Preface / T.N. Madan -- Introduction / McKim Marriott -- Constructing an Indian ethnosociology / McKim Marriott -- Is there an Indian way of thinking? An informal essay / A.K. Ramanujan -- The original caste: power, history and hierarchy in South Asia / Nicholas B. Dirks -- Centrality, mutuality and hierarchy: shifting aspects of inter-caste relationships in north India / Gloria Goodwin Raheja -- Hindu periods of death 'impurity' / Diane Paull Mines -- Eating sins in Karimpur / Susan S. Wadley and Bruce W. Derr -- Humoral transactions in two Tamil cults: Murukan and Mariyamman / Manuel Moreno and McKim Marriott -- The Kerala house as a Hindu cosmos / Melinda A. Moore