The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c17.1

c17.1

Apart from its obvious place in Max Weber's study of Hinduism, caste, though fairly often mentioned, does not appear to be a central concern in his thought. Weber, it would seem, is mainly interested in caste as a particular, even extreme case of the closed estate (*Stand*) as different from *Klasse*. The distinctive element that turns *Stand* into its extreme form, caste, is that it is underwritten by the ritual sanction of pollution.¹ With Louis Dumont, we may note in passing how Weber on this basis achieves a remarkable junction of hierarchy, ethnicity, and division of labor.² In an imaginative tour de force, he pulls together disparate notions on the nature and origin of caste in a succinct, logically coherent formula. In Weber's view, the caste phenomenon comes down to "eine umgreifende Vergesellschaftung die ethnisch geschiedenen Gemeinschaften zu einem spezifischen politischen Gemeinschaftshandeln zusammenschliesst".³ This formula may count as a school example of Weber's particular use of the concepts of *Gemeinschaft* and *Gesellschaft*.⁴