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with associated companies in Berlin lbadan Preface to the First French Edition xlv
Brief Note on Translite ration of Indian Words li
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INTRODU CTION I
Published in India I Castes and ourselves I
By Oxford Univefsity Press, New Delhi 2 The individual and sociology f
Preface and Postface © 1980 the University of Chicago 3 Individualism and holism 8
© 1970 George Weidenfie ld and Nicholson Ltd and the Univ~rsity of Chicago 4 Rousseau on equality II
Licensed by the University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois 5 Tocqueville on equality '3
6 Tocqueville on individualism 17
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker) 7 Necessity of hierarchy '9
First published 1970
Oxford India Paperback s 1998 CH,\PTER I: HISTORY OF IDEAS
Second impressio n 1999 I I Definition : the word (caste'
12 Main attitudes
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Oxford University Press, at the address above
I8 Mter r945
You must not circulate rhis book in any other binding or cover and you must
impose this same condition on any acquirer CHAPTER II: FROM SYSTEM TO STRUCTU RE:
ISBN 019 564 5472 THE PURE AND THE IMPURE
u Element and system
TI1is edition is for sale mily in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, 22, The place of ideology
Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanm<tr
23 The notion of structure
24 The fundamental opposition
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 ,PREFACE TO THE COMPLETE ENGLISHEDITI.QN
sive discussion that has centred on H,H" as I shall abbreviate the
title and of the subsequent development of the research, The non-
spe~ialist reader may have found strange or even shocking some
particular viewpoint or statement found m the work, What are the
opinions of the author'scolleagues? Should the pomt be taken as
scientifically established or as a gratuItouS construct? Where does
the matter stand today?
PREFACE TO THE GOMPLETE ENGLISH EDITION
,an egalitarian theory of castes, or at least of varnas) - younger than
Hutton, but like him watched for by death, Professor Bose, having
read the book in the English translation, sent word of his support
in the form of a long review, written for his journal, Man in
India, and published in a Calcutta newspaper by his friends, in
which he expressed reservations only with respect to details. 2 H.H.
can take pride in these two endorsements, and sometimes one
would like to find more of the openmindedness shown by these
two veterans in their perhaps more modern, but often less
experienced, successors.
Most anthropological criticism of HH. mixes praise and blame.
Later we shall try to separate the arguments that are (more or less
generally) accepted from the ones that are rejected" but what is
distinctive is the mixture of opposite opinions addressing the work
as a whole. It is not completely impossible to praise an author while
condemning his work, and one also can, and often does, dissociate
the theory from its application in order to favour one or the other.'
Still, the work - condemned, not to say caricatured, here; extolled
there (and sometimes meeting both reactions in the same spot)-
has been granted an honourable place in the history of caste studies.
Let us interpret 'this observation: all these pa"adoxes express the
fact that the special study of India and, more broadly, the discipline
of anthropology are deeply divided in their basic orientations. 4 A
major factor in this division lies in the endemic materialist ten-
dency, strongly reinforced by Marxism's hold over many minds.
Here, French Marxist dogmatism has been slow to react. At first,
serious authors silenced their preferences and surrendered. Even-
tually, it took an Africanist to give form - in fact, caricatural form
- to the 'necessary refutation. 5
Three facts. govern both the level and the limits of what can be
said here of H.H.'s place yesterday and today in the social anthro-
pology of India. The scope of the controversy which H.H. has
aroused calls for some explanation and makes simplification and
selection necessary. Moreover, the field has evolved in the past ten
years, and certain attituqes are outmoded. Finally, the author him-
self has moved away from Indian studies and he must take this into
account. Let us take up these three points.
H.H. has been the subject of numerous reviews, of:<n appearing
as review articles, an unpublished public discussion at the 1971
Annual Conference of the American Anthropological Association
xiii