The Female Bridegroom A Comparative Study of Life-crisis Rituals in South India and Sri Lanka

Ceremonies marking female puberty are among the most important public events in the lives of many South Asian people. Describing such ceremonies in Tirunelveli, South India, Anthony Good shows how female puberty rites mimic weddings, and involve the 'female bridegrooms' of his title. Everyhigh-caste family aims to protect its caste status by controlling ritually the sexual activity of its female members, and Dr Good argues that the rituals he describes reflect localized modes of inheritance, residence, and descent. His main aim is to understand all such rituals in their regional context. He goes on to compare them with practices elsewhere in South India and Sri Lanka, as described by major ethnographers such as Srinivas, Gough, Yalman, and Dumont. In his final section Dr Good describes divine weddings inHindu temples. He demonstrates how ideas about female sexuality are represented in worship and mythology and brings out the significance of the diverse ritual practices discussed in earlier parts of the book by placing them in the context of a single cultural framework.