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.

The 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 oppor- tunities 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

1370 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 in- clude 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 YUS- pects, 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 Wol f Woman, Sister o j Crashing Thunder: The Autobiogvaphy o j a Winnebago Woman. Edited with introduction and notes by NANCY OESTREICH LURIE. Fore- word by RUTH UNDERHILL. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961. xx, 142 pp, 3 appendices, 15 illustrations, map. $4.95.

Reviewed by RUTH L. 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, clutch- ing 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 begin- ning 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