This book constitutes the first part of a two-volume study. Banerji is one of the few scholars who have tried to see health-related behavior and health services in the wider framework of the economic, political, demographic and social characteristics of rural populations.
Rarely in recent memory have information, ideas and scholarly acumen of such a high calibre been presented as in these two volumes. Professor Chattopadhyaya deserves ad¬ditional credit for having brought together papers that were published as early as the eighteenth century and there¬fore likely to be missed by most contemporary scholars.
‘Social Anthropology is concerned not with stones and bones but rather Marx and Spencer’—Isaac Schapera’s comment comes to one’s mind when reading Arjun Appadorai’s book since he is also an anthropologist with a differ¬ence. In his introduction, the author calls himself an ethno-historian and clarifies his fundamental differences with the functionalist school of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown who regard social struc¬ture as a mere mirror-image of culture which is defined as a set of established customs and usages.
The initial attraction of a reader to this book is its cover. The symbol of the undying Pax Britannica—the arro¬gant image of the lion trium¬phantly astride the globe, an unfurled Union Jack, backed by the imperial crown domi¬nates the front flap, announc¬ing the Spectacle of the Empire. And rarely has a title so suited the contents of a book. The varied collection of paintings and photographs, many of which have not been published before, bring alive a variety of imperial themes virtually transporting the reader back to the turn of the century when the empire was a vibrant I reality.
Art has historical roots that lie outside it, and it has his¬torical consequences that again lie outside it the work of art closest to perfection is both most profoundly determined by its time and goes furthest be¬yond it into timelessness, while the imperfect work of art re¬mains caught in the spatial and temporal conditions precisely because it has been touched by them most superficially.
In the long tussle for supre¬macy among the main gods of the Hindu pantheon (certain¬ly not instigated by the divine personages but by their followers and worshippers), Vishnu and Siva have finally emerged as the two top con¬tenders to assume the role of the Refuge. Vishnu comes to us either as Himself with his conch and discus or in the form of Krishna and Rama. Siva remains aloof, keeping his distance as a destroyer but assuring us of a renewal of life through decay and death.