这是人类学研究史上对于印度种姓制度进行研究的最为重要的一本书。作为人类学经典名著，杜蒙的在这本书中综合了前人对印度研究的成果，提出了“阶序”的理念，一方面揭示了印度这个古老文明的基本理念，一方面则暗指西方近代“平等”理念的局限。这是一本超越了印度研究领域，而对各种比较文 化研究都有着重要参考价值的著作。 就印度社会研究而言，这是一本到目前为止依然可以称为做出了最显著贡献和最深入研究的著作。《阶序人》涵盖了这一领域的几乎所有理论，它为作者赢得广泛声誉，这使得杜蒙的重要地位不仅局限于印度学研究，更扩展到整个人类学研究范围。—— 哈佛大学人类学教授 努尔·亚曼

Louis Dumont's modern classic, here presented in an enlarged, revised, and corrected second edition, simultaneously supplies that reader with the most cogent statement in the Indian castle system and its organizing principles and a provocative advance in the comparison of societies on the basis of their underlying ideologies. Dumont moves gracefully from the ethnographic data to the level of the hierarchical ideology encrusted in ancient religious texts which are revealed as the governing conception of the contemporary caste structure. On yet another plane of analysis, homo hierarchicus is contrasted with his modern Western antithesis, homo aequalis. This edition includes a lengthy new Preface in which Dumont reviews the academic discussion inspired by Homo Hierarchicus and answers his critics. A new Postface, which sketches the theoretical and comparative aspects of the concept of hierarchy, and three significant Appendixes previously omitted from the English translation complete in this innovative and influential work.