City Boundaries: Cremation, Dying, And Purification

The river is considered to he outside of the city's boundaries to the south, as are the ghat^[*] s (Bhaktapur Newari, ga :) or steps leading down to the river on its city side. At the river clothes are washed and people bathe as a phase of major purification procedures (chap. 11). People approaching death are sometimes brought to the river ghat^[*] s so that their feet and legs may be immersed in the river at the actual moment of death (app. 6). The city's three cremation grounds (Newari dip , from Sanskrit dipa , burning, blazing) are also outside the city, as they are in all South Asian Hindu communities. Two of the major cremation grounds are beyond the river and, as they should be ideally, to the south of the city. These two cremation grounds (Khware Dip and Mu ["main"] Dip) are each associated with one of the ghat^[*] s on the city side of the river, and are connected to them by bridges spanning the river. There is a third major dip , Bramhayani (Sanskrit Brahmani),^[7] to the east of the city, named after the protective boundary goddess of the eastern pole of the city.

Although we are concerned here with city boundaries and inside/ outside contrasts and relations, it is convenient at this point to introduce some other aspects of the cremation grounds in their relation to city space and to its status system. The three dip s are for the "clean" thar s, the "unclean" ones use various fields outside the city (although on the city side of the river) away from the three main dip s. Various Newar chronicles suggest that the cremation areas of most of the significant macrostatus groups were, or at least were held ideally to be, separated. Thus, according to Hasrat's chronicle, Jayasthiti Malla "distinguished and classified thirty-six tribes according to their trades and professions . . . [and] constituted for each of the thirty-six a separate masan [cremation ground] or place for burning their dead" (Hasrat

1970, 55ff.). There are now traditional places within the grounds for some thar s, but as a whole the cremation grounds are related to areas of the city, rather than to social status. People who have been brought to die at Hanuman ga : are cremated at the Khware Dip. Those who had been brought to die at Cupi(n) ga : are cremated at the Mu Dip. It is a matter of family custom and choice which ga : they are brought to. Most people die at home, within the city, and these people are usually cremated at Brahmani Dip if they live in the upper half of the city, and Mu Dip if they live in the lower hall

Gutschow and Kölver (1975) called attention to the fact that funeral processions to the dip s were determined by residence in a particular twa: (a village-like division of the city; see below). "Now there are exact prescriptions regulating not only who has to use which [cremation ground], but also the way a corpse has to be borne to his proper place of burning. The decisive feature in this is geographical. The body of a man who belonged to a particular ward [twa: ] has to be carried along the way prescribed to all the members of his ward" (Gutschow and Kölver 1975, 27). These differentiated routes, based on twa: residency, recall Oldfieid's statement, previously quoted, that the number of gateways in the old city walls exactly corresponded to the number of toles (twa: s) in the city, and that the maintenance of the gates was the responsibility of the local twa: authorities (Oldfield [1880] 1974, vol. I, p. 95f.). Because of the mixed collection of thar s in many twa: s, this arrangement, as Gutschow and Kölver point out, tends to neutralize the distinctions of caste (1975, 27).

This "communitas, " represented by a collapse of status distinctions in funeral procession and place of cremation, is typical of many activities that are outside and beyond the ordinary civic structuring of Bhaktapur; for example carnival and Tantric rituals. In all of these, however, there is always a residue that is excluded from the egalitarian community, in this case the lowest thar s, who are refused even the common cremation grounds.^[8]