An outstanding contribution to the ethnographic literature on caste in India, the book views the major structural dimensions of caste as related to specific functional prerequisites. The caste structure is seen to relate to goal attainment and integration; the kinship structure to pattern maintenance and tension management; and the community structure to adaptation. The aim of this book is both ethnographic and analytic. It provides a comprehensive ethnographic account of the Dule Bagdi caste, a backward caste from the Jaynagar region of West Bengal. It also provides an analytical model which could be tested and used in future studies of specific castes.