Breaking down the question
This 10-mark question is specific and author-anchored. It does not ask for a general comparison of northern and southern kinship; it asks what Irawati Karve, in particular, identified as the major differences. The marks therefore depend on genuine recall of her framework rather than a vague geographical contrast.
Karve approached kinship through language and culture, dividing India into kinship zones and reading kinship organisation off the linguistic and cultural region. The heart of your answer is the contrast she drew between the northern zone and the southern zone in their rules of marriage, descent and terminology. Keep the tone precise and organised, and confine yourself to the differences she actually specified.
The descriptive foundation on descent and kin groups can be drawn from the note on lineage and descent.
How to approach it
Open with a sentence on Karve's method — her division of India into linguistic-cultural kinship regions in her work Kinship Organisation in India. Then set out the north-south contrast across a few clear axes: the rule of exogamy and the treatment of cross-cousin marriage, the logic of kinship terminology, and the position of women and the affinal tie. Close with a short line noting the value and the limits of her regional scheme.
Model answer
Irawati Karve, in her study Kinship Organisation in India, analysed kinship not as a single national pattern but through cultural-linguistic regions, of which the northern and southern zones are the most sharply contrasted. Her central claim was that these two zones follow opposed logics in reckoning kinship and arranging marriage.
The first and most fundamental difference concerns the rule of marriage. In the North Indian system, exogamy is extended widely: a person must marry outside a broad circle of kin, avoiding relatives on both the father's and the mother's side for several generations. Marriage with a close blood relative, including a cross cousin, is prohibited, and the bride typically marries into a village and family with whom no prior kin tie exists. In the South Indian system, by contrast, marriage is preferentially arranged within the kin group. Cross-cousin marriage — a man marrying his mother's brother's daughter or his father's sister's daughter — is not merely permitted but valued, and uncle-niece marriage occurs in some communities. The southern rule thus repeatedly reinforces existing kin ties rather than creating new ones.
A second difference follows in kinship terminology. In the North the terms sharply separate consanguineal kin from affinal kin, and the language of kinship keeps the family of birth distinct from the family of marriage, in keeping with the rule that spouses come from unrelated groups. In the South, because cross cousins are potential or actual spouses, the terminology merges certain kin and affinal categories; a single set of terms may cover both a blood relative and an in-law, reflecting the practice of marrying within the kin network.
A third difference concerns the position of the woman and the affinal bond. In the North the bride enters as a stranger into her husband's family and village, and her natal ties are socially distanced after marriage, giving the affinal relationship a formal, hierarchical character. In the South, since she often marries a relative and may remain within her wider kin circle, the woman retains closer links with her natal family, and the affinal tie carries greater warmth and familiarity.
Karve's regional framework gave Indian kinship studies a systematic, comparative foundation. It has been refined by later scholars, who note internal variation and overlap within each zone, but her core contrast — northern exogamy and distance against southern cross-cousin marriage and closeness — remains a standard point of reference.
Examiner's perspective
For a 10-mark answer the examiner wants Karve's specific scheme, not a generic north-south sketch. Naming Kinship Organisation in India and her method of dividing the country into linguistic-cultural regions establishes credibility at once.
The marks then hinge on the substantive contrasts: wide exogamy and the prohibition of cross-cousin marriage in the North against preferential cross-cousin marriage in the South, the corresponding difference in kinship terminology, and the differing position of women and the affinal tie. A brief closing line acknowledging that later scholarship has qualified her regions signals balance and lifts the answer above straight reproduction.