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Chapter Five The Distribution of Roles: The Macrostatus System
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Thar, Macrostatus, and the Organization of Occupational and Ritual Roles

The organization of thar s into macrolevels sorts out their members into the hierarchical system, and in so doing organizes by level (and by larger groupings of macrolevels) much of their members' economic activity and standard of living. The levels they belong to determine whether they can be served by Brahmans, or by other priests, or—if they are sufficiently low—only by ad hoc priests in their own thar s. It is the levels that entail the organizing implications of the Hindu hierarchical system—purity; patterns of association, commensality, and marriage; and relative public esteem—to which we will return later in this chapter and in chapter 11. The relationship between status level and occupation is obscured by those status levels that include only one thar . When there is more than one thar in a status level, it is evident that levels join together occupational type s, not specific occupations. They sort such categories as court officials, shopkeepers, farmers, craftsmen, and providers of essential symbolic-ritual services that are demeaning to those who do them. Individual thar s may specify narrowly defined professions within these larger groupings. In those cases where there is only one thar at a particular level, this is simply a special case where occupation and status level coalesce so that the classical definition of a "caste" is approximated, but it is a special case of considerable interest. In some cases such as Tini and Tama: this exclusive convergence seems to be an historical residue of some problem in categorization. However, most of the examples of such "castes" are thar s that are essential not only for their specific vocation but also for the very definition, constitution, and maintenance of the symbolic component of the hierarchical system; Brahman, Nae, Jugi, and Po(n) are evident examples. It is also of interest that the isolation of thar s into discrete status levels as "castes" is represented at the top of the system with the Brahmans only (the king is traditionally included with various Ksatriya[*]thar s) but pervasively throughout the "unclean" thar s from level XIV down, each of whom is ranked at its own discrete level. This is one of many suggestions that Brahmans and the unclean thar s are joined closely in the same enterprise.

In contrast to the effects of all thar s on occupation because of their placement in a particular status level, and the resulting assignment of its


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Figure 3.
A member of the Kumha: (potter) thar making pots on his wheel.


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Figure 4.
Awa:s (masons) and Ka:mis (carpenters) building a house.


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Figure 5.
Young wives chatting while collecting water at a communal tap.


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members to some general class of activities (e.g., farming or shopkeeping), there are about forty-five thar s whose membership at present specifies for its members either a particular and exclusive hereditary trade and/or some hereditary "ritual" function, that is, a function in the marked symbolic realm of the city. There are various combinations of occupational and ritual functions. Some thar s have ritual functions that reflect their occupational functions (e.g., potters and carpenters). There are some groups whose hereditary occupational functions have disappeared but who may still have ritual responsibilities deriving from and faintly echoing those functions. There are groups with occupational specialties (e.g., Ayurvedic physicians) and no ritual functions. There are groups whose occupation is a ritual occupation, that is, entirely within the realm of marked symbolism (e.g., priests). Among these various groups there are some thar s whose ritual or occupational function accounts for most of the livelihood of most of the adult male members of the group (e.g., Brahmans, sweepers). In contrast, there are other thar s for whom the ascribed occupational or ritual function, while it is limited to the thar and tends to explain or justify its status in the overall system, may actually be performed by only a few of its members, selected in some way by the thar , and sometimes involving only a small segment of the selected member's time and economic activity. Such variety, which, furthermore, has shifted during the course of Bhaktapur's history, makes the question as to how thar membership determines differentiated ritual and occupational behaviors of its members very complex.

For the purposes of the city's organization, we may emphasize again that it is the output of the thar that is essential, not its internal affairs and organization—as long as those internal features guarantee that output. The important thing for the city as a whole is that sufficient numbers of the members perform their essential functions within the traditional system, and that their other economic functions and social behaviors do not appear dissonant with the status of the thar . The city is, in fact, differentially exigent and severe in its pressures on different thar s to maintain their traditional functions. This is for both material and "symbolic" motives. The city can now do without local drum makers if necessary, but for many reasons it cannot do without the economic and/or symbolic functions of, say, Brahmans, potters, and sweepers. The symbolic practitioners, in fact, must be locally in place. One can import pots from another town, but such actors as Brahmans and sweepers are essential constituting components of


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the city system, and must be in place for the traditional system of city action to work at all.

In order to sketch the relation of thar s to differentiated urban roles, we will use an ad hoc sorting that, however, reflects some important contrasts in the implications of thar -assigned roles. In listing these specialized thar s we will briefly gloss their special functions that have been given already above, many of which will be discussed elsewhere in the book. The roman numerals following the thar names indicate the status level. Recall that occasionally the same thar name may occur at more than one status level.

1. Priests, auxiliary priests and "para-priests" (see chap. 10). Rajopadhyaya Brahmans (level I), Lakhe Brahmans (level I, lower section) (priests), Josi (level II) (astrologers), Acaju (level III) (auxiliary priests, with Tantric specialties), Josi (level III) (astrologers), Tini (level IV) (priests), and Acaju (level IV) (auxiliary priests, with Tantric specialties).

2. Thar s who are allied to group 1, the priests, in that their traditional roles, services, products, and behaviors are expressive of and constituent of a special component of the city's symbolic order, which is associated with purity and impurity, "ordinary" deities, and "priestly morality." We will delineate this component in later chapters, and contrast it with other aspects of symbolic order and of power. In contrast to the priests, the functions of these thar s are overtly stigmatizing or at least associated with a depressed status:[37] Cyo (level XI) (purifying services during the cremation phase of the death ritual cycle of upper-level thar s), Gatha (level XIII) (flower growers, deity-possessed performers as the "Nine Durgas"), Kata (level XIII) (cut umbilical cords and remove and dispose of placentas), Nau (level XIII) (barbers, purifyers), Pu(n) (level XIII) (painters of religious images and mask makers), Bha (level XIII) (death ritual services for upper-status thar s); Cala(n) (level XIII) (services in funeral processions of upper-status people), Khusa (level XIII) (esoteric services for one of the Tantric deities during the Mohani festival cycle), Sa:mi (level XIII) (oil pressers, special functions in the Biska: festival cycle), Nae (level XIV) (butchers, kill animals in some sacrifices in major temples), Jugi (level XVI) (tailors; performers on drums, trumpets, and shawms; important roles in the cycle of death ceremonies and other pollution-accumulating tasks), and Po(n)


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(level XVIII) (sweepers, fishermen, basket makers; various important pollution representing and pollution accumulating functions).

3. Stigmatizing, occupational specialties with no marked symbolic functions. These are craftsmen whose craft has a traditional status-depressing implication, but who, in contrast to the other thar s listed in group 2, do not have (in the present at least) corresponding additional symbolic functions: Kau (level XIII) (blacksmiths, workers in iron), Chipa (level XIII) (dyers of cloth), and Do(n) (level XVI) (players of trumpets).

4. Nonstigmatizing occupational specialties: Baidhya (level II) (Ayurvedic physicians), Baidhya (level III) (Ayurvedic physicians), Tama: (level VI) (caster of metal pots, plates, and icons), Kumha: (level VII) (potters), Awa: (level VII) (house builders), Kami (level VIII) (wood carvers, carpenters), and Loha(n) kami (level VIII) (stone carvers). (In this group some families of Tama: and Kumha: have some ritual functions in some rites of passage.)

5. Thar s including members who have ritual or ceremonial functions in Bhaktapur's focal festivals (chaps. 12 to 16) and/or in association with the Taleju temple. This represents the "symbolic reconstruction" of the old society centering on the Malla court and the temple of its tutelary deity Taleju: from level II (above), Malla, Pradhana(n)ga, Hada, Bhau, Tacabhari, Muna(n)karmi, Bhari, and Go(n)ga; from level III, Madikami and Bhari; from level V, Suwal; from level VIII, Kalu, Caguthi, Muguthi, Haleyojosi, and Jatadhari; and from level XII, Dwi(n). (Among thar s included in other lists, those with additional special Taleju ritual and/or ceremonial functions include Josi [II], Acaju [III], Tama:, Kumha:, Gatha, Khusa, Pu(n), Jugi, Nae, and Po[n].)

6. We can add to this list those groups outside the Newar Hindu core group who have essential occupational or ritual functions. We noted previously some of the occupational specialities of these groups (shoemakers, knife sharpeners, washermen, etc.). Only two groups outside of the core group have ritual-symbolic functions for the core system. The Bhatta[*] Brahmans have a very limited (but theoretically interesting) function for one upper-status thar (chap. 10). The Bare Buddhist thar provides the children who become the "living goddess" Kumari and her attendant gods and goddesses during the major ceremonial cycle, Mohani (chap. 1.5).

There are, thus, some forty-five thar s in the core system, about 13


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percent of the city's approximately 340 thar s, whose membership in itself (rather than through its status level) entails ritual and/or occupational specialties. For the city as a whole, seventeen of these thar s, particularly the upper-status ones, whose ritual activities are confined to the Taleju temple, are of minor differentiated importance. So it is, finally, some twenty-eight thar s, about 8 percent of the whole, whose members have major specializations—against the more diffuse background of farmers and merchants and craftsmen and specialists in being impure, which is organized by the larger macrostatus system. In addition to the total number of specialized thar s we need to consider their relative size and the number of households and individuals that they contain. Their combined size is, as we shall see, a larger percentage of the city's population than their numbers alone would indicate.


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Chapter Five The Distribution of Roles: The Macrostatus System
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