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The Cultural Pattern of Indian Civilization: A Preliminary Report of a Methodological Field Study*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Milton Singer
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Extract

During a visit with my wife to India in 1954–1955 I had an opportunity to do a methodological field study in South India. The purpose of this study was to chart an intellectual map of some of the researchable territory that lies between the culture of a village or small community and the culture of a total civilization. This study is not easy to classify in terms of prevailing conceptions about “research,” since it is something that falls between the intensive anthropological field study and the purely conceptual types of methodological analysis. But despite its unorthodox character, it seemed an appropriate type of study to undertake in a new and not well known field. Although the study was primarily designed to serve the methodological purpose of giving an empirical content to some very general ideas and to suggest concrete hypotheses for further research, it also turned up some substantive findings which have importance on their own account. In this report I shall mention some of these in passing but will in the main confine myself to the problems of method posed by the study. A more detailed and documented account of the entire study is in preparation.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , November 1955 , pp. 23 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1955

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References

1 Redfield, Robert, “The Social Organization of Tradition,”Google Scholar in this issue.

2 Redfield, Robert and Singer, Milton, “The Cultural Role of Cities,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 3.1 (10 1954)Google Scholar, esp. 64–73.

3 Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1952.

4 Marriott, McKim, “Little Communities in an Indigenous Civilization,” in Village India, ed. by Marriott, McKim, (Comparative Studies in Cultures and Civilizations, ed. by Redfield, Robert and Singer, Milton) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955).Google Scholar

5 Robert Redfield in this issue.

6 Lewis, Oscar, “Peasant Culture in India and Mexico: A Comparative Analysis,” in Village India.Google Scholar

7 An ancient manual on the classical dance beautifully expresses this organic interrelationship of different media: “The song should be sustained in the throat; its meaning must be shown by the hands; the mood (bhāva) must be shown by the glances; time (tāla) is marked by the feet. For wherever the hand moves, there the glances follow; where the glances go, the mind follows; where the mind goes, the mood follows; where the mood goes, there is the flavour, (rasa).” The Mirror of Gesture: Being the Abhinaya Darpana of Nandikeśvara, tr. by Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. and Gopalakrishnayya, Duggirala. (New York:E. Weyhe, 1936), 35.Google Scholar

8 Robert Redfield, op. cit.