What does "endogamy" mean ?
The term endogamy refers to a societal custom in which individuals only marry in the limits of their local community, tribe, or clan.
In Bloch’s reading (1982), the Merina “demes” or “localised kin-groups” (Bloch, 1982: 211), are known to be endogamous for the family to regroup their inherited land. Thus, all the progenies of a man or woman inherit some piece of the family land, irrespective of their sex. By practising endogamy and hence by marrying close kin, the Merina people thus use this custom to avoid “the potential dispersal of rights to ancestral land to outsiders through the process of diverging inheritance” (Bloch, 1982: 213).
In addition, this simultaneous grouping of individuals and ancestral land by endogamy is echoed by the regrouping of the dead in the ancestral tombs of the deme. This association is of major importance to the Merina people as the association between “the people of the deme and the land of the deme is, and should be, eternal” and is “totally merged with the notion of ancestors” (Bloch, 1982: 211), who are believed to form the land of the deme.
The Deme's tomb as a symbol of community
To the Merina people, tombs are a central symbol. As argued by Bloch (1982), all tombs in ancestral areas are understood and believed to share the same elements and to be related, or even “one”. Each of these tombs can contain an almost unlimited number of corpses, which is symbolic of the community. The existence of such tombs of a specific deme in an area is what makes that area a place of ancestral land for that deme, as the tombs contain the corpses of the collective ancestors, then placed in the land. The tombs are hence “the medium of the merging of ancestors, deme and land” (Bloch, 1982: 213), or in other words, the community. Just like the land must be regrouped, if the ancestors are regrouped in one place, it allows the substance of the deme to be concentrated in one place. As illustrated by Bloch (1982), the communal feature of the Merina tombs, is furthermore seen when a new one is built and numerous corpses from an old tomb are taken to the new one before anyone gets buried in it, as “one can never be alone in a tomb” (Bloch, 1982: 213). This idea of a community and regrouping is thus the most crucial and sacred duty of the Merina people, as it guarantees the “continuing strength of the blessing” (Bloch, 1982: 213), that is passed on inside the deme, which entirely depends on this idea of the community and the non-dispersal of the ancestors and land base of the deme.
The association of women and death
The idea of a community, indivision, and blessing are all aspects of one notion the Merina people call “the good”. This idea of "the good" has an antithetical construction with the representation of women. Although women are not always a symbol of division, – as they are not outsiders to the deme and are heirs of the ancestral blessing just as men and children are – they are also a symbol of division in their roles of wives and mothers.
Mothers are often affiliated to the stress of individuating divisive lines, in opposition to men and fathers, who are thought to be more concerned with the common good of the community (Bloch, 1982). Furthermore, as wives, women are symbols of division in the community as their tie to their husbands leads “to a division within the sibling group of their partner” (Bloch, 1982: 213). Women are also seen as masters of the households, which in itself is seen as women’s territory and more importantly as “the place of individual birth and death” (Bloch, 1982: 213). This association is of vital importance.
Women are associated with both sorrow and pollution in the Merina community. It is women who are required to weep individually and as a group, and who take on mourning for the dead. While mourning, women do not take care of themselves, and grieve and receive condolences from other women. If the polluting aspect of the corpse is associated to women, it is even more common for women to be “the channel for the expulsion of the polluting element through mourning” (Bloch, 1982: 226). In the case of the Merina community, mourning involved the mourners (women), taking on to themselves the pollution and sorrow of the death of their male counterparts. By taking on this defilement, women clean the corpses and liberate them for their “re-creation as a life-giving entity” (Bloch, 1982: 226). Women are thus associated with death through their role of mourning the dead. Furthermore, they wash the corpses in the house, which associates them with the pollution of death. After the cleansing of the corpses, it is women who carry the bodies to the tomb on their shoulders, while driven forward by men. This first Merina individual burial is thus strongly associated with sadness, pollution, death and women.
Although the burial of corpses is associated with death, it is also associated with birth, as the individual starts the process of becoming part of the community. “Birth and death in their deme aspects are the same” (Bloch, 1982: 320). In this sense, women as mothers, who give biological birth are directly associated with the deaths of individuals. This fusion of apparent opposite notions becomes the central construction of the eternal deme. The notion and concept that the undivided people are permanently associated with undivided land, net from the time passing by, demands the fusion of the notion of birth and death. And to summarise in Bloch’s words:
“One can say, […], that in Merina ideology the concept of birth and death are systematically collapsed in these rituals and made one by opposing them to an antithesis acted out by women, biological birth and biological death” (Bloch, 1982: 220).
Merging birth and death in such funeral ceremonies hence created a “picture of fertility” (Bloch, 1982: 227), which transcends the biology of mere dirty mortality and birth. These funeral rituals, according to Bloch (1982), do not only illustrate the victory over death by being “reborn” into the community but also a victory over the “physical, biological nature of man” (227) overall. Birth, sex and death in this sense seem to be an illusion, present in the women’s sphere, and real, true life and fertility are found elsewhere (in the world of men). Women are thus invariably associated with the notion of death.
The double aspects of funerals
The Merina people have two burials. The first ceremony is understood as an individual ceremony, which takes place when the individual dies. The corpse is buried in a single grave, somewhere on the hillside, regardless of whether or not the spot is part of the ancestral land of the dead or not. In this sense, the corpse is buried on its own, outside the tomb and is not yet part of the “community of dead”. Sorrow and sadness are expected from the Merina people. It is a time for mourning, which is done by women. The second crucial element of the first burial is the notion of pollution. The body’s decomposition and wetness make the corpse polluted. This first individual burial is hence “a time of sadness, of pollution and of women” (Bloch, 1982: 215).
The second funerary ceremony is called the “famadihana” (Bloch, 1982: 215), which involves the exhumation of the now totally clean, dry and decomposed from the individual grave and the burial of that body into the communal family tomb located in the ancestral land of the deceased; thus, recovering both the powdered remains of the body’s flesh and its bones. If during the first burial the body is buried where it died, burying it in the ancestral land of the dead is often a journey as Merina people often live far away from their ancestral land of the dead. As opposed to the sadness of the first burial, this second burial is assimilated to a time of joy, music, dancing, of blessing, fertility, children, crops and wealth. It is a time of community, returning the dead, and letting the corpse enter the land which illustrates and guarantees the victory, affirmation and canalisation of the deme. As opposed to the first burial where pollution was a crucial element, in the context of the famadihana, all who take part in it are understood to be blessed with good and fertility. During the ceremony, it is however only men who “enter the tomb, who stand on it and speak from it on behalf of the community” (Bloch, 1982: 218). It is also men who transmit the blessing. Women during the ceremony are forced to come in contact with the polluting parts of the ritual: contact with the corpse. In this sense what is seen during the ritual of famadihana is that this crucial blessing in unity is:
“achieved through the victory over individuals, women, and death itself (in its polluting and sad aspects) so that these negative elements can be replaced by something else: the life-giving entry into the tomb” (Bloch, 1982: 217-18).
This life-giving entry to the tomb is thus achieved by defeating the women’s sphere, a world of sorrow, death and division; vanquishing that is of course performed by the men in the community.
There are therefore many dual aspects in the burying rituals of the Merina people: two burials, individuality/community, world of women/world of men, polluting/blessing etc.… The first burial is, however, necessary to allow the rebirth of the corpse during the second. Indeed, the first burial allows a cleansing of the corpse to allow a pure, clean regrouping of the corpse with the community.
Reference:
Bloch, M. (1982) ‘Death, women, and power’ in Bloch and Parry (eds) Death and
the Regeneration of Life.
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