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American Anthropologist

[69, 19671

system called d b is described, and it is shown how a learning this system and the values of hospitality, politeness, and respect for elders and kinsmen helps to make the child a part of his kin group. The kinship material would have been more useful if data on marriage had been presented statistically and if the composition of clans rather than genealogy only had been included.

Towards a Sociology of Cdture in India: Essays in Honor of Professor D. P . M k r i T. K. N. UNuej. SmGq NITHAN, INDRA DEVA, and YOGENDRA eds. New Delhi: Prentice-Hall of India (Private) Ltd., 1965. xii, 441 pp., 1 plate, 6 tables. $6.00. Reviewed by EDW- J. JAY California State College ad Hayward Judging by the title, one would expect to find within this anthology a clarification of the conception sociology of culture and an application of the idea to Indian culture in particular. Unhappily, however, neither of these tasks is achieved. The 28 papers, grouped under five major headings, are diverse in subject matter and uneven in quality. The editors lengthy paper on the sociology of culture serves as an adequate introduction, but it suffers from serious omissions, such as the absence of any reference to the highly relevant ideas of Kroeber on style and process in Civilization. The works of Marriott and Redfield are misinterpreted in the passages dealing specifically with India, and many contributions to Indian village studies are ignored. The discussion of elite, folk, and tribal substructures adds nothing new and confuses certain issues. The authors fail adequately to justify radical statements such as: It may be all right to refer to the folk tradition in India as the little tradition, but it will be a serious mistake to consider the Indian village as a little community. The section of the volume entitled Sociology of Culture and Civilization includes Martindales overly discursive and only partially successful attempt to define civilization, in terms not of structural characteristics but of certain qualities intrinsic to noninstrumental activities such as play, art, and literature. Sorokins paper in the Same section reads l i e the introduction to a textbook on cultural anthropology, with special emphasis on human creativity as an adaptive force. Mukerjees Philosophical View of Civilization and Bergels Prolegomena to a Sociology of Art seem inappropriate to the volume. The last three sections are entitled Culture Change and Elite in India, Socio-Cultural Planning and Development: Process and Problems in India, and Socio-Cultural Planning and Development: Theoretical Perspective. Most of the articles in these sections are on a high philosophical or theoretical plane, but there are exceptions, such as Kapadias ethnographic paper on religious creeds among the Patidars of South Gujarat. Of particular

interest to anthropologists are the contributions of Srinivas, Dube, Chauhan, and Panchanadikar. The first three discuss the strengths and weaknesses of a number of concepts useful to the study of Indian civilization, such as the folk-urban continuum, little and great traditions, Sanskritization, universalization and parochialization, and Lintons universals, alternatives, and specialties. Dubes paper is the most general and theoretical, while Srinivas and Chauhans contributions are rooted firmly in current sociological data. One of the most interesting papers in the volume is Panchanadikars concise and rigorous analysis of religious and political responses to various sociocultural forces operating throughout Indian history. This scholar combines a fine sense of history with a keen understanding of contemporary social process. He sees Hinduism not as a single religion, but as a vast complex of ideas out of which grow movements appropriate to the age. The cores of Indian religion and modern liberalism are both enduring. facts of Indian social living. These two orientations are in many ways incompatible, and one of the great dilemmas of India today is to achieve some sort of integration of the two, both in the social and in the individual realms. Srinivas, traveling a different route, reaches ultimately a conflict a similar conclusion: I will have to be postulated between the Sanskritic world-view and the Western world-view, between the religious would-view and the scientific worldview. Obviously this short review does not do justice to a volume of such length and complexity. Many fine papers cannot even be listed by title, let alone receive commentary. The strength of this book lies in its diversity, eclecticism, and timeliness. The editors are to be congratulated for bringing together such an outstanding group of contemporary social scientists writing on a wide variety of topics. Paradoxically, however, one of the books weaknesses is its lack of direction, unifying theme, or principle of integration. Some papers overlap to the point of duplication; and where papers on diverse topics are included within a particular section, the editors provide no general comments to bridge the gaps among them. Another weakness is the inclusion of some papers characterized by rather less than rigorous standards of scholarship: common faults are verbosity and triviality. These shortcomings notwithstanding, the book as a whole is interesting and useful. The format is attractive and the printing is of high quality, but there are many typographical errors, and the list of errata does not rectify them all. An index and a general bibliography a t the end of the volume would have been helpful for reference purposes.

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Krishna: Mylhs, Riles, and Alliludes. MILTON SINGER,ed. With a foreword by Daniel H. H. Ingalls. Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1966.

Book Reviews
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more personal assertion of a grass-root identity, which that most aloof caste seeks to achieve in the R h e d by ACEHANANDA BHABATI, conduct of some of its most outstanding contemporary members. He is careful not to predict that the Syracuse Uniocrsity bhajanas will lead to a casteless, sectless, ecumeniHardly ever before have Indologists and anthro- c l form of Hinduism @. 138), and he rightly a pologists joined forces to produce a truly exquisite avers that new types of ritualization, intellectualizabook that contains both diachronic philological depth tion, and sectarianism make such an outcome imand synchronic analysis. Prof. J. Dumont in Paris probable. and other skeptical social anthropologists will probMcKim Marriotts Feast of Love is a hiehlv ably take heart from this publication; for here the instructive piece of anthropological scholarship-di& twain have met, and there is no reason why they guised in exquisitely charming writing. In the frameshould not proceed together in further amity. work of passively observant participation in bucolic Daniel Ingalls of Harvard, the doyen of American ribaldry, the author reports the pleasant and rough Sanskritists, acutely summarizes the hitherto con- vagaries of the Holi festival in a village near the acting approaches of the orientalist and the anthro- birthplace of Krishna, with whom the villagers conpologist, tracing the conflict back in an ingenious nect the occasion-with little mythological justificamanner to the British Rzj, in ntue. Three of the tion but all the more verve. The histrionic inversion authors are anthropologists; the other six present of statuses and roles during this one short period of the theme in a literary fashion, but almost all of them the year falls into place as Marriott felicitously provide some h e anthropological insights. speculates on it, concluding a rather serious, imporIn The Social Teaching of the BhcigavalaPurU# tant book on a humorous, albeit learned, note. Thomas J. Hopkins makes a convincing case for the view held by Hindu devotees that the VaiSpava Cask and Kin in Nepal, India and Ceylon: Anthroscriptures aimed a t and did achieve some sort of p ~ l ~ g kStudies in HindwBuddhisl Contact Zones. al social leveling by de-emphasizing ritualistic qualifiC~~~STOPHF~~R-HA~~ENDOIW, VON ed. New cation through birth and caste, a t least among the York: Asia Publishing House, 1966. vii, 364 pp., followers. His case for poverty as cherished and chapter bibliographies, 16 illustrations, index, 3 advised by the Vaigpava texts is less convincing. maps, chapter notes, chapter references, 4 tables. J. A. B. van Buitenen, head of Indic studies and $13.50. Sanskrit at Chicago, displays astounding familiReviewed by JOHN T. HITCHCOC~, arity with recent anthropological writing on India. University of Wisconsin He also introduces an excellent term that should be O the six essays in this volume, five are concerned f used by both Indologists and anthropologists in the Indic field: he suggests replacing orthodoxy with caste in the Himalayas; the sixth is an analysis with orthopraxis, as the orthodox in India were of Sinhalese polyandry. The most sharply drawn never too concerned with -doxa, but with ritualistic theoretical issue in the book is contained in Rossers deeds (p. 30). For those who do not intend to read essay on caste mobility among the Newars of the E. Dimocks Place of the Hidden Moon, which con- Kathmandu Valley. Wherever there are disparities tains an exhaustive treatment of the subject, his in wealth and political power, Rosser maintains, Doctrine and Practice among VaiSpavas in Ben- there are systems of stratification, with group sepgal covers the intriguing field of bhakti-culture in a arated from group in competition, and the symbols synoptic way. Surajit Sinhas essay discloses the and beliefs of whatever cultural context is present erotocentric traditions of tantricized VaiSpavism (whether Buddhist, for example, or Hindu) being among the tribal Bhumij of Manbhum district in used to legitimize and reinforce the resulting Bihar and their corollaries in the social structure of hierarchy. From this point of view, class and caste this Hiuduizing group. phenomena tend to become indistinguishable (p. By far the most extensive essay, and no doubt the 138) and supportive cultural ideologies of much less focal piece in the book, is the editors study of the moment than the harsh realities of the d8erential Rgdha-Krishna bhajanas (litany-and-commemo- distribution of political and economic power (p. rative assemblage for the worship of the god) in the 135). Following from this is Rossers view that decity of Madras. This article is particularly fascinat- scribing power-based upward mobility as Sanskriting to Indianist anthropologists, as it analyzes the ization is both a redundant and a parochial way to seemingly awkward absorption of the one-time low- conceive of a general and widespread process (p. 70); brow Krishna cult of personalistic devotion by the his disagreement with Leach, who holds that caste Sm&rta-brahmins, who have been and still are the ideology presupposes an absolute and intrinsic ideological torchbearers of that most highly inteuec- separation of society into noncompetitive groups (pp. tualied form of Hindu speculation, the monistic 135-136); and his contention that the so-called Vedanta systematized by hmakarscarya. Singer unity of India, so far as this is a sociological fact, reSees in it both an attempt at social assimilation in an sides as much in the common history of political and increasingly anti-Brahmanical atmosphere and a economic conditions as it does in the ubiquity of the