Consanguinity and marriage distance among three castes of coastal Andhra Pradesh

The present paper describes consanguineous marriages and distances between birth places of 318 couples of three agricultural castes, namely, the Yadava, the Telaga and the Velama of West Godavari and East Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh. Consanguineous marriages with maternal cross-cousins are most frequent among these populations. However, the Telaga differ significantly from other two groups in respect of F values of inbreeding coefficient for autosomal genes and only from the Velama in case of F-1 values for X-linked genes. Village endogamy is higher (48.5%) among the Velama compared to the Yadava (21.3%) and the Telaga (12.1%) and reveal a significant association with consanguineous marriages. But absence of any correlation among the Velama and the Yadava, and non-significant negative correlation among the Telaga failed to indicate the influences of inbreeding on distribution of marriage distance among them.