Changing Patterns of Family and Kinship in South Asia.

• Author: KOROM, FRANK J.
• Position: Review

Changing Patterns of Family and Kinship in South Asia. Edited by AsKo PARPOLA and SIRPA TENHUNEN. Studia Orientalia, vol. 84. Helsinki: FINNISH ORIENTAL SOCIETY, 1998. Pp. vii + 314, illustrations (paper).

This volume is based on the proceedings of an international symposium held at the University of Helsinki on May 6, 1998, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of India's independence. The eleven contributions are primarily by Finnish scholars, but there are also essays by Don Handelman, Lina Fruzzetti and Akos Ostor, G. Gopinathan, and Mohan K. Gautam. The monograph lacks an introduction that might frame the essays theoretically, yet there is a certain amount of coherence, in that each essay focuses on the two key themes of the title: family and kinship. The approaches taken range from symbolic or textual studies of mythic themes to ethnographically informed field studies.

The volume opens with Handelman's discussion of Siva and Parvati's dice game, in which he exegetically continues the work he began with David Shulman (1997). Handelman discusses the "metaphysics of gender" in Saiva mythology by analyzing how the divine couple's relationship is formed through the destructive mediation of the game of dice. His central argument, based on an interpretive reading of Skandapurana 1.1.34-35 is that Siva and Parvati "must fall apart in order to have the opportunity to come together as distinctly male and female" (p. I). He argues that the formation of their sexual identities in the myth is "fraught with a metaphysic of ongoing imbalance, of falling apart in order to come together" (p. 9). Yet in constantly failing in a successful relationship due to tension and uncertainty, they are prevented from having a fruitful union. His symbolic reading of the myth seems sound to me, but the brevity of his argument does not convincingly support his conclusion that opposition and conflict are even deeper in human marriage relationships than they are in the marriages of deities.

Virpi Hameen-Anttila looks at Kalidasa's vision of the ideal marriage through an analysis of key themes such as ritual and romance, conflict and harmony, beauty and truth. She concludes by addressing Heesterman's "inner conflict of tradition" (1985) to ask what the fifth-century author may have thought about the tension between action and renunciation. The conclusion is sensible: Kalidasa is too engrossed in the world of the senses to abandon it completely, but he does provide visions of renunciation in his merging of the sensual and the transcendent. Klaus Karttunen provides a brief but...