Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh (early history)
by Prakash Narayan | 2011 | 63,517 words
This study deals with the history of Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh (Northern India) taking into account the history and philosophy of Buddhism. Since the sixth century B.C. many developments took place in these regions, in terms of society, economic life, religion and arts and crafts....
Kinship Grouping
We now turn to the problem of ascertaining the kinship and quasi-kinship groups that may be found in the text. This is a very difficult task because they are not directly mentioned, but have to be inferred. This shall be done in two ways. Firstly, we shall examine a number of key terms and formalisations found in the text and ascribe to each of them some specific meaning. In doing this we shall undoubtedly find that some of these terms carry different connotations at various times, or that same group is denoted by different terms. But this should not obstruct us. We shall find, on the contrary, a true picture of the system of grouping in the understanding of these connotations and denotations. Secondly, we shall take the conceptual definition of the kinship groups most likely to be found in the Buddhist society (e.g. the household group, family, agnates) and find out how far they can be inferred from the data available from the text.