Dravidian Kinship Terminology as an Expression of Marriage

54. The Dravidian Kinship Terminology as an Expression of Marriage Author(s): L. Dumont Source: Man, Vol. 53 (Mar., 1953), pp. 34-39 Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2794868 . Accessed: 27/05/2013 13:29 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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Nos. 53. 54

Man

parchment, as has been suggested by Fran,oise Henry.25 Mr. C. H. Roberts hasexpressedthe following opinion: 'If we may assumethe existence of pre-Christian"books" in Ireland, we should expect them to be in the roll form. Equallyone would expect the codex form to be introduced by the earliestChristianmissionaries.'On the other hand it is strange that Theodor Birt does not refer at all to this unusualway of holding a roll.26The posturemay, however, have a symbolical meaning as yet unknown to us. The contrast between the lifelike sculptureof the seated ecclesiastic and the other three stereotyped figures is striking. I should like to suggest as a hypothesis that the latter are copies of seventh-centurysculptures.Similar sets of figures may have existed in other more accessible churches,where they suffereddestructionwhilst the White Islandfigures survived owing to their isolation. If this was the case, a local sculptor may have been commissioned to add furtherportraitsof persons closely associatedwith this church. This would (i) explain the single head (Plate Cd, left) and the rejected stone mentioned above; and (ii) bridge the time gap between the seventh-century original statuesand the younger text of The TripartiteLife. The question now ariseswhether the three seventh-century sculptures, or copies of them, may not even have inspired some of the above quoted passages in The TripartiteLife. We cannot, of course, offer any definite answer, but may at least seem justified in adducing those texts as pertinent evidence. The compilers of The TripartiteLife may, indeed, have remembered that the figures of White Island, or possibly similar copies, or the originals themselves were representationsof St. Patrick, King Loiguire and King Enna.27 I Eric

MARCH, I953 3

The PreliminarySurvey of the AncientMonumentsof Northern

Ireland (Belfast, I940), p. I48. 4 A.J. Butler, TheAncientCopticChurches ofEgypt(Oxford, I884), Vol. II, fig. 20, p. IIO. 5 IrishMonasticism (Dublin, I93I), p. i85. 6 Ed. tr. Wh. Stokes (London, i887), pp. 75, 567. 7 The use of pairsof animalsin substitutionritualis alsomentioned by ProfessorS. H. Hooke, 'The Theory and Practiceof Substitution', Vetusrestamentum, Vol. II, No. I, pp. 6-8. 8 The MichaelmasSheep Story,' Tripartite Life, op. cit.,pp. ss7f.; James F. Kenney, The Sourcesof the EarlyHistoryof Ireland(New York, I929), p. 350. 9 'The Iconographyof St. Patrick,'Down and ConnorHistorical Society'sjournal,Vol. VII (Belfast,I936). IO Op. cit., pp. i83, 326. I" Ibid.,pp. 35, i64, 22I. I2J. A. MacCulloch,'Tonsure,'E.R.E., Vol. XII, p. 386a. I3 'The Form of the CelticTonsure,'P.S.A.S., Vol. XXX, p. 326. I4

Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 229.

H. F. McClintock, Old Irish and HighlandDress, 2nd ed. (Dundalk,I950), Plate 8; Sexton, op. cit., figs. 48, 52, 55. i6 Op. cit., p. 79. I7 TheBanquet of Dun-nan-Gedh(Dublin, I842), note on pp. 38f. I8 The Life of St. Gall (London, I927), p, 73, note I. '9 Op. cit., pp. II4, I20f, 476-9. I5

Ibid., p. 249. 2nd ed. (Leipzig, I884), note on p. 42, quoted from Morgenblatt, i853, No. 34, p. 4I5. See alsoJ.R.S.A.I., Vol. XXX, p. 237, 20

21

T. J. Westropp, 'The Clog an Oir, or Bell Shrineof Scattery.'The Secretaryof the Royal IrishAcademykindly informedme by letter that 'the Minutes of the R.I.A. for iS March, igig, contain three pagesrelatingto the history of the bell. ...' 22Adolf Mahr, ChristianArt in Ireland(Dublin, I932), plate i8, No. 5. 23 Op. cit., p. 383. 24 Op. cit., p. 358.

IrishArt (London I940), p. I0o. Die Buchrollein derKunst(Leipzig,I907). 27 We should regard the squatting female figure (Plate Cd, centre) as a Sheela-na-Gig,and hope that the originaland probably paganmeaningof this whole group of femalestatueswill some day be fully explained.I am greatlyindebtedfor advice in the preparation of thisarticleto Fatherkomuald Bauerreiss,O.S.B., of Munich, and to ProfessorI. LI. Foster, Sir John L. Myres and Mr. C. H. Roberts of Oxford. 25

26

Notes H. L. Sexton, Irish Figure Sculptures(Portland, Maine,

1946), p. 299. 2 Ibid.,p. 298; the Revd. D. O'DriscollinJ.R.S.A.I., Vol. LXXII, pp. ii6ff.; R. A. S. Macalister,The Archa?ology of Ireland,2nd ed. (London, 1949), p. 358.

THE DRAVIDIAN KINSHIP TERMINOLOGY EXPRESSION OF MARRIAGE*

AS AN

by L. DUMONT Instituteof SocialAnthropology, Universityof Oxford

54

This paper'springsfrom two sources.Field acquaintance with Dravidian kinship terminology made me feel very strongly its systematic,logical character; I could not help thinking that it centred in marriage, and that it should be possible to expressthose two featuresin a simple formula. But, in trying to do so, a considerableresistance from currentanthropologicalideas was experienced. Therefore a few generaland criticalremarkssuggest themselves. * A paperreadbeforetheIVInternational and ofAnthropological Congress EthnologicalSciences,Vienna,September,I952, and herepublishedby ofthe OrganizingCommittee.With 4 text figures permission

PRELIMINARY

Its main features are well known: classificationaccording to generations, distinction of sex, distinction of two kinds of relatives inside certain generations, distinction of age. Since Morgan, who based his second or 'punaluan' family on the Dravidian and the Seneca-Iroquoissystems, this type of terminology, known as Seneca or DakotaIroquoistype, and one of the most widely spread,has challenged anthropologists. Rivers, studying the Dravidian system, saw that its main feature was the distinction of

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MARCH,

Man

1953

No. 54

parallelandcrosscousins,andrightlyconnectedsomeof its -I I featureswith cross-cousinmarriage,but, to accountfor it F M's Br asa whole,he turnedtowardsa hypotheticalpreviousstage of dualorganization.Lesssatisfactorydescriptions,when and it is very likely that the principle of the opposition lies foundin modernliterature, witnessto thedifficultyscholars in that relationship.Possibly our preconceived ideas resist encounterin becomingfamiliarwith this importantand such a view, but should they not give way if the facts im-

relatively simple terminology. As late as 1947 we find maintainedthe denomination of 'bifurcate merging' type introduced previously with the explanation: ' . . . bifur-

cate, becausepaternal and maternal kin are distinguished, mergingas far as thereis a partialmerging with the parents, a definitionobviously inaccurateand misleading,as the distinction is not between paternaland maternalsides, which are, on the contrary, treatedexactly according to the same principle,as alreadymade clear by Rivers. Even when the 'principleof the solidarity of the sibling group' is emphasized, we return to the same confusion, since the paternal auntis assimilatedwith the father, the maternaluncle with the mother.2 All this would requirean explanation,and some of what I believe to be the factors producing these misconceptions will be found below. But perhapsit may be said in general that the terminology was not consideredfor a moment in itself but in terms of other aspectsof kinship, in fact related to but differentfrom it; at the same time it was still felt as irrationaland one hastened to explain without accurately describing.This is so true that when Kirchhoff,on the contrary, only wants to describe it, he comes close to the explanation.He states,in his type D, that there is 'a common word for fatherand father'sbrother,but anotherword for mother's brother' (etc., in two columns).3 Let us proceed from this point to some furtherobservations.Here, in the father'sgeneration, there are two kinds, and two kinds only, of male relatives.They are two classes,and we should not, because the father and the mother's brother respectively fall into these two classes,by stressingthem in fact substitutethe idea of a dyadic relationshipfor that of a class, as we do if we suppose, for example, 'mother's brother' to be the basic meaning, and the others to be extensions.4 Moreover, the 'mother's brother' is also the 'father-inlaw,' and the common assumptionthat the affinalmeaning is here secondary, the cognatic meaning being primary, is based upon nothing but the common notion that one's kinshipposition necessarilyprecedesone's marriage,an idea quite out ofplace here, as only the analysisofthe system can reveal the real meaning of the category. All these arbitrary assumptionsarise from our own way of thinking, unconsciouslysuperimposed upon the native way of thinking. We must,therefore,refuseto indulge them and keep before us the question: what is the principle of the opposition between those two classesof relatives exemplified by what we call fatherand mother'sbrother?Provided that we consider this opposition as standingin its own right and do not assumethat the principle of the opposition lies in the relation with the Ego, and provided that we view it against the background of the whole system (see note 7 below), we can find some approach to the answer. Briefly, in this case the relationship between father and mother's brother is:

pose it? This relationshipwe shall call an alliancerelationship, as the relationshiparisingbetween two male (or two female) persons and their siblings of the same sex, when a 'sister' (a 'brother') of one is marriedto the other:

or, more generally: and

O[ =]o. It expresses the fact that if marriage creates a relation between two personsof differentsexes, it connectsalso their groups. As an equivalent formula I shall speak also of two men (or women) having an alliancerelationshipas male (or female) affines. There is another way of expressingthe same fact, which, although not altogetherwrong, is I think less accurate,and the criticism of which will throw some more light on the anthropologist'sunconsciousresistanceto the classificatory idea. It is possible to extend the distinctionbetween-parallel and cross cousinsand to speakof paralleland crossrelatives, the principle of the distinctionbeing that 'there is, or there is not, a change of sex when passingfrom the direct line to the collateral line.' I followed this doctrine in a monographicstudy of kinship in a Tamil-speakingcommunity.5 But the whole passage, although tending to a synthetic view, is, I am afraid,obscure.Moreover, the formula is not satisfactoryfor two reasons: (i) in spite of the fact that the natives do, when tracingrelationships,passfrom one line to another, these are not among their basic categoriesand are not in the least expressedin their theory: (ii) the system has much to do with marriage, and this should appear more clearly,if possible,in its formula. In fact, it is the anthropologist alone who is responsiblefor the introduction of this unsatisfactoryconcept of a 'change of sex'; he does so becausehe wants to trace through a relative of the opposite sex a relationshipwhich the native conceives-when he thinks classificatorily-in a different manner. For instance we introduce the mother as a link between Ego and his mother'sbrother, where in fact the latteris just opposed to the father. Two errors converge here: (i) the 'extension' tendency confusesa classwith the actualmother's brother, (ii) the introduction of the latter's compounded, western, descriptivename bringsin the mother, who is only relevant at this level as the link by which the relation between father and mother's brother comes into existence. If, however, we agree to consider the terms for the two sexes separately (as is normal in a system where the terms for females are distinct, and not mere feminine forms of the terms for males), and in a classificatoryperspective, the difficultyvanishes.

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After this lengthy but necessarydiscussion,we can now define the problem. LIMITS AND NATURE OF THE ANALYSIS

Since Morgan, it has been recognized that the terminological systems used by most of the communities speaking one of the four written Dravidian languages (round about 70 million people) are very much alike. What does this amount to, when each language uses differentterms, when againin each language the actuallist of terms differsslightly from one group to another, and when, moreover, only a few such lists are recordedfrom among the vast number of those which exist? Is it possible to abstractanything like a common terminological system? It is, thanks to the systematic characterof a remarkablyconstant structure.And it will not be denied that the attempt will be logical rather than statistical. Not all groups conform to the perfect schema outlined below-for instance, some Tamil Brahmins alter the system considerably by the introduction of a number of individualizingterms, or Nayar at the present day do not distinguishbetween cousins (accordingto Mlle Biardeau)-but on the whole most lists can be said to centre in a common scheme, from which they differ slightly and individually. Both the Tamil lists and the published Kanareseexamples illustrateit almost perfectly.6 The limits of the analysiswill be drawn close to the vital nucleus of the system: I shall consider only the common classificatoryfeatureswithin a range of live generations. One important point is that the nature of the task compels us to considerthe distinctivenessof the terms denoting the classes, quite irrespective of their concrete linguistic form. This is fortunate, because it allows the analysis to develop at the basic level of the structure of the system, whereas such analysesusually become mixed up with linguistic considerations as well as with considerations of attitudesor institutionswhich belong to a differentlevel of analysisand which are excluded here by the very diversity of the background. The need to stress the cross-cousin marriagewill appear the more striking as our analysisdevelops. A brief explanation is needed of the expression used above: 'the distinctiveness of the terms denoting the classes.'The distinctivenessof the terms is the main matter, as they are used to distinguish (i.e. to oppose) classes.But conversely, linguistic differences which are not used to oppose classesare irrelevanthere, and it is for this reason that I add the words 'denoting the classes.'For instance, different words applied to exactly the same relatives are irrelevant, or again secondary differences within a class (obtainedby affixation, etc.) are irrelevantin so far as they do not alterits unity (becausefor instancethe classword or root is kept in all). Again, linguistic resemblances may exist between terms of different classes, in so far as the classes are not in direct opposition. All such facts are of interest, and may even be found to be common to all our terminologies; but they do not form part of the basicstructure. (Considerationsof space preclude these points being developed and exemplified here as they should be.) Our situation is similar to that of the phoneticist: just as he 36

MARCH, I953

retains among phonetic particularitiesonly those which differentiatemeanings, we here retain from linguistic particularitiesonly those which differentiaterelatives,and even (for the time being) the fundamental classes of relatives only. The system as just defined classifiesall relatives of five generationsfrom grandfatherto grandsoninto i6 dassesby using i6 distinctive (setsof) terms. The generationsare as a rule absolutely distinguished; there is no assimilation of relatives belonging to different generations. Additionally, Ego's generation is split into two by distinguishing relatives older and younger than Ego: this distinction of age will be treatedas analogousto the distinctionof generations. (The distinctionof age in other generations,e.g. the father's, is marked,not by distinctterms, but by prefixed adjectives; hence it is not relevant here, as stated in our previous point). Some of the terms have a masculineand a feminine form, some have only one form, either masculine or feminine, and this is the rule wherever the central, critical distinction which follows is fully maintained. In each generation (or age) group, the relativesof the same sex are distinguishedinto two classes.In the chart (fig. i), every class is designated by a letter, from A to P, and they are distributedsymmetrically to stressthe opposition. Generation

A

son grandson

E

B

H

G

E >Ego 1