BOOK REVIEW 95 the coloniser, who located progress towards free labour in terms of slavery->serfdom-Klebt bondage. The kamias are usually from the outcaste group called Bhuiyas, found mostly in every district of south Bihar. They are distinguished by the advances of money and grain they receive from the landlords. This region-specific presence is attributed to the labour-intensive paddy cultivation. Prakash also identifies social relations as an important, determining factor. This second point is corroborated by sociologists who emphasise the links between the dominance of the feudal ethos and the kamia structure in parts of north Bihar, for example (Hetukar Jha, Social Structure of Indian Villages: A Study of Rural Bihar, New Delhi, 1991). More importantly, the very fact that in parts of adjoining Orissa the Bhuiyas are not regarded as outcastes makes the author's point particularly relevant. The second chapter seeks to interpret oral and written texts with the idea of delineating the nature of the pre-colonial agrarian economy and the changes that took place after the 14th century A.D., leading to agricultural expansion and the subordination of the Bhuiyas. Prakash narrates three versions of a Bhuiya epic, explaining their historical status as a ritually polluted group engaged in agricultural labour. He emphasises the varying degrees of sanskritisation underlying all of them. As pointed out, the 'unclean rank* of the Bhuiyas has a long history and represents a long-term process. The consumption of beef by Tusi Bir (the youngest of seven brothers of whom Bhagwan was the eldest) is cited by the author to illustrate the sanskritisation process. It's tempting to ask here if this also implies an assertion of the Bhuiya's identity, within this over-all process, as well? One can also speculate if Prakash's method of binarising the oral tradition associated with Tuisi Bir and Hindu gods, in terms of contact/confrontation is methodologically sustainable, given the process of sanskritisation he refers to. There is a recognition of the structure of caste and its internalisation by the Bhuiyas. More importantly, their oral tradition establishes that the kamias were 'dependent servants of dominant lords' in the pre-colonial period (p.81). In the third chapter the author projects the changes in the post-Permanent Settlement period, underlining that these were not one directional over the two centuries (i.e. 18th and 19th). He refers to the zamindars being armed by colonial property rights, which in the late c.l9th, replaced their pre-colonial basis of power—i.e. coercion and their position in the social hierarchy. This pre-colonial/c.l9th demarcation needs to be, perhaps, located in relation to the feudal ethos/coercion, which can hardly be ignored while studying the mechanism of agricultural surplus appropriation. Thus, although one can agree with Prakash upto a point, his demarcation makes one feel uncomfortable since it over-dramatises the process of colonisation.