Revision summary
The textual perspective explains Indian society through Dharmashastra, epics and related canons. Ghurye and Dumont used that archive to theorise caste as a hierarchical whole. The approach is strong on civilisational categories and weak on labour, gender and local power. Srinivas’s field view and Desai’s Marxism correct the book without discarding it. Texts remain part of the social system because groups still quote them in law and ritual.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
- The textual perspective reads Indian society through its authoritative books: Dharmashastra, epics, Puranas, Buddhist and Jain canons, and later commentaries. It treats those books as a map of the social system, not as optional literature. G. S. Ghurye, Louis Dumont, and the older Indologists made this the first professional grammar of Indian sociology. The living village does not vanish; it is interpreted against a civilisational text.
Body
What the texts give
Ghurye’s Caste and Race in India and his work on gotra, sadhus and Indian costume used Sanskrit sources to fix the features of caste: segmental division, hierarchy, restrictions on feeding and marriage, civil and religious disabilities, and lack of unrestricted choice of occupation. Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus went further. He argued that the ideology of purity and pollution, drawn from Brahmanical texts, is the encompassing principle of the caste system. Status, not power, is the key. The king is encompassed by the priest. McKim Marriott and Dumont–Pocock’s “For a Sociology of India” insisted that Indian facts must be thought with Indian categories, not only with Western class.
- The textual view is strong on long continuities: varna as a scheme, ashrama, purushartha, joint-family duties, and the idea of a ranked cosmos. It explains why reformers themselves quoted shastra, and why law courts still meet personal law that grew from text.
Limits of the book view
M. N. Srinivas warned against the book view replacing the field view. Texts over-represent Brahmanical order. They under-represent women, Adivasis, artisans, and the everyday bargaining of jati. A. R. Desai and Marxist historians treated the texts as ideology of a class order, not as a full description. André Béteille showed in Tanjore that land, office and caste do not always coincide as the shastra would like. M. N. Srinivas’s sanskritization is itself a comment on texts: lower groups use the book, they are not frozen inside it.
Colonial ethnography often fused the textual perspective with the census, turning fluid jati into a rigid schedule. That was a political use of text, not a neutral reading.
Flow diagram
Conclusion
The textual perspective is indispensable for the idea of the Indian social system—hierarchy, duty, and civilisational self-description. It is not a photograph of practice. A sociological answer holds Ghurye and Dumont together with Srinivas’s field and Desai’s political economy.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Do you think that new economic reforms of British rule have disrupted the old economic system of India? Substantiate your answer with suitable examples
Next question on this syllabus topic (2025 · Q3(b)). View answer →
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Is Indology the same as sociology?
No. Indology is the philological study of texts. Sociology uses those texts as one kind of evidence about a living system of groups, power and meaning.
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Did Dumont ignore politics?
He subordinated power to status in the caste ideology. Critics say this underplays kingship, land and the colonial state.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2026 · Q1(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
In what respect is M. N. Srinivas' study of Indian village society based on structural and functional perspective? Analyse. -
2023 · Q1(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Highlight the significant features of A.R. Desai's 'Dialectical Perspective' to study Indian Society -
2020 · Q1(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Elaborate A. R. Desai's perspective to the study of Indian society. -
2018 · Q1(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Write a note on G.S.Ghurye's Indological perspective of understanding Indian society. -
2017 · Q1(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Write a critique of the structural and functional perspective used by M.N. Srinivas in the understanding of Indian society
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