Verwandtschaft und Sozialitat bei den Jenu Kurumba.

• Author: Zvelebil, Kamil V.

By ULRICH DEMMER. Beitrage zur Sudasienforschung, Sudasien-Institut, Universitat Heidelberg, vol. 173. Pp. xi + 193. Stuttgart: FRANZ STEINER VERLAG, 1996. DM 66, OS 515.

The book presents an ethnographic study of the Jenu Kurumba, a tribe of hunter-gatherers and forest traders in the Nilgiri area of South India. Since I am not an ethnographer or an anthropologist, I shall discuss the work under review from the point of view of a Dravidianist who is primarily interested in the languages and the cultures of Dravidian-speaking tribal communities of the Nilgiris.

In contrast to most early scholars who distinguished between two ethnic communities, the Jenu Kurumbas and the Kadu Nayikas, I have shown beyond doubt as early as in 1981(1) that these two names designate one single ethnic-linguistic group. I am glad to read that my conclusions, later (1989) confirmed by N. Bird-David, agree with the opinion of the present author. The people in question are known to Kannada speakers as Jenu Kurumbas ("Honey-Kurumbas"), to the Tamils as Ten Kurumpar, to the Malayalam-speakers as Kadu Nayikar ("Lords of the Forest") or Shola Nayakar ("Lords of the Jungle"); they speak a Kannadoid South Dravidian language (which they simply designate as nanga matu "our speech"), closely related to Alu Kurumba.(2)

The book has seven chapters, two appendices, rather detailed bibliography and a rather meager index, as well as an English summary. The author's main interest is undoubtedly dedicated to the structure of interpersonal social life, the "sociality" (Sozialitat) of the Jenu Kurumba. It is based on intensive fieldwork of two and a half years, conducted in a community of some three-hundred-fifty adults. It also describes the structure of kinship relationships, works out the moral concepts of the people under scrutiny, and quotes a number of narratives and some songs, partially in the original language, mostly in German translation.

The author argues that, among the Jenu Kurumbas, only "one mode of sociality is prevalent, namely the mode of unmediated exchange"; that their society is characterized "by forms of unmediated transactions," by "the exchange or contribution of immaterial gifts," and that the "gift of (helping and supporting) work ... should be conceptualized less in terms of exchange but rather in terms of sharing, contribution and distributing" (p. 193). The most basic moral principles of Jenu Kurumba social life are defined as "the striving for...