A Christian Caste in Hindu Society

Religious Leadership and Social Conflict among the Paravas of Southern Tamilnadu

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3649986
AutoresB Kaufmann (0000-0002-8033-8989), S B Kaufmann (St. Clare Hospital in Lakewood, autor de correspondencia)
Año1981
Volumen15
Número2
Páginas203-234
Fecha de publicación1981-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x00007058
OpenAlexW1967125490
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas19

Since the nineteenth century scholars have depicted Indian castes as timeless, fixed communities whose customs, rituals, and occupational specialities evolved at an unidentifiable point in the distant past. It has now been shown, however, that manyjatisare of relatively recent origin, and historians have been able to trace the economic, political, and religious changes which acted to form individual caste groups during the colonial period. Several recent works on south India have argued that the agglomerations of artisans and cultivators described as castes in British ethnographies and Census reports had no real cohesion and were often no more than unstable political alliances or 'administrative fictions'. In this view it was the misconceived European notion of castes as rigid, competing corporations which stimulated the formation of many south Indian castes after 1880

Caste · Colonialism · Economic geography · Ethnography · Geography · Hinduism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Urban agglomeration · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Law · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies