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The Descent Group System of the Raj Gonds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Christoph Von Fürer-Haimendorf
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Extract

The horizontal division of Indian societies into hierarchically ranked castes and sub-castes has been the subject of a considerable literature, and recent anthropological studies of individual villages have largely concentrated on analysing the function and interrelation of such caste groups. The internal organization or vertical divisions of endogamous castes have, on the other hand, received little attention, though the work of Louis Dumont in Tamilnad, of Kathleen Gough in Malabar, and of Adrian C. Mayer in Madhya Bharat, which is for the most part still unpublished, promises to throw considerable light on the internal structure of castes in these areas.

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , October 1956 , pp. 499 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1956

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References

page 499 note 1This article is based on fieldwork carried out intermittently between the years 1941 and 1953. My last stay among the Raj Gonds of Adilabad was greatly facilitated by a generous grant from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

page 499 note 2cf. Marriot, McKim (ed.), Village India, Chicago, 1955,Google Scholar and Srinivas, M.N. (ed.), Indian villages, Calcutta, 1955.Google Scholar

page 499 note 3The Raj Gonds of Adilabad : a peasant culture of the Deccan. (The Aboriginal Tribes of Hyderabad, Vol. III, Book i, Myth and ritual.) London, Macmillan, 1948.Google Scholar

page 500 note 1cf. Buradkar, M.P., ‘The clan organization of the Gonds’, Man in India, XXVII, 1947, 130–6.Google Scholar

page 502 note 1cf. von Fürer-Haimendorf, C., ‘The Pardhans : the bards of the Raj Gonds’, Eastern Anthropologist, IV, 1951, 172–84.Google Scholar

page 502 note 2cf. The Raj Gonds, 220–6.

page 503 note 1Political systems of highland Burma, London, 1954, 128,Google Scholar 129.

page 503 note 2Katora is a term exclusively applied to the priest of a clan or sub-elan (the term for village priest is devari); patla, a Gondi corruption of patel, on the other hand, is a term applied not only to village headmen, but also to other men of dignity and high status; kutma is a term derived from kutum, a group of agnatic kinsmen.

page 504 note 1Khandan is an Urdu word meaning literally ‘family’ or ‘lineage’. No Gondi term seems to exist for such a sub-division of a pari.

page 509 note 1cf. Elwin, Verrier, The Muria and their ghotul, Bombay, 1947, 59.Google Scholar