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change is balanced by the sensibilities of a Sanskritist. His critics will point out that the Dumontians never imagined that India was unchanging, all Brahmans ideal, and economic motivations unimportant, especially not in pilgrimage centers. Nor, it seems to me, would they admit that van der Veers case speaks directly to the Dumontian argument, for the book says little about how contemporary pandas and sadhus themselves understand their economic actions or the relationship of those actions to their renunciation. What those critics will have to admit is the cumulative force of another stunning example of the formative influence of colonialism and economic transformation against Dumonts narrow construction of Indian society.

Social Change in Village India. Sachchidananda. New Delhi: Concept Publishing, 1988. 240 pp. $40.00 (cloth).
JOHN VAN

WILLICEN University of Kentucky

This is a collection of 18 papers, 13 ofwhich were previously published in various Indian periodicals and other edited volumes. The content is focused upon three general topics: aspects of caste, rural development and society, and social change and social problems. The papers are coupled with a cursory and unreflective introduction. This review will consider the book as a publishing idea and as content. As a publishing idea this book is flawed. It is inappropriately titled, as few of the papers are directly focused on the content implied by the title. While virtually all the pieces deal with rural India, most do not represent direct examinations of village life. The content and tone of the included publications is quite variable. Some pieces are technical research reports whereas others are essays that take a more general perspective. While the availability of the original versions of the articles reprinted here is variable, some being originally published in apparently low-circulation periodicals, all of the reprinted material in the book is accessible to most American scholars through interlibrary loan programs or their own libraries. These levels of access do not apply in India; therefore, it is likely that the book represents a somewhat better publishing idea for that domestic market than the international. It is fair to say that publication is more or less timely as most of the papers were published between 1978and 1984. As a publishing

venture I do not think that it makes a lot of sense, especially at its price. The content of the book is a somewhat different story. Much of the content is moderately useful. The chapters most interesting to me were of two types, those dealing with development efforts of nongovernment organizations and those that examine rural life from a critical perspective. The chapter entitled Voluntary Agencies and the Challenge of the Eighties can serve as an example of Sachchidanandas approach. This paper was originally published in 1981 and seems to be based on the authors general experiences and specific reviewed literature. While it seems like a plausible account of the topic, it provides little evidence for how the author reached his conclusions. T h e book would be enhanced by more methodological disclosure and documentation of sources. Nevertheless, I think that readers, especially non-Indian, would find this a useful introduction to the important role of the voluntary agencies in providing social service, health care, rural development, and urban renewal. He includes interesting characterizations about the history ofsuch organizations, their diverse roles, the nature of their funding, and the characteristics of their volunteers. Interestingly, he contrasts these kinds of organizations with newly developing groups that are restructured to reduce the dependency-producing qualities of the voluntary organizations. I also found interesting the chapters entitled Emergent Scheduled Caste Elite in Bihar, Caste Hindu Violence against the Harijans, and Protection and Discrimination: The Changing Relations in Rural India. Of the chapters mentioned, only the last appears to be prepared for this volume. In conclusion, the book does not represent a useful publication because almost 70% of it is published elsewhere in accessible sources. At the same time, some of the content is of interest to those who would like an orientation to the phenomenon of caste violence, caste group development in rural settings, and the roles of voluntary agencies in social service and development.

The Origins and Developmentof Classical Hinduism. A . L . Basham (Kenneth G . Zysk,

ed.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1989. 178 pp. $18.95 (cloth). ACEHANANDA BHARATI Syracuse University All anthropologists who work in South Asia have read Bashams Wonder That W a s India

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(Grove Press, 1954). It is probably the only straight history text on India that most of them read, and much of their most general notions about the history of Indian culture derives from it. This fact alone justifies a review in American Anthropologist, just as a review of a book on the Nuer would be justified in a journal ofAfrican history. Basham was, somewhat vaguely, interested in anthropological work about South Asia, although he never used it in his writings. Basham was not a prolific writer. Wonder and History and Doctrim of the Ajivikas (Luzac, 1951) were his only full-size monographs. Many of his small number of articles appeared in unreferenced journals. Their importance lay in the promotion rather than in the analysis of Indian themes. The editor, who was one of Bashams star disciples, in this book summarizes Bashams work and places it in a critical perspective. The book might well be read by South Asian area anthropologists in lieu of Bashams magnum opus Wonder, as well as of his less accessible works. The book is based on a series of five lectures given by Basham during the last years of his life; as such it presents his most mature views of Hinduism and Indias complex traditions. The first chapter deals with prehistoric South Asia and the earliest Vedic period. Chapter 2 turns to the tenth book of the Rgveda and the Atharvaveda and the later Vedic period. Chapter 3 presents the bases of Hindu speculative thought in the Upanisads, including early notions about transmigration developed at about that time. Chapter 4 speaks about the mystical traditions and about ! h e heterodox Jainas, the Buddhists and the Ajivikas, the latter being Bashams special domain. Chapter 5 presents the two great epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramiyana. Chapter 6 talks about the Bhagavadgita, that exquisite, and exquisitely overworked, tract from the Mahabharata, which many Hindus including Mahatma Gandhi regard as the Hindu answer to the New Testament. The final chapter is the editors own, emending what Basham had left out, that is, the literature pertaining to the civil and legal corpus of ancient and medieval Indian writing. The appendixes list Bashams publications as well as a useful chart of suggestions for further reading. There are some 50 black-andwhite illustrations of hitherto unpublished works of religious art and of other artifacts. The best part of the introduction is a hermeneutically engaged report on Bashams career-one very much of a scholar and a gentleman, and a true Renaissance man.

Clearly, Bashams work was on texts in the narrower sense, and on literary traditions. Many of his notions about Indian society were anthropologically naive. He patently confused and conflated the v a r y system with caste, by omission rather than commission; he did not show any special interest in that key theme of South Asian social studies, the caste system, or systems, as the late Sir Edmund Leach preferred to call it. He talked about the Hymns of Creation, the purusa-szikta, the primordial sacrifice; he really believed, it seems, that the four estates mentioned in that passage were in fact the basis of the caste structure. Bashams work did not throw much light on actual, hands on Hinduism, as it were. His was a bookish approach throughout---or in the terms of a somewhat obsolescent anthropology, a totally etic reading of the text. The great merit of this volume lies in its revealing the minimal literacy core of Indian culture, minimal for the anthropological entry to South Asia.

Hindu Women and the Power of Ideology.

Vanaja Dhruvarajan. Granby, MA: Bergin and Garvey, 1989. 176 pp. $39.95 (cloth).

SYLVIA J. VATUK University of Illinois at Chicago

The ideology of Dhruvarajans title is the concept of pativratya, by which ideal womanhood is defined in Hindu culture; the authors aim is to explore the content and meaning of the concept itself and to describe the process by which girls learn behavioral conformity to the pativrata role, developing a willing compliance with the subordinate position for women that it entails. Dhruvarajan, a n India-born sociologist now apparently based in North America, returned to her childhood village for five months to observe and interview Brahman and Vokkaliga women. She approaches her subject from an avowedly feminist perspective. She wishes to show how a blatantly androcentric ideology causes women, admittedly held in high regard as mothers, to be devalued as persons and systematically humiliated, depersonalized, and dominated by men (p. vii). She quotes liberally from the words of village men and women on the concept ofpativratra and relates these to Hindu ideas about male/female differences, womans dual nature, and the importance of retaining male control over female sexual energy. She then describes womens roles in the family and community, examining the pattern of their lives from birth