1158

American Anthropologist

[71, 19691

One must try at all times, of course, to their Ghotul, which, with W. V. Grigsons keep analytically distinct the household and The Maria Gonds of Bastar and Elwins the minimal lineage segment, but especially own material on the Maria, provides basic when they are very largely, save perhaps for ethnographic data on the peoples of this rethe in-marrying husband, of identical sub- gion of India. stantive composition. This, after all, is just a The Kingdom of the Young is an question of understanding the difference be- abridgement of The Muria and their Ghotul, tween categories and the people occupying incorporating 11 of the 25 chapters of the them. Failing to maintain this distinction, original work. In his preface, Elwin indiMiss Nakane says (p. 131) that it is not the cates that this version has followed the lines descent group based upon sibling ties but of earlier abridged translations of The the low-level household iing absolutely that Muria and their Ghotul into French and is the basic structural unit of Khasi society Italian, and the result has been to throw all and that the descent principle functions ef- the emphasis on the village dormitory (p. fectively just with respect to the inheritance vii) and the sexual and psychological satisrules. factions that it provided the Muria, while The third part of the book is the general omitting or drastically abbreviating material discussion of matriliny dealt with earlier in dealing with the place of the ghotul in this review, and this, finally, is followed by Muria society. In preparing the abridgean ethnographic-economic appendix on two ment, no attempt was made to bring the additional Khasi villages. The bibliography material up-to-date, although twenty-one is divided into works cited and works not, years had elapsed since the original study the latter far longer than the former. There had been made. is no index, a fact most irksome when one is Membership in the ghotul of Muria viltrying to keep track of the various usages of lages is composed of unmarried preadolessome term such as Gar0 nok, where each cent and adolescent boys and girls who, usage is treated almost exclusively in a dif- after initiation into ghotul life, assume ferent place in the text. graded responsibilities associated with ghotul titles and related to an internal division of The Kingdom o the Young, VERRIER f EL- labor. Members are expected to spend their WIN. London: Oxford University Press, evenings and nights in the ghotul with their 1968. xiii 261 pp., figures, maps, plates, fellows. Boys and girls are paired, either actables, index. $8.50 (cloth). cording to a system of regular rotation of Reviewed by HUGH PLUNKETT partners, as in most villages, or in ghotul S. University of Virginia marriages, permanent for the partners peThe Muria are a Gondi-speaking tribal riods of ghotul association. In both types, people numbering approximately 100,000 sexual intercourse between partners is exwho live in the northern portion of Bastar pected, while illicit intercourse is severely District, Madhya Pradesh, India. The late limited. With the marriage of either partner, Verrier Elwin visited the Muria intermit- ghotul ties are severed and marital fidelity is tently between 1935 and 1942. During this stressed. As a corporate group, the ghotul time he collected much ethnographic data, membership is important in the performance paying particular attention to the institution of village rituals; the ghotul compound is imbued with ritual significance associated of the adolescent village dormitory-the ghotul--and its relation to Muria culture. with its mythical founder, the culture hero Although spending little time in any one vil- Lingo Pen. In both the original work and in lage, Elwin visited some 347 ghotul and col- the abridgement Elwin contends that ghotul lected 2000 case histories of Muria individu- experience is regarded by the Muria as a als through the use of schedules intended to means of coeducation for activities imporrelate ghotul organization and activities to tant to adult life and that it results in a marriage, family organization, ritual, and healthy adjustment and a satisfying haother aspects of Muria life. He published tural way of life. As Victor Turner (1967:181) has said, the result of his work in The Muria and

Book Reviews
Elwins approach to research was that of an eclectic ethnographer rather than that of a social analyst. He was, as well, a romantic. The value of his work to anthropologists lies in the data his works provide rather than in the use he himself makes of it. In The Kingdom of the Young the deficiencies of the longer work are exacerbated by abridgement. The ghotul itself is described but not systematically related to the sociocultural milieu in which it exists. The differing types of ghotul are not analyzed either in terms of distribution throughout the area or with respect to other social variables. Elwin indicates that children of differing endogamous groups in the village participate equally in the ghotul, but he gives no description of such groups for particular villages-in fact, the brief listing of such groups in the region given in The Kingdom of the Young is much shorter than that of the original work. Influences and contacts with non-Muria are mentioned in passing (usually pejoratively as corrupting Muria ways), but it is difficult to determine their impact. The romantic interpretation of idyllic tribal life and Elwins outmoded theoretical perspectives have been retained from The Muria and their Ghotul, while the details requisite for reinterpretation and further analysis are absent or much reduced. The reader is deprived of the meat of Elwins work and given no new bones to gnaw upon. The utility of this abridgement, whether for the scholar or the interested general reader, seems minimal. I suggest that those interested consult the much richer material of the original The Muria and their Ghotul. Considering what it fails to provide, the price of this book is the more outrageous.

1159

Investigations in a Shia Village in Bahrain. HENNY HARALD ]HANSEN. Publications of the National Museum, Ethnographical Series, 12. Copenhagen: The National Museum of Denmark, 1968. 208 pp., diagrams, figures, illustrations, list of ethnographical specimens from Bahrain, notes, note on transcription, references cited. n.p. (paper) Reviewed by BRIAN SPOONER University of Pennsylvania This is a work of Danish ethnology. The author states that she carried out the field research in Bahrain as cultural anthropologist in association with the Danish archaeological Bahrain Expedition to the Persian Gulf (which she states elsewhere was in progress from 1953 to 1965) and with the support of the Carlsberg Foundation (p. 11). She stayed in the village of SBr in the northern part of the island of Bahrain for forty-nine days beginning on February 20, 1960, and thereafter a further thirty-one days in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, where she had the opportunity to accompany the British nurses of the Child Welfare Institution on their visits to the different villages. Later, in 1963, she visited Iraq and Iran for an unspecified period, which allowed her to pick up extremely valuable background material (p. 7). During her stay in Siir she worked through two male interpreters who were both members of a single lineage in the village. Her stay included the month of Ramadan, during which she herself kept the fast. She was obviously hurt by the fact that she was never really accepted by the community and recounts four specific occasions on which she was openly rejected (pp. 157-158). The main subject of her investigations in the village was the pattern of life of the References Cited women (p. 12). The villagers themselves were Shia, whereas the ruling family and ELWIN, VERR~ER 1947 The Muria and their Ghotul. London: town dwellers of the island were Sunni; this Oxford University Press. made it possible for her to study some of W. GRIGSON, V. the differences between the religious practice 1938 The Maria Gonds of Bastar. London: and attitudes of the two sects, and their Oxford University Press. coexistence. The main occupations for the VICTOR W. TURNER, 1967 Aspects of Saora ritual and shaman- men were work with the Bahrain Petroleum ism. I n The craft of social anthropology. Company and tending the date groves (busA. L. Epstein, ed. London: Tavistock tan) of the village. Since the village community constituted not only a Muslim sociPublications