When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization

460 Pages·37.931 MB·English

by  Milton B. Singer

AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH TO INDIAN CIVILIZATION
MILTON SINGER
'FOREWORD BY M. N. SRINIVAS
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2018 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/whengreattraditiOOOOsing
WAOl UUMMUBUIX VUUhmlsE
JP4M4JHA mwir mumxu\
When a Great Tradition Modernizes
I
When a
Great Tradition
Modernizes
An Anthropological Approach
to Indian Civilization
Milton Singer
Foreword by M. N. Srinivas
PRAEGER PUBLISHERS
New York • Washington • London
For Helen —
With love and gratitude
HI Fourfh Ax rotJLISHERS
5, Cromwell P^/e' Lo"/01"’ NY' I0003- U-«-
Place, London SW7 2JL, Englant
Published ^ United States of America in ]Q
by Praeger Publishers, Inc.
© 1W2 by praeger pubJishers_ Inc
^ reserved
bra.y of Congress Catalog Card Number: 71-833.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Foreword, by M. N. Srinivas vii
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
A Note on Transcription and Pronunciation xvii
Part One: India and the Comparative Study
of Civilizations
Introduction 3
1. Passage to More than India: A Sketch of Changing European
and American Images 11
2. Text and Context in the Study of Contemporary Hinduism 39
Part Two: Structure and Transformation of a
Great Tradition
Introduction 55
3. Search for a Great Tradition in Cultural Performances 67
4. The Social Organization of Sanskritic Hinduism in Madras City 81
5. Urbanization and Cultural Change: Bhakti in the City 148
Part Three: Myth, Ritual, and Social Change
6. The Radha-Krishna Bhajanas of Madras City 199
Part Four: Modernization and Traditionalization
Introduction 245
7. The Social Organization of Indian Civilization 250
8. Industrial Leadership, the Hindu Ethic, and the Spirit of Social¬
ism 272
liWWJW
GitLf COAST COMMUNITY COLiKI
panama arv, nemo*
vi / Contents
Appendix A: List of Companies 367
Appendix B: Analysis of Backgrounds of Candidates Applying for
Industrial Employment, 1963 374
Part Five: Beyond Tradition and Modernity
9. Beyond Tradition and Modernity in Madras 383
Selected Bibliography 415
Index x 421
A section of photographs follows p. 174.
*
Foreword
Professor Milton Singer is too well-known an anthropologist for his book
to need an introduction from anyone, and I consider his request that I
write a foreword for it one more instance of his regard for me and of his
generous acknowledgment of such stimulation as he may have received
from my writings. It is only fair to add here that my own thinking has
been influenced in recent years by Singer, as my Social Change in Modern
India* will show. It gives me particular pleasure to acknowledge that his
writings continue to stimulate me in a variety of ways. The present work,
for instance, is uniformly thought-provoking, and I find Singer’s comments
on the adaptive strategies of Indian culture to new forces and circum¬
stances particularly insightful. He rejects, and rightly, the view that tradi¬
tional Indian society was resistant to change; he shows that the adaptive
strategies evolved over several centuries prior to the establishment of
British rule continue to function today.
The course of anthropological theory has been deeply influenced by the
work of such scholars as Sir Henry Maine, Robertson Smith, and Fustel
de Coulanges, whose primary interest was in the older civilizations or in
the ancient periods of modern civilizations. Subsequent generations of
anthropologists, including such renowned scholars as Sir James Frazer,
Marcel Mauss, and A. L. Kroeber, have moved freely from the considera¬
tion of ethnographic data bearing on primitives to literary and historical
data on the ancient and medieval periods of the “civilizations.” In short,
though cultural and social anthropology did concentrate until the end
of World War II on primitive peoples, it occasionally went beyond its
self-imposed boundaries to consider parallels and linkages between the
“civilized” and the “primitives.”
There is, however, a difference between reliance on literary, archaeo¬
logical, and historical material on the civilizations of the Old World and
carrying out field work in them. If field work, especially intensive field
work, is an important diacritical sign of cultural and social anthropology,
then field work in civilized countries is an appropriate way of indicating
their formal inclusion in the discipline. The Department of Anthropology
of the University of Chicago played a leading role in this enterprise in the
* Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966. See especially
Chapter I.
/
viii Foreword,
1930 s, when, under the leadership of Robert Redfield, field studies began
to be carried out in Mexico, Guatemala, Canada, and Japan. As a result of
his field work, Redfield formulated in the 1950’s his project on the “Com¬
parative Study of Civilizations,’’ and Singer was intimately associated with
Redfield in that project. Indeed, Singer’s first visit to India came about
in connection with the establishment of a suitable “base’’ from which he
and Redfield could conduct field studies. That visit led to Singer’s in¬
volvement in India, an involvement that has paid rich dividends for
Indian studies in the United States and elsewhere. This book is also a
happy outcome of that involvement.
The 1930’s were also important for the development of anthropology
and sociology in India. Indian scholars, in particular G. S. Ghurye at
Bombay, encouraged their students to clo field work among tribal or
other sections of the population, ignoring the conventional barriers be¬
tween cultural and social anthropology and sociology.
Understandably, the extension of anthropology to include civilizations
has profound consequences for the discipline. For one thing, no single
discipline can hope to subsume within itself the study of all aspects of
a civilization. The need for collaboration with scholars from a variety
of other fields is the first thing that impresses itself upon the anthropolo¬
gist when he is confronted with the study of a civilization. Finally, the
richness and diversity of the culture and the abundance of the historical
and other data available require from him long and patient study. Stu¬
dents may well find that it is even more difficult to apply the comparative
method to the study of civilizations than it is to the study of “primitive
societies. Perhaps they should begin by applying the comparative method
within that civilization and consider applying it across civilizations only
subsequently.
The extension of the scope of social and cultural anthropology to in¬
clude civilizations means, among other things, that theories that have
emerged essentially from the study of primitive societies will have to be
tested against the vastly more complex data about civilizations, with the
likelihood that they will need to be radically modified. (See in this con¬
nection the introduction to Part Three, with Singer’s fruitful comments
on the contribution of the study of the Krishna myth to anthropological
theory.) The availability of data of sufficient richness on selected periods
of a civilization might prove crucial for the understanding of social
change. Anthropology will have to move closer to history, especially so¬
cial, economic, religious, legal, literary, and art history. Anthropologists
will have to work in collaboration with other social scientists and with
scholars who have specialized in the study of the relevant classical lan¬
guages. Such cooperation will, it is hoped, increase the relevance of an¬
thropology to the problems of the modern world.
Singer points out that the classical structural-functional approach to
anthropology subordinates culture to social structure and that this greatly
limits its heuristic value in the study of civilizations. A student of civiliza¬
tions can ignore culture only at his peril. One of the characteristics of a
civilization is a class of literati whose business it is to study, comment
upon, interpret, and even elaborate ideology, myth, and ritual. Its exis-