Thursday, March 29, 2012

Irawati Karve




Irawati Karve (15 December 1905 - 11 August 1970) was an Indian anthropologist.

She was born in Mynjan in Burma and educated in Pune, India. She received a masters degree in Sociology from Pune in 1928 and a doctorate in Anthropology from Berlin in 1930. She served as the Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Deccan College till her retirement. She wrote in both Marathi and English on a wide variety of academic subjects as well as topics of general interest.

She was the daughter-in-law of Maharshi Dhondo Keshav Karve. Dinkar Karve, her husband, was an educator. Her daughter, Gauri Deshpande, made a name for herself as a writer.

She presided over the Anthropology division of the National Science Congress held in Delhi in 1947.

She died in Pune of heart attack in 1970.
Works

Her principal books are:

    Hindu Society - an interpretation(1961) - A study of the Hindu society based on data collected on her field trips and her perusal of texts in Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit. Paying, the most attention to the caste system, she discusses the pre-Aryan existence of the phenomena and traces its development to its present form.
    Kinship Organization in India(1953) - A study of various social institutions in India.
    Maharashtra -Land and People (1968) - A brief description of various social institutions and rituals therein.
    Yuganta - A look at the main characters of the Mahabharata. These character studies treat the protagonists as historical characters and use their attitudes and behaviour to understand the times they lived in. Written originally in Marathi, it was later translated by the author into English. The book won the Sahitya Academy award in 1968.
    Other Marathi works -Paripurti,Bhovara,Aamachi Samskruti,Samskruti, Gangajal.