Reviews Of Different Books

Page 48

294 REVIEWS On p. 620 Nur Yalman's criticisms of Dumont's views on kinship terminology should be noted. "Official Language Problems and Policies in South Asia" by Jyotirindra Das Gupta (pp. 578-596) will probably be of lasting importance as a detailed historical record of the development of language policy in India, of the conflicts between politics and linguistic realities and the defeat of Hindi as the national language. His conclusion is: "The complexity of the problem of official language in South Asia admits of no easy solution or judgment." Of the other papers I only mention "English in South Asia" by Braj B. Kachru (pp. 627-678), a masterly synthesis of a fascinating subject. Some more illustrative material might have enlivened the exposition (e.g., "your worthy self" for the "polite diction", listed without examples on p. 651) but the author has rightly concentrated upon the theoretical aspects. The same subject has since been dealt with by H. J. Vermeer in a monograph. The book ends with three chapters on linguistic studies in Pakistan, Ceylon I (Sinhalese) and Ceylon II (Tamil). D. E. Hettiraratchi gives some additional information about the Veddah speech (p. 746f.). The last chapter is one of the weakest. Zvelebil's article on Ceylon Tamil of 1966 (IIJ, 9, pp. 113-138), the most extensive study so far, was apparently not yet accessible to the author but in the sub-chapter"Tamil and ProtoDravidian" some words should at least have been said about the intriguing problem of the historical relations between Ceylon Tamil and "West-Coast Tamil" (= the western Tamil dialects and Malayalam). Instead the author expatiates on his own theory of a relationship between Dravidian and Sumerian. All in all, a book extremely rich in information on all fields of South Asian linguistics, and an indispensable tool for every linguist specializing in New Indo-Aryan or NonAryan languages. The number of misprints and misspellings is excusable in a book of this size and nature but higher than one would expect. F. B. J. Kuiper