Harald Tambs-Lyche

His research on caste highlighted the significance of "conflict, competition and power relations", but because of the influence of Louis Dumont and McKim Marriott on him, also placed emphasis on "the presence of a hierarchizing mode of interaction and discourse".

In the book, Tambs-Lyche provided a study of the changing relationship between three groups in the region — the kings and their agricultural, Brahmin, pastoral and Rajput supporters; the merchants; and the Charans — with the three of them representing power, profit, and poetry, respectively.

Assessing Tambs-Lyche's work, Mahesh Neelkanth Buch stated that he explored the subject matter from three angles — anthropological, socio–political, and historical — with an infusion of myth and legend.

[16][17] The authors located the two "within the broader transformations in northern Europe, the Victorian empire in India, colonial Bengal and the Santal communities in the aftermath of the suppressed rising (Hul) of 1855–56".

The monograph argued that the variations in the Victorian evangelism was one of the root causes of the "failure of the Scandinavians to sustain their communitarian vision of a Santal utopia, ruled by puritan values of industry and prosperity".

[18] Tambs-Lyche reflected on the previous studies on caste by Adrian C. Mayer, Andre Beteille, Frederick George Bailey, Fredrik Barth, Gerald Berreman, Govind Sadashiv Ghurye, Louis Dumont, McKim Marriott, and Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas.

University of Lausanne's Raphaël Rousseleau noted that Tambs-Lyche initially "[distinguished] various forms of kingship" in northern and southern India from the medieval and modern period by drawing on the approach of Burton Stein, and later introduced his personal "historical schematization" as well.

Rousseleau also noted that he drew from the works of Chris J. Fuller, Lawrence A. Babb, Susan Snow Wadley, and Gérard Toffin and Véronique Bouillier to "[demonstrate] the contextual and fluid nature of divine classifications" to emphasize "the importance of transactions in the processes of hierarchization of gods and men", thereby making the argument that "rituals and festivals reflect less an underlying harmonious order than they express strategic attempts to create an Integration through Ritual".