Marriage and rank in Bengali culture: a history of caste and clan in middle period Bengal

Inden, Ronald B.

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..

Abstract
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.

History

Status, role, and prestige

Castes

Ethics

Basis of marriage

Regulation of marriage

Lineages

Clans

Territorial hierarchy

Mythology

Ethnopsychology

Bengali