India: The Social Anthropology of a Civilisation by Bernard S Cohn; Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1971; pp xv+164; $1.50.
IN 'great civilisational' areas such as India with a long and recorded historical past, society can be studied not merely at a particular point of time but also over a period of time. With the help of archives available in the Government record offices and a whole lot of other literature particularly in the regional languages, social conditions in India during different periods in the past can be studied and analysed sociologically. Moreover, the 'ethnographic present' can be studied in relation to the past. This is very useful, if not essential, in the analysis of social change.
