What Is Polluted, And What Is Polluting?

The Sastras traditionally treated polluted human bodies and polluted inanimate objects separately.^[5] There were proper cleansing procedures of various types for purifying objects; the proper procedure depended on the object or material that was to be purified. Ashes, soil of various kinds and water were the main purifying materials. Various other materials (mustard-seed paste, ground-up fruit, cows' urine and dung, whitewash, etc.) were also used for cleaning certain polluted materials (Manu V, 110-126; Bühler 1969, 188-191). The materials and objects whose purification are discussed in the Sastras are the materials and objects of everyday life—worked metal, stone and clay, cloth of various kinds, foodstuffs, houses, land, vessels for holding food and liquids, spoons, cups and so on. These are the materials and objects that are the unavoidable context of life, which must be touched, which envelop the body, which are foods, or which hold the foods that must enter the body through the mouth. Their purification is prophylactic, at the service of a central concern—the protection of the condition of the individuals that these objects and materials surround and with whom they may come in contact. The cleaning procedures are technically specified. "A man who knows (the law) must purify conch-shells, horn, bone and ivory like linen cloth (i.e., with mustard-seed paste) or with a mixture of cow's urine and water." This is all technical, mechanical, and mundane, whatever its distal religious justification might be. These materials and objects are in that segment of a person's world that the concerned person can control; they are extensions of his or her self, his or her body, and can be purified like the body itself. The impurities that threaten from outside this easily controllable circle of possessions can be produced by animals, by events (above all, birth and death of family members), or by other persons (above all, by those of lower and low status). These agents of pollution cannot be purified by scrubbing with an appropriate cleansing agent. Sources of pollution must be avoided

if possible, but in those cases where avoidance fails or where they cannot be avoided, then procedures for purification of the self become essential.

For objects and materials impurity is something that adheres to them, like the physical "dirt" that is one of the sources of the idea, and can be scrubbed off or (in the case of liquids) removed by filtration. The nature of the impurity produced by birth and death is more problematic; we will return to this. But what about the person who is concerned about the problem of pollution? What becomes polluted? Where does his or her pollution exist?

According to Kane, many Sastras differentiated "body" impurity into "external" and "inner" kinds (1968-1977, vol. IV, p. 310). The "inner purity" refers to the "mental attitude." For some commentators the inner "mental attitude" was more significant than "external purity." Kane states: "The Padma emphasizes that it is the mental attitude that is the highest thing and illustrates it by saying that a woman embraces her son and her husband with different mental states" (ibid., 310). Manu's Laws include references to this mental or spiritual purity. "Among all modes of purification, purity in the acquisition of wealth is declared to be the best; for he is pure who gains wealth with clean hands, not he who purifies himself with earth and water." "The body is cleansed by water, the internal organ is purified by truthfulness, the individual soul by sacred learning and austerities, the intellect by knowledge" (Manu V, 106, 109; Bühler 1969, 187f.).

The reference to "inner impurity" seems to be a "philosophical" extension. The major traditional emphasis, and the present emphasis in Bhaktapur is on the "external impurity." In relation to the organization of a community such as Bhaktapur, a primary emphasis on internal purity and impurity would, in fact, have a revolutionary implication. Like Bhakti religion, it represents the possibility of a detachment from and transcendence of the network of the interrelational controls of the civic dharma, a kind of movement to a direct, individual, "Protestant," encounter with an altered view of the divine, an escape from the control of the Brahmanical mesocosm.^[6] A Newar Brahman, queried, for example, as to what is affected when an individual is impure (asuddha ) replies that it is the mha , the physical body. The atma , the soul, he says, cannot be affected, it is always pure. Asked about the manas , the "mind," he says that mind is not affected directly ,when a person is asuddha —although it is affected indirectly insofar as a person is concerned about his state.

The body and its "physical impurities" is also an important reference in the traditional explanation of the sequence of rites of passage, samskara s, which entail, among much else, the progressive transformation of individuals to higher and purer states throughout their life. "Manu says, 'By performing the Samskaras [those dealing with] conception, birth-rites, tonsure, and Upanayana [full initiation into his caste group for a male], seminal and uterine impurities are washed away, . . . Yajna-valkya also endorses the same view. Some kind of impurity was attached to the physical side of procreation and lying in the womb. Therefore, it was thought necessary to remove that impurity from the body by performing various Samskaras" (Pandey 1969, 29f.).

Bodily pollution is usually thought of as "external," in part because of its contrast with "internal mental pollution," and also because of the emphasis on the surfaces of bodies and of objects to which impurity adheres and that can be purified by washing, scrubbing, and so forth. But bodily pollution itself can be "external" or "internal." The implications of external or surface and internal bodily pollution for any given individual differ. The external surface pollution has to do with an individual's presentation of self, his or her social meaning, as mediated by the elaborate uses the city makes of pollution as a condition for proper relations and social position. The internal aspect of pollution relates in part to the meanings of one's status and the threats to it, but here something else is added; namely, the meanings of the oral incorporation, the ingestion of pollution. These meanings, associated with feelings of abhorrence and disgust, not only help motivate adherence to the public system of relations ordered by purity but also add important aspects of "intellectual coherence" to it.