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tory encapsulates either Irish or Traveller society, or that it reveals the grand workings of the world system as it devolves upon one historical situation. Nonetheless, we are given a graphic chronicle of the effects of the wrenching changes in the Irish economy after two world wars, and the way these changes affect a cultural minority exploiting the informal economy. This is in part due to the way Nan Donohoe controls a dramatic, bardic prose style, but it is also due to Gmelchs lucid scholarship. I recommend this book to anthropologists and historians of Irish society, of the informal economy, oral history, and womens studies. The story is as good as Moll Flanders or the Book of Job, and furthermore, i t isnt fiction.

A South Indian Subcaste: Social Organizationand Religion of the Pramalai Kallar.

Louis Dumont. French Studies in South Asian Culture and Society, 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.558 pp. $29.95 (cloth). PAULINE KOLENDA University of Houston T o the anthropologist-reader of the 1980s, the recently translated A South Indian Subcaste has the dryness to it of the scientific report. Dumont was already trained as a museologist, Sanskritist, Indologist, and social anthropologist, and was, as well, an extraordinarily conscientious and perceptive fieldworker during his eight months in 1949 among the few thousand Pramalai Kallar, a rural ex-criminal subcaste (endogamous group, one of various Kallar subcastes in the region), living west of the Tamil city of Madurai. Part 1 of Subcaste, wherein Dumont describes in exact detail house and well construction, and agricultural tools and techniques, reminds one that such careful description is rare in contemporary ethnography. It was rare in the 1950s, too, when Dumont wrote Une Sour-Caste de Llnde du Sud in French (published in 1957), though it was less so in Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) reports, encyclopedic works on specific Amerindian cultural groups. So Subcarte combines the scientific precision of Stevensons 1869 BAE report on the Zuni with Evans-Pritchards careful delineation of social structure a n d religion in his works o n the Nuer. Both the pre-war American and British anthropological traditions influenced Dumont, but he himself says (p. xiv) that the greatest influence upon him was Marcel Mauss. Successful as a lengthy, encyclopedic, objective work, the book is divided into three ma-

jor parts: ( 1 ) history, locality, and economy; (2) social organization (including chapters on unity and hierarchy, ceremony and prestations, and justice, among others); and (3) religion. Dumonts careful treatment of lineage structure and alliance reflects the influence of Lkvi-Strausss Elementary Structures and EvansPritchards work; it will supplement Dumonts other noted writings on marriage alliance for the kinship specialist. Subcaste is pre-reflexive anthropology. While Dumont tells us a little about his key informants, he tells us almost nothing about himself or his place in Tengalapatti hamlet. H e mentions how formidable the Kallar were to outsiders (they had been mercenary soldiers, then highway men and robbers beforepax Britannica); yet, he, an intrepid Frenchman, managed to ingratiate 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 Ortners Sherpas Through Their Rituals, or Lynn Bennetts Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters, Subcaste lacks coherence and fails to engage with the ethos and world view of the Kallar in any but an incidental way; it is pre-symbolic anthropology, and it lacks a firmly emphasized theme. Dumont in his introduction says, the civilization in which a caste participates is also present within it. This is the premise on which the present study is based, and which we feel the study verifies (p. 3). This is a theme, clear to Dumont perhaps, but which the reader can only infer, as the author, from place to place, compares Kallar practices with those of the Brahmans and other Hindus. For a more complete discussion of Subcaste, the reader may refer to the 1965 Current Anthropology (7:327-346) when it, along with H i erarchy and Marriage Alliance, was reviewed by I 1 scholars. Furer-Haimendorf s statement that future generations interested in knowing what life in South Indian villages was like in the middle of the 20th century will turn to this book rather than to any o t h e r . . . (Current Anthropology 7:331, 1965) remains true. It is still the only thorough study of an endogamous caste group. Others have studied a category of castes (Untouchables) at the local level (Moffatt), a regional caste structure (Beck), and a cas te-complex (Hardgrave), but no one else has yet published on another subcaste in any way approaching Subcaste. Michael Moffatt, as editor and chief translator of this deserved-to-be-classic work, along with his colleagues, and Professor Dumont himself, must be richly thanked for making the book available in English.