7/27/2019 American Anthropologist Volume 90 Issue 2 1988 [Doi 10.1525%2Faa.1988.90.2.02a00640] Pauline Kolenda -- SocialCultural Anthropology- A South Indian

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S OCI AL / CULT L I RAL ANTHROPOLOGY 46 3

tory encapsulates either Irish or Traveller so-ciety, or that it reveals the grand workings ofthe world system as it devolves upon one his-torical situation. Nonetheless, we are given agraphic chronicle of the effects of the wrench-ing changes in the Irish economy after two

world wars, and the way these changes affecta cultural minority exploiting the informaleconomy. This is in part due to the way NanDonohoe controls a dramatic, bardic prosestyle, bu t it is also du e to Gmelchs lucid schol-arship. I recommend this book to anthropol-ogists and historians of Irish society, of the in-formal economy, oral history, and womensstudies. The story is as good as Moll Flandersor the Book of Job, and furthermore, i t isntfiction.

A South Indian Subcaste: Social Organi-zation and Religion of the Pramalai Kallar.Louis Dumont. French Studies in South AsianCulture and Society, 1. New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1986 .558 pp. $29.95 (cloth) .

PAULINE OL E NDAUniversity of Houston

To the anthropologist-reader of the 1980s,the recently translated A South Indian Subcastehas the dryness to it of the scientific report.Dumont was already trained as a museologist,Sanskritist, Indologist, and social anthropol-ogist, and was, as well, an extraordinarily con-scientious and perceptive fieldworker duringhis eight mont hs in 1949 amon g the few thou-sand Pramalai Kallar, a rural ex-criminalsubcaste (endogamous group, one of variousKallar subcastes in the region), living west ofthe Tamil city of Madurai. Part 1 of Subcaste,wherein Dumont describes in exact detailhouse and well construction, and agricult uraltools and techniques, reminds one that suchcareful description is rare in contemporaryethnography. It was rare in the 1950s, too,when Dumont wrote Une Sour-Caste de Llnde

du Sud in French (published in 1957), thoughit was less so in Bureau of American Ethnol-ogy (BAE) reports, encyclopedic works onspecific Amerindian cu ltural groups. So Sub-carte combines the scientific precision of Ste-vensons 1869 BAE report o n the Zun i withEvans-Pritchards careful delineation of socialstructu re and religion in his works on theNuer. Both the pre-war American an d Britishanthropological traditions influenced Du-mont, but he himself says (p. xiv) that thegreatest influence upon him was Marcel Mau ss.

Successful as a lengthy, encyclopedic, ob-jective work, the book is divided into three ma-

jor parts: ( 1 ) history, locality, and economy;(2) social organization (including chapters onunity and hierarchy, ceremony and presta-tions, and justice, among others); an d (3) re-ligion. Dumonts careful treatment of lineagestruct ure an d alliance reflects the influence of

Lkvi-Strausss Elementary Structures and Evans-Pritchards work; it will supplement Du-monts other noted writings on marr iage alli-ance for the kinship specialist.

Subcaste is pre-reflexive anthropology. Whil eDumont tells us a little about his key infor-mants, he tells u s almost nothing about him-self or his place in Tengalapatti hamlet. Hementions how formidable the Kallar were tooutsiders (they had been mercenary soldiers,then highway men an d robbers beforepax Bri-tannica); yet, he, an intrepid Fr enchman, man-aged to ingrat iate himself and win them over

to his purposes. Thereby must hang a tale;perhaps Dumont will yet tell it.In comparison with some excellent recent

ethnographies for south Asia, like Sherry Or t-ners Sherpas Through Their Ritual s, or LynnBennetts Dangerous Wive s and Sacred Sisters,Subcaste lacks coherence and fails to engagewith the ethos an d world view of the Kallar inany but an incidental way; it is pre-symbolicanthropology, and it lacks a firmly empha-sized theme. Dumont in his introduction says,the civilization in which a caste participatesis also present within it. Th is is the premise onwhich the present study is based, and whichwe feel the study verifies (p. 3) . This is atheme, clear to Dumont perhaps, but whichthe reader can only infer, as the author, fromplace to place, compares Kallar practices withthose of the Brahmans and other Hindus.

For a more complete discussion of Subcaste,the reader may refer to the 1965 Current An-thropology (7:327-346) when it, along with H i -erarchy and Marriage Alliance, was reviewed byI 1 scholars. Furer-Haimendorf s statementthat future generations interested in knowingwhat life in South Indian villages was like inthe middle of the 20th centur y will turn to this

book rather than to any other. . . (CurrentAnthropology 7:331, 1965) remains true. It isstill the only thorough study of an endoga-mous caste group. Others have studied a cat-egory of castes (Untouchables) at the locallevel (Moffatt), a regional caste structure(Beck), and a cas e-complex (Hard grave ), butno one else has yet published on another sub -caste in any way approaching Subcaste. Mi-chael Moffatt, as editor and chief translat or ofthis deserved-to-be-classic work, along withhis colleagues, and Professor Dumont himself,must be richly thanked for making the book

available in English.