are ecologically capable of sustaining kingdoms: relatively large populations in
a relatively small area. Caste is associated with fertile agriculture, not with
barren mountainous or desert regions. Secondly, it offers an explanation of why
caste organization is found among non-Hindu communities in India, Nepal and
Sri Lanka and why very similar forms of social organization are found in other
monarchical and feudal societies which give ideological stress to what Geertz
(1980) has aptly called “the exemplary center.”
Caste ideology is an expression of the conflicting demands of two different
principles of social organization. On the one hand, there is the hierarchical prin-
ciple of monarchy, a form of centralization which, of itself, is always very
tenuous because it is dependent on personal patronage.^6 On the other hand,
there is the relatively egalitarian principle of lineage organization which simul-
taneously stresses kinship (sameness) and marriageability (difference, but
bridgeable difference). To be a member of a lineage in a caste-organized society
is to identify first with one’s lineal kin in opposition to members of all other
lineages, then to identify with that group of lineages inside of which one may
seek spouses in opposition to those lineages which are not acceptable marriage
partners.
Hocart brings together these principles of organization in caste society by
arguing that castes are “families” which hereditarily transfer ritual functions in
order to ensure that the king and nobles remain in a pure state (1950: 17, 20).
In contrast to the idea that caste is orientated to a pure–impure axis with
Bra ̄hman.as and Untouchables at polar ends, Hocart argues that what is at stake
is the integrity of kingship, the institution to which everyone is connected. By
implication, it is a very fragile integrity which can only be maintained by the
repeated performance of rituals (sacrifices). The integrity of kingship provides a
model – an exemplary center – for others to emulate by replicating the king’s
rituals on a lesser scale.
Hocart’s approach endorses Dumont’s assertion that the separation of king
and priest (as he put it, the “disjunction between status and power”) is central
to the theory of caste. But it shows that Dumont was quite wrong about the
dynamic of relations between kings and priests and the underlying structure
they depended on. Nobility and kingship are not a simple matter of material
dominance, but are concerned with the ability to command rituals which bring
the community together and expurgate the inauspiciousness which social life
habitually generates. Priests are the instruments who perform this purging func-
tion and who therefore make possible kingship and nobility. Caste organization
could thus be said to be a division of the community into noble and kingly
families on the one hand and priests on the other, provided it is understood
that the primary function of priests is to cleanse the society of anything which
threatens it with death and evil.
In the modern, postcolonial period, the ostensible disappearance of kings from
the political scene has not led to the disappearance of kingshipas an organizing
principle of ritual and social relations though this has often been obscured by
on the relationship between caste and hinduism 501