This article is about the essential nature of transformations in Dravidian kinship systems as maybe observed through a comparison of a few contemporary ethnographic examples. It is a sequelto an earlier article entitled ‘The Hill Madia of central India: early human kinship?’ (Vaz 2010),1in which I have described the structure of the Madia kinship system as based on a rule ofpatrilateral cross-cousin (FZD) marriage. I concluded that article by saying that a complexbonding of relations, rather than a simple structure, seems to be the essential feature of the Proto-Dravidian kinship terminology and that it is only from the point of view of such an original statethat Allen’s (1986) ‘Big Bang’ model for the evolution of human kinship would make sense. Theaim of the present article is first, to discuss certain aspects of the transformations of Dravidiankinship, and secondly, to reconsider Allen’s ‘Big Bang’ model. I begin with a review of sometheoretical perspectives on Proto-Dravidian as well as on proto-human kinship and a briefreference to the role of marriage rules in human kinship systems. This is followed by the maincontent of this article, which is a comparative analysis of three Dravidian kinship systems(actually, two Dravidian and one Dravidianized) and an Indo-Aryan system, on the basis ofwhich I have proposed a revised ‘Big Bang’ model.
展开▼
