The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c16.5

c16.5

This involved two things. In the first place, the whole of the territory had to be uniformly mapped out in neatly separated units, which could not take cognizance of the multidimensional and widely stretched out networks and interests. Here the concept of the village as an autonomous unit came into its own. The "little republic" marvellously filled and legitimized the bureaucratic need for a well-defined basic unit. This took care of territory. Second, the people had to be categorized and counted as well. The inescapably obvious answer to this was caste. Irrespective of the manifold and significant complications of intercaste relationships, the concept of caste was hardened by administration, law courts, and especially the census into a system of tight compartments, each stereotyped by its customs, beliefs, attitudes, means of subsistence, governing institutions, and other attributes. Like the "village republic," each caste came to be seen as a separate world complete in itself.