the purum of assam

1. the purum of assam an example of echange generalise (generalized exchange)

2. The anthropological context • Needham is concerned to refute a prior analysis of Homans and Schneider of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage. • Their analysis was functionalist: they argued that matrilateral cross-cousin marriage was quite common in patrilineal societies due to the oedipal complex, i.e. that a man in a patrilineal society would feel affection for his mother’s brother, and conflict and respect for his father and his father’s lineage. (Remember Radcliffe-Brown and his finding of joking relationships between a man and his mother’s brother.) • Needham argues that this functionalist theory—a theory of sentiments-- cannot explain the fact that in most cases, a man does not marry his actual mo bro dau, but rather a woman who has the same classificatory kin term as the mo bro dau. In Purum society, this would consist of 1/3 of all women of ego’s generation. Indeed, in Purum society, less than half of recorded marriages are with the actual mother’s brother’s daughter. • Rather, what explains Purum marriage prescriptions is a theory of alliances and of exchanges of women, wealth, and goods, what Levi-Strauss refers to as generalized exchange.

3. The purum context • Manipur province, northeastern India • 1930: 303 individuals divided among 4 villages, each politically autonomous. • 5 clans, 4 of which are divided into several patrilineages. Neither the clans nor lineages are localized, i.e. all the clans, except one are represented in all villages. • Subsistence rice agriculturalists; also raise pigs: both rice beer and pig meat are important ritual and culinary delicacies. • Lineages, but not clans, are exogamous.

5. Purum kinship terms and marriage patterns 1. pu: FF, MR, MB, WE, MBS, WB, WBS 2.. pi: FM, MM, MBw, wm, wbw 3. pa: F, FB,, MZH 4. nu: M, MZ, FBW 5. Ni: FZ 6. rang: FZH 9. nau, yb, FBSy, MZWy, Yz, MSDy, MBD, BW, WBD. (marriageable lineage). 10. sar : Z 12. sha : S. BS, SZS, D, BD, WZD 13. tu: FZS, ZH, FZD, ZS, DH, ZD, SS, SD, DSW, DS, SDH, DD. (unmarriageable lineage).

6. Structural features of the marriage system. • The major distinction is between men of wife givers (pu) and men of wife takers (tu). These also have the largest category of actual relatives applied to these terms. • The entire society is divided into: • 1. lineally related descent groups. • 2. wife-giving groups • 3. wife-taking groups • The fundamental cycle of alliance is exhibited by the statement that a wife taking group may be identical with a wi gi group of one’s own wife givers. • From the diagram, we can see that the major forms of classification are between wi gi and wi ta and also generation and sex. • Hence, not only are males of wife-giving lineages referred to as ‘pu’, but also males of ego’s lineage and of his grandfather’s generation. Not only are men of wife taking lineages referred to as ‘tu’, but also grandsons and children of ego’s grandsons’ generation. • Women who belong to wife giving lineages are referred to as ‘nau’, as is one’s brother’s wife. Women who are the wives of wife takers are called pi, as is one’s grandmother. • Elders have greater status than juniors, wife givers have higher status than wife takers. Hence grandfathers and wife takers have the same kin term; while grandmothers, and wife givers of wife givers’ women have the same kinship term. Similarly grandsons have the same term as males of wife-giving lineages who are not much senior in generation; otherwise the term is ‘rang.’ • Collectively, wife takers and women from one’s own lineage who have married are collectively referred to as maksha for ritual purposes.

7. Patterns of alliance • Women are married in one direction, in the previous diagram, they move from right to left. • All lineages stand in a relation of wife giver and wife takers to other lineages. • The actual sequence is quite complex: • 1. Julhung (K1) gives wives to Kankung, Rikmpunchong, and Rim ke lek lineages, takes wives from Rangshai, Teyu, Thao-run, Thao-kung, Parpa, Pilling, Rimkung, and Makan Re lineages. • 2. Aihung gives wives to Rimpunchong, Rimpunchong, Rim ke lek and Pilling, and receives wives from Rangshai, Thao-kung, Parpa, Rimkung, Makan re and Kankung lineages. • 3. Kankung gives wives to Aihung, Rimpunchong, Rim ke lek, Pilling, Thao kung, Thao run, Teyu, and Rangshai lineages, while receiving wives from Parpa, Rimkung, and Julhung. • 6. Rimkung receives from Thao kung, thao run, Teyu, while giving to Parpa, Julhung, Aihung, Kankung, Makan re.

8. Exchanges of women and exchanges of goods, rituals, etc. • Characterized by reciprocal opposition: from any ego’s point of view, purum society is divided into wife givers and wife takers. • 3 year’s bride-service is required for grooms, during which the prospective groom resides at his father-in-laws’ house. • Partly to compensate the loss of a daughter, the wife takers (maksha) must provide rice beer and pig sacrifices for all important ritual occasions: the hair-cutting ceremony at one year, they must provide labour, food and beer at house construction, they must provide all the food at marriages, and also at funerals, or when anyone acquires a political office in the village. Symbolically, the maksha also must sit apart from their wife-giving affines in any ceremony: the status relations are ones of an inferior to a superior. • the married daughters (ningan) are incorporated fully into their husband’s lineage; when visiting natal relatives for ceremonies, they cannot receive any help from their natal relatives and must sit separately from them.

9. Symbolic and Cosmological Oppositions • The house: divided into : phumlil on the right, looking from the back, and nungan on the right. • Father has his bed in the phumlil half, near a special post called chhatra, and his unmarried sons and daughters sleep near him on the same side. Future son’s in law—those fulfilling bride service, sleep in the ningan half, near a post called senajumphi. At night the phumlil is taboo to those outsiders who sleep in te ningan and married dau sleep in the ningan when they visit their parents;’ home. The two posts are also associated with phumlil and ningan and are of ritual importance. The chhatra is erected first, then the senjumphi; and the stringers which rest on them are also put up in the same order. • Left=mortals; gods=right; feminine goods (loom, brass cup, baskets), left; male goods, pigs, rice beer = right; inauspicious = left; auspicious = right; forest = left; village (culture) = right; famine = left; prosperity = right; earth = left; sky = right, affines = left; kin = right; female = left; male = right. • Dualistic system of symbolic classification in which pairs of opposite but complementary terms are analogically related. • Hence, the underlying opposition between wife givers and wife takers structures not only marriage, but also ritual and symbolic exchanges and cosmological systems.