Bhaktapur's Non-Newar Brahmans

As we have noted the Malla kings were said to have brought other Brahmans from India in addition to the Rajopadhyayas^[*] . Since the Malla period there have been two such groups of Brahmans in Bhaktapur, who have lived there in separation from both the Newar Hindu and Buddhist community life. In this they resemble other such cultural isolates in Bhaktapur—the Muslims and the Matha^[*] priests (chap. 5). These two groups of Brahmans do not consider themselves to be either Newars or Newar priests. They are the  Jha  Brahmans (whose family name is "Misra") and the Bhatta^[*] Brahmans. Some  Jha  Brahmans work as temple pujari s and public storytellers in Bhaktapur, but most of them are professional workers in the modern political and economic sector of Bhaktapur and Kathmandu.

The Bhatta^[*] Brahmans, whose origins were in Maharastra^[*] , are found

in many Newar towns and villages. In Bhaktapur most of them are teachers and professionals, while members of some families are temple priests. Some work as purohita s for other Bhatta^[*] families. Members of two Bhatta^[*] Brahman families, however, have a closer, and in some respects curious, relation to Bhaktapur's Newar Hindu community life. They act as auxiliary priests to one group of families, a section of the Chathariya Kayasta^[*]thar called "Nakanda." In certain Brahman-conducted puja s held to cure illness or misfortune thought to be due to bad planetary influences, a mixture of different kinds of grain are held to the head of the sufferer. The families in this group then have the option of sending the grain to a Po(n) untouchable so that he may absorb the misfortune (which is what families other than those in this particular group would do) or else to send it along with valuable gifts to a Bhatta^[*] Brahman as an offering, a dana . Although the transaction may be phrased as a gift, a dana , it resembles in nature and function the offerings to lowest-status thar s, offerings that signal the inferiority and dependence of those thar s, and which serve to transfer pollution, as is suggested in the option of choosing either a Bhatta^[*] or Po(n) here.^[10]

This equivalence of Po(n) and Bhatta^[*] Brahman here suggests the polluting implications of many priestly services, and is typical of the situation of the "auxiliary priests," to whom we will now turn.