Brahman Kinship in a Tamil Village1

Abstract

THE kinship systems of all the Hindu castes of Tanjore District, South India, have certain features in common. All follow the rule of patrilineal descent. With the exception of town-dwellers, all are distributed in small caste communities, each community forming a local group within a multi-caste village. Villagers traditionally depend for maintenance, directly or indirectly, on wet rice lands and dry garden lands, and village sites remain fixed for centuries. Each caste community within the village contains from one to about twelve exogamous patrilineal groups. Marriages take place within the caste between members of different patrilineal groups of the same or of different villages, and communities of the same caste residing in the villages of a given locality (whose limits vary from caste to caste) form an endogamous subcaste. Within the subcaste, bilateral cross-cousin marriage and marriage to the elder sister's or classificatory elder sister's daughter are preferred. Given these common features, two main subtypes of kinship systems exist. One is the system of the Brahmans, the highest caste of landlords and religious specialists. The other is found in its purest form among the Pallans and Parayans, the lowest castes of landless laborers, collectively called Adi Dravidas or Original Dravidians, who live on the outskirts of villages. Major differences between these two systems include differences in the range of the kinship system as a whole, the size and generation depth of the patrilineal group, the composition of the dwelling group, the rules regulating marriage and divorce, the type of payments made at marriage, the range of incest prohibitions, the rules of adoption and of ancestral propitiation, certain differences in the pattern of kinship terms, and considerable differences in the rights and obligations, the emotional content, and the etiquette of behavior between kin. Two sets of factors seem to underlie those special characteristics of the Brahman kinship system which differentiate it from that of the lower castes: first, the Brahmans' occupations, means of subsistence, and position in the scale of ranked castes; and second, certain moral values deriving from the Sanskrit religious tradition, of which they are the main carriers. With regard to the first set of factors, Brahmans are traditionally permanent owners of agricultural land, rather than potentially mobile tenants, artisans, or landless laborers. This has implications for the depth and structure of their patrilineal groups, and their pattern of residence. Further, Brahmans as landowners are maintained by the work of lower caste tenants and laborers. As religious specialists, the men do almost no manual labor, but spend the greater part of their time in the home, absorbed in ritual and in kinship relationships. Women work only in the home, do not by traditional custom own immovable property, and (unlike low caste women) make no contribution to the household income in the form of cash or goods. These facts have im-