It has been two decades since the publication in this series of Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon, and North-West Pakistan (E.R. Leach, ed., 1960), a collection of important ethnographic and analytical papers which provided an impetus for further study of South Asian systems of caste organization. In the intervening years both the ethnographic record and the range of theoretical frameworks to interpret data on caste systems have so greatly expanded that it would be quite possible today to convene a collection of papers dealing with any one of many specialized ‘aspects of caste’ currently under investigation. The unit of study has continued to diversify over the period, so that reports of localized village caste hierarchies have been supplemented by studies of regional caste organization and longitudinal studies of caste mobility through time. Yet, despite the increasing diversity of empirical work, the compelling patterns of similarity and variation in caste systems throughout the region continue to nourish efforts to discover a single pan-Indie rationale, or cultural logic, which could be seen to underly all manifestations of caste organization.

Broadly speaking, the essays in this volume challenge the uniformity and consistency of indigenous ‘caste ideologies’ in different South Asian fleldwork settings, while at the same time seeking to trace how these ideologies impinge upon the actual patterns of group interaction observable in South Asian life. The term ‘ideology’ in this context has entered South Asian anthropology through the work of Louis Dumont, and it is used here to refer to a coherent and systematic set of indigenous ideas, assumptions, and values which inform, shape, and give meaning to a broad range of social institutions.