are printed after the text and are followed by a reply from the author.Vol, 11 . No, 3 . J« '" 1973 of personal experience to social institutions, and with the impact of personal choice on social change. Such questions are more likely to be raised by life history studies, those which follow the individual through the course of his career.A life history is the account of a life, completed or ongoing. Such an account obviously involves some kind of selection, since only a very small part of all that the person has experienced can possibly be re corded. Certain salient facts about a person are likely to be recorded by any narrator, but much of any life history has to be chosen for inclusion according to some principles for selection. Often enough, such principles as are used are unstated or unwitting or inchoate. Most social scientists who have pointed out the great potential of the life history approach for their respective disciplines have seen as its chief dif ficulty the lack of accepted principles of selection, of suitable analytic concepts to make up a coherent frame of reference.Three procedural suggestions are given here as a possible start for such a frame. The ideas of the dimensions, turnings, and adaptations in a life history may be useful as guidelines for the collection and analysis of life history data. These ideas are not intended to be inviolable classifications; nor are they substantive concepts, though using them may help us develop such concepts_ Their applicability is illustrat ed with the life history of Gandhi, whose life bears such intrinsic interest that, in this study as in other contexts, it has become something more than an illustration, has taken on, as it were, a life of its own. Garraty 1957). But the study of lives for purposes of social science has been more advocated than prac ticed. At one time the Social Science Research Council gave special attention to the use of life histories and of related personal documents (see Blumer 1939, All port 1942, Gottschalk 1945, Kluckhohn 1945, Angell 1945. Other psychologists and sociologists have also given directives for the study of life history and have outlined programs for research (d. Park and Burgess 1924; BUhler 1933 BUhler , 1968a K. Young 1952; P. Young 1966; Becker 1966; Denzin 1970). But not many have as yet done much recording and analysis of life histories as wholes. Longitudinal studies, nota bly those conducted in the Institute of Human Devel opment at the University of California, Berkeley, have yielded many significant observations of growth and social development, but these have yet to be placed in their social and cultural contexts. LIFE HISTORY STUDIES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCESAnthropologists have recorded life histories since the beginnings of the discipline. Many of these have been published (d. Langness 1965: 54-82 The stimulus to record them has been, I believe, not so much the outcome of a deliberate research plan as the result of a characteristic phase of the anthropologist's own life experience. When an an thro...

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Indian diagers gmerdLy separate the transcudentad f w w k of thcir rdigion jrom the more pragmatic fw&ons, assigning diJerd deities, rijds, and practitioners to each. The two complexes o j religious bdiejs and praciicw are taken ar comfikmmtary to each other. Some tribd grwps NTHROPOLOGICAL studies of religion have long demonstrated thatA each people uses its religion to serve a number of purposes, but it has not often been noted that in some cultures two of the general functions of religion are separated, with different deities, rites, and practitioners being assigned to ,each. The one complex is geared to the transcendental functions of religion and the other to the more pragmatic functions. Each complex is taken as being complementary to the other, rather than as a rival or an alternate.If we then use this separation of function as a criterion for comparing religions, we can classify them into several categories. It will be seen that these categories have interesting implications for formulating sequences of development from one religious category to another, a kind of formulation that, as is well known, has not been conspicuously successful in a good many previous attempts.Religion as used here means all of a group's beliefs and acts relating to their concept of the supernatural. The term "religion" thus includes abstract cosmology as well as specific "magical" devices used to cure or exorcise. The test of what is to be taken as religious is whether those who hold the beliefs and perform the acts believe that in doing so they are dealing with forces beyond those that men, by their own power, can control and command. It covers all that they believe to be superhuman and supernatural, beyond the ordinary grasp of man and above the natural world (cf. Spiro 1964: 102-103; 1966:96-98). While the scope of the supernatural can be very differently defined in different cultures, the distinction between natural and supernatural has been made by most peoples.We start with the two functional aspects of religion as they appear in village Hinduism and other religious forms in India and in village Buddhism in Ceylon. These were noted in an earlier paper (Mandelbaum 1964), which .discussed the studies in Religion in South Asia (edited by Harper 1964Harper ), par-1174