The Feast of Love, McKim Marriott's essay in Krishna, Myths, Rites, and Attitudes, published by the East-West Center Press in 1966, is a scholarly anthropological analysis of Holi as observed in the North Indian village Marriott studied directly, reading the festival's ritualized role reversal and boundary crossing, including the temporary inversion of caste and gender norms, as a structured symbolic statement about social hierarchy rather than simple disorder. Marriott was a pioneering anthropologist of South Asian village society whose fieldwork based method grounds the essay in direct observation. Its strength is that fieldwork specificity, tied to one documented community's actual practice rather than a generalized account of Holi across all of India. Its limit is exactly that specificity, Marriott's interpretation describes the particular village he studied in the 1950s, so a claim treating his reading of that community's Holi as representative of the festival's meaning everywhere in India needs to account for real regional and historical variation the essay does not itself cover.
Facts
Citation
AuthorMcKim Marriott
PublisherEast-West Center Press
Honolulu, 1966, in Milton Singer, ed., Krishna: Myths, Rites, and Attitudes, pages 200 to 212; a University of Chicago Press reprint edition followed in 1968. Publication Year1966
Year of the original East-West Center Press edition named alongside its publisher. Source Typebook chapter
Assessment
Reliability Tier1
McKim Marriott's essay The Feast of Love, in the edited volume Krishna, Myths, Rites, and Attitudes published by the East-West Center Press, is scholarship by a foundational figure in the anthropology of South Asia, treated at the top tier as academic press scholarship. NotesThe standard anthropological account of Holi as a ritual of reversal, from fieldwork in a north Indian village.
Connections
Associated With
This source names India directly: "of Holi as observed in the North Indian village Marriott studied directly, reading the festival's ritualized role reversal and boundary crossing, including the temporary inversion of caste and..."
Source The Feast of Love, in Krishna: Myths, Rites, and AttitudesMcKim Marriott
This source names Krishna directly: "of Love, McKim Marriott's essay in Krishna, Myths, Rites, and Attitudes, published by the East-West Center Press in 1966, is a scholarly anthropological analysis of Holi as observed in the North..."
Source The Feast of Love, in Krishna: Myths, Rites, and AttitudesMcKim Marriott
This source names Krishna directly: "of Love, McKim Marriott's essay in Krishna, Myths, Rites, and Attitudes, published by the East-West Center Press in 1966, is a scholarly anthropological analysis of Holi as observed in the North..."
Source The Feast of Love, in Krishna: Myths, Rites, and AttitudesMcKim Marriott
Claims Backed By This Source (20 claims)
This source backs 20 claims across the atlas. As facts: 12 well-attested. As cited relationships: 4 holds. Plus 4 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.
Disposition By Topic
- Sources, 10 claims: 7 well-attested, 3 holds.
- Holidays & Festivals, 5 claims: 4 well-attested, 1 general references.
- Sacred Foods, 3 claims: 1 well-attested, 1 holds, 1 general references.
- Cities, 2 claims: 2 general references.
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