1. Premchand 1968. [BACK]

2. Eck 1982. [BACK]

3. Dalit has become a term by which an increasing number of Varanasi Chamar identify their political commonality with other "untouchable" or "Harijan" communities; at the time of research in the late 1980s, however, it was seldom used by people in Nagwa to describe themselves and will not be used here. Chamar can be an offensive term in some contexts, but not it is hoped in the kind of writing offered here. [BACK]

4. Khare 1984. [BACK]

5. See Freeman (1979) for some discussion of untouchable caste performance. [BACK]

6. Ravidas 1988. By permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. [BACK]

7. For a structurally analogous situation, see Gaylene Becker's study of hearingimpaired old people, for whom lifelong identification as deaf transforms the everyday knowledge and experience of being old (1980). [BACK]

8. Dumont 1980. [BACK]

9. Berreman 1971, Mencher 1974. [BACK]

10. Marglin 1977, Dirks 1987. [BACK]

11. Malamoud 1988. [BACK]

12. Appadurai 1986, Das 1982, Dirks 1987, Marglin 1977, Marriott 1989, Quigley 1993, Raheja 1989, Uberoi 1996. [BACK]

13. Khare 1984. [BACK]

14. See Searle-Chatterjee (1981) for a related finding. [BACK]

15. The string amulet as differential signifier of the male body across class has been used in contemporary advertising campaigns, perhaps nowhere as explicitly in terms of its complex relation to kamzori as in the television ad in which a wife enters the bedroom to find her husband, Bi-joy (a homoerotic play on the Bengali name Bijoy), in bed with a thinner, amulet-wearing bhaiya (north Indian lumpen). The husband panics and scrambles to get dressed; the bhaiya is thoroughly unconcerned. The ad, somewhat mysteriously designed to sell television sets (the wife drops their television in surprise), offers a doubled and inverted reading of kamzori : both the rich Bijoy versus the lumpen bhaiya , thin and protected by his amulet, and the unprotected and anal-receptive (notably Bengali) Bi-joy versus the amuletprotected and active bhaiya Televisions that do not break are being offered as protective wrapping to prevent middle-class weakness in the face of the receptivity of the new consumerism. [BACK]

16. Asli Bara Indrajal n.d. [BACK]

17. One uses ''empowering'' with caution, given its overdetermined and class-laden context; yet menstrual blood in this context is literally empowering through its removal of embodied weakness. [BACK]

18. See Cohen (1983), where I contrast the use of jara and vrddhatva in Epic and Puranic texts. [BACK]

19. See Madan 1987. [BACK]

20. See Khare 1984 for a lengthy discussion of similar themes. [BACK]

21. Appadurai 1986:752. [BACK]

22. See Cohen "The Pleasures of Castration" 1995 for a discussion of Chandan. [BACK]

23. Cohn 1955, 1960. [BACK]

24. The eponymous grandmother of the internationally televised documentary film Dadi and Her Family (1982) is in many ways similar to Juguli in her concerns over the bahu as the cause of brothers separating and old parents being neglected. [BACK]

25. Tara Devi's name is kept, at her request; the others have been changed. [BACK]

26. Susruta ( Nidanasthanam 1:3) 1981 [1911]: vol. 2: 2. [BACK]

27. Zimmermann 1987: 8. [BACK]

28. Susruta ( Nidanasthanam I: 4—12) 1981 [1911]: vol. 2: 2-4. [BACK]

29. Dash 1978:24. [BACK]

30. Radcliffe-Brown 1940. [BACK]

1. See "Janpad men bheriye se zyada aphvahon ka jor " 1996. [BACK]

2. "Janpad men bheriye se zyada aphvahon ka jor" 1996, "Lakarsunghva[?] ke aphva[?]h se sva[?]tsthy pariksan nah[?]n ho saka" 1996. [BACK]

3. "Wolves Strike Again in Pratapgarh District" 1996, "Hyena Hunters Fail to Convince People" 1996. [BACK]

4. "Human Hyena?" 1996. [BACK]

5. "Hyena Strikes Again, Baby Saved" 1996, "Hyena Menace Still in Villages: Police Forced to Hand Over Killed Girl's Body" 1996, "Child-Killing: Police Still in Dark about Black Figure" 1996, "Three 'Wolf-Men' Lynched in U.P." 1996, "Mysterious Disappearances of Two-Year-Old Girl" 1996. [BACK]

6. "Adamkhor janwar ne adhikariyon va janta ki nind urai" 1996. [BACK]

7. "Another Lynching by Mistake," Northern Indian Patrika 1996, "Another Burnt Alive in Kanpur" 1996. [BACK]

8. "Kanpur Mob Roasts Woman Alive" 1996. [BACK]

9. "Lakarsunghva ke bhram men baba ko pulis ke havale kiya" 1996. [BACK]

10. See Scheper-Hughes (1990) for a discussion of the complex truths behind child-theft rumor. [BACK]