The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c16.21

c16.21

The brotherhood institution by itself, however, is not sufficient for the task of recombining and manipulating the fractionized whole. It is, as we saw, an exclusive, formally bounded grouping and therefore lacks the more informal and expansive, though less stable, capabilities of exchange and reciprocity. Thus exchange arrangements are needed in juxtaposition to the institution of brotherhood. Because of their more informal nature, they lend themselves less to documentation. But from all we know, we may suppose that the brotherhoods are afloat in a sea of exchange arrangements. Further on, we shall have occasion to come back to the latter.