connect with law courts and legislatures for some purposes, and to customary prestations, rites and ceremonies for others. This heterogeneous domain offers a cultural complexity which helps develop the conduct and course of the exogenous config¬ uration. Thus, while it might be analytically useful to distinguish and separate the exogenous forces from those indigenously normative and pragmatic, the social reality makes them interact in terms of one another, letting dominance and priorities establish themselves by social contexts and events. For example, as a general triumph of the exogenous configuration, the traditional kinship system must recognise the illegality of polygyny (and of the sati practice) and redefine the share of women in paternal inheritance. But the same exogenous force, though legally approved, gets defeated when it either promotes intercaste mar¬ riage or supplants the traditional marital ceremony by court registration. However, the larger significance of the exogenous configuration emerges from a more general and fundamental ethos now shaping

160

Normative Culture and Kinship

the Hindu’s pragmatic kinship. This ethos is comprised of, first, the new practical strains which the exogenous configuration intro¬ duces, and second by the practical sense which has been indigenously existent and adapting. The exogenous forces, for example, introduce notions of “public good” and “individual rights,’’ and utilitarianism which institutions of the nation-state legalise and bring to the door of the Hindu household. The configuration also offers, at least initially, an imitative garb in which to clothe one’s changing identity and personhood. (Thus, for decades, Western dress for educated sons, and of late for daughters, have come to represent a new face and personhood in Indian families. For popular remarks on dress as a window to cultural change, see Chaudhari 1976.) Initiation, with time, however, contracts the reality of that limited, and the latter s ideas and practices begin to infiltrate. Husbands and wives, and parents and children begin to imbibe aspects of the exogenous configuration in their (initially peripheral) interpersonal behaviour. Kinship terms, though generally recognised as one of the least changing vocabulary at the level of category formation, are also, at least colloquially, very susceptible to changing social influences. “Papa,” “daddy,” “mummy,” and “son” and “baby” are some of the readily recalled and frequently used terms today among the Westernised Indian families. (They now are increasingly penetrating the surrounding countryside.) However, while at present too much could not be read into such tendencies, they refer to a potent change-producing influence from the exogenous configuration nevertheless. Further, the exogenous configuration is neither homogeneous in content nor uniformly strong in all directions; nor is it as well bounded and contrasted as the Indian/Western analytic comparison makes it to be. Its practical forces are also similarly uneven, though they are, in the popular view, closely bracketed with the government (sarkar) and its institutions and representatives in contemporary society. If Hindu kinship is being increasingly influenced by these forces, it is generally under those conditions when the normative rules and regulations have broken down in a way that either directly confronts or violates the “law” of the state. (Otherwise, a cultural laissez faire prevails.) At present, such situations might be generally more evident among the rural Hindu households of middle and lower caste clusters on the one hand, and among the Westernised “upper class” families, on the other. Mari-

Some Considerations Towards Pragmatic Kinship

161

tal problems, disputes about property inheritance, domestic violence and fraternal fights (including those factional) are some of those situations which usually invite intervention from the state law and its courts. The customary kinship rules and their values are found deficient in such instances. Conversely, as the orthodox caste Hindus observe from the Lucknow-Rai Bareli region of Uttar Pradesh, “One's family honour and prestige need constant vigilence, since they are like a mirror, which, once broken, can never be the same, and never mean the same.” Thus, if, practically, the exogenous configuration is still at the periphery for the majority of the Hindu kinship order, its presence is neither doubted nor less real. The notions of practicality and practical results it introduces are distinct, especially as they relent¬ lessly call upon the households to establish the ethos for “whatever works,” and to be satisfied with such a goal. Analytically, the immediate purpose is made dominant over the ultimate, and is deciphered in terms of ego-centred needs and requirements. The karmic “individual” of the traditional system thus tries on a garb which is made to fit best those shaped to represent the “enlightened self-interest.” The adaptations—a refashioning of the garb vis-a-vis the karmic agent—necessarily follow; the karmic conceptions of time, space, and event thus encounter rather alien notions of personal histories, utilitarian arrangements and unique occurrences. But, it is neither a hopelessly grotesque nor conflicting nor unequal encounter; it is anthropologically inevitable and dramatic, starting intense and arduous negotiations on the subcontinent between core presuppositions and constructs of two major civilisations. Thus also the consequences—conceptual and pragmatic—this development is offering are neither narrow, nor easy to ignore, nor fully predictable. If some of these are already evident in schools, offices, factories, market-places, voluntary organisations and even temples, they are also carried into the houses and kinship networks for close inspection among one’s relatives, intimate as well as distant. Actually, this pervasion testifies to an on-going interaction between the indigenously available orders of instrumental (sadhana) and “practical” (vastavikta, upayogi and vyavaharika) action on the one hand, and pragmatism of the exogenous configuration, on the other. Ethnographically, it is now impossible to separate the two fully from each other’s influence, and one’s kinship behaviour is normally a complex matrix of both, with varying contextual

162

Normative Culture and Kinship

domination of one over the other. Though this whole field of enquiry is hardly systematically studied within social anthropology, given its clear emphasis on the normative rules and customary behaviour, there may be a good reason and substantive social evidence available within the Indian society to pursue it at least within this century. The rationale for doing so would be (and as perhaps the kinship domain might clearly demonstrate it) that even the reality of ideal and institu¬ tional rules, beyond a point, might be better explicated through the orders and conditions of reality that the practical domain and its strategies reveal. In any case, it might be particularly appro¬ priate lor the Hindu cultural system which refuses to dichotomise ideology (siddhanta) from the instrumental (sadhana) and the practical (vyavhara and upavoga); this system is as used to turning out the first from inside the second as it is in wont of treating the moral monad and the Whole in terms of each other. This system approaches the reality undivided and unmitigated, engulfing life as it does, from all sides in a totalised way. Implications

Considered alongside the previous four chapters, this brief exercise draws our attention to a series of characteristics, and some openended formulations, which evidently need to be systematically studied further. (a) 1 he Hindu system may not allow a dichotomy between the normative and the pragmatic. Actually, both may subsume each other essentially as a property of the Hindu conception of idea and action, and what is found true for the system as a whole is also found integral to the Hindu kinship relationships. The “norma¬ tive kinship includes considerations of “pragmatic kinship’’ as a part of the “conventional reality,’’ and they could be traced further into the customary and behavioural spheres to see how such provisions are followed up in everyday life, and under ceremonies. (b) The pragmatic kinship is a transformation, rather than a negation, of normative kinship. The questions concerning what is piactical and practicable are a part of the Hindu as well as the exogenous pragmatics. (c) The pragmatic kinship does not have to be any less meaning-

Some Considerations Towards Pragmatic Kinship

163

ful or real to the Hindu. Governed by the principles of the cultural system as a whole, the significance of pragmatic kinship generally depends upon the social consequences it produces, and the way it is subsumed to serve certain ultimate values. Thus, all pragmatic considerations of the Hindu may be included within the domain of the conventional (vyavaharika) reality, they must also simultane¬ ously have a real and unavoidable relationship with the moral agent (karta-bhokta) and his position within the Ultimate Reality (pararnarthd). If there is nothing in this system, in ideological terms, that is not somehow finally related to the Ultimate Reality, there could also be no influence of consequence in the practical world that would stand intrinsically intractable to and alienated from the ultimately significant. (d) There are several important implications flowing out of such an arrangement of cultural properties. First, whether kinship exists or does not exist (or is a non-subject) is an inappropriate question. It is, instead, a moral condition for the Hindu, appearing and disappearing under moral forces. It could be accorded either a conditioned reality or no reality at all. Second, and conversely, there could be no condition under conventional reality that would be entirely free of the moral and pragmatic considerations. Third, however strong might be the pull of either the virtuous or pragmatic forces on Hindu kinship at any particular time, they can seldom be found entirely devoid of all the shaping produced by cultural questions of Ultimate Reality. Thus, fourth, the pragmatic dimen¬ sions cannot be held apart from the idealised kinship, at least for indigenously significant reasons, and nor these two from the other socio-cultural formations (e.g. varna and jati, and status and con¬ tract) and their forces. Fifth, as forces of the exogenous configura¬ tion impact on pragmatic kinship, they receive at present a variable handling within the Indian conditions. This handling could be either for neutralisation of the alien (but intrinsically congruent), or assimilation of the congenial, or a selective disintegration ot the opposed. (e) The Hindu kinship, both normative and pragmatic, is cul¬ turally insignificant if it is not a commentary on interrelationships between the “self” (atman) and society (samaja). Hindu “kinship' creates, nurtures and houses the morally appropriate bases of individuation (and the resulting domain of the moral agent kai tabhoktd) and formulates them in relation to the whole. This

164

Normative Culture and Kinship

“kinship,” under the widest metaphor, always stands for varied forms of moral relationships among different codes, substances, agents, actions, events and intentions inhabiting the cosmos. This kinship, inter alia, becomes synonymous with handling, as the educated Kanya-Kubja Brahmans had observed in 1972, a plurality of names and forms (nama aur rupa); “a play of gunas (human qualities) upon gunas,” “a web of illusion {maya) and attachment {molia),” and finally “a creation of the Adipurusha (Primal Being) that must dissolve into him.” The last characterisa¬ tion had alluded to the Hindu’s unconditional reality: He is their father, he their son. He their eldest brother, and their youngest: The One God, entering the mind, Is the first-born; yet he is in the womb. (Atharvaveda X, viii, 28; in Zaehner 1966 : 26)

Bibliography

M. 1979 “The Problem of Efficacy : Strong and Weak Illocu¬ tionary Acts,” Man, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 1-17. Apte, Vaman Shivram 1965 The Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary. (First Edition 1912). Delhi : Motilal Banarsidass. Barlingay, S.S. 1965 A Modern Introduction to Indian Logic. Delhi: National Publishing House. Barnes, J.A. 1980 “Kinship Studies : Some Impressions on the Current State of Play,” Man, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 293-303. Biardeau, Madeleine 1965 “Ahamkara : The Ego Principle in the Upanishad,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, No. 8, pp. 62-84. Blunt, E.A.H. 1969 The Caste System of Northern India. (First edition 1931.) Delhi: S. Chand. Brown, Robert 1966 Explanation in Social Science. (First edition 1963.) Chicago : Aldine Publishing Company. Buhler, Georg, [trans.] 1964 The Laws of Manu The Sacred Books of East. (First Edition 1886.) Vol. 25. Delhi : Motilal Banarsidass. [Quoted as Manu in this text.] Burridge, K.O.L. 1967 “Levi-Strauss and Myth,” in E. Leach (ed.) The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism. London: Tavistock. Chaudhuri, Nirad C. 1976 Culture in the Vanity Bag. Bombay : Jaico Publishing House. Concise Oxford Dictionary 1976 Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Conklin, Harold C. 1969 “Lexicographical Treatment of Folk Taxonomies,” in Stephen A. Tyler, (ed.), Congnitive Anthropology. New York : Holt, Rine¬ hart and Winston. Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. 1978 Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government. (First edition 1942.) Delhi : Munshiram Manoharlal. -, 1979 The Bugbear of Literacy. (First edition 1949.) Middlesex : Perennial Books. Deussen, Paul 1966 The Philosophy of the Upanishads. (First edition 1906.) New York: Dover Publications. Dumont, L. 1957a “Hierarchy and Marriage Alliance in South Indian Kin¬ ship,” Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Occasional papers. No. 12. -, 1957/5 “Kinship,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, No. 1. Ahern, Emily

166

Normative Culture and Kinship

-, 1962 “Le vocabulaire de parente dans l’lnde du nord,” U Homme, Vol. II, No. 2. -, 1966 “Marriage in India III. North India in Relation to South India,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, No. 9. -, 1970 Homo Hierarchicus. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. -, 1975 “Terminology and Prestations Revisited,” Contributions to Indian Sociology (New Series), Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 197-215. Durkheim, Emile 1974 Sociology and Philosophy (trans. D.F. Pocock). (First editon 1924.) New York: Free Press. Durkheim, Emile, and M. Mauss 1963 Primitive Classification (trans. Rodney Needham). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eliade, Mircea 1954 The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History. (Originally published in French 1949. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fortes, Meyer 1969 Kinship and the Social Order. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. G.S. 1962 Family and Kin in Indo-European Culture. (First edition 1955.) Bombay: Popular Book Depot. Hampshire, Stuart 1970 Thought and Action. London: Chatto and Windus. Hocart, A.M. 1969 The Lifegiving Myth and other Essays. (First edition 1952.) London: Methuen and Company. Hubert, Henri and Marcel Mauss 1973 Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function. (First edition 1898.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Inden, Ronald B. and Ralph W. Nicholas 1977 Kinship in Bengali Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kane, Pandurang Vaman 1941 History of Dharmasastra. Vol. 2, part I and II. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. -, 1953 History of Dharmasastra. Vol. 4. Poona: The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Kapadia, Kanailal Motilal 1947 Hindu Kinship. Bombay: Popular Book Depot. Karve, Iravati 1938-39 “Kinship Terminology and Kinship Usages in Rigveda and Atharvaveda,” Annuals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. -, 1968 Kinship Organization in India. (First edition 1953.) Bombay : Asia Publishing House. Ghurye,

Kay, Paul 1969 “Comments on Colby,” in Stephen A. Tyler (ed.), Cognitive Anthropology, pp. 78-90. New York : Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Khare, R.S. 1960 “The Kanya-Kubja Brahmans and their Caste Organiza¬ tion,’ Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 16, pp. 348-367. -, 1970 “On Hypergamy and Progeny Rank Determination in Northern India,” Man in India, Vol. 5, pp. 350-378. -> 1971 “Encompassing and Encompassed: A Deductive Theory of Caste” (review article), The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 30, pp. 559-568. -. 1972 “Hierarchy and Hypergamy: Some Interrelated Aspects Among the Kanya-Kubja Brahmans,” American Anthropologist Vol. 74, pp. 611-628. > 1973 “One Hundred Years of Occupational Modernization Among KanyaKubja Brahmans: A Genealogical Reconstruction of Social Dynamics,” in

Bibliography

167

Milton B. Singer (ed.), Entrepreneurship and Modernization of Occupational Cultures in South Asia. Durham: Duke Monographs and Occasional Papers No. 12. -> 1973a “Northern Kin Categories and the Dominant Cultural Principle: An Essay on the Nature of Hindu Kinship.” Mimeographed. -, 1975 “ ‘Inside' apropos of ‘Outside’: Some Implications of a Sociological Debate," in G.R. Gupta (ed.), Main Currents in Indian Sociology. Delhi: Vikas. -, 1976a The Hindu Hearth and Home. New Delhi: Vikas. -, 19766 Culture and Reality: Essays on the Hindu System of Managing Foods. Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study. -, 1977 “From Kanya to Mata: Aspects of the Cultural Language of Kin¬ ship in Northern India.” Unpublished manuscript. (Modified version to be published in Akos Ostor et. al. (eds.) Person, Category, and Practice in India. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.) ——, 1981 Ideology and Pragmatism: A Cultural Analysis of the Indian Untouch¬ able. Forthcoming. Kunjunni, Raja, K. 1963 Indian Theories of Meaning. Madras: The Adyar Library and Research Centre. Kuppuswami Sastri, S. 1963 A Primer of Indian Logic. Madras: Adyar Library. Leach, E.R. 1961a Pul Eliya, a Village in Ceylon: A Study of Land Tenure and Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. -, 19616 Rethinking Anthropology. London: University of London, Athlone Press. -,1974 Claude Levi-Strauss. New York: Viking Press. -, 1976 Culture and Communication: The Logic by which Symbols are Connected. London: Cambridge University Press. Levi-Strauss, C. 1963 Totemism (trans. Rodney Needham). Boston: Beacon Press. -, 1966 The Savage Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lingat, R. 1973 The Classical Law of India (trans. J.D.M. Derreit). Berkeley : University of California Press. Lloyd, G.E.R. 1966 Polarity and Analogy: Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought. Cambridge: The University Press. Madan, T.N. 1975 “Structural Implications of Marriage in North India: Wife-Givers and Wife-Takers among the Pandits of Kashmir,” Contributions to Indian Sociology (New Series), Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 216-243. Marcuse, H. 1960 Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. Boston: Beacon Press. Margenau, Henry (ed.) 1972 Integrative Principles of Modern Thought. New York: Gordon and Breach. Matilal, Bimal K. 1971 Epistemology, Logic and Grammar in Indian Philoso¬ phical Analysis. Hague/Paris: Mouton. -, 1977 The Logical Illumination of Indian Mysticism (Inaugural Lecture). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mayer, A C. 1960 Caste and Kinship in Central India. Berkeley: University of California Press.

168

Normative Culture and Kinship

Mayr, Ernest

1969 Principles of Systematic Zoology. New York: McGraw

Hill. Mayr, Ernst,

E.G.

Linsley

and

R.L. Usinger 1953 Methods and Principles

of Systematic Zoology. New York: McGraw Hill.

E.M. 1967 “The Efninvited Guest: Ancilla to Levi-Strauss on Totemism and Primitive Thought,” in Edmund Leach (ed.), The Structural Study of Myth and Totemism. London: Tavistock.

Mendelson,

Needham, R. 1974 Remark and Inventions:

Skeptical Essays about Kinship.

London: Tavistock. -, 1975 “Polythetic Classification: Convergence and Consequences,” Man Vol. 10, pp. 349-369. NiKHrLANANDA, Swami 1963 The Upanishads. New York: Harper Torchbooks. O’Flaherty, Wendy D. 1973 Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva. London: Oxford University Press. -, 1980 Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Oldenberg, Hermann (trans). 1973 The Grihya-Sutras: Rules of Vedic Domestic Ceremonies. Part I. (First edition 1886.) Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. -, 1973 The Grihya-Sutras: Rules of Vedic Domestic Ceremonies. Part II. (First edition 1892.) Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Oxford English Dictionary 1971 The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. 2 Vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pandey, Raj Bali 1976 Hind Samskaras: Socio-Religious Study of the Hindu Sacraments. (First edition 1969.) Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Paz, Octavio 1971 Claude Levi-Strauss: An Introduction. London: Jonathan Cape. Potter, Karl H. 1980 “The Karma Theory and Its Interpretation in Some Indian Philosophical Systems,” in Wendy D. O’Flaherty (ed.), Karma and Rebirth. Berkeley: University of California Press. Prabhu, Pandharinath H. 1963 Hindu Social Organization (First edition 1940.) Bombay: Popular Prakashan. Prasad, Jwala

1958

History of Indian Epistemology. Delhi: Munshi Ram

Manoharlal. Pitt-Rivers,

J. 1973 “The Kith and Kin,” in J. Goody (ed.), The Character of

Kinship. London: Cambridge University Press.

I.A. 1965 The Philosophy of Rhetoric. (First edition 1936.) Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schneider, David M. 1965 “American Kin Terms and Terms for Kinsmen: A Critique of Goodenough’s Componential Analysis of Yankee Kinship Terminology,” American Anthropologist, Vol 67, No. 5, Part 2. -, 1968 American Kinship: A Cultural Account. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall. Richards,

-, 1969 “Kinship, Nationality and Religion,” in V. Turner, (ed.), Forms of Symbolic Action. Proceedings of the 1969 annual spring meeting of the American Ethnological Society, pp. 116-125. -, 1970a “What Should be Included in a Vocabulary of Kinship Termst”

Bibliography

169

Proceedings of the VIII International Congress of Anthropological Sciences, Tokyo, Vol. 2, pp. 88-90. ——, 19706 “American Kin Categories,” J. Pouillon and P. Maranda (eds.), Echange et Communication, Melanges Levi-Strauss, 2 Vol. Paris: Mouton. -, 1972 “What is Kinship All About!” in Kinship Studies in the Morgan Centennial Year. Washington: The Anthropological Society of Washington. —-—, 1976 “Notes Towards a Theory of Culture,” in Basso, K. and H. Selby (eds.). Meaning in Anthropology, Albuquerque: University of New Meaxico Press. ——, 1980 American Kinship: A Cultural Account. (First edition 1968.) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Sharma, K.N. 1975 “On the Word ‘Varna’.” Contributions to Indian Sociology

(New Series), Vol. 9, No.2, pp. 293-297. G. 1961 Principles of

Simpson, George

Columbia University Press. Sokal, Robert and Peter

H.A.

Animal Taxonomy.

Sneath

1963 Principles

New

York:

of Numerical

Taxonomy. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman. Srinivas, M.N. 1966 Social Change in Modern India. Berkeley: University of California Press. Staal, J.F. 1973 “The Concept of ‘Paksa’ in Indian Logic,” Journal of Indian

Philosophy, Vol. 2, pp. 156-166. -, 1975 “The Concept of Metalanguage and

its Indian Background,”

Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 3, pp. 315-354. Varna to Caste through Mixed Unions,” in J. Goody, (ed.), The Character of Kinship, pp. 191-229. Cambridge: Cambridge

Tambiah, S.J. 1973 “From

University Press. 1969 “A Structural Analysis of the Hindi Kinship Termino¬

Vatuk, Sylvia

logy,” Contributions to Indian Sociology (New Series), Vol. 3, pp. 94-115. -, 1975 “Gifts and Affines in North India,” Contributions to Indian Sociology (New Series) Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 155-196. Vidyabhushana, S.C. 1971 A History of Indian Logic. Delhi: Motilal Banarsi-

dass. Waismann, F. 1968 How I See Philosophy. New York: Macmillan. Zaehner, R.C. 1966 Hindu Scriptures. London: J.M. Dent and Sons.

-; 1969 The Bhagavad-Gita. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Index

Adharma, 46, 49, 59, 69 Adrsta, see Unseen Affinity (rishtedari), 4n, 20-41, 44n, 70, 73-75, 132, 133, 139, 146, 151, 154n, transformation of, 30-33 Agni, 68 Ahalya, 53 Ahern, Emily M., 13, 14n, 165 Amba, 57n Ancestor (pitra), 4, 11, 14, 41, 43, 48,

49, 53, 56, 57, 57n, 60, 61, 63,69, 70, 72, 75, 90, 137, 138, 140, 142, 146 Blunt, E.A H., 89, 165 Bombay, 124 Brahman, 13, 14, 22, 23,27, 31,34, 40, 40n, 49, 54, 64-66, 79, 86n, 8890, 92n, 94, 99, 104, 106-108, 140, 106-108, 140, 141n, 144, 147, 164

58, 62, 63, 68, 71, 72, 74, 77, 106,

Brahmacharya, 62, 154n Brihadarnyaka Upanisad, 97, 101

129,144, 146

Brother (bhai), 26, 31, 41, 45, 57, 69,

Angira, 122 Anubhava, 17, 82 Apte, Vaman Shivram, 46, 49n, 50, 51, 53n, 56n, 93, 99, 100, 121, 165 Arjun, 31n Artha, 127n, 140, 146 Ashrama, 122, 125, 135,

142,

143,

154n Atharvaveda, 164 Atman, see Unbounded soul Attachment (mamta), 60, 61, 64, 116, 122, 146, 147, 164; web of, 164

70n, 77, 132, 141n, 164 Brown, Robert, 117, 127, 165 Buhler, Georg, 165 Burridge, K.O.L., 20, 165 Caste (jati), 2, 6, 7, 9n, 13, 21, 22, 27, 29n, 36, 40, 40n, 55, 65, 78, 80-108, 117, 118, 133,

137, 142, 143, 151,

156, 160, 161, 163; hierarchy, 36; inequality, 36; inter-, 13, 40, 40n, 88, 89n; lower, 27, 89, 90, 91 n, 160; twice-born, 22, 52, 55, 65, 88; upper, 13, 65, 105, 151, 156, 160

Bahen, see Sister Barlingay, S.S., 96n, 165 Barnes, J.A., 15, 165 Beti, see Daughter Bhagavad Gita, 59, 117, 139 Bhagvata, 117 Bhai, see Brother Bhaichara, see Consanguinity Bhakti, 116, 116n, 134, 144 Biardeav, Madeleine, 114n, 165 Bija, see Seed Birth, 4, 6, 12, 14, 17, 38, 41, 44, 48,

Chandogya, 97 Chaudhuri, Nirad C., 160, 165 Conjugation (Samyoga), 58, 66, 69, 70, 70n, 133 Conklin, Harold C , 80, 90, 91, 165 Consanguinity (bhaichara or biradari), 4n, 11, 20-41, 44n, 68-70, 73,74, 132,133, 146, 151, 154n; transfor¬ mation of, 30-33 Conventional reality (vyavaharika), 6,9, 14,73,77, 78, 115, 116, 118, 125n, 127n, 133,139, 144-46,150,

172

162,163 Coomaraswamy, Ananda K., 79, 107, 108, 165 Cosmos, 6, 13, 47, 72, 134, 164 Custom, 10, 36, 46, 47, 54, 126, 150 Daiva, see Fate Dana (gifting), 10, 39, 40, 43, 49, 6266, 66n, 67, 68, 71, 72, 74, 77, 101, 123, 127, 133-36, 146, 147n, 157; dharma, 67; kanya, 49, 51, 52, 54, 64-66, 70, 73, 75, 77, 128; maha (supreme), 49, 54, 64, 101;pinda, 62, 63; pitra, 61; vidya, 65 Daughter (beti), 26, 27, 56, 72, 74, 75, 77, 88, 128, 129, 138, 143, 156, 160 Dayabhaga, 46 Death, 6, 12, 14, 44, 63, 118, 142, 146 Debt (rna), 43, 59, 62, 63, 71, 72, 114, 125 Deity (deva), 119, 121, 122, 147n Deliverance (moksha), 48, 73, 77, 127n, 140, 146, 148 Deussen, Paul, 148, 165 Deva, see Deity Devaki, 61 Dharma, 10, 44n, 45n, 46-50, 53, 56, 56n, 57, 57n, 59-62, 64, 68-70, 70n, 71-73, 77, 114, 117, 119, 125n, 126, 127n, 129, 140, 144, 146; dana, 65; grhastya, 18; matra, 61; sharirika, 69, 70 Dharmasastra, 52, 58, 122 Dharmasutra, 77, 151, 153, 156n Drsta, see Seen Draupadi, 53 Dumezil, G., 86 Dumont, L„ 8, 21-24, 29n, 31, 34, 36, 43, 81, 84, 85, 86, 86n, 87, 101, 102 Durkheim, Emile, 8, 9n, 10n, 80,

106, 107, 130, 131, 166 Duty (kartavya), 4n, 10, 18, 39,

77, 117, 125-30, 132, 133, 136142, 145, 147n, 157, 159; web 159

Normative Culture and Kinship Eliade, Mircea, 99, 166 Faith (shraddha), 65, 72, 135, 140 Family, 40, 49, 57, 66n, 102, 125, 145, 154n, 160, 161 Fate (daiva), 58, 119, 120, 120n, 121, 122, 125, 135, 147n Father (pita), 4, 11, 25, 26, 29n, 31, 33, 43, 48, 58, 62, 63, 68, 71, 72, 74, 77,119, 128, 129, 137, 138, 141, 146, 164 Field (kshetra), 57-60, 68, 69, 125 Forter, Meyer, 149, 166 Gandharva, 68 Ganesh, 67 Geertz, C„ 114 Ghurye, G.S., 124, 166 Gifting, see Dana Gobhila, 155 Goodenough, W., 29n Gorakhpur, 22 Gouldner, A., 15 Gouri, 67 Grihyasutra, 77, 122, 151, 153, 154n, 155, 156n Hampshire, Stuart, 80, 166 Hegel, C.W.F., 39 Hiranyagarbha (golden egg), 59, 97, 100, 101, 103, 105 Hocart, A.M., 20, 86, 127, 166 Hubert, Henri, 134, 166 Husband (pati), 26, 41, 48, 54, 54n, 55, 58, 67-70, 70n, 71, 74, 77, 129, 157, 160 Illusion (moha), 5, 52, 60, 116, 122, 146, 147, 164; web of, 164 Inden, Ronald, B., 110, 124, 125, 166 India, 8, 17, 84n, 110n Isha, 97 Jacques Derrida, 18 Jati, see Caste Jaya, 57n Jiva, 5, 6, 99, 115, 121n, 144, 145

Index

173

Kaikei, 60

Lucknow, 25, 37, 44, 49, 71, 84n, 161 Lustration (samskara), 10, 13, 66,

Kali age, 47, 54, 94, 154 Kama, 127n, 140, 146

67, 73, 75, llln, 119, 121-25, 125n,

Kane, Pandurang Vaman, 47n, 49, 51,

126, 133, 135, 138-40, 146,153, 154, 154n

52, 54, 55, 58, 64-68, 71, 101, 166 Kant, I., 9n, 130 Kanya, see Virgin Kapadia, Kanailal Motilal, 124, 166 Karma, 4n, 10, 14, 14n, 17, 39, 44n, 47, 48, 58, 64, 73, 11 In, 117, 119, 120, 120n, 121, 121n, 122, 124, 125, 131-33, 135, 139-47, 147n, niskama, 14n; web of, 159

159;

Madan, T.N., 131, 133, 167 Mahabharata, 58, 148, 154 Mamta, see Attachment Mandodari, 53 Manu, 30n, 49, 51-55, 57n, 58, 59, 60n, 62-66, 71, 72, 94, 95, 107, 108, 148,154

Karta-bhokta, see Moral Agent

Marcuse, H., 37, 167

Karve, Iravati, 8, 42, 43, 122, 124,

Margenau, Henry, 167 Marriage (Panigrihana), 4, 13,

154, 166 Kashmir, 131 Kaumarya, see Virginity Kaushilya, 61 Kay, Paul, 90, 166

118,119, 123, 131-33, 154n, 15759; Brahma, 65; intercaste, 157,

Kayastha, 22, 27, 49 Khare, R.S., 18, 25, 34, 36, 44n, 47, 48, 59, 60, 88-90, 92n, 93, 95, 98 132, 147n, 166 Kinship, 1, In, 2, 2n, 3, 3n, 4n, 5-9, 9n, 10-14, 14n, 15-18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 29n, 30n, 36-48, 62, 77, 78, 90, 104, 105,

107-64;

behaviour,

126;

categories, 41-79 ; terminology, In, 3n, 4, 4n, 21-28, 29n, 30n, 31, 33-35, 38, 39, 42, 44n, 56n, 136, 137, 160; theory of, 16;

transformation of

terminology, 26, 29-33; web of, 4 Krishna, 31n, 61, 123 Kshatriya, 86n, 94, 140 Kshetra, see Field Kunjunni, Raja K., 26n,

14,

26-28, 30, 31, 31n, 32, 34,36-38, 40, 40n, 41,44, 47n, 48-51, 54, 64, 66, 66n, 67, 72, 74, 74, 79, 88, 116,

79, 100,

lOOn, 167 Kuppuswami Sastri, S., 96n, 167 Kurai, 134 Leach, E.R., 2, 53, 60n, 109, 149,

159 Married Woman (Suhagin/saubhagyavati), 4, 5,41, 48, 53, 53n, 53-57, 60, 62-64, 66n, 67-73, 75 Mata, see Mother Matilal, Birnal K., 96n, 145, 167 Mauss, Marcel, 80, 85, 134, 166 Mayer, A.C , 31,167 Mayr, Ernest, 90, 168 Meerut, 22 Mendelson, E.M., 21, 168 Mensuration, 49, 50, 51 Mitakasara, 46 Moha, see Illusion Moksha, see Deliverance Moral Agent (Karta-bhokta), 5, 6, 19, 73,74, 106, 107, 112, 117, 121n, 123, 126, 130, 131, 138-40, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147n, 156-58, 163 Mother (mata) 2, 4, 5, 31, 41, 48, 52, 56, 57, 57n, 58-64, 67-73, 75, 77, 137; Kumate, 60; upamata, 61

167 Levi-Strauss, C., 20-22, 24, 30n, 167

Mueller, Max, 154n

Lingat, R., 45n, 46, 167 Linsley, E.G., 168 Lloyd, G.E.R., 95, 167

Nature (prakriti), 5, 52, 68 Needham, R., 2, 16, 80, 85, 91, 109,

174 168 Nicholas, Ralph W., 110, 124, 125, 166 Nikhilananda, Swami, 148, 168 Nivritti, 148 O’Flaherty, Wendy D., 56, 60n, 122, 168 Oldenberg, Harmann, 153-55, 168 Pandey, Raj Bali, 122, 123, 134, 137, 153, 154n, 168 Panigrihana, see Marriage Paramartha, see Ultimate reality Pati, see Husband Patni, see Wife Paz, Octavio, 20, 21, 168 Pinda, 62, 63, 146 Pita, see Father Pitra, see Ancestor Pitt-Rivers, J., 68n, 168 Poona, 124 Potter, Karl H., 140, 168 Prabhu, Pandarinath H., 49n, 52, 53, 53n, 57n, 58, 64, 68, 124, 168 Prajapati, 11, 62, 75 Prasad, Jwala, 17, 168 Purana, 52 Purusha, 5, 59, 60n, 64, 94-100, lOOn, 101, 103, 105-08, Purusartha, 125, 137, 146 Putra, see Son Rae Bareilly, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28,33, 34, 37, 40n, 44, 49, 55, 71, 84n, 161 Rama, 60 Renouncer, 131 Resolve (vrata), 10, 39, 123, 128-33, 136, 137, 145, 147n, 157 Richards, I.A , 106, 168 Rishtedari, see Affinity Rite/Ritual 5, 6, 12-14, 14n, 40, 41, 54, 55, 62, 63, 67, 72, 74, 75, 77, 79, 101, 102, 119, 122, 123, 125, 127, 127n, 128, 132, 133, 135, 13739, 143, 144, 154, 154n, 155, 157,

Normative'Culture and Kinship 159; ancestral, 61, 63, 67-72; cosmological, 101; funeral, 63 Rna, see Debt Sacrifice (Yajna), 10, 39, 40, 63, 64, 66, 77, 107, 108, 123, 127, 128, 133-36, 138, 145, 157 Sagotra/Sapravara, 47n Samskara, see Lustration Samyoga, see Conjugation Sanatani (Hindu hand-book), 79 Sanskritisation, 92n Sapinda, 40n, 41,68-70, 74, 75 Sati, 45n, 54 Savitri, 54, 54n Schneider, David M., 2, 21, 24, 25, 29n, 30, 30n, 33, 42, 45, 45n, 56, 109, llOn, 11 In, 168 Secularism, 127 Seed (bija), 57-60, 68, 69, 71, 72 Seen (drsta), 47n, 50, 66, 83n, 93, 99, 104, 115, 131 Sharma, K.N., 137, 169 Shiva, 56 Shradha, see Rites (ancestral) Shraddha, see Faith Shudra, 90, 92n, 140 Simpson, George, G., 80, 86n, 90, 169, Sister (bahen), 41, 45, 57, 64, 69, 74, 77, 131, 132 Sita, 53 Smrti, 45n, 46, 51 Smvrti, 117 Sneath, Peter, H.A., 80, 91, 169 Sokal, Robert, 80, 91, 169 Soma, 68 Son (putra), 4, 11, 27, 34, 43, 48, 58, 59, 61-63, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, 77, 138, 141, 146, 147n, 158n, 160, 164 Srinivas, M.N., 92n, 169 Sruti, 45n, 46 Staal, J.F., 98, 101, 103, 169 Subhadra, 3In Suhagin/Saubhagyavati, see Married woman

175

Index Varnashrama

Taittiriya Samhita, 108 Taittiriya Upanisad, 148 Tambiah, S.J., 80, 84, 85, 87-90, 93, 102, 169 Tara, 53 Thakur, 22, 23, 27, 31,49 Ultimate reality (paramartha), 4, 6, 9, 14a, 73, 77, 78, 115, 116, 118, 122, 125n, 127n, 129, 133, 138, 144-46, 147n,150, 163 Unbounded soul (atman), 6, 17, 114, 115,119,121, 122,

129, 144, 145,

163 Unseen (adrsta), 47n, 50, 66, 68, 83, 93, 94,99, 104, 115, 131 Usinger, R.L., 168 Uttar Pradesh, 22, 44, 84n, 89, 161 Vaishya, 140 Vatuk, S., 22, 23, 29n, 31, 132, 169 Varna, 2, 67, 80-108, 137, 140, 142, 143, 146,147n, 163 Varnashrama, 135

dharma,

4n, 62, 77,

124, 125 Veda, 63, 148 Vidyabhushana, S.C., 96n, 169 Virgin (kanya), 4, 5, 25, 26, 41, 45n, 48, 49, 49n, 51-53,

55-57,

62-64,

66-68, 70, 71, 73-75, 77, 79 Virginity (kaumarya), 50, 51,55, 129 Vrata, see Resolve Vyavaharika, see

Conventional

reality Waismann, F., 83, 83n, 100, 169 Weber, Max, 9n, lOn, Wife (patni), 69, 70, 70n, 71, 74, 77, 157, 160

Yajna, see Sacrifice Yama, 54n Yashoda, 61 Zaehner, R.C., 59, 101, 140, 148, 164, 169