Les angles de l'Inde

Résumé En

Geometries of India. J.-C. Galey. This article's backdrop is India's civilization and contemporary situation, as well as the present state of Indian Studies. It takes upfacts considered peripheral by various disciplines, and combines an ethnology of history with a history of ethnology in a critical approach. The following five points are developed : 1. In trying to understand religions and castes, Western orientalists and nineteenth century evolutionist rationalists viewed India as an object constructed with motives and categories foreign to Indian self-representations. 2. The relationship between Brahman thought and Hindu society reveals internal transformation within certain limits. 3. The complex interactions between "castes" and "tribes" legitimate a thorough reconceptualization of their postulated independence. 4. A comparison of different regional caste system configurations and of Hindu values in societies without caste organizations points out the variable forms a cultural order can assume as well as its methodological limits. 5. India's former relations with neighboring countries account for many of the borrowings whichplay a significant part in its make-up; India's exported elements reflect important features of its specificity.