symbol and meaning in Nayar marriage ritual

Abstract

This paper examines the three ceremonies of the Nayar marriage complex—tälikettukalyänam, tirandukalyänam, and the ceremony beginning a sambandham relationship—as rituals consisting of indigenously meaningful symbols. These rituals are shown to have significantly different yet comparable focuses, based on their treatment of persons of each gender and of the prestige and social connections of tayavads. The symbolic representation of the taravad as a house‐and‐land unit is found to be a unifying theme.