Prescription, Preference and Practice: Marriage Patterns Among the Kondaiyankottai Maravar of South India

Abstract

Many kinship studies are partial in that they emphasise only one aspect of the data-be it categorical, jural or behavioural-at the expense of the other two. In this account of marriageability among the Kondaiyankottai Maravar, a marital south Indian sub-caste with an idealtypical 'Dravidian' kin terminology, all three levels of data are examined. They prove to be mutually inconsistent, but not contradictory. It is argued that inter-level inconsistency is inevitable given the nature of the relationships between categories and rules on the one hand, and rules and behaviour on the other. All three orders of phenomena must be taken into account in analysis if kinship systems are to be adequately represented.

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