Fieldnotes: !st lesson with the ....Genealogist Fieldnotes: 2nd lesson with the Genealogist Male Immortality Female Mortality The "Seed Man" and the Patrilineage The King and the Genealogies The Male Self The Dangerous Gift The Lineage Goddess   This boy's name goes into the genealogies, recorded for all time, giving him a kind of immortality This girl is recorded only as "Kanya," an anonymous daughter of her father.

Male Immortality "Immortality," which may be no more than the memory of a name in a genealogy, is commonly a masculine privilege. It is through fathers and sons, not through mothers and daughters, that "eternal" social continuity is maintained. --Nancy Jay, 1991   Maithil Brahman men, through the patrilineage, gain a kind of immortality. An infant male is born with a pedigree of known, named ancestors and the assurance of constancy of identity at his unique point in a long, intergenerational chain. The keepers of his genealogy can chant his ancestors beginning with a viji purusha, a "seed man," twenty-four generations ago, so that he knows his origins, which are located in a man and a village and a century. In the books of the generations, all these names are inscribed and every half-century they get carefully transcribed again to protect against annihilation by decay, pests, and the short memories of mortal men. The books, and the experts who keep them, insure his immortality. Female Mortality An infant girl is born to a man whose name is in the books. She will marry a man whose name and whose ancestors are in another book. But her name is not there, and will never be inscribed, neither in her father’s nor her husband’s books. Her mother’s name is not in any book. No ancestress is in any book. What is the relation of these anonymous girls to those named and rooted men? How does she see herself in a world where men, like bamboo with which they compare themselves, have roots and grow in replenishing clusters, but women do not? The patrilineages have constructed themselves, both symbolically and institutionally, as eternal. They go on endlessly into the future, generation after generation of sons, maintaining a mystique of pure patriliny. Since many societies, including those in the West, have not managed to institute such thorough-going patriarchy, it is interesting to ask how the Maithil Brahmans have managed to do this. The written texts, and the expert class of genealogists, of course are a major method. But these are supported by other devices.