Chapter Ten Priests
1. A classic attempt to explore and resolve the moral paradoxes of the king's responsibilities is the Bhagavadgita. [BACK]
2. Some Rajopadhyaya Brahman individuals or families now use for some purposes the surname "Subedi" or "Sarma," a generalized Brahman name that does not distinguish them from other Nepalese Brahmans. [BACK]
3. The Rajopadhyaya Brahmans contrast themselves with the Partya Brahmans, among other ways, in that they, the Rajopadhyaya, are engaged only in proper Brahmanical activities. The Partya Brahmans' farming indicates for the Newars a fallen status. [BACK]
4. This displacement of the old Kanyakubja Brahmans and the building of the "substitute house" is referred to in the legend of the bringing of Taleju into Bhaktapur (chap. 8). [BACK]
5. This reference to the shortage of families from which the new Rajopadhyaya Brahmans could take wives suggests the possibility that the two groups of Valley Brahmans although supposedly both from Kanyakubja may have refused to intermarry, and that the earlier Brahmans were in fact displaced by the later ones. [BACK]
6. D. R. Regmi, discussing the Brahmans in Malla Newar society, notes that some of the chronicles state that the Valley Brahmans were divided into two groups, one made up of "five divisions" of North Indian Brahmans and the other of "five divisions" of South Indian Brahmans. He goes on to say, "There is no trace of ... [these] Brahmans [within organized Newar society] other than those belonging to one branch, those known as the Kanaujiyas. It was true that some Brahman families came from South India. There were [also] many families who came also from Mithila and Bengal. But these never rendered priestly functions to the community. As such they were kept outside the pale of the Nepalese caste structure" (1965-1966, part 1, p. 679). [BACK]
7. There is another inferior group of Brahmans, usually referred to as the "Lakhae Brahmans," who although they use the that name "Rajopadhyaya," are at present an entirely different group than the dominant Rajopadhyaya Brahmans. (See the next section in the text.) [BACK]
8. These thar s are Malla, Hada, Hoda[ *] , Pradanana[ *] , Ujha(n)thache(n), Gwa(n)ga, Jo(n)che(n), and Bijukche(n). [BACK]
9. Pressures of modernization and economics have caused changes in recent years. Many Rajopadhyaya Brahmans are now seeking some position in the modernized Kathmandu Valley society commensurate with their traditional status. [BACK]
10. The Rajopadhyaya Brahmans are well aware of the stigmatizing implication of dana offered them in connection with death and illness in other contexts, and some say that they do not accept such offerings. We will return to the implication of payments to Brahmans below. [BACK]
11. Taleju's focal festival, Mohani, requires three astrologically determined saits or proper times, but these, which coordinate the timing of Taleju's activities in each of the old Newar cities, are made by the central government's Royal Astrologer, a non-Newar. Only some comparatively minor astrological determinations are made in relation to Taleju's activities by the Bhaktapur Temple's own Josis during this festival (chap. 15). [BACK]
12. Astrological work for the lower-middle and marginally clean thar s is often done by Buddhist Vajracarya priests. [BACK]
13. The word " dasa ," when used without a context specifically meaning "good," implies "bad fortune.'' [BACK]
14. It is possible by a secondary use of Karmic theory to say that the reason that a person has a had relation to the astrological forces is because of his or her bad karma . This is a more abstract, theoretical use of " karma ." [BACK]
15. In some early accounts and later chronicles (e.g., Hamilton [1819] 1971; Basnet [1878] 1981; Lévi 1905) the Josi (written "Jaisi" or "Jausi") are described as a high-status mixed group derived from the marriage of a Brahman and a non-Brahman Newar woman who had subsections variously doing divination, astrology, medicine, and priestly work. Hamilton ranks them above "Shresta," that is, above Chathariya, as some middle-ranked and low-ranked people still do. [BACK]
16. In the other Newar cities some, at least, Acaju families are at the Chathar level. [BACK]
17. Characteristically, the term "Tini" is not used in their presence, where its use would be considered disrespectful. In their presence they are referred to as "Sivacarya" and addressed as "Pujari." [BACK]
18. We only know of one passing reference to the Tim in older lists of Newar status groups (Chattopadhyay 1923, 506). [BACK]
19. The gha:su: jagye ceremony is said to be a shortened version of a fire offering to Bhairava (called a Bhairavagni ) made once a year in the main Bhairava temple. [BACK]
20. Members of the Cyo thar , which is at level XI, officiate as a "sort of a priest" during one phase of the ceremonies at the cremation grounds lust prior to the cremation itself in the death ceremonies of upper-level thar s. [BACK]
21. There are, in fact, still three Pasi families living in Bhaktapur, but they no longer do this traditional and stigmatizing work. [BACK]
22. One of these is a linga[ *] representing Siva as Hatakeswar[ *] , "a god who comes from under the earth," made of special clay dug from deep under the surface, a kind of linga[ *] that can be properly made only by a Bha. [BACK]
23. In a very significant contrast to the untouchable and near untouchable thar s who have been forced to remain in their traditional positions and to perform their traditional functions through various social and economic sanctions, the members of the marginally polluting thar s find it much easier to drop the status-depressing, polluting, and embarrassing traditional functions of their that for other kinds of work, often in farming or the modern sector of Bhaktapur's economy. Thus many Bha families have farms, shops, or small restaurants, and have members who are in government service or are school teachers. [BACK]
24. Toffin describes this service by the Bha for the high Hindu thar s of Panauti where a bit of bone from the dead persons skull is mixed with a food offering presented to the Bha. Toffin says that this practice is for the purpose of evicting the spirit of the dead, of chasing it from the house by "identifying" it with the Bha (1984, 290). [BACK]
25. This is said to have been done by a Partya Brahman in connection with the death ritual of the last king of Nepal. The Brahman is said to have had to leave Nepal and to have gone to India. [BACK]
26. Hamilton, in one of the earliest Western accounts of the Newars, presents a passage that bears on the activities and status of the Tini, Bhatta[ *] Brahmans, and Bha, "The Achars [by whom he seems to mean Newar Brahmans and auxiliary priests] have among them certain men who perform the ceremonies necessary to free from sin the souls of those who die on certain unfortunate days. This ceremony they call Horn. The [non-Newar] Brahmans perform similar rites, which they call Pushkarasanti. The Hindus believe that if this ceremony is neglected all the relations of the deceased will perish. By this ceremony the officiating priest is supposed to take upon himself the sin of the departed soul; and if, in its performance, he commits any mistake, he incurs certain destruction from the wrath of the Deity. The office is therefore shunned by men of high rank, both as sinful and dangerous. The Achars who perform this ceremony are calculated Gulcul, and cannot intermarry with those of the first rank" ([1819] 1971, 31). [BACK]
27. Todd Lewis, in his study of the Newar Buddhist Tuladhars of Kathmandu, writes that "most" of them believe that the Newar Brahmans are at the top of their (the Tuladhars') caste system (1984, 148). A survey of Bhaktapur's various Buddhist thar s on this issue would be of considerable interest. Insofar as Lewis's findings might hold in general, the elevation of the Brahmans in the conceptions of nonpriestly Newar Buddhists may reflect an inference by Buddhist laymen that the status of the Vajracarya unprotected by an allocation of contaminating functions to others is lower than the Brahmans, an inference deriving from the logic of the purity-based status system—which the Newar Buddhists accept. [BACK]
28. This "permanent attachment" is in many ways problematic, and must be reinforced by ensuring often through physical and economic force that the low thar s continue to perform clearly polluting functions and live m polluting circumstances. [BACK]
29. As we have noted in chapter 9, the Ksatriya[ *] groups could kill (and eat) animals in the course of war-like hunting and could kill human beings in the course of war without its having a lowering effect on their status. They were following their special kind of Ksatriya[ *] " meta-dharma ." [BACK]
30. In popular (and erroneous) folk explanation it refers to "eating the God's meat" ( la ), that is, the offering to the Tantric Astamatrkas[ *] . [BACK]
31. According to Niels Gutschow (personal communication), the main source of temple-caring income for the Po(n)s comes from their assignment to the Surya Vinayaka temple (chap. 8), which, like the pithas , is outside the city's boundaries. [BACK]
32. The Po(n) have one uniquely nonpolluting role to play in Bhaktapur on the fifth day of the solar New Year festival Biska: (chap. 14). [BACK]
33. "Jugi," "Darsandhari[ *] ," and ''Kapali" are terms derived from that group's yogic tradition; "Kusle" or ''Kusale" is a Nepali term referring to hereditary tailoring groups, one of the Jugis' professions. [BACK]
34. D. R. Regmi, however, characterizes the first Jugis in Nepal as "Nepalese mendicants" of the Gorakhnath school and contrasts them with the Kanphata[ *] yogis themselves who arrived later in Nepal and became associated with the Valley Matsyendrantha cult, and "who do not belong to Newar society" (1965-1966, part II, p. 756). Briggs (1938), supporting a possible origin of those "mendicants" in the yogic order, gives many examples of descendants of Kanphata[ *] yogis whose occupations and status resemble those of the present Newar Jugis. [BACK]
35. In their musical performances they use other instruments—drums and cymbals—as well, but these instruments are not special or restricted to them. [BACK]
36. This is on the fifth day for a Brahman, on the fifth or seventh day for various Chathariya and Pa(n)cthariya thar , and generally on the seventh day for Jyapu-level thar s. [BACK]
37. The Jugi who goes to a particular chwasa may live anywhere m the city. "One Jugi may own rights at five different chwasas , and three Jugis may have divided their rights at one chwasa . These rights are occasionally sold to others" (Gutschow, personal communication). [BACK]
38. The Bha: also, in the case of high-status chents, incorporates part of their body substance. This magical gesture is only tangentially related to the symbolism of the flow of impurity, and in some cases, as we have noted, previously required the exile of the Bha:. [BACK]
39. In fact, as we will discuss elsewhere, this is a matter of very vestigial forms used in the course of initiations into certain thar activities, such as the beginning of the study of the musical instrument, the mwali . The Jugi now, in Bhaktapur at least, do not know or use traditional yogic practices, and, in contrast to upper thar s with Tantric initiation, do not perform meditation. This is, in fact, characteristic of even those who remained fully in the Kanphata[ *] tradition. As Briggs wrote in the early decades of this century, there seemed to be little knowledge of their texts and only limited practice of Yoga among them ([1938] 1973, 251). [BACK]
40. That is, we are excluding here those religious structures that are Newar Buddhist and whose attending priests are the Vajracarya, and the Mathas[ *] , the centers for visiting Shaivite ascetics from elsewhere in South Asia, whose presiding priests, or mahantas , are Ja(n)gam, Gin, and Puri of Indian origin. [BACK]
41. For the three or four temples that had more than one priest, only the major pujari is listed. [BACK]
42. For example, "The Brahmans, being in principle priests, occupy the supreme rank with respect to the whole set of castes" (Dumont 1980, 47). [BACK]