ABSTRACT
This chapter reports an attempt to understand a local caste hierarchy in village terms, and more particularly an attempt to connect local ideas and opinions about caste rank with a model of this hierarchy as a system of symbolic interaction, also local. The job of constructing an occupational index of caste rank seemed to pose problems as formidable as those of a dietary index, but more complex because the number of occupational differentia is so much larger than the number of nutritional differentia. The net effects of the five kinds of food transactions upon the rankings of all castes may be compared by inspecting their respective series of net scores. The matrix form of representation makes possible a separate analysis of the distinctions of rank made by each caste in its vector of transactions with the others. The Goatherds' initial difficulties also illustrate the interconnectedness of the system of food transactions as a whole.
