Caste and Sect

In order to analyse the relationship between caste and sect it is necessary to know what caste is and what sect is. ¹ During the period of my field-work these categories did not constitute a problem and it was only in the course of working my way through the data on return from the field that I gradually lost confidence that I had any real understanding of either of these institutions. As a result the comments in this concluding chapter are largely negative. In Chapter 9 on Assamese castes I set out some of the misconceptions, as they appeared from the ethnography, in anthropological models of the caste system. In Chapter 10 on the devotional path I attempted, more positively, to present certain aspects of the religion in terms which, I hoped, bore at least some correspondence to the ideas of the people. The task of de-construction is, however, much more severe than I originally supposed. In what follows I indicate some of the difficulties that have arisen in the attempt to analyse the institutions of an alien people through the concepts and language of our own culture.