areas, often making their living by
hunting, woodcutting, gathering
honey and medicinal plants, and
through subsistence agriculture. The
largest concentrations are in Orissa,
Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar, on both
sides of the Vindhya Mountainssep-
arating northern and southern India,
but they are also found in regions
such as the Nilgiri Hillsin southern
India. Adivasis are still largely unas-
similated into casteHinduism. Many
are illiterate and desperately poor,
despite programs giving them reser-
vationsfor higher education and gov-
ernment employment. In recent years
they have been the focus of intense
missionary activity by both Christians
and Hindu missionaries sponsored by
the Vishva Hindu Parishad.
Adoption
One of the most important requirements
for every Hindu male is to have at least
one son, so that the funeral rites for him-
self and for his ancestors will be correctly
performed and maintained. These rites
are considered central for the well-being
of the dead, particularly the recently
departed. Even in modern times, only
men are allowed to perform funeral rites.
Given the importance of these cere-
monies, men with no biological sons
adopt a son to guarantee the performance
of the ceremony. The ideal candidate is a
blood relative, such as a brother’s son, who
is of equal social status with the adoptive
father. Through adoption the boy
becomes a member of another family, but
the legal texts disagree on his continuing
relationship with his natal family. Many
sources claim that an adopted son has no
right to the inheritanceof his natal family
and no entitlement to offer funeral rites
for those ancestors, since by adoption he
has become part of another family. Other
texts speak of special arrangements by
which an adopted son is considered to
have two fathers, one biological, one
adopted. He inherits from, and performs
ancestral rites for both fathers.
Adultery
Given the traditional Hindu belief that
womenare the vessels and guardians of
family status, rules about adultery out-
lined in the dharma literature are
mostly concerned with the conduct of
women, although these texts do pre-
scribe a penance (prayashchitta) for a
man who commits adultery with
another man’s wife. As outlined in the
dharma literature, adultery is much
more serious for women. It is notable
that in most cases the dharma does not
recommend the woman be driven from
her home. An adulterous woman is to
perform a rigorous penance until her
next menstrual period—sleeping on the
ground, wearing dirty clothes, and get-
ting very little food; during this time she
also loses her status as a lady of the
house and whatever domestic authority
she may have wielded. According to the
dharma literature, all of this is to end
with a bath at the end of her menstrual
period, after which she is accepted back
at her former status. Women who con-
ceive as a result of adulterous liaisons
are to be abandoned. In practice this
often means being secluded and cut off
from the family, although she still
receives food. Abandonment is also rec-
ommended in certain other cases: in
adulterous liaisons with a man’s student
or his guru, if a woman attempts to kill
her husband, or if she kills her fetus. The
reluctance to completely cast a woman
away, and the willingness to bring her
back to her former status after doing
penance, both reflect the importance of
marriage and family life in Hindu cul-
ture, as well as women’s importance in
the family.
Although these prescriptions in the
dharma literature seem relatively
humane, often there has been a consid-
erable difference between these pre-
scriptions and a particular group’s
actual practice. In general, the higher
the group’s social status (or the more a
group is trying to improve its social sta-
tus), the more harshly it treats such
infractions, since these infractionsAdultery