Book Reviews 1445

the author is unduly symbol-prone and sacred-conscious, and by the time she has come
t o Chapter 8, she has convinced herself, with the help of some rather dubious assump-
tions and circular arguments, that practically all the prehistoric Mesopotamian art
forms are symbols of “potency,” fertility, and aggression, not to mention their solar
implications and sacred connotations.
The great merit of the book for the anthropologist, archeologist, and historian, lies in
its practical usefulness; it is the most up-to-date compendium of the many and diverse
Mesopotamian art forms that are scattered haphazard throughout numerous special-
ized field reports, monographs, and articles. The author has combed her sources with
care and discrimination; she has arranged the relevant artifacts and designs admirably,
and with the essential bibliographical details, according to period and excavation site;
and the Yale University Press has reproduced hundreds of them most adequately and
expertly. For all this, both the author and the press deserve our deep gratitude-really
and truly, and not just symbolically speaking.

Temple Gateways i n South India: The Architecture and Iconography of the Cidambaram
Gopuras. JAMES C. HARLE. Oxford, Bruno Cassirer, 1963. (Distributors: Faber and
Faber, London.) xxiii, 179 pp., appendices, bibliography, 27 figures, 181 plates. 95s.
Reviewed by SHERMAN
E. LEE,Cleveland Museum of Art
While general studies in book form of Indian art and archeology are abundant, we
have been dependent on articles or obscure monographs for more detailed knowledge of
individual sites or specialized subjects. The growing interest in a detailed knowledge of
Indian art is signalled by such a book as this by Dr. Harle, a result of his doctoral re-
searches under William Cohn a t Oxford.
The general title is justified by the first and last chapters which treat of Pallava and
Early Chola tower (gopuram) remains, and of the Late Chola monuments related to the
true subject of the book-the four main towers of the temple a t Chidambaram. The
mid-13th century dates determined for these famous but little-studied monuments
place them a t the end of the Chola period, but a t a classic point of architectural develop-
ment within the tower format. The rich sculptural embellishment of these towers makes
them doubly important-first, as a full expression of a later dominant architectural
form, the tower, as opposed to but derived from the shrine; and second, as an almost
undamaged demonstration of the rich figural iconography of South Indian Hinduism.
After a summary of such Pallava and Early Chola gate-tower achievements as those
of Mahamallapuram and Tanjore, the author examines the history of the Chidambaram
complex and then embarks on a detailed description of the gate-towers of this temple,
followed by a consideration of their relative chronology and absolute date, with the
inscriptions properly and cautiously weighted. The longest chapter by far is the last,
concerned with “The Iconography of the Cidambaram Gopuras.”
This chapter, with its accompanying illustrations, is a new mine for the study of
South Indian sculpture in stone or in metal. It provides some quite reassuring means of
dating by both iconography and style; but it dismays even more by its acknowledge-
ment of archaism and reconstitution. In this Dr. Harle is less knowing; his connoisseur-
ship is not equal to his erudition. We must still be guided by nuances of style and qual-
ity in our tentative chronologies of South Indian sculpture.
The rather pedantic prose of this volume is not an aid in penetrating a specialized
and abstruse subject. Nor are the diagrams readily readable. The miasma of the doc-
toral dissertation still wreathes the finished book. Still, the author has dug well, and
1446 American Anthropologist [66, 19641
much of the material is freshly turned and newly presented. Thus, iconologists, art
historians, anthropologists, and sociologists will find much useful material for such
studies of South India as may be in prospect or progress. The basic premisp of the study
-that a religious necessity formed the material remains-has often been stated but
seldom so well documented. The gate-tower does indeed mirror the shrine-is an extcn-
sion of that holy-of-holies. Further, the placement of t h e towers is dictated by pilgrim
age usage rather than by strict esthetic or iconological symmetry. Less inspiring, the
placement of images on the four towers is repeated with little intelligence or imagina-
tion. Since Chidambaram has more images remaining than other comparable com-
plexes, the rigidity of the iconographic arrangement is hard to gainsay. Until further
evidence is brought forward, we must admit that the Indian genius was better served by
the individual sculptors than by the planners. In this the period is scarcely unique,
especially if compared with our own.
Much kudos to Dr. Harle for a thorough, useful and pioneer study. But one cavil-
the all-too-proper and humorless sprinkling of Sanskrit architectural terms throughout
the text makes for frustration, even infuriation. Despite the appendix on architectural
terms, I prefer “reverse-curve moulding” to padma, “enclosing wall” to prakara, “at-
tendants” to bhutas, etc. Precision is not necessarily served by the use of one word for
three, especially if that word is foreign to all but the most specialized reader.

LINGUISTICS
The Languages of Africa. JOSEPH H. GREENBERG. (Indiana University Research Center
in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics Publication 25;International Journal of
American Linguistics, Vol. 29, No. 1, Part 11.) Bloomington: Indiana University,
1963.vi, 171 pp., indexes, 6 maps. $5.00,
Reviewed by ERNSTWESTPHAL,
University of Cape Town
Professor Joseph Greenberg’s The Languages of Africa is a revision of his widely
discussed Studies in African linguistic classification. Both books present evidence for
genetic relationships. Professor Greenberg himself says “It should be realized , . , that
no concrete evidence of the kind which documents this work was ever assembled for the
total assumed ranges of these (African) language stocks” (p. 2). Though I would doubt
the validity of some of the lexical comparisons he makes in my special field, I am sure
that he has brought out several important features of the languages and of linguistics in
his study. He has coined the term “mass comparison” and has applied this concept in
the way he advocates, viz.: (1) over a wide geographical area; (2) over many languages;
and (3) over a large part of each language. Even more far-reaching is the importance of
his idea of genetic relationship, which I contrast with linguistic relationship. The concept
of genetic relationship, which in Prof. Greenberg’s application does not require the evi-
dence of regular “sound-shift,” raises many interesting questions. What exactly is the
nature of the genetic relationship of languages and how does this differ from other types
of relationship? How must we conceive of genetic relationship where genetic relation-
ship is presumably historical-in the sense that it implies “genesis from”? What sort of
time ranges does it refer to? How long ago before the present did two or more languages
with “genetic relationship” have genetic origin from their ancestor? And, most impor-
tant, what kind of linguistic (not social) factors underlie the transformations of lan-
guages beyond the boundaries of the units with accepted “linguistic relationship”? The
implications of Greenberg’s study are certainly stimulating and deserve careful study,
although we may doubt the validity of some of his genetic language families.