- Irawati Karve
Irawati Karve (15 December 1905 - 11 August 1970) was an Indian anthropologist.
She was born in Mynjan in
Burma and educated inPune ,India . She received a masters degree inSociology 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 atDeccan College till her retirement. She wrote in bothMarathi 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 andPrakrit . Paying, the most attention to thecaste 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 inIndia .
*"Maharashtra -Land and People (1968) - A brief description of various social institutions and rituals therein.
*"Yuganta" - A look at the main characters of theMahabharata . 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 theSahitya Academy award in 1968.
*Other Marathi works -"Paripurti","Bhovara","Aamachi Samskruti","Samskruti", "Gangajal".Also check this out
* Maharshi Karve & Family http://maharshikarvefamily.blogspot.com/
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