Book Reviews

1369

peasant society. To an anxious, development-minded India the Namhalli story promises

a measure of more widespread success; to the often pessimistic ethnographer of peasant
communities, it presents a strong admonition not to leave time or the city out of his
reckoning of cultural potentialities. Beals remarkable double role of commending the
integrity of Gopalpurs traditional culture while lamenting the poverty and therefore
the probable changelessness of its immediate future can be appreciated fully only when
placed against the background of his previous experience of an oceanic transformation
elsewhere in the same region.
Were this brief but richly laden volume on Gopalpur a summary of many previous
writings on the same community (like several other volumes in the series) one could
fill its inevitable exclusions by further reading. Since Gopalpur is not a summary, but a
first report on a new piece of field work, one can only turn to the author with demands
for detail and with certain anticipation of important analyses to follow.

T h e New Brahmans: Five Maharashtrian Families. D. D. KARVE(ed. and trans.)

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963. 303 pp., glossary,
table. $5.50.
Reviewed by HENRY
ORENSTEIN,Tulane University
This book consists of life histories of five new Brahmans of Maharashtra, men of
varied background and activities, all of whom were involved, to some extent, in the
social and political upheaval that took place in India in the course of the 20th century.
The life histories were originally written in Marathi by intimates of the men or by the
men themselves. Two of the new Brahmans were artists, C. G. Kolhatkar an actor,
and M. T. Patwardhan a poet. D. K. Karve was a college teacher of mathematics, and
G. S. Sardesai a historian. N. T. Katagade was professionally implicated in politics, the
only one of the five.
Even those who were not primarily concerned with action on political and social
issues were entangled in the process of change. Kolhatkars main concern was with the
stage, yet his autobiography opens with an account of an interrogation by the police
regarding allegedly revolutionary activites. The interrogation is amusingly framed as if
a play, in which a young nian (Kolhatkar) is being terrorized by Yama, the god of
death, and his black-shirted assistants (the police). The brief story of Patwardhan, the
poet, is to be understood, in large part, by reference to a background of scandal. He was
one of a small group interested in new forms of Marathi poetry. Meetings of the group
were attended by wives and by a few female students, a radical phenomenon in India
thirty years ago, which was readily productive of rumor and slander. As a result, his
university position was lost and his reputation badly damaged. Sardesias concerns were
largely scholarly, yet many incidents in the short sketch of his life are illustrative of the
changes then occurring in India.
The largest sections of the book treat of two men who were actively involved in
producing change, Katagade and Karve. Katagade was among the first in the Gandhian
movement. There had been early misfortune in his life, the loss of wealth and of opportunities for higher education. Being without clearly defined goals that he could achieve,
he readily became implicated in the revolutionary movement. He gives an interesting
and detailed account of his early efforts to awaken Indian villagers and of his training in
Gandhis ashram.
The most fascinating portrait comprises three sketches, all focussed on D. K. Karve.
The first is autobiographical. Then there is his wifes story, and lastly an analysis of his
character by the anthropologist, Irawati Karve, his daughter-in-law. The three views

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American Anthropologist

[65, 19631

add to one another, gradually unfolding a complete picture. What is revealed is a man
who was emotionally aloof from people as particular individuals, including even his
wife and children, a man totally and selflessly devoted to principles. His main concern
was the women of India, especially the difficult position of the high caste widow,
forbidden by custom to re-marry. While his activities cannot be considered apart from
the general social movement, there is little doubt that he, as an individual, served as an
important catalyst in changing the status of the widow in Maharashtra. It is probable
that many of the really effective social revolutionaries are, like D. K. Karve, men whose
efforts and emotions converge completely on general ideas, on issues rather than on
particular people.
These life histories allow the reader to see a culture undergoing change from the
perspective of participants. While each part of the book centers on one man, they include much on interpersonal relations and attitudes within the family and much on the
general context in which the men lived. If one were to find fault, it would be with the
brevity of some of the selections. The parts dealing with Sardesai, an important scholar,
and Parwardhan, an artistic innovator, are very brief. To have given more details on
these men would not have added overmuch length to the whole and would, one YUSpects, have added much of value and interest. But this very complaint, the desire of the
reader for more, is indicative of the interest and quality of the work. I t is highly to be
recommended.

Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister o j Crashing Thunder: The Autobiogvaphy o j a Winnebago

LURIE. ForeWoman. Edited with introduction and notes by NANCYOESTREICH
word by RUTHUNDERHILL.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961. xx,
142 pp, 3 appendices, 15 illustrations, map. $4.95.
Reviewed by RUTHL. BUNZEL,
Columbia University
It is rare good fortune to have biographies of two American Indians not merely from
the same tribe but from the same family. Although Mrs. Luries sensitively edited
volume can stand on its own feet as an outstanding autobiography of an Indian woman
in a period of social and cultural upheaval, it gains an added dimension from the fact
that Mountain Wolf Woman was the youngest sister of Big Winnebago, whom Paul
Radin immortalized under the name of Crashing Thunder. As such it provides the kind
of spontaneous data on unconscious informant distortion that one rarely can get under
usual conditions of field work in American Indian tribes.
Crashing Thunders autobiography tells most dramatically the story of crisis and
catastrophe in the life of an individual and of a people. It reveals the inner struggle of a
man passing through crisis-the loss of cultural values, the frustration, violence, clutching a t inadequate substitutes (sex, alcohol, the murder of a Pottawattomie in a drunken
brawl to acquire war honors) and his final conversion through peyote, and the beginning of a new way of life. Although he had lived some 15 years after that and before
writing his story for Radin, these years go unrecorded. His life was complete with
the resolution of his crisis.
Mountain Wolf Woman, on the other hand, begins with her earliest memories-the
earliest before she was two years old-and ends in Ann Arbor, and here I am, telling
. . . how I lived my life. She tells of the peaceful unfolding of a harmonious but far from
simple life, of the easy incorporation of new experiences and new ways of making a
living, and of widening horizons. Her life bridged the period from 1884 to 1960, yet in
reading her account of these years one is scarcely aware that anything had changed for
the Winnebago. As a child she visited relatives in Nebraska, traveling by train and