THE PIRAMALAI KALLARS OF TAMILNADU

The late Prof. C.N.Natarajan's work on The Piramalai Kallars of Tamil Nadu:
A Study of their Marriage, Kinship and Clan System is a classical work which was actually carried out about half a century ago for his Doctoral Programme. But, a must read socio-anthropological work and hence it is brought out as a book. Though the study is stuffed with the analytical contents, it is very simple even for a common man to follow.

Likewise, Prof. Natarajan has also dealt with the patterns of kinship behaviour. The Kallar kinship behaviour is highly predictable, because the pattern is completely modeled and it is culturally standardized. The author, further, makes valuable discussion with well known scholars such as Needham, Fred Eggan, Nur Yalman, Radcliffe-Brown, and the like. Hence, this book is valuable on many levelsc its illumination of kinship rights (urimai) as "bundle of rights along with defined social relationships. By and large this ethnographic case study of Kallars is accounted on structural functionalist approach.

-Bakthavatchala Barathi