1. Groups within Bhaktapur: Buddhist Bare.

For Rajopadhyaya Brahmans, the Buddhist Bare (including both sections—priests and precious metal craftsmen) were considered water-unacceptable. The justifications given by Brahmans for their low rank are miscellaneous, but not necessarily more post hoc than other such justifications for status. These include their metalworking, their traditional performances on "contaminating" musical instruments, and their short seven-day period of contamination after death—such short periods being characteristic of low-level groups. Furthermore, the Bare do not, in con-

trast to Hindus, maintain a residual queue of hair in the course of the shaving of their heads at the time of (and in purification rituals subsequent to) boys' ritual initiation into their thar . This last, a reminder of their original status as monks (Buddhist monks' shaving of the entire head being a sign of renunciation of ordinary lineage and social ties), probably reflects one of the historical reasons for their ambiguous rank—recalling the ambiguous social ranking of all Hindu renouncers. For other members of upper-level thar s, Chathariya and Pa[n]cthariya, the Bare were considered on the levels of the Jyapus, and thus "water-acceptable."^[51]