Book Reviews
Yet, his aim is to render “intelligible in sociological
terms the working of the Hindu kinship system in
Kashmir” (p. 9). The sociological frame of reference
the author purports to use is Nadel’s.
One of the main features to emerge from Madan’s
study is the great importance of the household
(chzdah) in contrast to the relative weakness of
wider kin groups. Aside from its functions in de-
limiting the range of exogamy and ritual association
in the ancestor rites, the patrilineage (Kol) is of little
importance. The kotamb (a fluctuating group com-
prised largely of close agnatic kin resident in the
same village) is characterized by varying degrees of
solidarity. As households segment, the ceremonial
and economic ties with distant kotamb members
weaken. Madan ascrihes kol and kotamb weakness
to the state’s encroachment on their political and
juridical functions. This contrasts sharply with
other studies reporting the assumption of wider po-
litical involvement by caste or subcaste groups. As
Madan notes (pp. 221-222), this lack of solidarity
may simply be a characteristic feature of Brahmin
social organization.
On the whole, this book is well written and con-
tains useful information on a previously unstudied
group. Yet, it suffers from the fact that the original
data have been distilled to such a degree that it is
no longer possible to recover them. It is apparent
that Madan has based his study on carefully col-
lected census and genealogical data, but, with the
exception of household composition, nowhere are
these data available in a form appropriate either
for verifying the author’s statements or for com-
parative purposes. It is good to know, for example,
that 17 households had an income of Rupees 100-
500, but it would be even better if we knew which
households. We might then arrive at an answer to a
number of possibly interesting questions, for ex-
ample, “what is the relation between household
size and/or composition and income?” Similarly, the
village map (between pp. 30-31) is useful, but it
would he even more useful if one knew where par-
ticular families lived in relation to their agnates. Or,
if Madan had given us the vital statistics on all
causes of household generation and decay (that is,
the probability of their occurrence within specified
age intervals), we could then develop a stochastic
model that would give the probabilities for the in-
cidence of household types for any set period of time.
A restudy of household types in the Same village a t
a later date would then either confirm or reject this
prediction. In the latter event, it should be possible
to pinpoint some change in the factors causing gen-
eration and decay.
:In essay on family and kinship is not the Same as
a scientific treatise. Perhaps it is unfair to fault
Madan, since we have many such essays in anthro-
pology hut few scientific treatises.
The Place o j the IJidden Moon: I+oLic Myslicism in
the Vai?nava-saltajiyi Ctrlt o{ BetiSol. EDWARDC:.
525
DWOCK,JR. Chicago & London: The University
of Chicago Press, 1966. xix, 299 pp., bibliography,
index. $7.50.
R&Wtd by AGEHANANDA BHARATI,
Syroczcse University
Edward Dimock is a scholar’s scholar in the
orientalist profession. America’s foremost authority
on Bengali language, literature, and culture, he has
published a delightful anthology of Bengali court
and village tales and numerous learned articles in
orientalist journals.
While this book would merit a detailed review in
an Indological publication, it contains some material
that is of unique interest to cultural anthropologists,
Imth those oriented to the Indian area and the
students of religion and ritual in peasant societies.
Professor L. Dumont has pointed out time and
again that anthropological study in Indic subjects
cannot be complete without access to the written
tradition of the area. The Vaiqava and Sahajiya
cults in Bengal would pose, without such knowledge,
a welter of unrelated, incomprehensible episodes
and practices; or, a t best, an anthropologist un-
familiar with the literary background of the move-
ment would produce a description on a par, in
context and content, with a study of some dance
ritual in a nonliterate society. This would obviously
be a travesty of the facts; dance plus literature is
simply more than dance without literature, and the
literary matrix of Indian ritual cannot be dismissed
in the most radically synchronic study without
slanting the entire situation.
The anthropologically relevant thesis of this book
is this: an important section of the population of
Bengal has been following a religio-ideological tradi-
tion inaugurated by Caitanya, a powerful religious
charismatic born in the late 15th century. His teach-
ings were to a degree anomalous to the Brahmanical
traditions of his and earlier times. They stressed the
highly personal, the concretely anthropomorphic,
hence emotionally accessible divinity of K r ~ p a ,the
supreme deity of the universe. The disciplines in-
volved derive directly from the bucolic mythology
connected with the life story of Kr+, the eighth
incarnation of Vispu. I t forms the model for the
overtly or covertly gymnosophist position of the
Vaisaava cuk-Kys@’s dalliance with the cowherd-
ess RBdha epitomizes the eternal play of the cos-
mos, hut human romance, when properly informed
by the cult’s training, epitomizes the union of
Krsna and Radha. Now though Caitanya himself,
very much in line with many of his predecessors
and his successors to the sacred profession in India,
denied overt sensuousness and taught extreme sex-
ual abstention as central to his discipline, the stu-
dent of culture and personality, or in fact any
psychologically interested anthropologist, recognizes
a field of phenomena diffusely present in many
societies; Dimock himself points out certain striking
similarities with Western forms of Christian mys-
526 Americart il nthropologist [69, 19671
ticism. But in the case of medieval Bengal, as of Ulithi, have seen probably the highest development
modem Bengali religion inasmuch as it perpetuates of open-ocean navigation in the history of the non-
this specific lore, we have a local precursor to the European world. This, combined with sophisticated
religious use of sensuality in the Sahajiya cult that canoes and intrepid sailors, has led to an extraor-
is considerably older than the Caitanya movement. dinary maritime tradition, which stamps its char-
Fascinatingly, Dimock traces the relation between acter on every facet of life. Lessa repeatedly refers
the two cults, their oppositional and their inter- to people coming from other atolls and to com-
meshing elements and phases, and the resultant munication between the islands of the far-flung Yap
ambivalence of Bengali devotional life. empire, but he never refers, except in passing, to the
extraordinary cultural complex that makes this pos-
Ulilhi: A Micronesian Design for Limng. WILLIAM sible. However, despite this omission, the overall
A. LESSA.(Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology account presents a readable and coherent picture
Series.) New Pork: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, of a distinctive way of life and thus meets the prin-
1966. x, 118 pp., 4 figures, 1 map, 2 plates, recom- cipal objective of all contributors to the series.
mended reading. $1.75 (paper). Viewed from the standpoint of the picture that is
presented of cultural anthropology and its goals,
~m*med ay THOMAS GLADWIN, the author has made a deliberate choice, which
Oxon Hill,Maryland
some anthropologists might applaud but with which
Although each volume in this growing series of I cannot agree. This is to present a largely syn-
case studies, edited by George and Louise Spindler, chronic picture of the society as it existed 30 or 40
stands on its own merits, each gains in stature and years ago, prior to its major adaptations to foreign
in utility by virtue of the reputation of the series impact. I find this choice unfortunate because it
as a whole. The Spindlers deserve a particular com- suggests that the role of the anthropologist is con-
mendation for the continuing flow of volumes of such 6ned to recording ways of life. I t does not reflect for
high quality. students a responsibility to advance our understantl-
L e a is well qualified to write on Ulithi. His re- ing of how change and the impact of change can be
peated visits to the atoll, beginning in 1947, have managed to the greatest benefit of the people in-
resulted in a series of outstanding publications, volved. Synthetic descriptionsof life in bygone times
many of them making substantial contributions to leave us vulnerable to the criticism that anthro-
theory and methodology, as well as to descriptive pologists would prefer to be caretakers of human
ethnology. Although the present volume draws zoos rather than contributors to human welfare.
upon much of Lessa's earlier work, it necessarily That Lessa has chosen to follow this format is par-
presents Lessa's rich Ulithian data in only summary ticularly surprising because he recently published a
form. The book, like others in the series, is directed detailed and pioneering analysis of the impact and
toward beginning students. I t should therefore be implications for culture change of a devastating
evaluated not only on the adequacy with which a typhoon that struck Ulithi in 1960; this last study
particular single culture, Ulithi, is presented but made a major contribution to the literature of cul-
also on the impression of anthropology and the role ture change. Since the remainder of the monograph
of the anthropologist that emerges from the presen- reflects rather well the emphases of all his other
tation. earlier publications, it is hard to understand why
With respect to cultural description, every anthro- Lessa left out of the picture something so signifi-
pologist has his own special interests, and these in- cant both to his own work and to the story of
evitably contribute to the balance and emphasis he Ulithi.
gives to the various aspects of any culture he de-
scribes. This volume is no exception. Lessa has pub- Bushmen and other Ron-Bantu Peoples of Angola:
lished extensively on folklore and on the early his- Three Lectures. ANTONIO DE ALMEIDA. (A Pub-
tory of the Central Carolines, and the sections deal- lication of the Institute for the Study of Man in
ing with these topics are rich in information and Africa Number 1.) Johannesburg: Witwatersrand
assured in style. The description of ghosts is often University Press, 1965. xu, 43 pp., select bibliogra-
downright charming. Other sections, in which the phy, frontispiece, 2 maps, 3 plates. R1.00, lOs.,
author was presumably less interested, are some- $1.45 (paper).
what drier in style and sometimes give the impres-
sion, all too familiar in anthropological writing, Reviezued by RICHARDB. LEE,
that he has kent one eve on the O&nu of Cultural Harvard University
Materials in an effort to be sure that he covers all Almost nothing has been available in English on
the categories of traditional interest to anthro- the Bushmen and other click speakers of Angola.
pologists. A certain amount of this is, I suppose., in- The author is a physical anthropologist of the old
evitable. Yet there is one serious omission to which school; the coverage of ecology and sociology is hit
I feel it necessary to point, although admitting my or miss, apparently representing the marginal notes
own bias because it is an area of particular interest of an investigator whose main emphasis has been
to me. The Central Caroline Islands, including anthropometric.