Reprint of the original, first published in 1872.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1872.

Product Dimensions: 25x16x3 cm. - Description: The book is divided into 4 parts, that are based on the 4 fold division of Hindu castes: Brahmanical, Kshatriya, and Rajputs mixed castes of Viasyas and Shudras, and finally aboriginal, and other so called lower castes. This work, first published in 1872, is the outcome of meticulous researches carried out by the author. Drawing upon various treatises, and his acquaintance with many families of Benaras, he presents the outcome in a very clear and academic way. The book is divided into 4 parts, that are based on the 4 fold division of Hindu castes : Brahmanical, Kshatriya and Rajpoots, Mixed Castes of Viasyas and Shudras, and finally Aboriginal, and other so-called lower castes. Genealogies of the castes given are quite thorough, and often are traced tight back to their mythological roots. Over 400 castes in all have been noticed. Included in the book are 5 plates of quaint bearded statues that are found in the vicinity. The book has 405 pages.

When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.