Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town by Leela PrasadReview by: Donald R. Davis, Jr.Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 128, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 2008), pp. 812-813Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25608486 .

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812 Journal of the American Oriental Society 128.4 (2008)

labels, official titles, and the like. In addition to the

alphabetically arranged entries, it contains a nine-page chronology, an extensive but dated bibliography, and a

surprisingly good introduction to the "medieval period of Indian history," defined as the years from 1000 to

1526 (p. xi). It reflects the historiographic orientation of a generation of scholars at Aligarh Muslim University, where its author Iqtidar Alam Khan was long based.

Aligarh's historians, who for decades dominated the

study of "medieval" India (that is, the period of Muslim

political dominance from ca. 1200 to 1750), have relied almost exclusively on texts written in Persian and fo cused largely on polities headed by Muslims.

Accordingly, this historical dictionary is strong on

the Muslim political elite of North India from 1206 to

1526 (with a few Sufi mystics thrown in for good measure) and weak on everything else. Coverage of the two centuries before the establishment of the Delhi

Sultanate in 1206 is spotty nor are the chronological parameters carefully maintained, as in the case of the

earlier scholar Medhatithi (described on p. 101 as a com

mentator on the Puranas rather than on Manusmriti). With a handful of exceptions, such as the Chola kings

Rajaraja I and Rajendra I, the people and places of the

Deccan and South India are covered only inasmuch as

they had some association with an Indo-Muslim polity. This unabashedly North Indian- and Muslim-centric

perspective was once pervasive in Indian scholarship, but is no longer acceptable; in more practical terms, it is a shortcoming that severely limits the dictionary's usefulness.

There is no apparent reason why the dictionary could

not have been expanded to include more of the sub

continent's territory and notable individuals. It is con

siderably shorter than the other volumes in the same

series, such as the forthcoming Historical Dictionary of Ancient India by Kumkum Roy, which will be almost

five hundred pages long. The likely explanation for its

brevity is that the author was unable to extract more from

standard accounts on "medieval" India, which typically

provide far more detail on the Mughal era (ca. 1526 to

1750) than on the Delhi Sultanate period. We are told

that "the themes for entries have been selected largely on the basis of the importance given to them in the

major writings on the period, from the pens of Mo

hammad Habib, Tara Chand, R. C. Majumdar, H. C.

Ray, Ishwari Prasad, T. Mahalingam, A. B. M. Habi

bullah, Romila Thapar, Haroon Khan Sherwani, Simon

Digby and Peter Jackson" (p. xi). The list of secondary

scholarship just cited contains very little published in

the last forty or so years and only a couple of items

relevant to the Deccan and South India.

The value of Historical Dictionary of Medieval India

is further eroded by numerous errors. Some of these are

simple inconsistencies, as when Qutb al-Din Aibek's last

name is spelled Aibak on occasion, or the place usually called Cannanore is variously referred to as Kannur,

Cannor, and Cannore. Other mistakes are presumably

typographical: Kapilandra instead of Kapilendra, Sahms and not Shams, Ramcharitramanas for Ramcharitmanas, etc. But the contents can also be suspect: the entry "Allahkhand" on the oral epic named after one of its

heroes, Alha (not Allah), is said to be contemporary to

the twelfth-century battles it. describes; while the Mo roccan traveler Ibn Battuta is said to have traveled from

Delhi to Peking via Coromandel, Malabar, and Ceylon,

thereby obscuring his years of wandering in the Indian

Ocean as well as the likelihood that he got no further than the southern coast of China. Nor is the rationale for the arrangement of personal names ever provided: why "Aitegin, Ikhtiyar al-Din" but "Ikhityar al-Din Alp Ghazi," why "Mahmud Shah Tughlaq, Sultan Nasir al

Din" but "Ghiyas al-Din Tughlaq Shah"? A reference work should be held to a higher standard in such matters, since factual accuracy is one of its primary justifica tions for existence.

Given these problems?and the book's exorbitant

price?it is difficult to see who would derive much

benefit from consulting Historical Dictionary of Medi

eval India. For up-to-date information on the Delhi

Sultanate, a researcher would be better directed to the

index of Peter Jackson's excellent monograph, The Delhi

Sultanate: A Political and Military History (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999). Scarecrow Press publishes numerous

series of historical dictionaries, which it presumably markets to academic libraries. This particular volume

cannot be recommended for purchase to any but the

most ambitious collections, however.

Cynthia Talbot

University of Texas

Poetics of Conduct: Oral Narrative and Moral Being in a South Indian Town. By Leela Prasad. New

York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Pp. xv

+ 291. $25.50.

In the long back and forth between anthropology and Indology since the 1950s, many have envisioned,

encouraged, and/or promulgated a rapprochement be

tween these two rather different approaches to what is

important about India?the Society that publishes this

journal being resolutely behind the Indological approach, if also occasionally open to new ideas from other sides.

Once in a while a work comes along that does not wallow

in the debate, but rather transcends it. Such a work is the

monograph here under review. Let me be clear. This is

not a philological study or an in-depth examination of

texts, but it makes excellent use of the philological work

of others in the service of ethnography.

Though I risk unfairly reducing Prasad's work to a

utilitarian purpose, many Indologically inclined scholars

will find first in this work a constant bibliographical ref

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Brief Reviews 813

erenee to a "modern" case, because Prasad describes the

town of Sringeri in modern Karnataka and especially its

Brahmin community in ways that bring out the everyday relevance of concepts, institutions, and worldviews that

most would associate with unfashionable, Sanskritic, and Orientalist portrayals of Indian life. I have already cited Prasad's work in this crass manner on more than

one occasion. However, to read this book with an instru

mentalist, here-is-the-ethnography-of-what-classical India-must-have-been-like attitude is both badly to mis

judge the argument of the book and to undervalue its

relevance to scholarship on South Asia.

Specifically, Prasad demonstrates the importance of

s?stra, especially Dharmas?stra, in both the ordinary

parlance and the wider ranging ethos and imagination of the Sringeri Brahmin community. She writes deftly in two distinct rhetorical registers that show both the

immediate quotidian context for and the broader impli cations of discussions of old Indie concepts such as

upacara, rna, and d?na (chapter two), s?stra and a host

of other terms (e.g., samprad?ya, ?e?ra, and paddhati)

relating to traditional authority (chapters three and four),

aucitya and ?slrv?da (chapter five), and s?ksma and

viveka (chapter six). The first register is Prasad's real

gift, for it is her nuanced, engaging, and wonderfully evocative reporting of interviews, experiences, and in

terpretations with and about Sringeri Brahmins that

provides both an insightful look into contemporary and

classical Brahmin cultures and a model of sensitive, yet confident ethnography. Here, Prasad convincingly dem

onstrates that stories told in everyday life, being simul

taneously reflective and applicative, are the best source

from which to discern the practical effect of normative

regimes, including texts, on ethics?a methodology with

implications far beyond Sringeri. The second register consists of Prasad's wide

ranging discussions of secondary work in ethics, his

tory, Indology, law, poetics, religion, anthropology, and folklore. Prasad lifts themes from her conversations and weaves them into her examination of the relationship between "generalized moral imperatives, moral reflec

tion, and acts in everyday life" (p. 226). Her secondary sources are judiciously chosen and ample in scope, more than sufficient to substantiate her justified, if somewhat

diffuse, conclusion that Sringeri society has a "fluid normative imagination" in which "normative discourses are strictly circumscribed, playfully teased out, but al

ways imaginatively and plurally lived out" (p. 227). Prasad's presentation of both the fluidity and cre

ativity in bringing normative discourses and everyday life together is, however, anything but diffuse. Her con crete recounting of Ramachandra Bhattru and Pandu

ranga Murthy's subtle and often hilarious (the cat lessons on s?stra [pp. 146-47] are alone worth the price of the

book!) understandings of s?stra's place in everyday life

exemplifies Prasad's ability to show the multivocality of normative expression in Sringeri and justify her insis tence that "plural" is the only reasonable adjective to use

in describing the manifold ways that higher order moral

reflection is brought to bear on simple acts of cooking,

eating, dressing, as well as ritual, law, and conflict.

My characterization of the two rhetorical registers that dominate Prasad's book puts into relief the one

criticism I will make in this brief review. Prasad gen

erally neglects another rhetorical register, namely the

views that Indie intellectual traditions themselves took on the themes raised by her ethnographic work. When

Prasad mentions P?rva-Mim?ms? and Ved?nta views

of s?stra (pp. 102-3) or various views of aucitya in

K?vyas?stra (pp. 176-77), the discussions are mediated

through secondary works (as good as the references cited

are) and have a somewhat perfunctory quality as a result.

A more direct and extensive examination of traditional

Indie scholarly views of the central concepts Prasad

found so important in Sringeri would have supported and enhanced her arguments. As just one example, the

views of medieval Dharmas?stra commentators on the

meaning and authority of smrti and ?e?ra as normative

categories are at least as diverse as, though not exactly congruous with, those Prasad encountered among con

temporary Sringeri Brahmins.

Overall, however, Prasad has produced a book of

immense value to scholars in many fields of South Asian

studies and beyond. Her detailed, emphatic, and beau tiful ethnography draws the reader into a consideration of issues that textual scholars struggle to "make rele vant." Those discrete, yet thematically coherent descrip tions in turn open up questions of ethics, normative

values, and religious life that directly address current

scholarly dilemmas in these areas.

Donald R. Davis, Jr.

University of Wisconsin

Historical Dictionary of the Tamils. By Vijaya Rama swamy. Historical Dictionaries of Peoples and Cul tures. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2007.

Pp. lxix + 374.

The Historical Dictionary of the Tamils is the sixth volume in a series, Historical Dictionaries of Peoples and Cultures. In keeping with the format of the previous volumes in the series, it aims to provide an overview of

the history of the Tamils from antiquity to the present. The dictionary begins with a chronology of Tamil his

tory from 8000 b.ce. to 2006. This is followed by an

introduction which locates the Tamil region and Tamils

geographically, ethnically (as of "Dravidian stock"),

politically (from the classical Caiikam period to the

present), economically (only the colonial and post colonial periods are dealt with), and culturally (religion, cinema, and music are prominent). The dictionary sec

tion, which follows, comprises the bulk of the volume.

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