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Informant: “So one of the traditions that we have during weddings is that woman go and they get a pot, and they grab get water from the holiest river in India and this well and you fill it into this pot. And when it’s time for the bride and groom to get married, after they get married, the woman, um, kind of stands for a very long time with this pot on her head. It’s like this very pure water and the bride and groom’s like families like negotiate with time or how long to stand with this pot on her head. It’s usually like a symbol of like honors as well to be standing there. You know, it doesn’t sound like that because like everyone else is dancing and whatnot, but I think my mother stood for like 6 hours.”
Interviewer: “What’s an average time?”
Informant: “Average. I would say at a recent, um, sort of, like, I think maybe like a year ago, 2 or 3 hours. I definitely think that longer you are back in time, it’s more like like the definitely like a rite of passage and this feeling of like you’re about to get married and you basically afterwards when the woman is getting down from standing, usually what will happen is like someone from the bride’s family will be like, no, we’re just not gonna let her go just that easily, so they like demand money from the groom side of the family. So they like kind of shower her with money as she like steps down and takes this pot off her head. And then the water, that’s like this really holy entire water, is later on, like supposed to be, um, kind of like splashed at the house of the new couple to like show that you’re getting brought a lot of this like good energy, I guess.”
Context: The Informant is from Coorg, India. Their ethnicity is called Coorgi or Kodava and they speak Kodavathuk (it is a South Indian Dravidian language). Weddings last three days and this is a pre-wedding ritual. The Informant also mentioned that there they don’t use caste systems but do have a huge emphasis on ancestors.
Analysis: In this we see a high context marriage ritual that is repeated through multiple generations. According to Van Gennep, rites of passage have three stages, separation (preliminal), transition (liminal), and reincorporation (postliminal). In this ritual, the separation comes when the bride puts the pot on her head, entering into a state of semi vulnerability and trial, liminality, holding a pot of water on your head is not necessarily stable which clearly signifies a transition period. Then the reincorporation stage is where she steps down and can take off the pot of water, interestingly this can be postponed, holding the bride in this state of liminality and in between to demand a price from the groom’s family, though seemingly in the interest of the bride. Many wedding rituals or traditions are a test to see if you are ready for marriage and this one is no different. The purity or holiness of the water invokes the idea of virginity going into marriage. Holding the water on the bride’s head could also be seen as a metaphor for pregnancy. The long duration of the ritual, the instability of holding water on one’s head, and the symbolism of it being literal water, a woom, might be a nonliteral test to see if the bride can carry a child to term. In this ritual we can also clearly see the remnants of the transactional nature that marriage has traditionally held in the past in a patriarchal society. The woman is the one who being put in this liminal state while the families are negotiating on her behalf how long this ritual will take place. This is even more firmly cemented when the brides family demands money before she can step down, before they will hand her over, interestingly a subversion of the dowry system which usually has the money going the opposite way.