Envoi

The order generated and represented by thar and macrostatus level relates to hierarchy and specialization, separation and interrelation, although it hardly sorts matters in the simple manner of Bouglé's definition of a "caste" that we quoted at the start of this chapter. In one way or another, however, thar and status level in various combinations assign and control most of the differentiated production of goods and services necessary for Bhaktapur's traditional and early modern urban life.

This order ensures that the many specialists such as masons and

metalworkers—and above all, masses of farmers, will be replaced and maintained from generation to generation. It guarantees that "Ksatriyas^[*] " will hold on to the places they have been able to capture, at least for the length of a dynasty. It also provides the priests and untouchables the exemplars and technicians of the system of marked symbolism which presently will concern us. The way that the precise roles and the more diffuse qualities that thar and level attribute and assign to the people who are born into them are—or are not—made use of by the symbolic order, and the ways that the symbolic order expresses and reinforces the status system will concern us in the following chapters.