Purity Technicians With Limited Functions

The four Newar thar s we have considered so far—Brahmans, Josis (in the priestly component of their traditional functions), Acajus, and Tinis—are "priests" in the sense that they have the legitimate right and proper traditional knowledge to perform services for their clients that mediate for these clients in their relations with deities. Although, as we have argued, their statuses are depressed in their relation to the highest segments of the social hierarchy, their statuses are still high in the larger system and their polluting force and meaning for others is overtly simply the usual relations of higher and lower in the macrostatus system.

There are a number of other thar s whose traditional activities are necessary for the religious life of the city—both for that led by priests and for individual or household worship. Some of these are craftsmen, producers of objects necessary in worship. These include the Pu(n), painters of religious images and mask makers; the makers of images in metal (Tama: and the "Buddhist" Sakya), stone (Loha[n]ka:mi) or wood (Ka:mi); the growers of flowers for religious use (Gatha); and the potters (Kumha:). There are also shopkeepers whose shops sell supplies and equipment necessary for performing puja s. These craftsmen and suppliers occupy a span of statuses, and are not apparently differentiated from other craftsmen or suppliers—either elevated or depressed in status—because they happen to make or deal with religious objects as one of their services.

There is another group of thar s whose status is what we have called "marginally pure"; that is, they are all polluting to the highest thar s who will not accept water from them, although the middle groups will. They are in the same level in the macrostatus system (level XIII; see chap. 5), a level that is intermediate between the clearly clean thar s above them and the clearly polluting ones below them. There are miscellaneous justifications given for the low status of the various thar s in this level. Three of them, however, Bha, Nau, and Kata:, perform neces-

sary services for higher thar s that allow for the restoration of purity or in the case of the Bha a human form for the soul after death, and in so doing acquire pollution themselves. A fourth, Cala(n), carrying a torch and a pair of cymbals, walks at the head of funeral procession to warn people because of the danger of crossing in front of it.^[20] These four groups are included by Brahman informants as Karmacari, religious workers in contrast to the craftsmen and suppliers on the one hand, and the lowest thar s whose "priestly" functions are covert, on the other. Insofar as they may be defined as enabling , through their actions, the ritual states and behaviors presided over by priests, we may call them, as we did the Josi, "para-priests." In addition to the Bha, Nau, Kata:, and Cala(n), there was in the recent past an additional such group in Bhaktapur, the Pasi, whose function was to wash and thus purify the clothes of a family's "chief mourner" on the day of his purification after ten days of ritual mourning (app. 6).^[21]

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]

The Cala(n)

Members of the Cala(n) thar are placed second in upper-status funeral processions where—carrying a torch in one hand and small cymbals, which they clang together, in the other—they warn people that a funeral procession is coming, and thus prevent them from crossing in front of it at a crossroads, which would produce misfortune for all concerned.

The Kata:

The traditional function of the Kata: for upper-status families, performed by women of this thar , is to cut and tie the umbilical cord after birth, and to remove the polluting placenta and bury it outside of the city boundaries.

The Nau

The Nau are the barber thar . The men of this thar work as ordinary barbers, but both the men and women of the thar are necessary for the major purification procedures required by the middle-level and upper-level thar s following periods of pollution (usually the result of death or births within the phuki ) or in preparation for some major puja or rite of passage. The Nau's functions, as we will argue in the next chapter, are outside of the realm of priestly ritual as such. However, they, like those of the other para-priests, belong to the larger symbolic context of purity and impurity within which those rituals exist. The Nau remove impurity as an essential precursor to ritual action.