The Comparative Freedom of the Newar Woman in the Northern Hindu Context

The Chetri anthropologist Dor Bahadur Bista wrote that "the Newar woman in her husband's house has much more authority and freedom than her [Indo-Nepalese] Brahman or Chetri counterpart. She is readily accepted into the extended family group and adapts quickly to her new role in relation to the family and in particular to her husband" (1972, 24). This relative freedom within the Nepalese Hindu context is obscured in the first descriptions of a wife's role, with its implicit comparison to modern Western ideal forms.

The Newar family is in most respects what Karve (1968) has called a North Indian type, and which she takes to be a continuation of ancient Hindu patterns. "The present northern family is a continuation of the family of the ancient times with slight modifications. It is patrilineal, patrilocal and patriarchal. The marriage is generally outside of the kin-group and the local group. It is a joint family in which the brides are all brought from the outside and the girls are all given away. The behavior is strictly regulated according to generations, according to whether one is born in the family or married into the family and finally according to whether one is a man or a woman" (1968, 136). All this holds for the Newars, with the important exception of marriage outside the "local group."

The Newar kinship system, like the Newar family, is essentially, as we shall see (app. 3), a "Northern system." Karve (1968, 251) sets this Northern system in contrast with a Southern "Dravidian" system, in which a man can marry his younger female cross-cousins or a daughter of one of his elder sisters, producing—among other consequences—a freer, more comfortable position for women in their husbands' households:

A man does not bring a stranger as a bride to his home, a woman is not thrown among complete strangers on her marriage. Marriage strengthens existing bonds. The emphasis is on knitting families closer together and narrowing the circle of the kin-group, a policy exactly the opposite of the one followed in the north. The whole tone of the southern society is different. The distinction between the father's house and the father-in-law's house is not as sharp as in the north. The distinction between "daughters" and "brides or wives" is not as deep as in the north. A girl's behavior in her husband's family is much freer. After all, her husband is either her uncle or her cross-cousin and his mother is either her own grandmother or her aunt. Neither is she separated for long periods from her parents' house.

The Newars have within a northern marriage and kinship system, partially subverted it, as it were, with the result of modifying the condition of women into a somewhat less patriarchal and patrilineal Hindu form. The "Northern" characteristics of a wife's separation from her natal home, physically through separation in space,^[10] and socially through the loss of status of the wife's family in relation to the husband's family through "metaphorical hypergamy" (discussed below), are not present. The Newar wife's relationship to her natal home is strong in comparison with the North Indian and the Indo-Nepalese situations.

The continuing strong relation to the wife's natal home is inversely

related to aspects of Newar marriage that weaken (again when compared with the North Indian pattern) the dominance of the husband's household. This, in turn, derives its ritual justification ultimately from a peculiar Newar rite of passage, the Ihi or mock-marriage to the god Visnu/Narayana^[*] (app. 6) and to associated modifications in menarche rites. The legends associated with these rites and the rites themselves reveal certain anti-Brahmanical and antipatrilineal biases. Their legendary origin was in an innovation introduced into the Kathmandu Valley by the goddess Parvati, whose natal home it was, in order to prevent the disabilites of widows, a severe problem in the traditional Hindu social system, through the device of a first ritual marriage to a god. A woman's subsequent marriage to a mortal becomes a secondary marriage, and as her primary, true husband cannot die, she will never become a widow. The mock-marriage also weakens the ideological support for child marriages, that is, that a girl should be married and living in her husband's household prior to the onset of menstruation. Now it is necessary only to marry her to the god Narayana^[*] before menarche.

With its ritual expression in the Ihi rite, the modified Newar marriage contrasts in fact with Chetri and other northern Hindu marriages in relatively easy separation and remarriage under certain circumstances, relatively little stigmatization and disadvantaging of widows, a lack of hypergamic stigma for the wife's family, and a wife's close continuing relations with her natal household.

Newar Menstrual Disabilities in Comparison with the Indo-Nepalese

Differences in comparative disabilities during their monthly menstruation is another way in which the Newar women feel themselves to have a better situation than Indo-Nepalese Chetri and Brahman women. A discussion of menstruation belongs most centrally to an examination of the "private lives" of Newars, but it may be useful to say something about it here in relation to the question of the comparative position of Newar women in relation to other Nepalese Hindus. Lynn Bennett's report on a Kathmandu Valley community of Indo-Nepalese women based on a study made at the same time as this present one suggested the extent of their stigmatization (Bennett 1983, 215):

In Brahman-Chetri culture menstrual blood is a strong source of pollution—particularly to initiated males. During the first three days of every menses, women become polluted and untouchable. As one woman explained, "We

become like female Damai. . . . We become like female dogs." For these three days a woman must not enter the kitchen, touch food or water that others will eat or drink, or even worship the gods or the ancestor spirits. She may not comb her hair or oil it, and she sleeps separately in a downstairs room. Also she may not touch an adult man. . . The segregation of women during their menstrual periods is strictly observed. . . Older informants told me that in the time of their mothers-in-law . . . women were hidden in a dark room away from the sun^[11] . . . and out of the sight of all males for the first three days of their periods.

Bennett also notes that Brahman-Chetri women of Jumla in western Nepal "may not enter the house at all for three days and so they must sleep in a cattle shed or outside with a fire. Linda Stone reports that this rule holds also for the Brahman-Chetri women of Nuwakot" (Bennett 1983, 215).

According to both male and female informants, Newar women's restrictions in Bhaktapur are, in comparison to these examples (insofar as they may be representative of Indo-Nepalese practices now or in the past), considerably less. Menstruating Newar women in Bhaktapur do comb their own hair, and may continue to sleep in their usual place, although they sometimes go to another household woman's sleeping area to sleep. Most upper-status families reportedly do not let women cook during menstruation, although according to Jyapu informants, in most Jyapu and middle-level (and probably lower-level) families, menstruating women can cook everything except rice to be used for ceremonial purposes. In many thar s, including Pa(n)cthariya and Chathariya (but not Newar Brahmans), menstruating women attend ceremonial family feasts. At all levels menstruating women are not supposed to carry water or touch god images, sacred utensils, or priests. They are not supposed to pluck flowers used for religious offerings. In the farming thar s, menstruating women work on the farms, but are not supposed to touch certain plants (e.g., ginger, chili peppers, turmeric), which would be harmed by their touch.

During menstruation Newar women may worship deities in the same way that a polluted man (say, during the course of death pollution) would. If initiated, she will perform the necessary worship of the Tantric lineage god (in upper-status families), but away from the actual shrine, using a dish and uncooked rice (app. 4), and worshiping a mental image of the god. She may also perform daily worship in the same way, imagining the steps of the puja (app. 4). She may also perform what would ordinarily be household shrine worship at the side of the

river. Women are supposed to eat rich foods during menstruation to prevent ill effects (including dizziness) from loss of blood. Cloths are used to absorb the menstrual blood, which are washed by the menstruating woman and kept for repeated use.

The period of contamination is supposed to last four days, following which the woman must purify herself and her sleeping area by bathing and cleansing with specially pure water—(Ga [n ]ga jal [app. 4]). For upper-status women, they may have a more formal purification with services of a woman of the barber thar (chap. 11). After purification women have no further menstruation-related disabilities, with the exception that they are not supposed, at least in upper level thar s, to participate in commemorative worship to deceased ancestors during the six days following purification.

Intercourse is supposed to be discontinued from the onset of menstruation until the fourth day after onset, that is, after the purification. Men believe that if they have intercourse during the wife's menstruation they will become seriously and perhaps chronically ill. They fear contact with the menstrual blood. (Menstrual blood is regarded, apparently, more as a dangerous^[12] and powerful rather than a disgusting substance.^[13] As we will see in chapter 9, chapter 11, and elsewhere, "disgusting" versus "dangerous" is a significant distinction in Bhaktapur's symbolic world.)

All this echoes G. S. Nepali's (1965, 115) earlier report on other Newar communities:

Menstrual impurity other than the first one [i.e., menarche rites] is not observed by the Newars as strictly as by the Gorkhas [the Indo-Nepalese]. During menses, a Gorkha woman byes practically in isolation. On the fourth day after her bath she is considered clean. But still she is not allowed to much water and attend to religious duties until the fifth day. Among the Newars, on the other hand, a woman during her menses can even attend to the domestic duties including kitchen. The only restriction imposed on her is that she should have her bath before attending m her normal duties. At the most she is forbidden to come in physical contact with objects of religious worship.

The details of menstrual practices vary among thar s within this general characterization. It is of great interest that one extreme exception was among the untouchable Po(n)s, among whom women must leave the inside of the house and go to the cheli (the porch or lowest story of the house which is considered outside the house) during their period of contamination, which lasts for six days, two days longer than for most Newar women.

We hope to deal elsewhere with the local doctrines explaining the origins of menstruation. It is not associated by our informants with bad karma or with a woman's own "sin." The widespread Hindu legend that it is one result of a great sin by Indra, his killing of a Brahman, is known but told in a considerably less misogynistic form than the version given by Bennett (1982, 216). It is said that menstruation represents the periodic draining of impurities from a woman's body. The male anxieties represented in interpretations of menstruation are, in short, more subtly and much more mildly expressed in the Newar response than in those of their Hindu neighbors.