Book
Marriage and rank in Bengali culture: a history of caste and clan in middle period Bengal
University of California Press • Berkeley • Published In 1976 • Pages:
By: Inden, Ronald B..
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This study, a revision of the author's Ph. D. dissertation (University of Chicago, 1972), is a detailed historical account of marriage and clan rank among two of the highest castes in Bengal -- the Brahman or 'priestly' caste, and the Kayastha or 'writer' caste, which were subdivided into smaller territorial units or 'subcastes'. The primary focus in this work in on two of the latter group, the Radhi Brahman, located in western and southeastern Bengal, and the Daksina-radhi Kayastha, found in southwestern Bengal (p. 1). The period of time covered in this source begins around the year 1500 AD with the formal organization of the Brahman and Kayastha into smaller subcastes and even smaller ranked grades of clans, and ends with the first attempts to reorganize into larger and more homogeneous units around the year 1850 under British administrative and economic control.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- History
- Status, role, and prestige
- Castes
- Ethics
- Basis of marriage
- Regulation of marriage
- Lineages
- Clans
- Territorial hierarchy
- Mythology
- Ethnopsychology
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Bengali
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2002
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Asia
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- South Asia
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Historian
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- John Beierle ; 1992
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1964-1965 [p. ix]
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1500-1850 [p. 2]
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- India
- NotesAdditional notes
- [by] Ronald B. Inden
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 73085789
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Bengalis