The Bha

The Bha, or Bha(n), have the thar name "Karanjit." In the course of death rituals for upper-status thar s, during the first ten days following death a Bha acts as an instructor and assistant to the chief mourner (the kriya putra , usually the oldest son) in a bereaved client household, and constructs some of the objects used during this period (app. 6).^[22]

On the tenth day, the final day of the mourning period, the family makes a presentation of substantial gifts to the attending Bha for the special work he must now do on that day. During the ten days after death the spirit of the dead person, which has been in the dangerous and marginal form of a preta , has been forming its "spiritual body" piece by piece in a definite sequence, and by the tenth day that body is completely formed (app. 6). The relation of the Bha to this formation, and one of the reasons be is given substantial gifts on this day is not discussed publicly, in part to protect the public reputation of contemporary members of the thar and thus to ensure that the custom will continue.^[23] Chattopadhyay (1923, 468) quotes from Brian Hodgson's early nineteenth-century descriptions of the functions of the various Newar thar s that

The Bhat [Bha:] are also connected with funerals; they accept the death gifts made on the eleventh [now, for Bhaktapur's upper thar s, at least, the tenth] day after the funeral of Newars of any caste (excluding outcastes) [now in Bhaktapur only for Pa(n)cthariya and above]. In the case of the Ksatriyas^[*]

[Pa(n)cthariya and Chathariya] it is mentioned that a piece of the brain of the deceased is kept covered with sweetmeats, the rest of the body being burnt, and this is eaten by the Bhat on the eleventh day as he accepts the death gifts.

The death gifts that the Bha is now given include such substantial items as clothes, shoes, hats, mattresses, kitchen pots, drinking vessels, and substantial quantities of food. The Bha, it is said, is now often given a bit of ordinary food to eat, rather than a part of the dead body, but this "ordinary food" may, in at least some, perhaps in most, high-status cases, be boiled rice previously touched to a fragment of one of the corpse's bones. This ingestion by the Bha is said to ensure the preta 's eventual reincarnation in a human rather than an animal form. Another possible function (and alternate explanation for the Bha's action) may be to ensure that the spirit itself has completed its change from preta to human-like form (app. 6).^[24]

Brahmans say that if a Brahman were to go to the house of a mourner on the tenth day and were to eat anything, or to accept any offering, he would lose his status as a Brahman. In other parts of South Asia, similar ingestion is or was done by a Brahman himself on the death of people of very high status. The Brahman was then very highly compensated, but had then to live in exile outside of the community.^[25] The Bhas relieve the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans of such unpleasant responsibilities. The Bhas are said by Rajopadhyayas^[*] to be a fallen Brahman group, and they are, in fact, referred to in some texts as Mahabrahmana^[*] , "Great Brahmans."^[26]