He has offered a detailed account of his theory in his well-lu~own book, I Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications. Sumit Guha’s Beyond Caste is the most important synoptic study of caste since Louis Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus. Translated by Mark Sainsbury. particular the theoretical position of Louis Dumont (1980). The cultural-particularistic view is held by Louis Dumont who holds that caste is found only in India. Despite such stigmas attached Indian Caste system remarkably survived for over 2,000 years. The castes participating in the jajmcni system can be divided into those that absorb pollution and those kept pure by the services of those absorbing pollution, plus a For Dumont pure and Impure determines to whom one can have a contact, Marriage, and giving and accepting food, Kuchha and Puckka. Most articulate perhaps was Louis Dumont. According to a hymn (RS 10,90) in the !.gveda-Sarnhit4 the earliest Indian "22 Note the steps in Dumont's argument: i. Purity-impurity is a religious principle. In this line of thinking, it is not conceived that women can take positive roles in rituals because of this pollution. The caste system is based on the concept of purity and pollution, according to Louis Dumont's 'Homo Hierarchichus'. The Brahmans are at the top of this hierarchical ladder, followed by the Kshatriyas, the Vaishyas and the Shudras. The traditional way of looking at caste “based on the irreconcilable opposition of purity and pollution”, an idea popularised by Louis Dumont, is “unmindful of the material dimensions of the caste system”. Louis Dumont's "purity" and "pollution" - axiom of Indian polarization - etic and emic heuristic devices - the question of ethics -- deontological vs teleological -- medias in res on the Hindu side: Shiva, the erotic ascetic (O'Flaherty and long before) - the erotic element in Hinduism in general. It has generally bern assumed that purity is the basis of hierarchy in ancient India. Louis Dumont whose theory on caste is considered to be most adequate said that in case of caste, the whole notion of purity and pollution is based on ritual ‘purity’ than on physical purity. The status of Indian women is related to the concepts of purity and impurity. In Homo Hierarchies, his controversial study of caste, Louis Dumont proposed a way to do this for India. He also learnt Sanskrit. The 'pure' and 'polluting' groups must be kept separate from one another so that ritual purity of certain groups is maintained. Both pure and impure castes have their advantages and disadvantages, considering the politics of vote and rhetoric. The status of Indian women is related to the concepts of purity and impurity. This was the exotic stuff of Orientalist orgies: Max Weber saw Indian society defined in terms of purity and pollution on a sliding scale from the Brahmans to the Untouchables. But for Dumont, it is the organising concept. What is the impact of Globalization on the structure and mobilization of the working class in India? The paper traces the restrictions imposed on female bodies through a (300 words/ IAS 2009) Challenge 28 1. concepts of purity, pollution, hierarchy, power, and the caste system in Indian society. controversial structuralist approach, Louis Dumont (1966) proclaimed ritual ideas of purity and pollution to be the fundamental idea underlying the caste system, encompassing all other concepts. Homo Hierarchicus. Louis Dumont’s seminal anthropological work, Homo Hierarchicus, states that caste is voluntary and static. Dumont has developed a genaal theory, an "ideal type", of the traditional Hindu caste system. Gupta, on the Gupta, on the other hand, challenges Dumont on the basis of alternative evidence, or hierarchies that are Indologists and anthropologists from Louis Dumont to Declan Quigley to Nicholas Dirks have variously described and analysed caste in various ways, but the challenge is to write about it in a way to destroy it from people’s consciousness, from social, political, legal and economic structures so that it disappears from people’s practices in daily life for good. His understanding of caste lays emphasis on attributes of caste that is why; he is put in the category of those following the attributional approach to the caste system. According to the author, viewed from ‘below’ the most critical feature of caste is the experience of untouchability—in which the ‘line of pollution’ has been an important category in the official discourse on caste. The caste system in India is the paradigmatic ethnographic example of caste.It has origins in ancient India, and was transformed by various ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and modern India, especially the Mughal Empire and the British Raj. Louis Dumont's modern classic, here presented in an enlarged, revised, and corrected second edition, simultaneously supplies that reader with the most cogent statement on the Indian caste system and its organizing principles and a provocative advance in the comparison of societies on the basis of their underlying ideologies. The caste system, according to the currently prevalent view, is based on purity, each caste being located on a hierarchical gradation of purity, a thesis laid out most compellingly by Louis Dumont. Female bodies have been enmeshed within the discourses of culture and media that have tried to cage them within a matrix of what Louis Dumont calls as the purity-pollution syndrome. 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