Toward an Ethnosociology of South Asian Caste Systems

Marriott, McKim; Inden, Ronald

doi:10.1515/9783110807752.227

Cited by 239 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The other use of the word 'caste' is to specifically define the social organization found in traditional regional societies in India and within adjacent Hindu and related populations in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka (Leach 1967;Hutton 1969;Dumont 1980;Marriott and Inden 1985;), and which to a large extent have survived to the present day.…”

Section: Issues In the Theoretical Discussion Of Caste Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Some Theoretical Considerations on Caste

Subedi¹

2014

Dhaulagiri

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Section: Issues In the Theoretical Discussion Of Caste Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Some Theoretical Considerations on Caste

Subedi¹

2014

Dhaulagiri

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“…For a discussion of the role of 'meditative tapas' in the Upani.sads and later ascetic traditions, see Kaelber 1989. 56. Among the numerous critiques of Dumont's work, see in particular Marriott 1969Marriott , 1976bMarriott and Inden 1977;Marglin 1977. With respect to the debates between Dumont and Marriott, see n.60 below.…”

Section: Concluding Reflectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Body connections: Hindu discourses of the body and the study of religion

Holdrege

1998

Hindu Studies

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In the past decade there has been an explosion of interest in the 'body' as an analytical category in the social sciences and humanities, particularly within the context of cultural studies. Studies of the body have proliferated, representing a range of disciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, linguistics, literary theory, art history, and feminist and gender studies. Despite the proliferation of scholarship on the body in the human sciences, until recently relatively few studies have focused on discourses of the body in religious traditions--on the ways in which the body has been represented, regulated, disciplined, ritualized, cultivated, purified, and transformed in different traditions. In recent years a number of scholars of religion have begun to reflect critically on the notion of embodiment and to examine discourses of the body in particular religious traditions. However, the body has yet to be adequately theorized from the methodological perspective of the history of religions.Hindu traditions provide extensive, elaborate, and multiform discourses of the body, and I would suggest that a sustained investigation of these discourses can contribute in significant ways to the burgeoning scholarship on the body in the study of religion. I have argued elsewhere (Holdrege 1999) that the Brahman. ical Hindu tradition in particular constitutes what I term an 'embodied community,' in that its notions of tradition-identity are embodied in the particularities of ethnic and cultural categories defined in relation to a particular people (IndoAryans), a particular sacred language (Sanskrit), and a particular land (,Ary,~varta). The body is represented in the Br~hman.ical tradition as a site of central significance that is the vehicle for the maintenance of the social, cosmic, and divine orders. The body is the instrument of biological and sociocultural reproduction that is to be regulated through ritual and social duties, maintained in purity,

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“…The person is the composite of many tokens of many types. Marriott and lnden (1977) have called the South Asian concept of the individual, "dividuality." The person is divisible; he has many identities.…”

Section: Traditional Knowledge and Its Usesmentioning

confidence: 99%

time, person, and gender in Sinhalese astrology

Kemper¹

1980

American Ethnologist

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One of the defining characteristics of Ayurvedic healing in South Asia is its search for what is appropriate both to the time (Skt. kala satmya) and t o the place (deSa satmya) (Zimmerman 1975:90). The same can be said of South Asian astrology It too treats the person not as standing apart from time and place, but in relation to both. At birth, place is just as determinative of one's nature and destiny as the time of birth. After birth, place becomes less important; but as time proceeds, one's nature continues to change with it. Embedded in these conditions, the individual changes as much as does the world that he inhabits. The corollary to this proposition is a surprising one in the context of South Asian societies or, at least, in the context of the Western study of such societies. Because all persons are constituted by time and place, in this one way all persons are the same Male and female, young and old, high caste and low caste-all are equally bound by these conditions. For the astrologer, this fact has important consequences: all persons can be scrutinized simply as persons. There is no gender-specific astrological knowledge or technique; there is just astrological knowledge Here, astrological thinking seems to part ways with the generally Inferior, and certainly separate, position of women in South Asian social thought. This

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Toward an Ethnosociology of South Asian Caste Systems

Cited by 239 publications

References 2 publications

Some Theoretical Considerations on Caste

Some Theoretical Considerations on Caste

Body connections: Hindu discourses of the body and the study of religion

time, person, and gender in Sinhalese astrology

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