Five
Untouchable Chuhras Through Their Humor
"Equalizing" Marital Kin Through Teasing, Pretence, and Farce

Pauline Kolenda

What is at issue, briefty, is the over-all "discursive fact," the way in which sex is "put into discourse."
—Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I

Remember, people joke about only what is most serious.
—Alan Dundes, Cracking Jokes

The various genres of humor are for the purpose of entertainment. They relate to emotions because, although they require a cognitive prerequisite (one must "get" the joke), if appreciated, they bring pleasure to their audience.

There is a belief in the United States that the English cannot quite "get" American jokes; there is even a series of jokes about that (Dundes 1987:150-158). That many ethnographers may sympathize with the English predicament is indicated by the scarcity of ethnographic treatments of humor. People construct jokes, farce, and satire out of cultural materials, and as a minimum, the ethnographer must, just as with a cockfight (Geertz 1973) or a ritual (Bateson 1936), know the other culture rather well to grasp its humor.

Although jokes primarily entertain, they can also be seen as commentaries that people are making, consciously or unconsciously, on aspects of their own society and culture. Dundes above warned us that jokes are about serious matters, and Mary Douglas (1975:104) has suggested that jokes are usually against the social structure: "they attack classification and hierarchy."

Jokes often seem to express a strain of defiance toward the official social structure and proper cultural values. Part of what makes some jokes funny is the casualness with which the sternest mores are broken in the often upside-down world fantasized in the joke. Perhaps it is the countercultural values expressed in the various genres of humor that contribute to making them difficult for an outsider to grasp. One must not only know much of the other culture but also appreciate its practitioners' discomfort and dissatisfaction with many of its parts, some of which they may imaginatively and even rebelliously play with in genres of humor.

To their audiences, jokes may be "truer" than propriety; they can have a kind of wisdom as they tear away the masks of propriety revealing that both

high and low are all-too-human (or all-too-animal). If anthropologists look more closely, they may see that one set of masks has been replaced in joking or farce by another and that the disguises of propriety shape the disguises of humor.

Habermas (1988:310) has suggested that when people laugh at the humor of wit they temporarily regress to an infantile prelinguistic stage of life. But I would say that it is not back to a prelinguistic stage but back to the early years of childhood, when they had to learn the most basic social and cultural rules, that jokes—that themselves permit the ready breaking of these rules—carry them. Certainly, joking and farce arc forms of play during which raconteur or actors and the audience may behave like kids. Perhaps that aspect of humor is universal, but the content of jokes is very much culturally constructed.

In this chapter, I am concerned with some aspects of humor among Hindu peasants in North India, specificially with culturally prescribed uses of humor, derision, and insult in the relations between equals, between men who are "brothers," and between married women of the same generation, on the one hand, and between unequal affinal relatives, the wife's kin and the husband's kin, on the other. These latter are what anthropologists have called ritual joking relationships.

Although ritual joking relationships are found widely throughout the world, including India, the content of the institutionalized joking between affines (people related as brothers-in-law or sisters-in-law or brother-in-law/ sister-in-law or co-parents-in-law) is seldom recorded. Apte makes the point forcefully that the ethnographic record is lacking in descriptions of actual joking behavior. He defines a joking relationship

as a patterned playful behavior that occurs between two individuals who recognize special kinship or other types of social bonds between them; it displays reciprocal or nonreciprocal verbal or action-based humor including joking, teasing, banter, ridicule, insult, horseplay, and other similar manifestations, usually in the presence of an audience. (Apte 1985:30-31)

Later he writes:

A major weakness in the existing studies of the joking relationship from the viewpoint of the student of humor is that much emphasis has been put on the relational aspects of the joking relationship and not enough on the phenomenon of joking itself. Relatively few ethnographic accounts describe in detail what actually happens by way of joking, irrespective of how the term is understood by the investigator. Detailed information about the verbal, gestural, and action-based manifestations of joking is often lacking. (Apte 1985:34)

In this essay, I shall describe "what actually happens" in culturally prescribed joking relationships, as I found them among North Indian untouch-

able Sweepers, called Chuhras or Bhangis, in village Khalapur, western Uttar Pradesh, in the mid-1950s.^[1] It is important to see that these joking relationships balance avoidance-respect relationships in the North Indian Hindu cultural context, a characteristic of joking relations noted by Radcliffe-Brown (1952a, 1952b) for some peoples in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and North America. In North India, avoidance and respect relationships between affines of different generations or between those with large differences in age in the same generation, follow an elaborate etiquette that has been described in considerable detail by scholars treating women, purdah (seclusion and veiling of women), and family life in northern India (Beech 1982; Bennett 1983; Das 1976; Hershman 1981; Jacobson 1970, 1977, 1982; Jeffery 1979; Luschinsky 1962; Madan 1965, 1975; Mehta 1982; Minturn and Hitchcock 1966; Papanek 1982; Papanek and Minault 1982; Sharma 1978; van der Veen 1972; Vatuk 1982; Vreede-de Stuers 1968). The following passage will give only a flavor of the Chuhras' extensive description of deference etiquette between affines.

Among the Chuhris (feminine for Chuhras; the latter term is both generic and masculine), especially when discussing the relationships between an in-married woman and her affinal kin, the word repeatedly spoken is kayda, a rule of etiquette manifesting an attitude of deference. There is sasu ka kayda, the etiquette for the mother-in-law, and jeth^[*] ka kayda, the etiquette for the husband's elder brother, nanand ka kayda, for the husband's sister, and so on. The combination is a code for hierarchical relationships between junior affines and senior affines, maritally related kin of different ages. The various kayde (plural) involve respectfulness, graciousness, concern for the other, even hospitality.

But I will let the Chuhris speak for themselves about kayde; in quoting from my field notes I use NQ and a number. Bhati told us about the sasu (the mother-in-law) and in the course of her discussion, spoke of kayda (etiquette of deference):

NQ 1 One should behave toward a sasu as toward one's own mother. (How should one show this?) Press her feet when she comes from outside, fill the hukka [water-pipe for smoking tobacco], rub her back in the morning, be affectionate toward her. (How should a sasu treat her bahu [daughter-in-law]?) She should be very affectionate, bring things for her—food, cosmetics, and toilet articles, keep her well-dressed. (Should the bahu obey the sasu?) If she doesn't obey her, it's very bad....

If the sasu and bahu are young, they might talk pleasantly to each other. I and my mother-in-law used to eat together. I kept one important kind of kayda [etiquette]. Unless she ate, I wouldn't eat. I wouldn't eat unless food was given me by my mother-in-law. There

was great affection between us. Unless she is sleeping, a bahu serves her mother-in-law. The mother-in-law tells her to do everything. When the bahu has learned, she does it herself....

For those who do keep kayda, affection is great....

My mother-in-law had four or five bahus. I had five devranis [husband's younger brothers' wives] and jethanis^[*] [husband's older brothers' wives]. She used to beat them if they didn't do their work, but I was never beaten. If she told me to do ten jobs, I would say, "I have so much to do. Please wait," and we both would laugh. She was very affectionate. If I ever came here [to parental village], my mother-in-law would come along, crying, for half a kos [one mile] after me. She missed me so, she'd say, "Oh, bahu, come back soon." The other bahus would sass back and be disobedient. If she said, "Ey, bahu, do this right away," the others would say, "I can't do it."

[A kayda-practicing bahu] covers her face if her husband comes in, and if the sasu sits on a cot the bahu sits on a pirha^[*] [stool], so she is lower than her mother-in-law. She keeps a ghumghat^[*] [covers her face with the end of her sari] from the taisera [husband's father's elder brother's wife] and pittisera [husband's father's younger brother's wife], too.

The Chuhris indicated the specific acts by which a subordinate displayed respect, reverence, or deference to a superordinate. In return, the super-ordinate should show affection.^[2] Suffice to say, in-marrying women should be silent and cover their heads and often their faces when in the presence of father-in-law, elder brother-in-law, and husband's other kin older than the husband, both male and female.

Similarly, in-marrying men are respectful toward a wife's older kin, just as they are respectful toward their own older kin. Male respect etiquette is not as dramatic as female. A man does not smoke, joke, or talk about sexual matters in the presence or hearing of older men.

Between people of the same generation, close in age, joking may be allowed and even prescribed among North Indian peasants. Balancing or opposed to deference between seniors and juniors is derision (ganda majak banana, to make a dirty joke), insult (galidena, to give an insult), and joking (hamsi-makhaul^[*] karna, to make a laugh-joke), expressed in asymmetrical relations between affinal kin of the same generation and close in age. A recognition that heavy purdah regulations are balanced by the gaiety and fun involved in this all-too-often risqué discourse may modify an impression that a culture so addicted to hierarchy as is North Indian, expressed in caste ranking and age-and-generation ranking, is unrelievedly obsequious.

My essay is divided into three parts—first, North Indian hypergamy; second, Chuhra marriage customs; third, joking relationships, which are

subdivided into four parts: everyday joking, teasing the bridegroom, brothers-in-law, and co-parents-in-law.

The North Indian Hypergamous Milieu

Hypergamy was first conceptualized as a label for certain marriage patterns in the Punjab by a Mr. Coldstream, according to British census ethnographer Ibbetson (1881:356), cited in Dumont (1964:87-88), and it means a preference for the bride to marry "up." Although seemingly only a few castes have grades of families (Dumont 1970:109-129), between which hypergamous marriages take place, the bride at marriage moving from a family of lower grade into a family of higher grade, in many more castes, the bride, her natal family members, and the members of her khandan (minimal patrilineage), basti (colony), or village caste-chapter are considered inferior to the groom, his natal family, khandan, basti, or caste-chapter; the differential ranking is instituted with the establishment of the marital alliance at the time of the arrangement of the marriage. In fact, some ethnographers report that marriages usually are established between families of about equal wealth and community standing. A number of scholars (Dumont 1964, 1966, 1975; Vatuk 1969, 1975; van der Veen 1972; Pocock 1972; Khare 1975; Madan 1975; Das 1976; Hershman 1981; Bennett 1983) have recognized that a central feature of the North Indian marriage system is the inequality between the groom's kin (the wifetakers) and the bride's kin (the wifegivers); indeed, Dumont has spoken of Hindu North India as a "hypergamous milieu" (Dumont 1966:94, 110), referring to the bridetaker-bridegriver ranking. The original inspiration for such analysis is Lévi-Strauss (1969:240, 245, 261).

The inequality between the bride and groom's sides is expressed in unilateral "perpetual gift giving" (Vatuk 1975:174) and various ritual gestures showing reverence and respect to the bridegroom (Dumont 1966:94) and his kinsmen. Dumont (1966, 1975), Vatuk (1969, 1975), Khare (1975), Madan (1975), Fruzzetti and Ostör (1976), and Inden and Nicholas (1977) have debated the issue of whether the inequality between the bridegivers and bridetakers is also expressed in North Indian kinship terminology, an issue addressed to some extent later in this chapter.

Although all the scholars listed have studied almost entirely Brahmans or higher castes, in one of the earliest village descriptions of the asymmetrical system—for Kishan Garhi, Aligarh District, Uttar Pradesh (Marriott 1955:101)—it appears to be shared by all twenty-four castes.^[3] For the "Cornell" village, Khalapur, Minturn and Hitchcock (1966:58) found that among the Rajputs, the high dominant landed caste, "the status of a wife's family is always subordinate to the status of the groom's." The Rajputs, Hitchcock found (1956:56-60), practice a kind of "directional hypergamy," resting on strict rules of arranged marriage, village exogamy (a marriage

partner must reside in another village), and patrilocal residence; brides come from Rajput villages to the south and east, and daughters are given in marriage to the north and west. As far as I am aware, all twenty-five Hindu castes of Khalapur have marriage systems in which bridetakers are superior to bridegivers.^[4] In this essay, I am primarily concerned with culturally expected humor concerning sexuality and marriage alliances in North India, as illustrated by the untouchable Chuhras of Khalapur.

Marrying Among the Chuhras of Khalapur

Khalapur, in western Uttar Pradesh, just to the east of Haryana and Punjab, is ninety miles north of Delhi, capital of Muslim empires for more than eight hundred years. So, although the population is over 90 percent Hindu, some Muslim-inspired customs endure. There were more than thirty different caste-communities among the five thousand people of Khalapur in 1955. The population was about fifteen thousand in 1984 when I returned there to do fieldwork.^[5] It is a Rajput village; the Rajputs are the dominant land-owning group, making up two-fifths of the population, with around twenty-four hundred people in 1955. The second largest caste, the untouchable Chamars, numbers about six hundred; they drag away other people's dead cattle to tan the hides, their traditional caste work, and labor in the Rajputs' wheat and sugarcane fields. The Chuhras are the fourth largest caste (after the Brahman priests), divided into two colonies (bastis). "Our" community, the Chuhras of the western basti, numbers about one hundred. Their work is cleaning cattleyards and ladies' latrines in the high-caste women's quarters. Most people in Khalapur would agree, even if the Chuhras would not, that the Chuhras are the bottom of the local caste ranking system. Between the high-caste Brahmans, Rajputs, and Merchants, and the unclean Chamars and Chuhras are clean serving and artisan castes—Goldsmiths, Barbers, Washermen, Potters, Weavers, Shepherds, Carpenters, and Blacksmiths, among others. The 10 percent of the population who are Muslim include Muslim Rajputs, Oilpressers, and Tailors. Caste-communities live in their own neighborhoods, especially untouchables like the Chuhras who live in an isolated, detached colony (basti) on the outskirts of the village.

There are two wedding ceremonies in North Indian marriages. In Khalapur, the first, the sadi, takes place when the bride is between the ages of ten and sixteen, and the groom is twelve to eighteen years old; the cala takes place one to five years later. The purpose of marriage is the reproduction of offspring, especially males, to continue the patrilineage. The first wedding ceremonies (sadi) bind together the two families, minimal lineages, and caste-colonies of the bride and groom. After each set of rituals at the bride's home and village, she goes with the groom and his all-male wedding party to his village where she stays with the women of his joint-family in the women's

quarters. After the sadi, she may not see her bridegroom at all. Only after the second set of ceremonies (cala) is the couple's marital relationship consummated.

Because women are hardly allowed to travel except between their natal and marital villages, male elders arrange marriages. The bride's elderly males propose marriage to the groom's. Mates must be found outside the child's own village (village exogamy) but within her or his jati (endogamous set of caste-chapters in a set of nearby villages). Unlike South Indians and some Indian Muslims, North Indian Hindus prohibit marriage with cousins or second cousins through a prohibition on marriage in three or four gotras or patri-sibs. A child cannot marry anyone belonging to his or her own, the mother's, the father's mother's, and the mother's mother's gotra.

Because marriages are arranged between unrelated lineages, in Khalapur, and in much of northern India, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are always unrelated strangers, as are the two fathers-in-law (father of the groom and father of the bride, both samdhi) or the two brothers-in-law (the bride's brother [sala] and her husband [jija, bahanoi, i.e., sister's husband]). Because women cannot travel about, the two mothers-in-law or sisters-in-law (bride's sister and groom's sister) are unlikely ever to meet.

The bride's family usually tries to find a bridegroom whose family's resources are better than their own. The bride's family, however, bear most expenses of the wedding entertainment, as well as the expenses of the bride's trousseau, gifts for the new affinal relatives, and gifts of money and clothing for the bridegroom. Gift giving is heavily one-sided; the bride's side gives the gifts, and the groom's side receives. Furthermore, a married woman's brother should bring her gifts three times a year at the festivals of Tij (in August), Diwali (in October or November) and Holi (in March or April).^[6] Whenever a daughter visits her parental home, she must take back with her gifts for her affinal kin, as well as clothing for herself.

Exchange marriage between two lineages is prohibited. The two parties to a wedding are permanently bridegivers and bridetakers to each other; the former gives gifts to the latter throughout the life of the marriage binding them together, and beyond, because a child's mother's brother (mama) must bring gifts for the child's marriage, even if the linking woman, the child's mother, is dead.

Basic to North Indian kinship is the strong positive relationship between brother and sister (Dumont 1966:99-100; Vatuk 1969:101; Pocock 1972:100-103). Both Das (1976:21-22) and Hershman (1981:133) emphasize the importance in the Punjab of the brother's caring for and protecting his sister; he may even protect her against her husband. Minturn and Hitchcock (1968:36) write about the dominant caste Rajputs of Khalapur: "The relationship between a brother and his sister or female cousins also seems warmer and less restrained than the marital one and is considered sacred" (see also Dorschner 1983:128-129).

Chuhras frequently state their own belief in the strength and priority of this relationship over others.

NQ 2 One Chuhri married into another village who feels much affection for her younger brother said, "As far as affection goes, it is greater for one's brother, because you can always get another husband if he dies. One's affection is always greatest for a brother. You can't get a new brother.

Gyarsi, a female informant in her thirties, also believed in the priority in a woman's affections for her brother.

NQ 3 A woman loves her brother above her son, and her son above her husband.

Because a woman marries into another village, into a household of strangers, potential support from her father and brothers in her natal village can be crucial for her welfare. The assumed bond of strong affection and obligation between brother and sister has much to do with the initially hostile relationship assumed to exist between a woman's bridegroom and her brother, which I discuss below.

High-caste Hindus, like the Brahmans and Rajputs of Khalapur, prohibit the remarriage of widows, but the Chuhras, and other untouchables, as well as the middle castes, allow widow remarriage, often practicing the levirate (Kolenda 1982). Marriages across generations are prohibited; thus, a widow could not take her dead husband's father's brother as her second husband.

Strongly influenced by Muslim culture, Khalapur has the insitutions of seclusion and veiling of women, purdah, and villagers largely accept the Islamic ideology concerning sexuality. According to this ideology, people have very strong sexual impulses that must be controlled to prevent social anarchy, and sexual interest distracts the devout believer from concentrating upon Allah and spiritual goals (Sabbah 1984:63-78; Jeffery 1979: 17-22). This Muslim ideology is similar to the belief in mystical Hinduism that sexual interest distracts the holy man from his spiritual goal (Carstairs 1957:98-99). Thus, in both religious traditions, there is a denigration of sexuality. Among the Chuhras and other North Indians, a young virgin is referred to and addressed as a devi, a goddess; auspicious, she is given offerings in some religious ceremonies, just as Brahmans and cows are; however, a married woman is a suhagin, a woman who is auspicious because her husband is alive, but she herself is not considered divine in any way. Degrading a devi by making her partake of sexual activity makes her brother who gives her into marriage curse-worthy.^[7] The reason for both the hierarchical relationship and the lowness of the bride's brother relates to religious traditions that devalue sexuality. Because the Muslims in Pakistan scorn the sala (a wife's brother), one may suspect this northern custom is both Muslim and Hindu.

There is a segregation not only of castes but also of the sexes in Khalapur. A set of patrilineally related women, the wives of brothers, fathers, and sons lives in its own quarters; compounds of rooms are built about inner open courtyards. Men of a minimal patrilineage sleep in their clubhouse (caupal), a room at the back of a platform built above the narrow village path. Men sit or sleep on cots on the platform. Women are forbidden to set foot on the men's caupal.

In other words, husband and wife do not share a sleeping room: a woman sleeps with her daughters and small sons in a room in the women's quarters; her husband sleeps with other men and boys of his joint-family and minimal patrilineage at the clubhouse or cattleshed. Sleeping arrangements seem to deny that sexual relations occur, consistent with the negative sexual ideology briefly described.

The subjects of my essay are untouchable Chuhras who work as servants of higher caste people. How many of the rules of purdah apply to the Chuhris, the Chuhra women? Adult Chuhris leave their homes daily to go out to work in homes and cattle yards of others. They always go in pairs, never alone, however, and they are always veiled as they move through the village, even when they are carrying baskets of waste on their heads to compost heaps. They are not fair game for strange men, and any illicit sexual relationship is strongly disapproved of. Except for the outings required by their work, Chuhri women remain at home; they do not work in the fields. Like higher caste women, they do not travel out of the village unescorted by a man. Women have their own quarters; men have their caupals.

Everyday Joking and Derision

The rule among the Chuhras against talking about sex before elders is matched by a rule against unmarried girls' listening to their brothers' wives' and the basti-brothers' wives' talk about sex. Both rules, however, are balanced by permission for married people of the same sex, close in age, to talk about sex quite freely, usually in a jocular vein. Married women often talk about another's sex life. Here are two examples from my field notes on the Chuhras:

NQ 4 Surti, a girl of fifteen, had just returned from her cala. A basti bhavaj [brother's wife] told a group of other married women, "Here, let me tell you something about this girl. She says that when she went to her in-laws and her husband came to visit her at night, she said, 'Wait, let me spread my orhna^[*] [long head-covering] on the cot, so that the cot will not get spoiled.' At this, her husband said, 'No, take some old cloth or old orhna. Don't spoil the new one.'" The women listening to the story looked incredulous, put their fingers on their mouths,

laughed, and shook their heads in disapproval. Another bhavaj said, "What an unwise thing to say! Her husband might have thought she was well up in such things, must have had practice before. He must have been a simple man. Otherwise, he might easily have become suspicious and caused trouble. Girls should try to show more innocence and not make such suggestions."

The first bhavaj said further that Surti had told her that she had pushed her husband away twice when he advanced toward her, before she let him touch her. At this, the women again laughed disapprovingly.

In the above passage, Surti's seemingly knowledgeable behavior, the bhavajs seemed to think, might have raised doubts in her new husband's mind about her total innocence.

The second example is usual daily fare.

NQ 5 A group of women were sitting together. One said something about having sore eyes. Tarkhi said in a low tone that her genitals also were sore, and Anandi remarked, "How can that happen? That person who can make them sore [her husband] is far away, not here!"^[8]

How are we to understand such a joke? As Bhati mentioned above in NQ 1, there is considerable rivalry between daughters-in-law for a mother-in-law's approval, and there is likely to be tension, even quarreling, between women over shares of work. Gossiping and joking together is at least an amiable pause in the day's occupations. Relations between the women are not hierarchically structured at such times, although rivalries and put-downs may manifest themselves in these exchanges between equals. Her brothers' wives in NQ 4 are certainly criticizing and putting down Surti, and a married daughter of the basti, Anandi, in NQ 5 may be questioning her sister-in-law's (Tarkhi's) virtue.

Mutual put-downs in a sexual discourse may become a kind of contest between equals among the Chuhras as in NQ 6. Conversations like NQ 6 take place on the men's sitting platform of the caupal where men spend their leisure hours. In the following passage, Kharu, a young man in his twenties, matches wits with Sadhu, a man in his late thirties; Sadhu and Kharu are third cousins.

NQ 6 Kharu told us that the night before last, he had been sitting on the caupal and he said to Sadhu's ten-year-old son, "Your mother will soon be here [Sadhu's wife had been in her natal village for some weeks], and your father will have a good time!"

Sadhu started abusing Kharu. Referring to Kharu's wife, Ramkali, Sadhu said, "She's your tai [father's elder brother's wife]; she's your caci [father's younger brother's wife]." [Thus, Kharu's "mothers," so

suggesting that Kharu was having an incestuous cross-generational sexual relationship with his leviratic wife, Ramkali. The latter is probably fifteen years older than Kharu.] Then Kharu kidded Sadhu about still sleeping in his house rather than on the caupal. Sadhu said he slept in the house because his wife was alone there. "There is no one to keep her company." Kharu twitted, "You have grown old. You have no more children. You should lend your wife out for six months or a year. Then see if she doesn't have children." [Here Kharu is teasing about a human female as though she were a cow. People in Khalapur often give a cow out "half-and-half" to someone who will feed and care for the animal; then as calves are born, the lender and the borrower alternate in ownership of them.]

Kharu said that one day he told Sadhu to give his wife out "half-and-half" to M.'s father, a "fat, dark Chamar" [an untouchable who the Chuhras like to pretend is of lower caste rank than themselves].

Sadhu retorted, "All right, I'll give her away. In case she doesn't have a child, though, you'll have to give the one-eyed bad one [he is referring here to Kharu's wife] to me!"

Note the various metaphors used in this discourse of mutual abasement, which Kharu considered to have been hilarious. First, Kharu breaks the rule of the silence between father and son on matters of sex by calling to Sadhu's sows attention the sexual relation between his parents. Then Sadhu accuses Kharu of incest by making Kharu's leviratic wife into a "mother." Kharu then accuses Sadhu of first liking sex too much (staying with his wife in her house) and then of impotence (indicated by her having no more children). He also "makes" Sadhu's wife into a cow who should be loaned out and impregnated. The offspring of such a mating would then be split between genitor and pater half and half. On some occasions, Kharu has suggested that the genitor in this half-and-half arrangement should be an untouchable Chamar. The men run the gamut of sexually outrageous behavior—excessive sexual appetite, incest, prostituting one's wife, prostituting her to a low-caste man and then accepting (presumably as legitimate children) the offspring (or half the offspring), and finally agreeing to give one's wife out to a "brother" for adultery.^[9] They use various idioms of hierarchy, those of caste, humans versus animals, wife versus prostitute/concubine, primary wife versus secondary wife, demeaning the other by putting him on the down side of each.

This joking discourse between Kharu and Sadhu appears to be based upon a number of cultural suppositions. First, women's purpose is primarily to bear children and, while still of child-bearing age, to continue to bear children; men's duty is to make them pregnant. Sadhu is already the father of four, but he does not protest that he and his wife already have enough chil-

dren. If his eldest son, at this time a youth of fifteen, had already been married, Sadhu could have used, as his excuse for seeming impotence, the cultural proscription on parents' having sexual relations after their eldest child is married. North Indian villagers believe it wrong for both mother and daughter to be producing babies at the same time, but Sadhu could not yet use that excuse.

In their sallies, both men take advantage of their intimate knowledge of each other's sexual vulnerabilities. Sadhu may well be feeling his age and feeling less virile than formerly. It was well-known that Kharu, who had inherited his older brother's widow in the Chuhras' prescribed levirate, was less than enchanted by his wife, well into her forties while he was still in his early twenties. She was already the mother of four children, the eldest aged nineteen, and she was hardly a beautiful woman; her face was marred especially by a heavy cataract over one eye. Kharu, on one occasion, asked us for some medicine to stimulate some sexual desire in him for this wife. She sometimes taunted him that when she died, she would haunt him, causing trouble (severe illness) to him and the new wife she expected he would immediately take after her death. Sadhu knew all this and used it to advantage in replying to Kharu's jibes.

Kharu does not hesitate to explain Sadhu's wife's infertility as due to Sadhu's failure, not to hers. She would surely bear a child if she were given out to a Chamar who would impregnate her successfully. So a lowly Chamar has power that Sadhu lacks. This taps, no doubt, into the chronic anxiety men in a caste system have about men of lower caste (or higher caste) taking their women.

Note that this joking is reciprocal; both men insult and tease each other, and both men, in effect, make the other into a pimp. Kharu suggests that Sadhu arrange a profitable relationship for himself by giving his wife to a Chamar, and Sadhu suggests that Kharu give his wife to him. Such casual suggestion of prostituting one's wife or forcing her to commit adultery, of course, reverses the seclusion of women that the purdah system in Khalapur provides and its protection of women so that they remain always chaste and faithful to their husbands. The anxieties about women's chastity and fidelity, that the purdah system seems to bespeak, are indeed spoken of indirectly in such joking between brothers as equals.

Lila Abu-Lughod (1986) has spoken of different discourses going on about and among women in purdah elsewhere. Among the Chuhras and other North Indians, hierarchical behavior with strict deference and respect forbids mention of the topic of sex and takes places between relatives and non-relatives of different generations; this is the more public, unmarked discourse. But in private, among equals, another discourse speaks frankly of prohibited sexual activities.

Other anthropologists (Burkhart 1974; Parry 1974; David 1974, 1977;

Carter 1975) have also written about non-unequal relations in South Asian caste or egalitarian contexts in India, both economic and religious.^[10] I may add these joking relations between brothers close in age and sisters-in-law close in age to that list of egalitarian relationships in South Asia.

The discourse between "brothers" who are good friends, as Kharu and Sadhu are, is in a "language of intimacy" rather than a "language of social distance" (Douglas 1975:106). In NQ 6, that language is one in which wives and sexual difficulties are talked about openly and laughingly; neither man takes offence. All the evils that purdah is erected to prevent are taken for granted as truths—incest, adultery, pimping—in the joking mode. Although the discourse of deference and respect supports the social structure, the discourse of joking between both female and male equals turns it upside down.

The Bridegroom and the Bride's "Sisters"

A young Chuhra bridegroom described himself to us as shy (saramlagna) as he anticipated his visit after his cala to his wife's parents and relatives, as much strangers to him as his relatives were strangers to his new wife. Why should the bridegroom feel shy? He would not have to stay at the bride's village and home very long. He would take her and leave her there. But probably he remembered his previous experiences among her relatives, when at both the sadi and the cala his bride's sisters and brothers' wives, as well as her brothers, teased him.

Sukhar, a man in his thirties, reminisced about his wedding day. Among the Chuhras, it is the custom to take the new bridegroom around to the various farmers who retain the Chuhras to work for them. In the village where Sukhar was married, the dominant caste was probably Tyagi, but it also had some untouchable Chamars as well, and the women of these castes pinched and needled the young Chuhra bridegroom. He said,

NQ 7 "When I went to get married, all the Tyagi girls and Chamaris came. They pinched me and put needles in me, and they gave me the same treatment when I went for my cala."

(Were you taken around, or was this in the basti?) He explained that "salam mangna^[*]" [greeting with a salam and begging] is done. The groom takes a thali [metal tray] and asks for things from the farmers [the landed families who employ the sweepers]. Wherever the groom goes, the girls laugh, joke, and are naughty. Sukhar said, "One Tyagi girl gave me a small bottle of oil and a comb. She said, 'Ey, let's see you comb your hair in the Angrezi^[*] [English] style.' Another gave me a piece of soap. She said, 'Ey, jija [sister's husband], go and bathe with this.'"

The fiction that the village is all one family is sustained in this example. All the girls of the village, though of higher caste-rank than the Chuhras, are, nevertheless, the bride's fictive sisters, and the in-married young wives are her fictive brothers' wives. And both sisters and brothers' wives of the bride can have a fling at teasing the new bridegroom. They give him hair oil, comb, and soap to help the bridegroom improve his appearance, presumably helping him to prepare for his meeting with the bride's womenfolk and, eventually, the bride.

Their mothers are, of course, fictive mothers-in-law to the groom, and, as upper generation women to the groom, women to whom he must show avoidance-respect and who show respect for him, they do not enter into the fun.

The day after the main wedding ceremonial at the time of the sadi, the groom is brought into the women's quarters to be fed. While he tries to eat, the bride's sisters (full sisters, female cousins, and basti-sisters; i.e., his salis) and her bhabhis and bhavajs (brothers' wives, cousin-brothers' wives, and basti-brothers' wives; i.e., his salhajs) tease him, saying he is the lover of his own mother (make yar) and the son of a lewd woman (luccika), suggesting that he commits incest with his mother and that his mother was or is a prostitute. They have not seen him before because women other than the bride do not attend the main wedding ceremony, but they assess his appearance saying that he looks like a runt and probably lacks sexual prowess. During these tauntings, the bridegroom must maintain his dignity as best he can. Above all, he must not break down by either becoming angry or weeping. It is a brave bridegroom who can make clever retorts. Most sit stiffly with head down, trying to concentrate on the food and be deaf to these strange harpies.

In the joking over the meal in the women's quarters, the women are rejecting the bridegroom as an acceptable mate for their bride: he is the son of a prostitute; he commits incest with his mother; he is impotent. He has to put up with whatever they deal out to him and to the members of his male party until they and he finally get the bride.

On the night before the barat (all-male marriage party) departs with the bride at either the sadi or the cala, the bahanoi, his brother, and members of his barat who are his age are serenaded by the salis (wife's sisters) and the salhajis (wife's brothers' wives) with sithani^[*], obscene songs which question the groom's virility, the virtue of his mother, and so on.^[11] Remembrance of such ordeals is enough to make any young bridegroom shy in anticipation of more encounters with his affinal kin.

There is a female solidarity among the women of the bride's village, especially among the unmarried girls and brothers' wives of her own generation, a common voice of protest at the coming of this stranger to take away one of

their own. Their resentment and hostility cannot become actual resistance, so teasing the interloper is indulged in with delight.

The cross-sex relations between affines of the same generation allow an older bahanoi [sister's husband] to tease his younger salis [wife's sisters] and for them to tease him. In this culturally prescribed teasing, both the bahanoi and sali speak of the desirability of her going home with him along with her sister. The salis may often, probably usually, initiate such joking conversations. The couple may be seen to be playing out a kind of mock marriage, parallel to the real marriage between the bahanoi and the sails' sister. The joking may also anticipate a sororate marriage later on. The Chuhras and other middle- and low-caste people of this region do not go in for sororal polygyny, but a sororate marriage does occasionally occur.^[12]

Relationships Between Brothers-in-Law: Respectful, Abusive, or Joking?

In Social Structure, his multicultural study of kinship practices, Murdock (1949:279) states:

Although the author unfortunately did not gather data on social behavior between male relatives, he has a distinct impression from general reading that the relations between brothers-in-law are commonly characterized by respect or reserve, especially by a marked tendency to avoid mentioning matters of sexual import. This is not unnatural in view of the fact that, with respect to the same woman one of the two men enjoys unrestrained sexual freedom whereas the other must observe one of the strictest of incest taboos. Any allusion to sex by the former is likely to amuse unconscious anxieties in the latter, whereas an allusion by the latter might imply to the former a lack of respect for the woman who unites them or even suggest the possibility of of an unpardonable incestuous connection with her.

Much of the writing on the North Indian relationship between wife's brother and her husband, brothers-in-law, has suggested that it is a relationship of distance or respect. The inequality between the brothers-in-law is expressed in respect rituals; Hershman writes (1981:197) about villagers in Jullundur District, Punjab: "Just as a younger brother touches the feet of an elder sister, so he also touches the feet of an elder sister's husband."

At several places Hershman speaks of the great honor and respect the bridegroom and his brother receive at the bride's natal home (1981:194, 196, 199, 203, 206); he also speaks of avoidance between brothers-in-law (1981:203). Hershman never talks, however, about a joking relationship between sala and bahanoi, although he mentions the fact that sala is a curse word when used as an appellation in address. Similarly, Nicholas (1965:33) says that "in Bengali the most common term of abuse is sala." He notes, however, that "the relation between a man and his wife's brother is formally distant and frequently hostile."

The consciousness or awareness of sexuality and the need for respect between affines is expressed by prohibiting use of the descriptively correct kinship terms in either reference or address between them. The Hindi terms for husband (pati) and wife (pativrata, patni) are never used; a woman might refer to her husband as "that one" or "someone"; a man similarly refers to his wife. Sometimes a man refers to his wife as the "lady of the house" (gharvali) or by his child's name—for example, Bharat's mother (Bharat ki ma)—or the woman refers to her husband as the "master" (malik) or Bharat's father (Bharat ka caca).^[13] In reference, a woman is so-and-so's wife—Bharat's wife is Bharat ki bahu. If a woman finds herself in a position of being asked to give someone's name that is the same as her husband's, she becomes flustered, and other women laugh embarrassedly. Ira woman by chance lets her husband's name slip out, other women think it is breathtakingly shocking and very funny, embarrassing indeed. These prohibitions on the use of either names or kinship terms by husband and wife for each other is not so much a matter of deference as of sexual embarrassment. One hints at the sexual relationship between husband and wife by saying "that one," but one never openly admits to the relationship by using a name or even more explicitly using the kin term.

Other affinal kin terms are never used in address. A man never addresses his wife's mother; he can address his wife's father, but he would never address him as sasur (father-in-law); a woman never addresses her husband's father; she can address her husband's mother, but she would never address her husband's mother as sasu (mother-in-law). She would call her ma or mataji (mother).

The affinal kin terms used for the wife's immediate relatives, her parents, and siblings, all seem suffused with the connotation of embarrassing sexual relationship connecting the two families of bride and groom. Some affinal terms do not share this stigma, such as bahanoi (sister's husband), and nandoi (husband's sister's husband). These arc males who actually have sexual relations with one's sister or one's husband's sister, but they are not considered demeaned or despicable because of this; the men who have given their daughters or sisters into this plight arc demeaned. The term daughter-in-law, bahu, the woman who is used sexually, is similarly not demeaned, and the Chhuhras say that one should neither joke about bahus nor ever treat them disrespectfully. The women being given and presumably being used sexually are not looked down upon, nor are the men who so use them; only the men who have given them as sexual partners for other men's pleasure are demeaned.

Curse words in Hindi are sala (wife's brother) and sasur (wife's father); their connotation approaches that of pimp in English. The sala and sasur are men who have given their sister or daughter in marriage; they have given her to be used by other men sexually, and the connotation is that they are low, curse-worthy because of this.

Hershman writes (1981:191, 197):

A brother gives his sister in marriage to another man and in so doing not only makes a gift of that which he most jealously guarded but also exposes himself to the possibility of personal dishonour. In Punjabi culture the most taunting abuse is for one man to inquire of another: tun^[*] mera sala lagda which literally means "are you my wife's brother?" but which carried with it the emotive power of "are you the man who gave me his sister to violate?" To give a woman in marriage is to place oneself in a position of inferiority to the taker ....

... The relationship which is most inegalitarian in nature is that between brothers-in-law. The word for sister's husband, sala, is never used as a form of address and some men even avoid using it as a term of reference by employing a circumlocution such as saying, "my child's mother's brother." Sala may be used as a term of abuse, and a choice use of insult is to call a man sale ka kutta "the dog of a wife's brother." The reverse of this is the term for sister, which is generally bhanoia and an honorific. Brahmans employ the highly honorific Hindi word jija in address and reference to an elder sister's husband, while other castes use the bhaia which is also a term carrying a great deal of respect and may be employed for any senior male such as the father's father.

(Notice that the above paragraph from Hershman is actually muddled. Sala is first translated as sister's husband instead of wife's brother, and later in the same paragraph bhanoia is translated as sister rather than sister's husband.)

Although Nicholas and Hershman suggest that the relationship between brothers-in-law is abusive in their absence (i.e., behind their backs) but distant in their presence, others do recognize the existence of an institutionalized joking relationship between brothers-in-law. Dumont (1966:102) states that there is a joking relationship, but he does not describe it, saying only that "outside its proper denotation, the word sala is a term of abuse." Madan (1975:226) also does not suggest that joking exists between the brothers-in-law among the Pandits of Kashmir; rather they are allies; he does, however, say that brothers-in-law in Uttar Pradesh use the term sala in banter rather than hostility; again, he does not label it a joking relationship. T. B. Naik's (1947) description of joking relationships shows considerable diversity in the content of the relationship, as he found it in the literature on Indian tribals, among whom the sister's husband sometimes bullies the wife's younger brother and sometimes the wife's brother bullies the sister's husband. Apte also recognizes and treats the joking relationship between brothers-in-law in India:

In societies with patrilineal kinship and strong male dominance, an asymmetrical joking relationship may exist between a Person and his wife's brothers. Wife givers are generally inferior to wife takers in such societies, so that a man can make fun of his wife's brother with impunity, knowing full well that his

brother-in-law cannot and will not respond in kind. Among the Hindus in North India, a wife's brother is always regarded as someone to be made the butt of joking. (1985:42)

This description does not fit the joking relationship between a man and his wife's brother among the Chuhras. In the instances of the relationship that I collected in the mid-1950s, the sala makes a butt of his bahanoi.^[14]

My own review of the ethnographic literature for North India and tribal India, some of which I cited above, confirms Apte's observation that the ethnographic descriptions necessary for comparison have not been published, so the variations in the joking relationship between a man and his wife's brother for North India cannot be analyzed. Now I will consider the joking between brothers-in-law as I found it among the Chuhras.

NQ 8 Kharu explained to us that there arc clean jokes (hamsi-makhaul^[*]), ridicule in fun; or hamsi-majak^[*], funny jokes. This is the type Kharu might have with Gyarsi [devar (husband's younger brother)—bhavaj (older brother's wife) joking].

We asked if the type of joking one did with a samdhi [one's son or daughter's father-in-law] or a sala [wife's brother] was hamsi-majak. Kharu said it was all the same thing. But one can abuse his sala through his sister and abuse his samdhi through his wife. You can't joke with a brother in this way. Abuses of that sort are ganda majak [dirty jokes] or gali [abuse]. One can't beat and throw a brother around as one can a samdhi.

Among the Chuhras, the ritual of insult (a joking relationship) between the sala and bahanoi involves a reversal in roles. The sala pretends that he has married the bahanoi's sister rather than the reverse, and he greets the bahanoi by hugging him and kissing or biting him on the cheek. The bahanoi must put up with this, remaining passive, saying little in response.

NQ 9 (We asked Kharu what kind of behavior was shown in joking relationships.) He said that there was much laughing, joking, and kidding, and they might start quarreling and slapping each other with their hands. "For example," he said, "if I and my sister's husband [bahanoi] are sitting, and someone asks, 'What arc you to each other?' I would say that he was my sala [wife's brother], the opposite from what is the truth. Then he might start abusing my sisters. We might even come to blows. When my sister Kraceni's husband comes, I will 'say that I am married in this fellow's house. Then we might come to blows. I might spit in his face or make him impure by kissing him. Then we would have a big fight. At the time of Anandi's wedding, I bit Kraceni's husband so hard that the mark on his face could be seen for days. He had two guests with him. They had a plan. They called

me over asking me to fill the hukka for them. When I went they caught hold of me and took big bites, and we slapped each other, and I ran away.

Note the variety of ways of insulting the bahanoi that Kharu used: first, making him impure by spitting in his face, biting, and kissing him;^[15] second, physically attacking him; third, mocking foreplay to sexual relations with him as the sex object; and in so doing, fourth, treating him as though he were a female. All this suggests the sexual nature of the relationship between the two parties.

Kraceni's husband and his friends get back at Kharu. Passivity on their part is no longer as necessary as it was during Kraceni's wedding when the groom and his party did not yet have the bride. Once they do have her, after the wedding, they do not have to take a sala's attack stoically. Kharu, of course, reported all this as great fun.

Another example of reversal in roles occurs between Bhartu, a basti-sala (bride's brother by membership in the same Chuhra colony) to Chandni's (Kharu's brother's daughter's) bridegroom, Paltu.

NQ 10 Bhartu sat in front of his bahanoi, Paltu, and the latter's brother, Pannu. Bhartu lit a cigarette and then gave it to Pannu to smoke. He knocked off the burning tip and almost burned his clothes with it. Bhartu said, "Why have you broken my cigarette? Now either give me my cigarette back or one of your sisters. Look, I am spreading my pala [bottom of shirt] before him and asking him to give me one of his sisters. And see, I'm saying the same thing to Paltu."

Pannu said, "Let me make a suggestion. You have given us a girl already. Give us each another one, and then we'll try to think of making some arrangement for you, too."

Here Bhartu proposes an exchange marriage, an impossibility to the Chuhras and to most North Indian Hindus.^[16] The groom's brother, not the groom himself, has the courage to reply; in his reply he suggests polygyny, not so abhorrent because it is sometimes practiced but rather unusual.

The reversal in roles I interpret as a culturally prescribed "reaction formation" on the part of the sala, who by joking denies his own shameful role in having given his sister for sexual use. The reversal, given the sala is the joker and the bahanoi the jokee, saves the sala from teasing about the bahanoi's sexual relationship with the sala's own sister. He also does not reverse the relationship so that he is married to the bahanoi's wife, who, of course, is his own sister; he does not joke about an incestuous relationship. He reverses it in the way least likely to anger the bahanoi or entrap himself.

This Chuhra move modifies Murdock's speculation, quoted above, that brothers-in-law do not joke because the idea of brother-sister incest might be invoked. They joke through role reversal and suggesting an exchange mar-

riage. As I have shown in the joking both between Kharu and Sadhu (NQ 6) and between the salis and the bridegroom, the Chuhras do not quake at the notion of accusing a jokee (victim of the joke) of incest (between son and mother). Nevertheless, the Chuhras' ingenious pretence of a role reversal in joking between brothers-in-law makes possible sexual joking without bringing in incest, rather than their being limited to a respect or reserve relationship that Murdock and others might have led us to expect. The reversal in relationship between sala and bahanoi (and, as I shall show below, samdhi and samdhi, the two fathers-in-law) is motivated by the bridegivers' resistance to accepting their subordinate status; Minturn and Hitchcock state that the practice of female infanticide by Rajputs of Khalapur in the past was partly due to the "heavy financial burden which dowry represented" and partly due to

the reluctance of the male members of the bride's family to assume a subordinate status in relation to the members of the groom's family ....

...Furthermore, since a girl must marry into a family of higher status than her own, her male relatives are always subservient to the men of her husband's family. Many of the men do not take kindly to this inferior position. (Minturn and Hitchcock 1966: 58, 96)

Sensitivity to the abuse one was subject to as a sala was carried to the extreme by at least one Muslim nobleman, the Nawab of Bahawalpur state (on the border between the Punjab, Sind and Baluchistan, now in Pakistan). Prakash Tandon wrote about this treatment for the sisters of the Nawab of Bahawalpur in the 1920s:

The sisters of a Nawab, according to custom, were not permitted to marry. In the north the word for wife's brother, sala, has somehow become a term of abuse. The Nawabs therefore considered it an unbearable insult to become a sala to someone; they would rather not marry their sisters. But it was a risk to keep them in the palaces for fear of some scandal arising, and they were therefore banished to an old inaccessible fort in the desert. There, under a heavy guard, they lived their long lonely lives like prisoners, lost to the world and looking back to their childhood, the only short spell of happiness they had ever tasted. Relations rarely came to see them, and thus condemned they could only have received scant attention from the fort authorities. (Tandon 1961:174-175)

That being a sala is experienced as a scourge and a disgrace at least by some North Indians and Pakistanis is suggested by this extreme custom.

Go-Parents-in-Law

The joking between the bride's and groom's male elders, father, father's brothers, and so on, both of whom are samdhi to each other, similarly involves a reversal. The elderly male of the bride's family accosts, hugs, and kisses the

elderly male of the groom's family and teases him, again a role reversal and a kind of defense against admitting one's own role in giving a daughter into a sexual relationship.

NQ 11 Kharu had told us that last night Soma had whipped the samdhi, Hari. At the caupal, we asked about this. Soma got up and took one of the boys' cadars [small blanket], wound it and doubled it over to make a kind of whip. Ram said that last night when the girls were singing, and the men were preparing a bundle to put on the samdhi's head, and the "girls" [Kharu and Soma] were preparing the whip, the samdhi had come to Ram's bed and said, "Oh, please save me." "And," said Ram, "I said, 'All right, I'll save you.' Then when they came to hit him, I sat in front and protected him." Soma contradicted him, saying that the samdhi had been hit twice. The samdhi denied that he had been hit. Ram said he had been pushed around a great deal in the process of trying to save Hari. We asked who had hit him. Ram said it was Pal ki bahu Chamari. It seemed Kharu and Soma had dressed up like girls and were Pal ki bahus.

Multiple insults are heaped on Hari, the samdhi. He is made into a menial carrying rocks on his head, while he is whipped by Chamar women. We did not know Pal, but we may suspect that Pal's wife or wives were not the most appealing women as prospective sexual partners.

NQ 11 (continued) The samdhi, Hari, said, "When you come to our place, our 'women' will also come and give you the same treatment." Soma said, "Oh, if your women come, then we'll hug them."

Here the men arc debating the virtue of Hari's women. He is saying that they will also command and force their samdhis to carry rocks on their head. But the latter are saying that no, these women will be amenable to being hugged by their samdhis. In other words, they will not resist the sexual overtures of these strange men, never mind beat them and drive them about.

NQ 11 (continued) The men said the samdhi jumped from cot to cot last night when they tried to put a bundle of rocks on his head. Also they made him worship the well—clasp his hands and bow to it while Mukanda beat the drum. Ram said that this was the custom, to tell the samdhi that it was customary to worship the well in their basti.

Here the samdhi is insulted by making him behave like a woman; only women worship the well. It is as though the giving of a bride makes her male relatives (here Kharu, her father's younger brother, her leviratic "father"; and Soma, a basti-father's younger brother) also female, and humor may involve the attempt to make the male relatives of the groom play at being female, too.

NQ 11 (continued) The samdhi was alone. He was the only barati who could be joked with. The brothers, bahanoi [sister's husband], and so on are samletas [affines of a junior generation] to Kharu and Soma, so they could not joke with them.

It seems that the samdhis can initiate joking with the opposite samdhis in their own [the formers'] village. When Kharu and Soma go to the samdhi's village, they will be kidded, too. Shyam and Soma sat up very straight to show how staunchly they would take it all. The samdhi said, "We'll beat you, beat you." Kharu said, "Memsahib, tell them that they can't beat your boy." Pauline said, "We'll protect you." Kharu explained that Pauline was Chandni's dadi [father's mother]. Pauline asked if dadis were beaten, too.^[17] When they go to the samdhi's, the men said they would take Mian (old Govardhan) with them. Mian said, "If you beat us, we'll put our samdhan in the car and bring her away."

Here joking between samdhi (son's "father-in-law") and samdhan (daughter's mother-in-law) is brought in. A samdhan is either one's married daughter's mother-in-law or one's married son's mother-in-law. Similarly, a samdhi is either one's married daughter's father-in-law or one's married son's father-in-law. Both pairs of same-sex terms are reciprocal: samdhan-samdhan and samdhi-samdhi. The joking in NQ 11 is between samdhi (Kharu, Hari's brother's son's father-in-law) and samdhi (Hari, Kharu's step-daughter, Chandni's father-in-law's brother). Joking involving the samdhan will be discussed below, after NQ 11.

NQ 11 (continued) Kharu asked Pauline if she saw any resemblance between Hari, the samdhi, and his son, Laki. Kharu joked that the reason there was so little resemblance was because Laki's mother had gone to live with a Grainparcher, and then Laki was born. Then she came back to live with Hari.

Naga said, "Look at the samdhi; he looks like a bear. Look at Kharu; he's a lion." Somehow, Laki was referred to. Kharu said, "Oh, don't say anything to poor Laki. He's only got one father." There was some discussion among the men of the caupal as to whether a person could have more than one father. Someone said, "Ask his father how many fathers Laki has." Someone else said, "But even Laki's father wouldn't know that. Ask Laki's mother where all she's been. She'll tell you how many fathers he has." Hari said, "Such a thing couldn't happen." Jumlal, an cider in his seven-tics, said, "Why, do you keep locks on them?" The samdhi retorted, "Do you keep locks on yours?" Jumlal replied, "No, we go with them."

Here the samdhi is insulted by the accusation that his wife was adulterous; even worse, her adultery was with a man of another caste (Grainparcher), and the samdhi had so little pride that he accepted the illegitimate child of the adultery as his own. Although the Chuhras value virginity and expect it in brides (see NQ 4 above), they seldom talk about honor, izzat. But much of this joking discourse is concerned with izzat. Because a man's honor is especially closely tied to the virtue of his unmarried sisters and daughters and to his wife's chastity and fidelity, these seemingly endless jokes about seduction and abduction of the women of the opposing party attack the opponents' honor. In the above passage, the suggestion that Laki might have more than one father is such an attack. Laki's mother was supposedly so promiscuous that she was having several affairs at once; thus, Laki could have been sired by any one of several men. When Hari has a chance to assert the resistance and virtue of his women, he passes up the chance, either purposely or not, allowing the bride's elder to assert the virtue of the bride's side's women who are always chaperoned by their men: "We go with them."

NQ 11 (continued) Kharu said that theirs was a good samdhi, because he did not get angry at all, but agreed with whatever they said. Mostly the samdhi sat quietly, with a half-smile on his face. The men on the caupal said they would talk and kid until midnight, but the samdhi would not sleep at all tonight. He didn't sleep at all last night, we were told, "out of fear." Kharu said that such kidding went on all through the time the calavalas were here.

NQ 12 Some of the men had put eggs under the samdhi. Then when the eggs broke, they said, "Oh, see, our guest has laid an egg."

The samdhi here is an animal—in this case, a chicken who can lay eggs. In this insult, the samdhi is not only an animal but also a female animal. The essentially sexual reproductive nature of the relationship between the two wedding parties is perhaps suggested by the fertility symbol—the egg.

Both the bahanoi and the samdhi (daughter's father-in-law) are victims of rites of degradation at the hands of the sala and opposite samdhi (one's son's father-in-law). In multiple ways, each is "put down," by being likened to an animal, by being hugged, tackled, chased, shoved and beaten, and by being touched by supposed untouchable Chamar women and treated as though he were a woman.

The relationship between samdhi and samdhan is more imaginary than real, but the content is one of flirtation.

NQ 13 At the time of Chandni's cala, we asked if the samdhan didn't joke with the samdhi. Chatu, a guest samdhi [bride's father-in-law in relationship], said that last night when no one was looking, he had de-

cided to go to visit his samdhian [son's mother-in-law]. Kharu said, "We saw him slipping away, but we didn't stop him because we knew our women were brave. We thought, 'Let him taste a bit from our women, too.' Just when he walked in, the samdhan caught hold of him and started beating him. And he said, 'Please let me go.' Then we went and got him free."

At this, one of the Chuhra men, a samdhi [groom's father-in-law] pulled Chatu back and shook his fist at Chatu as though he were threatening to beat him.

Here again the virtue of the local bride's women is attested to. Chatu, a guest samdhi, probably was trying here to insult the hosts by indicating that he had gone to have sex with the bride's mother, but again Kharu asserts that the women accosted the invader and beat him. Evidently one of the groom's men was displeased that Chatu's salvo had boomeranged.

Another example of a fantasy flirtation between samdhan and samdhi comes from Kanti's life history.

NQ 14 At the time Kanti was to have her sadi and go to her bridegroom's village, Kanti's mother's jija [sister's husband] teased her, saying, "Why don't you go with Kanti? Go with your samdhi. Go as his wife!"

Here Kanti's mother's sister's husband suggests that his wife's sister, Kanti's mother, go along with Kanti when Kanti marries, in order to have "a good time" with Kanti's father-in-law, Kanti's mother's samdhi. In this example, a sister's husband teases his wife's sister, a culturally prescribed joking relationship, and in his joke he refers to a largely imaginary joking relationship between samdhan and samdhi.

Not all flirtations are just imaginary, however. Sometimes samdhans, faces covered with headclothes, go up to the edge of the caupal and say, "We'll throw color on our samdhis." But their own men threaten the women. Sometimes, however, the women succeed in throwing colored powder on the samdhis. Colored powder is thrown during the spring festival, Holi, and seems to be a symbol of fertility (see note 11 for accounts of samdhans singing to samdhis).

The joking relationship between a samdhi and his samdhan is a cross-sex joking relationship that, contrary to what Brant's (1948: 160-162) hypothesis might have led us to expect, is not one between potential spouses.^[18]

Because samdhan (groom's mother-in-law) never meets samdhan (bride's mother-in-law), the joking takes place by means of messages with hidden sexual insults sent by way of their husbands or son or daughter to each other. One will send a message telling the other to take hold of a thorn bush (penis?). It is said that if they were to meet, both samdhans would have faces covered but would joke through their headclothes.

Devar (Husband's Younger Brother)—Bhavaj (Elder Brother's Wife)

It might seem that the new bride suffers nothing but shyness and embarrassment in her new role in the household of her mother-in-law. Many scholars of the North Indian family and kinship point to the relief that the young newly in-married daughter-in-law may enjoy in the culturally prescribed hamsimakhaul^[*] ka rista (joking relationship) between herself and her husband's younger brother. It is also commonly pointed out that this is a relationship between a couple who might eventually marry, especially if a caste, such as the Chuhras, practice the levirate. Because the right to joke with the husband's younger brother (devar) extends to the male cousins of the husband and to gamv-basti^[*] devars (village-colony husband's younger brothers), a woman like Gyarsi who delights in this sexy flirtatious joking may have many partners with whom to joke.

Although the ethnographic literature on northern India is bereft of examples of joking between devar (husband's younger brother) and bhavaj (elder brother's wife), mention of its existence is frequent.^[19] Space precludes explorations of that relationship here.

In all three types of cross-sex joking—that between bahanoi (sister's husband) and sail (wife's sister), samdhi (bride's father-in-law) and samdhan (groom's mother-in-law), bhavaj (older brother's wife) and devar (husband's younger brother)—there is a pretence that the two should have or arc already having a sexual relationship or that the two are already married. Women usually initate the horseplay and wise-cracking in which some women revel.

A man can joke only with his wife's younger sisters, not her older sisters; a married woman can joke only with her husband's younger brothers, not his older brothers. A husband's older brother cannot joke with his younger brother's wife; this is an avoidance relationship, and a woman should be veiled and should not speak to her jeth^[*] (her husband's cider brother), who is like a small father-in-law.

Among the lower castes of Khalapur and much of northern India in which levirate and sororate arc practiced, a bhavaj may indeed be married in a secondary marriage to her devar after her husband's death; thus, a sali could, indeed, become wife to her dead sister's husband.

Conclusion

As Radcliffe-Brown (1952a) perceived, the two parties, that of the bride and that of the groom, are two separate groups, now attached through their marriage. Clear in the joking relationships between affinal relatives close in age is that sexuality is spoken about or expressed in gestures. Some cross-sex joking, like that between bhavaj and devar and jija and sail, seems to anticipate a

future sexual relationship. Some cross-sex joking like that between samdhan and samdhi is a flirtation that, if not entirely fantasized, suggests a replay of the relationship between their children, with each other. That relationship, as well as the singing of sithanis to the groom and his "brothers," and the same-sex joking between samdhi and samdhi and between sala and bahanoi, is fraught with sexual content and innuendo and seems to direct the wedding parties' attention to the sexual nature of their relationship. The joking reiterates the fact: "We two groups are joined by a marriage."

All the mock sexual relations—those between sali and bahanoi, samdhan and samdhi, samdhi and samdhi, sala and bahanoi—act out in anticipation the sexual relationship between bride and groom. Sideplay statements during the wedding rest serve as a counterpoint to the religious ceremonies that also go on during the sadi, the profane opposes the sacred. Both profane and sacred rites unite bride and groom: the one carnally (at least in anticipation), the other spiritually, religiously, and legally (wrought by the mantras themselves).

Radcliffe-Brown (1952a) also suggested that the joking relationship mixes both hostility and affection. His observation holds for the sala-bahanoi and samdhi-samdhi relationships among the Chuhras. The two parties are initially strangers. Because elders usually arrange marriages, it is likely that the sala's father or grandfather actually went to the bahanoi's village to give the rupee and engage the bahanoi as a bridegroom for the daughter/granddaughter, so it may well be that at the time of the sadi neither young man has met the other before. The negotiation between the two wedding parties (the groom's are to be guests at the bride's, the bride's are to be the hosts) is often fraught with misunderstanding, even anger. The hosts try tactfully to hint that the groom's party should not be too large, for the hosts must feed them all for three or four days; the groom's party is touchy and can use their ultimate sanction of breaking off the engagement because the hosts are so penurious. So the feeling between sala and bahanoi upon first meeting and between samdhi and samdhi at the time of the wedding ceremonies is likely to be one of mild hostility.

Of course, the fundamental fact to be understood in this joking is the sala's and samdhi's (groom's father-in-law's) resentment in having to give sister/ daughter away in marriage to the bahanoi/jamai (sister's husband/daughter's husband). The reversal in relationship between sala and bahanoi and between samdhi and samdhi, possible when the groom's party is on the bride's home ground, is one way to quash the bride's father and brother's feelings of guilt and resentment. They thus resist the situation in which they find themselves.

The joking relationship in which the sala plays that he is the bahanoi seesaws him from the low subordinate position to the high superordinate one in this limited hypergamous system. He plays this game while the wifetakers are still dependent; they have not yet received the bride. The joking takes

place at the sadi and the cala before the bride has been transferred to the groom and the other men of his party who have come to take her back to the groom's father's village and before the sexual relations between the groom and bride have commenced. The groom and his brothers must bear up with joking both from his new wife's sisters and from his wife's brothers, not only to win their respect, but also presumably so that they will not falter in their transfer of the bride. His father and his brothers must do the same. The reversal in the relationships is the key trope in this play, and this can be seen as a kind of ritual of rebellion (Gluckman 1963), a statement that the sala or samdhi (groom's father-in-law) wishes that the relationship were the reverse of what it is.

Such an analysis, however, does not account for the content of the humorous insults that the bride's men dole out to the groom's men, much to the enjoyment of the others in the bride's party. As detailed above, these dirty jokes (ganda majak) and insults (gali) repeatedly attack the honor (izzat) of the guests in a situation in which the guests are helpless. The effect of this use of the discourse of forbidden sexuality—accusations of incest, exchange marriage, adultery, bastardry, and cuckoldry—is that the hierarchical relations between the bridetakers and the bridegivers are leveled. They also use the discourse of caste and pollution and override the usual vast gulf between humanity and animality, between male and female. The Chuhra jokers frequently demean a man by "making" him into either an animal or a woman.

Seen against a background of caste and arranged marriage the primary purpose of which is to ensure that bride and groom are of the same caste and from good families (ones in which incest and adultery presumably would not take place), such joking says that the groom's party is not worthy of taking the bride because the groom and his father and their brothers have broken the most basic rules of caste and family purity (Yalman 1963; Kolenda 1985: 62-85). The logic of such joking would seem to be: because you are of bad family and impure caste, you cannot take our daughter/sister. Through such insult, the groom's party is discredited and proven unworthy of being given the bride, who is presumably from a good family and a pure caste.

I began this chapter with a quotation from Foucault suggesting that the research scholar must see how sexuality is used in discourse. Between bride's people and groom's people during wedding ceremonial visits in the bride's people's village, the joking and farce express rebellion on the part of the subordinated, and they attempt w discredit the bridetakers to deprive them of their superior status. The content of the joking, thus, is not accidental but closely related to the intergroup situation. Such analysis suggests that there is considerable value in ethnographers' reporting the contents of joking and not just covering it with a single adjective like obscene, which is a common practice.

Mary Douglas has suggested that jokes are antistructural; this is true in the reversal of roles between the sala and the bahanoi. Douglas also claims that joking may well foster communitas, "unhierarchised, undifferentiated social relations" between the parties (Douglas 1975: 104). During the sadi and cala, not only does the bride's party resist the new relationship, but it also resists giving the bride. However, they do come to accept the relationship, and the bride is eventually given over.

Given the rules of patrilineage and village exogamy as well as caste endogamy and the asymmetrical ranking of bridetakers and bridegivers, plus the North Indian ideology of sexuality, one can see that the North Indian wedding is fraught with tension between the bride's and the groom's wedding parties. This tension could be dealt with in various ways, including avoidance, aloofness, and great formality in their interactions. Indeed, these interpersonal strategies are culturally coded, creating avoidance relationships between daughter-in-law and men older than her husband in her husband's party; the groom is silent before his mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law, those women and men in the bride's party of the parental generation.

The ambivalence in the encounter of the strange men brought together by a wedding presumably could teeter in one direction rather than another. Those anthropolgists who characterize the relationship between sala and bahanoi as hostile or distant suggest that in some North Indian localities and groups the ambivalence has tipped that way. Among the Chuhras, the groom, knowing that he will be teased, feels shy; he anticipates the humiliation that the sala is likely to deal out to him. However, in the Chuhra scheme of things, sala and bahanoi should become good friends. It is said that they should love each other far more than the bahanoi loves his wife, who is, of course, the sala's sister. Humor relaxes tension, and this strategy is used between members of the two parties of the same generation. The relaxation of tension through farce and humor makes possible more friendly relations between the two opposed parties. This seems to be what the Chuhras expect; out of the joking in which the sala attacks the bahanoi a relationship of affection will develop.^[20]

Obviously, the bride, as well as her brothers and parents, benefit if there is a friendly relationship between her father and her husband's father and father's brothers and a friendly relationship between her husband and her brother and their age-mates. That this, in fact, takes place is indicated at the end of the story about Chandni's wedding.

As the bullock-cart departs, taking Chandni, Kharu's step-daughter, away at her cala, her younger brothers walk with the young men of her husband's barat (all-male wedding party), their arms around each other; her father and her husband's father bid each other fond farewell; her husband's brother says that the relationship is now forever in reply to her brother's

regret that his bahanoi must leave. Out of the tomfoolery comes prema or pyara, affection and love. Out of the barrage of abuse, insult, and jokes emerges and triumphs intimacy (Douglas 1975:98).

In conclusion, I make three points about the insult-joking relationships at the Chuhra wedding. First, the mock flirtations and pretend sexual relations between certain assigned pairs of affines reiterate the purpose of the contact between the two groups—to establish a sexual relationship between a male member of one group and a female of the other. Second, much of the farce and joking is a pretense of diminishing the superior status of the groom and the bridetakers by discrediting their claims to purity either from regular endogamous relations or obedience to incest tabus; all this "in-play," jolly rituals of rebellion that can last for only a few hours or days, occurs before the jokers must succumb to the real superiority of the wifetakers and give them the bride. Third, the ritualized joking is a transformative process, the middle phase in a rite of passage (Gennep 1960:10-13) as the brothers-in-law pass from the statuses of strangers to those of^[*] friends.

The joking, both between equal brothers and equal sisters-in-law and between unequal affinal relatives, makes a travesty of the purdah system and the concept of izzat, the local versions of shame and honor. In fact, Mary Douglas suggests:

The joke merely affords opportunity for realising that an accepted pattern has no necessity. Its excitement lies in the suggestion that any particular ordering of experience may be arbitrary and subjective. It is frivolous in that it produces no real alternative, only an exhilerating sense of freedom from form in general. (1975:96)

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