Dear Allen,
I do not know of any Indian studies on adolescence in traditional India but you will find glimpses of the effect of the Indian family environment on the adolescent male (seconadarily female too) in the Bengali novel Pratham prahar (mid-fifties) by Ramapada Chowdhury which I read as an adolescent. myself. I do not know of any English translation. There are many stories of adolescent love in Bengali literature. Two filmed versions Balika badhu (Adolescent bride) and Shriman Prithviraj (Master Prithviraj), both directed by Tarun Majumdar, became popular all over India and shown in dubbed versions in non-Bengali languages.
Best
DB

--- On Fri, 8/7/11, Thrasher, Allen <athr@LOC.GOV> wrote:

From: Thrasher, Allen <athr@LOC.GOV>
Subject: [INDOLOGY] 'adolescence' in traditional India
To: INDOLOGY@liverpool.ac.uk
Date: Friday, 8 July, 2011, 11:29 PM

Has anyone done a study of the effect on the presence, absence, or different nature of adolescence (add scare quotes to last word?) in traditional India, taking into account that until recently most people there were married at or before puberty and took up marital sexual life at puberty or shortly after? I would think the convenient availability of a socially and morally approved sexual outlet at home would have profound effects in differentiating that period of life from Western Europe and its extensions, where for centuries few people of either sex except maybe royalty and aristocracy got married before their twenties, and usually in the second half thereof for men. Granted that at least in Hindu homes the young couple have to play at ignoring each other, and there is mother-in-law's jealousy, but still the whole family including mother-in-law wants grandchildren and therefore presumably the acts that produce them. Maybe there's some classical treatment of this but I've never come across it. On the other hand, Gandhi certainly seems to have had an adolescence in spite of having a wife, and the subhasitas complain about the follies of young men.

Allen

Allen W. Thrasher, Ph.D.
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