The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c16.31

c16.31

Here we get away from "caste" as the one and only mold of Indian society. What we tend to view exclusively as the equivocal bonds of hierarchical exchange can be and are handled by the participants in terms of shared or differential rights. The brotherhood, then, is not only afloat in a sea of exchange arrangements, as we surmised in a first approximation, but equally and more importantly, it is anchored in the jural order of rights and shares.