Mahadev L. Apte

JOEL SHERZER , Speech play and verbal art . Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. 198 pp. Hb

During the past 25 years, anthropologists, linguists, and other social scientists have taken a keen interest in delineating the nature (form and function) of play, not only among humans but also among other higher primates. The establishment of the Society for the Study of Play in the1970s, the annual meetings of its members, and the resulting publications clearly manifest this interest. Sherzers book on speech play and verbal art is a significant addition to the extant literature on the subject. His aim is to delineate “the significance of verbal play in the intersection of language, culture, and society in relation to verbal art” (p. 1). He views speech play as an “implicit and explicit meta-commentary on everyday life and artistic performance” (1).

45.00, Pb

ments during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, their relevance to regional, as well as pan-Indian solidarity of various sub-caste groups, their emergence as a new political force in modern India, and their effects on social mobility and structural change (Aiyappan 1965; Khare 1970; Lynch 1969; Nandi 1963; Rao 1964; Rowe 1968a, 1968b; Rudolph and Rudolph 1967). No attempts have been made to investigate the relevance of voluntary associations, including caste associations, to the acculturation process, ethnic identity, and boundary maintenance among linguistic groups settled in regions other than their own. Two studies of neighborhood groups in the city of Calcutta by Guha (1964,1966) constitute one of the few attempts in this direction. They describe the geographic, demographic, and ethnic divisions in Calcutta as well as

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Gopal Hari Deshmukh, popularly known by his pen name of Lokahitasvadi, and Vishnu Krishna Chiplunkar were two of the most prominent public figures in nineteenth-century Maharashtra. It is customary for both Indian and Western scholars to link them with literary and nationalist movements. Yet no effort has been made so far to assess their contribution by means of a survey of their work.

Voluntary Associations and Problems of Fusion and Fission in a Minority Community in South India

The nautanki performances of northern India entertain their audiences with often ribald and profane stories. Rooted in the peasant society of pre-modern India, this theater vibrates with lively dancing, pulsating drumbeats, and full-throated singing. In Grounds for Play, Kathryn Hansen draws on field research to describe the different elements of nautanki performance: music, dance, poetry, popular story lines, and written texts. She traces the social history of the form and explores the play of meanings within nautanki narratives, focusing on the ways important social issues such as political authority, community identity, and gender differences are represented in these narratives. Unlike other styles of Indian theater, the nautanki does not draw on the pan-Indian religious epics such as the Ramayana or the Mahabharata for its subjects. Indeed, their storylines tend to center on the vicissitudes of stranded heroines in the throes of melodramatic romance. Whereas nautanki performers were once much in demand, live performances now are rare and nautanki increasingly reaches its audiences through electronic media--records, cassettes, films, television. In spite of this change, the theater form still functions as an effective conduit in the cultural flow that connects urban centers and the hinterland in an ongoing process of exchange.