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symbol and meaning in Nayar marriage ritual
Author(s) -
MOORE MELINDA A.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.1988.15.2.02a00040
Subject(s) - symbol (formal) , ceremony , meaning (existential) , prestige , representation (politics) , theme (computing) , sociology , the symbolic , unit (ring theory) , linguistics , aesthetics , gender studies , anthropology , history , epistemology , art , psychology , philosophy , computer science , law , political science , archaeology , psychoanalysis , politics , operating system , mathematics education
This paper examines the three ceremonies of the Nayar marriage complex—tälikettukalyänam, tirandukalyänam, and the ceremony beginning a sambandham relationship—as rituals consisting of indigenously meaningful symbols. These rituals are shown to have significantly different yet comparable focuses, based on their treatment of persons of each gender and of the prestige and social connections of tayavads. The symbolic representation of the taravad as a house‐and‐land unit is found to be a unifying theme.