All three of these chapters discuss relatively small local groups of Jains in Rajasthan, but they come to different conclusions as to whether these groups are ‘communities’ in terms of the criteria in the position paper (chapter I). Howard Jones says that his circle of Jain business-men does make a community, while Christine Cottam Ellis and N. K. Singhi, both discussing much larger groups, maintain that Jains in the final analysis have a dominant identity which derives from outside the purely Jain sphere.

The issue here is the differing contexts of these three studies. Although all are in rural Rajasthan, the three groups do seem to be rather different, even allowing for the individual emphases of our authors. It is not, perhaps, so important for us to state our opinion on the issue of whether these are, or are not, communities. Readers can make their own judgement. But what is interesting is to compare the materials we are given, look at the elements of cohesion and divisiveness among the three groups of Jains, and discuss whether these correlate with the local contexts.

To begin with, the papers deal with Jain groups of very different scale. Jones has a small group of 150 Jains, all of them engaged in business and finance, living in an isolated village with a total population of around 1,000.