Rivalry and Tribute is a book written by Bruce Elliot Tapper that offers a peek into a 1970's village society in India.
This book is a study of the interplay between society and ritual, set in a village in Andhra Pradesh in south India. Tapper considers the dynamics of competition -- between people and between groups -- and explains the significance of Hinduism in their lives. In particular it focuses on Gavara farmers in the sugarcane growing belt of Visakhapatnam district in the context of historical and contemporary shifts in wealth and power.
The book presents case studies and statistical data on such issues as landholding, loan-giving, wealth, divorce, dispute settlement, leadership, and inter-caste economic relations. It examines rivalries between brothers, tensions in the relationship between husbands and wives, inequalities between caste members, and competitive aspects of settlement growth. It documents controversies over the conduct of festivals, which arose from such rivalries. Above all, it defines the essential principles of social organization- hierarchy (of age, sex and caste) and mutual obligations (among kinsmen and between caste groups)
This book describes beliefs -- including those about obligations toward deities, ideologies about the character of women, and ideas about female deities, astrology, and evil eye -- explaining them in terms of their social significance. It highlights the importance of puja -- a basic form of Hindu worship -- which it interprets as a symbolic payment of tribute, expressing a moral code that links the acceptance of hierarchy and social obligations with the maintenance of health and well-being.
The full range of rituals -- life cycle, seasonal, and agricultural -- are examined in detail, with discussion of the ways they define and reaffirm the basic structures of society despite rivaling and competitive tendencies.
Famous quotes containing the words rivalry, society, ritual, village, south and/or india:
“It seems to me that we have to draw the line in sibling rivalry whenever rivalry goes out of bounds into destructive behavior of a physical or verbal kind. The principle needs to be this: Whatever the reasons for your feelings you will have to find civilized solutions.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“We must get back into relation, vivid and nourishing relation to the cosmos and the universe. The way is through daily ritual, and is an affair of the individual and the household, a ritual of dawn and noon and sunset, the ritual of the kindling fire and pouring water, the ritual of the first breath, and the last.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The next forenoon we went to Oldtown.... The Indian is said to cultivate the vices rather than the virtues of the white man. Yet this village was cleaner than I expected, far cleaner than such Irish villages as I have seen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The white gulls south of Victoria
catch tossed crumbs in midair.
When anyone hears the Catbird
he gets lonesome.”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)
“India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)