Good Deeds: Parsi trusts from ‘the womb to the tomb’

Parsis (Indian Zoroastrians), a small traditionally endogamous group, are well known in India for their philanthropic giving. The Parsis of Mumbai are beneficiaries of hundreds of Parsi public charitable trusts today, and this article will show how trusts, as particular forms of giving, establish perpetual communal obligation connecting the past and present. It will show how the circulation of personal assets through customary inheritance within a family is replaced by the trust with the circulation of communal obligations in perpetuity. While this mechanism of giving has a marked endurance, what has changed is what constitutes ‘the good’ within these deeds. Moving away from traditional philanthropic practices of subsidizing education, medical care, and welfare to the poor, the focus of giving has shifted to the pursuit of communal reproduction, both biological and social.

Caste Systems and Technology in Premodern Societies

This chapter sheds new light on the effects of social institutions on long-run development. In particular, it explores the impact of caste systems during the early phases of economic and demographic development through how the systems influenced the possibilities for labor specialization. Based on data for precolonial social organization across different ethnicities, the chapter provides novel evidence that supports the hypothesis that caste systems were indeed conducive to specialization and technological sophistication. The hypothesis builds on the idea that caste systems, by promoting strong ties of solidarity and cooperation within groups, might have facilitated and accelerated the process of labor specialization and technological advancement. Moreover, the endogamous group might have represented the natural basin from which to recruit labor for extending production beyond the family unit.

Ritual Purity and the Mandaeans' Identity

The Mandaeans are the members of an ethno-religious group living in Iran and Iraq. The religion of the Mandaeans is a written tradition and is the main reference of their identity. As a small endogamous group under the hegemony of the non-Mandaeans and exposed to epidemics, they always have been under the threat of cultural extinction. Therefore, group identity protection has become one of their major concerns, which is reflected in their religious practice. The Mandaeans practice a doctrinal ritualistic religion with recurrence theme of purity. The doctrinal rituals allow them to transmit a large number of religious codes through generations and to re-establish their identity. Simultaneously, the obsession with bodily purity symbolically shows their preoccupation with the unity and integrity of the threatened group boundaries. Since recent decades the Mandaeans' homeland in Iran and Iraq has undergone dramatic socio-political changes caused by the Islamic Revolution of Iran and the first and second Persian Gulf Wars and their entailed instabilities. These circumstances led to the emigration of many Mandaeans to other countries and formation of Mandaean diasporas around the world. These new social conditions are making a crucial effect on the Mandaeans' religious system and identity policy. The article is based on a long-term ethnographic study on the Mandaeans of Iran.

Varna Schemes and Ideological Integration in Indian Society

Several decades ago, many studies of Indian caste equated this institution with the four-fold scriptural division of society called the varnas. At the present, however, most anthropologists agree that the jati or local endogamous group is the effective unit of caste. Although the varnas have little to do with the organization of caste groups, they do say something about the ideological integration of regions and sub-regions in traditional India. The term varna should not only be taken to refer to the literate, scriptural division. Rather it should mean any indigenous ideological scheme which merges castes into larger status categories or classifications. This paper suggests that such varna schemes are found throughout India, and that their individual distribution demarcates important cultural regions or nuclear areas. These schemes seem to function as ideological or ‘mechanical’ integrating mechanisms for areas which do not have stable and longstanding political and economic centricity (or ’organic’ cohesion). The ideas advanced below are in no sense final, but rather are intended mainly as suggestive of future research. They are tentative propositions aimed at a broader perspective on how regions in India were ideologically bounded by localized status categories of castes.