According to chaturvarna system, the Hindu society was divided into four main varnas – ... For Louis Dumont, the caste system is not a form of stratification but a special form of inequality. called castes. Dumont’s hierarchical tree will endure or fall according to how it withstands one Homo Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste crucial test of internal consistency: whether System. He says that caste is a special type of inequality therefore sociologist have to understand its essence and solve it. 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. In fact, Dumont highlights the ‘state of mind’, which ti expressed by the emergence in various. Louis Dumont has described caste system as Indian model of social stratification which is opposite to the western model of stratification based on class. This concept of dividing people in terms of pollution and purity was given by the famous Anthropologist Louis Dumont. Hierarchy: According to Louis Dumont , castes teach us a fundamental social principle of hierarchy. Moon, Vasant. 1] In class, the status is determined by merit or worth. The lower castes are regarded as less pure and more polluted. Louis Dumont (1911-1998), an eminent sociologist and Indologist, was a towering figure in the fields of sociology and anthropology in the world. Louis Dumont later insisted that dominance arises solely from economic power rather than factors such as numerical strength, and that this power flows exclusively from control of land (Dumont 1970). Louis Dumont (1970) Homo Hierarchicus: An Essay on the Caste System. The major attributes of caste are the hierarchy, the separation, and the division of labor. The work contains a valuable discussion of the debate on the relation of untouchable castes to Hindu hierarchy. Comparison between caste and class. 2. In caste, it is determined by birth. Each jati is composed of a group deriving its livelihood primarily from a specific occupation. People are born into a Caste system is a hereditary classification of people in a society, distinguishing people by relative degree of social prestige or status. They are not considered to be included in the ranked castes. Dumont says that caste … Mark Sains- it successfully integrates the purity-impurity bury, trans. At the top of this hierarchy is … It is today the basis of affirmative action programmes in India. unclean and polluting, such as scavenging and skinning dead animals and are considered outcastes. The varnas are then divided into specialized sub-castes called jatis. According to him, caste has a relationship with each other in terms of economy, political and kinship surviving by following certain values that are said to be religious. Restrictions on Occupations: The different castes are usually associated with traditional occupations. Each of these castes is a well developed social group, the membership of which is determined by the consideration of birth. Nature of … There are around 3000 castes and 25,000sub-castes in India. An important ethnography that draws on Louis Dumont's emphasis on the ideological consensus of purity and pollution to examine social relations and religious structure among an untouchable caste in a southern Indian village. LOUIS DUMONT. According to Dumont, distinctions of varna—the four main categories of Hindu society—are founded on degrees of purity and impurity, with the Brahmins at the top being the most pure, the most in danger of pollution from other groups, and hence the most subject to purity rules. 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