What do you think?
Rate this book
Kinship Organization in India
- GenresAnthropology
410 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
6 people are currently reading
98 people want to read
About the author
Irawati Karve
17 books72 followersKarve received a master's degree in sociology from Mumbai University in 1928 and a doctorate in anthropology from a university in Berlin, Germany in 1930.
Karve served for many years as the head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Deccan College, Pune (University of Pune).
She presided over the Anthropology Division of the National Science Congress held in New Delhi in 1947.
She wrote in both Marathi and English on topics pertaining to sociology and anthropology, as well as on nonscientific topics.
Karve served for many years as the head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Deccan College, Pune (University of Pune).
She presided over the Anthropology Division of the National Science Congress held in New Delhi in 1947.
She wrote in both Marathi and English on topics pertaining to sociology and anthropology, as well as on nonscientific topics.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 18, 2022
“Karve's book is so rich in factual information as well as spontaneous insight that a review cannot do more than outline the main trend of her arguments. Interspersed with the detailed description and interpretation of kinship usages are illuminating, even though partly rather tentative, hypotheses regarding problems of Indian prehistory. Thus Karve believes that the speakers of Munda languages represent the oldest still traceable ethnic group, and tends to support the theory of an expansion of Dravidian languages from a centre in South India discounting the hypothesis of the gradual displacement of Dravidians from Northern India and their slow retreat to the southern part of the peninsula…”
Iravathi Karve has done a ground-breaking work in the study of Indian kinship. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the basic focus through which she approached whatever aspect of Indian society she was studying, was kinship.
She will be remembered for years to come for her magnificent contribution to the study of kinship in the form of this book.
In this book, she presents a macro-analysis of the major kinship systems in India.
For years Karve was engaged in collecting information from various parts of India and also from literature in ancient and modern Indian texts and in analysing it mainly in the ethnological-historical frame. She published a series of long papers on kinship terminology and kinship usages of Maharashtra [1940-41], Gujarath [1942-45] and Karnataka [19501.
All the significant contents of these have been incorporated in this book.
This book attempts a comparative picture of kinship organisation in different parts of India. The material on Indian kinship has been presented as belonging to four cultural zones the Northern, the Central, the Southern, and the Eastern.
Data presented by her have a very wide scope. They include lists of kinship terms in the major Indian languages, their linguistic content and corresponding behaviour and attitudes, rules of descent and inheritance and patterns of marriage and family. Differences between the Sanskritic North and the Dravidian South are also brought out.
As she says, her study is based on personal enquiry supplemented by readings in Sanskrit, Pali, Ardhamagadhi, Hindi, Marathi and Maithili.
She also makes use of folk-literature. In the description of the Northern zone one part is devoted to the past, discussing the material found in ancient Sanskrit texts, while another part presents a generalized model for the whole of Northern India.
Karve has tried to show the kinship organisation of the Central Zone, though modelled on the northern pattern, shows some very significant differences due to culture contact particularly with Southern Zone.
In the treatment of the Southern zone, to quote the author’s words, “The kinship organisations in the various regions within this language area and of different castes and tribes within each region are presented as functional adjustments necessitated by culture-contact.” [P.24].
She maintains that there is something like a regional pattern of social behaviour. She is significantly interested in the process of acculturation and accommodation; and many customs, linguistic forms and kinship terms are sought to be explained through the region of their origins, migrations, settlement, contact with particular castes, functional association, and so on.
Karve’s study abounds in generalizations some of which may not be anything more than tentative hypotheses, but there is no doubt that the book contains several invaluable insights into the realm of Indian kinship and offers significant hypotheses that deserve to be tested in the course of field studies.
Her work makes it evident that structural-functional and formal structural studies of kinship in India must also take into account the historicjil processes of culture-contact and functional adjustments and not go by mere appearances of logic in the differences and similarities that are observed.
This book remains a landmark in the field of Indian kinship.
Iravathi Karve has done a ground-breaking work in the study of Indian kinship. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the basic focus through which she approached whatever aspect of Indian society she was studying, was kinship.
She will be remembered for years to come for her magnificent contribution to the study of kinship in the form of this book.
In this book, she presents a macro-analysis of the major kinship systems in India.
For years Karve was engaged in collecting information from various parts of India and also from literature in ancient and modern Indian texts and in analysing it mainly in the ethnological-historical frame. She published a series of long papers on kinship terminology and kinship usages of Maharashtra [1940-41], Gujarath [1942-45] and Karnataka [19501.
All the significant contents of these have been incorporated in this book.
This book attempts a comparative picture of kinship organisation in different parts of India. The material on Indian kinship has been presented as belonging to four cultural zones the Northern, the Central, the Southern, and the Eastern.
Data presented by her have a very wide scope. They include lists of kinship terms in the major Indian languages, their linguistic content and corresponding behaviour and attitudes, rules of descent and inheritance and patterns of marriage and family. Differences between the Sanskritic North and the Dravidian South are also brought out.
As she says, her study is based on personal enquiry supplemented by readings in Sanskrit, Pali, Ardhamagadhi, Hindi, Marathi and Maithili.
She also makes use of folk-literature. In the description of the Northern zone one part is devoted to the past, discussing the material found in ancient Sanskrit texts, while another part presents a generalized model for the whole of Northern India.
Karve has tried to show the kinship organisation of the Central Zone, though modelled on the northern pattern, shows some very significant differences due to culture contact particularly with Southern Zone.
In the treatment of the Southern zone, to quote the author’s words, “The kinship organisations in the various regions within this language area and of different castes and tribes within each region are presented as functional adjustments necessitated by culture-contact.” [P.24].
She maintains that there is something like a regional pattern of social behaviour. She is significantly interested in the process of acculturation and accommodation; and many customs, linguistic forms and kinship terms are sought to be explained through the region of their origins, migrations, settlement, contact with particular castes, functional association, and so on.
Karve’s study abounds in generalizations some of which may not be anything more than tentative hypotheses, but there is no doubt that the book contains several invaluable insights into the realm of Indian kinship and offers significant hypotheses that deserve to be tested in the course of field studies.
Her work makes it evident that structural-functional and formal structural studies of kinship in India must also take into account the historicjil processes of culture-contact and functional adjustments and not go by mere appearances of logic in the differences and similarities that are observed.
This book remains a landmark in the field of Indian kinship.
Displaying 1 of 1 review