For Dumont, however, purity was much more than this: it was a part of the backbone of the social order; it was one of the rules, and not just the justification for rules. The caste system is based on the concept of purity and pollution, according to Louis Dumont's 'Homo Hierarchichus'. He also learnt Sanskrit. Despite such stigmas attached Indian Caste system remarkably survived for over 2,000 years. 2. Most articulate perhaps was Louis Dumont. ed. He has offered a detailed account of his theory in his well-lu~own book, I Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications. Dumont used ethnographic detail in this study and applied holistic approach. (300 words) Challenge 29 1. Louis Dumont, the French sociologist, is regarded as an Indologist. For Dumont pure and Impure determines to whom one can have a contact, Marriage, and giving and accepting food, Kuchha and Puckka. Dumont commences with a chapter on the confrontation noted above between Western concepts of equality and Indian concepts of hierarchy. concepts of purity, pollution, hierarchy, power, and the caste system in Indian society. A collection of excellent essays, some of which expand on the author's earlier structural analysis of purity norms. As a study of the caste system in India, Dumont’s Homo Hierarchies offers several new perspectives of social structure. The caste system, according to the currently prevalent view, is based on purity, each caste being located on a hierarchical gradation of purity, a thesis laid out most compellingly by Louis Dumont. Thus, the application of these concepts of structural hierarchy and that of purity and pollution in network of transactions between distinct categories involves, as a concomitant, the concept of ‘social distance’ separating caste categories or cluster of such categories. It has generally bern assumed that purity is the basis of hierarchy in ancient India. If Dumont has found it advisable to understand caste in terms of purity and impurity, a young sociologist may venture to find out what use an individual does put purity and impurity to in ever-changing situations in life. He further says, the caste status is mutable and upward mobility in the system is accompanied by sanskritisation of rituals. As is well known, Dumont holds that the political and economic domains of social life in India are encompassed by the nreligious.n The religious principle becomes articulated in terms of the opposition of purity and impurity. In this paper I argue that while Dumont’s total social edifice built of purity and pollution was rightly abandoned, the relational principles he said were constitutive of hierarchy were discarded at a cost to our understanding of India. gives the concept of purity and pollution which governs relation between different castes. Both pure and impure castes have their advantages and disadvantages, considering the politics of vote and rhetoric. Louis Dumont whose theory on caste is considered to be most adequate said that in case of caste, the whole notion of purity and pollution is based on ritual ‘purity’ than on physical purity. And it’s a very useful way of looking at it. His seminal work, Homo Hierarchicus, located hierarchy as the foundation of the caste system and the Brahmans at the apex of that hierarchy. Caste-based differences are practised in other religions like Nepalese Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism. This was the exotic stuff of Orientalist orgies: Max Weber saw Indian society defined in terms of purity and pollution on a sliding scale from the Brahmans to the Untouchables. purity and pollution is generally associated with the writings of the French sociologist Louis Dumont. Louis Dumont's "purity" and "pollution" - axiom of Indian polarization - etic and emic heuristic devices - the question of ethics -- deontological vs teleological -- medias in res on the Hindu side: Shiva, the erotic ascetic (O'Flaherty and long before) - the erotic element in Hinduism in general. Female bodies have been enmeshed within the discourses of culture and media that have tried to cage them within a matrix of what Louis Dumont calls as the purity-pollution syndrome. The status of Indian women is related to the concepts of purity and impurity. What is the impact of Globalization on the structure and mobilization of the working class in India? When scholars such as Louis Dumont and Michael Moffatt present the untouchables as primarily reproducing the homogeneous scheme of the ritual hierarchy of purity and pollution, they ignore the other matrices — for example, of ritual kingship, colonial governance, non-Brahmanic religions, and the modern state — that shape caste. Comment on the reasons why neo-idealists and symbolic interactionists are critical of ‘positivism’ in Sociology. The dichotomy of pollution/purity dialectically put some Castes on the lower rung of extreme denial. The traditional way of looking at caste “based on the irreconcilable opposition of purity and pollution”, an idea popularised by Louis Dumont, is “unmindful of the material dimensions of the caste system”. The 'pure' and 'polluting' groups must be kept separate from one another so that ritual purity of certain groups is maintained. Dumont proposes a single hierarchy based on purity and pollution. His understanding of caste lays emphasis on attributes of caste that is why; he is put in the category of those following the attributional approach to the caste system. Homo Hierarchicus. For example, Louis Dumont (1980) suggested that the temporary pollution deriving from childbirth and death are connected with the permanent pollution of caste. by Louis Dumont. 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