The Aboriginal Tribes of Hyderabad. Volume II. The Redáis of the Bison Hills: A Study in Acculturation by Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf (review)

REVIEWS 107 Klansmen attack the Travilla estate (but are frightened off by Cousin Ronald the ventriloquist)-none of these or similar additions disturbs the early, elemental, and dominant pattern of the Elsie saga.· Besides elucidating this thematic unity of the series, Miss Brown develops the meaning of the popularity of the Elsie books. Martha Finley's dream of life under a stern, loving, protective, demanding father in circumstances of domestic comfort, great but vague wealth, Southern chivalry, orthodox religion, and noble patriotism was a dream shared by millions of her generation. "More people read Elsie Dinsmore than read When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, a commentary which must have discouraged contemporary scholars, but which is of great interest now." Much can be learned from such studies of popular second-rate writing; the peaks of literature do not compose the whole landscape. Mr. George Orwell has surveyed to some purpose even the low regions of boys' magazines and picture postcards. Among juve~ile books of the last century the~e is much to repay critical scrutiny: Maria Charlesworth's Ministering Children ("tea and tears") and F. W. Farrar's,Eric, or Little by Little come immediately to mind. Miss Brown's lively and scholarly little treatise has settled Elsie's place in the nineteenth-century garden landscape. Other children may dimly be seen among the shrubberies ready to come when called. R. D. The Aboriginal Tribes of Hyderabad. Volume II. The Reddis of the Bison Hills: A Study in Acculturation. By CHRISTOPH voN FiiRERHAIMENDORF in collaboration with ELIZABETH VON FuRER-HAIMENDORF, with a foreword by J.P. MILLS, Honorary Director of Ethnography to the Government of Assam. Bombay and London: Macmillan and Co. [Toronto : Macmillan Co. of Cariada]. 1945. Pp. xvii, 374. THE problems of India today are set on an enormous stale. Religious groups, political organizations, independent states, economic groups, ~11 are striving to maintain or better ,their position, and each represents millions of people seeking adjustment in a complex world. Most books on India aim to give an over-all picture of this medley of human beings and human aims. The conflicting desires of Hindus and Mohammedans are brought out clearly, but the Canadian reader is apt to lose sight of the simpler tribes of India, the people whose life is passed in small hill villages, people1 who live in a backwater of modern progress, but who have been in India for thousands of years and to whom the term "Indian" may more ap~ly be applied than to many of the _later and more strongly o.rganized groups. This volume gives a clear picture of the life of one of these forgotten groups, the Reddis of the Eastern Ghats of Hyderabad. 108 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY An anthropologist describing a people must fulfil two purposes. He must win the confidence of those among whom he is working and succeed in understanding their life so that he can describe their social structure, their economic problems, and their religious beliefs for the benefit of his fellow-scientists. A good anthropologist must do more. He must be able to describe them as human beings, so that the historian and social scientist can read and understand the problems of a people whose mode of life is cast i!l an unfamiliar background. In both these desiderata the author has been 'successful. The Reddis will rank as one of the good anthropological monographs of all time. It is well written, beautifully illustrated, and well printed. Furthermore, the author never forgets that he is dealing with human beings and his descriptions of village life, of courtship, and of children, leave the reader with a cle·ar picture of a simple population, descendants of the Pre-Dravidians, who inhabited India long. before the birth of Hinduism or Mohammedanism. They are hill people, dearing the forests for their small fields which they cultivate with digging stick and hoe, and with, in recent years, a few oxen to pull their ploughs. Economically therefore, they illustrate three phases in the development of agriculture. In some respects the Reddis must rank as one of the least developed of all contemporary peoples, with little music, little art...