Nayaka people
The Nayaka are an egalitarian foraging people in South India.
Culture
"The communnity is egalitarian," reports anthropologist Nurit Bird-David.[1]
The Nayaka consider each other, and even outside visitors, to be kin, and they address each other in kinship terms such as "my big-uncle" or "my sister-in-law."[2]
A couple who sleeps together and shares foraging duties and domestic chores eventually becomes recognized as married, without a marriage ceremony. A married couple and their children live together, although sometimes newly weds temporarily live with the bride's family.[3]
Economy
Sharing is central to Nayaka culture. There's a strong expectation that a Nayaka share food with all present. If a Nayaka asks another for something, giving it is the norm.[4]
The Nayaka diet is mainly based on foraged yams, nuts, honey, and fish, along with purchased or bartererd rice. Hunting is rare, but game include deer, lizards and pigs.[5]
Environment
The Nayaka cosmovision is traditionally animistic and reveres the naturalistic devaru (spirits) and ancestors that inhabit the forest. The religion has also incorporated minor deities of Hindu neighbors.[6]
- ↑ Nurit Bird-David, "The Nayaka of the Wynaad, South India" in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers ed. Richard B. Lee and Richard H. Daly (1999).
- ↑ Nurit Bird-David, "'Animism' Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology," Current Anthropology 40, No. S1 (1999): S73.
- ↑ Bird-David, "The Nayaka."
- ↑ Bird-David, "'Animism' Revisited", S72.
- ↑ Bird-David, "The Nayaka."
- ↑ Bird-David, "The Nayaka."
