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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.


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Chapter Ten Priests
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