Louis Dumont's modern classic, here presented in an enlarged, revised, and corrected second edition, simultaneously supplies that reader with the most cogent statement on the Indian caste system and its organizing principles and a provocative advance in the comparison of societies on the basis of their underlying ideologies. Dumont moves gracefully from the ethnographic data to the level of the hierarchical ideology encrusted in ancient religious texts which are revealed as the governing conception of the contemporary caste structure. On yet another plane of analysis, homo hierarchicus is contrasted with his modern Western antithesis, homo aequalis. This edition includes a lengthy new Preface in which Dumont reviews the academic discussion inspired by Homo Hierarchicus and answers his critics. A new Postface, which sketches the theoretical and comparative aspects of the concept of hierarchy, and three significant Appendixes previously omitted from the English translation complete this innovative and influential work.

The study delineates interrelationships between the thermal environment, specially the prolonged seasonal heat stress, and human life and culture in North India. The subject is first treated historically, with a survey of the ideals and behavior of man's adaptation to the climate in ancient and medieval India, and in colonial Anglo-Indian society. Present-day adaptations to the climate, as reflected in housing, clothing, technology, daily regimen, and diet are described and examined in greater detail. The second part of the report centers on heat injuries, with a survey of their worldwide epidemiology, and statistics and maps showing their incidence since 1960 in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The folk beliefs, concepts and therapy which are generally applied in rural North India to the occurrence of heat injuries are described and examined. Appendices further describe the recognized heat disorders and the scientific indices for assessing comfort and heat stress. (Author).

Case study in rural sociology of living conditions in a North Indian village as an illustration of the various aspects of the processes of social change for the purpose of planning community development programmes - includes a literature survey and information on the research method used, and covers family and occupational structures, leadership, traditions, aspects of intergroup relations, social status and environment, the social structure, behavioural norms, etc. Bibliography.

The traditional South Indian village pictures the entire universe as an entity in which all living things and human beings play a necessary and effective role. The stability of this worldview is based on a close relationship among human beings, grain crops, and cattle, which has permitted the continuous exploitation of agricultural lands over several centuries. Taken as a whole, the life of South Indian villagers represents a subtle and complicated adaptation to complex and variable environmental circumstances. It now faces the challenge of adjusting to modernization.After a fascinating description of the traditional South Indian worldview, Alan R. Beals describes the settlement patterns and social structures that characterize village life, the agricultural technology and ecology, and the techniques of population regulation that have traditionally operated to maintain appropriate man-to-land ratios. He then explains the relationships among villages, including marriage and economic exchanges, and the omnipresent influence of hierarchies of caste and social ranking.Over the past 2,000 years, South Indian civilization has undergone constant change and modification. Empires have risen and fallen, famine and plague have swept the land, and cities have been built and forgotten. But through all these years of change, the traditional South Indian village has maintained its basic character, adjusting to a variety of environments and countless conquests, yet always adhering to a single basic pattern of life. Village Life in South India, originally published in 1974, provides the reader not only with a still-valid description of a particular and distinctive way of life, but also with an explanation of how life is explained in ecological theory.

First published in 1998. The efficacy of the modern village or community studies lies in their deriving better understandings of the structure and function of institutions. They perform this office of social science by analysing the living workings of institutions in the experience of human beings struggling between traditional values and modern imperatives of change. the book before us is a community study, in that it lays bare before us a living village, in an interesting and too little reported region of the great and complex land of India. It is also, most importantly, the study of a local variant of a traditional economies institution, called elsewhere the Jajmani system, better the traditional economy of clientage and patronage, uniting service castes in ritual and craft services to the landowners and cultivators of a corporate village. an object of interest and seminal for social science since its discovery in the seminal historical studies of Sir Henry Maine.