The Gonds and Their Marriage

 

Gonds and Their Marriage
The Gondi or Gond people are people in central India, spread over the states of Madhya Pradesh, eastern Maharashtra. Chhattisgarh, northern Andhra Pradesh. With over four million people, they are one of the largest tribe on earth. All Gonds are in some way or other engaged in agriculture or work in the forest. They would not dream of accepting any other occupation. Originally they must have been nomadic hunters and food gatherers and then switched to shifting cultivation.  The Gonds have a pronounced patriarchal clan system. The Gonds practice clan exogamy, considering intermarriage within a clan to be incest. Offenders against the law of exogamy are excluded from the tribal community and can only be readmitted after separation.

A normal marriage among the Gonds is the monogamous union of a man and a woman based on mutual choice, sanctioned by the ceremonial exchange of vows, with the approval of the tribal council, witnessed by the relatives of the partners and the village community. Although the Gonds have liberal views on premarital sex, they are strict in the observance of married fidelity.  A Gond wedding is solemnized with many significant ceremonies. The essential wedding rite consists of the groom walking with his bride seven times around a wedding post erected in the center of the wedding booth. The father of the groom has to pay a bride-price, the amount of which depends on the position and wealth of the two families. Cross-cousin marriages are much preferred, so much so that a youth has to pay a fine if he refuses to marry an available cross cousin. A Gond can have more than one wife, polygamy being restricted only by the capability of the man to support a number of wives. The Gonds practice the sororate and the levirate. Widow marriage is forbidden only among the Sanskritized Gonds. Gonds who are too poor to pay the bride-price and the wedding expenses contract a Service marriage.

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