Chapter Eleven Purity and Impurity: On the Borders of the Sacred
1. A similar point was made earlier by Gabriel Campbell, who adds the observation that the transcendence of the categories of purity and impurity may characterize children as well as ascetics, and thus be prior to social differentiation. "Children are buried [rather than being cremated] because they are social and ritual non-entities; they have not completed the transition into human society . . . although the child is born in relative impurity, his nakedness and innocence is relative purity. . .. In the burial [rather than cremation] of saints [that is, Hindu ascetics] exactly the same structural relation to society holds as in the burial of children. Thus the saint is also outside of society both socially and ritually. He is casteless, without a family, and although m a state of basic purity, really exists outside the system of purity and pollution as it affects normal householders. . .. Cremation is necessitated by 'separateness,' by a social and ritual 'individuality'; whereas the relationship of the child and the saint to Brahman, the pervading Soul, is precisely one of non-separation, or non-individuality" (1976, 118-119). Burial rather than cremation is done in Bhaktapur for infants and young children and for Bhaktapur's historically renouncer group, the Jugi. It should be noted, however, that infants and young children who would not be cremated if they died are nonetheless purified in many thar s, albeit in a perfunctory manner, following death and birth pollution in the family. [BACK]
2. As Veena Das remarks, Van Gennep (1909) had in his seminal Les Rites de Passage already "emphasized the threatening nature of all liminalities—intellectual, social, and cosmic. He pointed out that being unclassifiable, these liminalities have the potential of disrupting the particular classifications imposed by man on his given reality" (Das 1977, 117). [BACK]
3. See the discussion of these theorists in Douglas (1968, 336f.). [BACK]
4. "Even those who have incurred impurity (on death, etc.) are enjoined to do certain religious acts such as offering water to the deceased" (Kane 1968-1977, vol. IV, p. 268). We noted in chapter 6 (In the discussion of menstrual disabilities) that menstruating women—and polluted men—may worship the Tantric lineage deity and do daily household worship, but in areas away from the shrines, and by making use of imagined images of the deities. [BACK]
5. "Thus the precise rules for the purification of the body have been declared to you; hear now the decision of the law regarding the purification of the various inanimate things" Laws of Manu V, 110 (Bühler 1969, 188). [BACK]
6. The radical possibilities of the escape from the Brahmanical dharma- supported status system when "inner impurity" is not only taken into account but given greater significance than "external impurity" is evident in the way that low castes can and do make use of the altered emphasis. Barnett and Barnett quote a South Indian untouchable, who argues "The caste man [a member of the clean castes] says if you touch a person who is not in the caste system, you will be polluted, but we deny caste. . . . Bathing is for external cleanliness only. . . . Our view of bathing and pollution is rational, theirs is traditional. . . . The caste man is not clean in heart while Adi-Dravidas [untouchables] are, since [we] . . .do not retaliate after mistreatment, and therefore surface dirt is irrelevant. . . . Brahmanical culture emphasized cow worship and sacrifice, not character'' (1974, 387f.; cited in Sara Dickey 1984). [BACK]
7. A person may have "impure" or "dirty" thoughts. These are one particular one sort of disturbed and disturbing thoughts, about which people feel variously shame or guilt or concern, but these are distinguished from, and are different sorts of problems than, physical impurities. [BACK]
8. The Po(n) and Jugi, like all thar s, high and low, have their own necessary purification procedures prior to rituals, and their own still lower status, and relatively degraded, eaters of cipa and collectors of impurity. In their own conception and action some, at least, and perhaps all of their own pollution might also be removed. But, they say, the conditions of their life make it impossible to avoid contamination as well as to devote themselves properly to religious activities. They may ascribe their fallen social condition to an act of a thar ancestor (the Jugis have an elaborate account of this), but this does not explain any "indwelling impurity," only the inherited conditions of life that render each generation and individual impure as a secondary consequence. [BACK]
9. Veena Das, emphasizing the relation of symbols of impurity to liminality, writes that "In the case of the symbolism of impurity, it is the peripheries of the body which are emphasized. Thus hair and nails, which figure prominently in this, have a peripheral position in relation to the body as they can both belong to the body and yet be outside it. It is significant that both the hair and nails are allowed to grow in a natural state to symbolize impurity" (1977, 127). [BACK]
10. There are three ritualized life-cycle events: birth, death, and menarche, which cause group pollution—which must be removed by purification at the end of the samskara proceedings. However, while the entire phuki is polluted by birth and death of its members—the shared pollution being one of the defining characteristics of a phuki group—the extent of pollution connected with menarche and menarche rites (see app. 6) varies according to the custom of individual thar s. In some thars all the phuki members are polluted; in others, only the parents of the girl. [BACK]
11. Compare the discussion by Veena Das (1977, 128f.) on the many problems in attempts to identify birth and death pollution with "caste pollution." [BACK]
12. The various "purificatory" acts that follow in the days after the main purification, which ends the official ten-day period of mourning after death—which is the purification referred to in this statement—can be seen as purging individuals and various places of dangerous, nondisgusting influences, that is, of "clean contaminants" (see app. 6). [BACK]
13. One metaphorical connection between "dirt" and birth and death is liminality. "The impurity of death marks off the mourners for the period when they are dealing with the liminal category of the preta ; similarly, birth impurity marks off the relatives of the new-born, till the child has been incorporated as a person, within the cosmic order" (Das 1977, 125). [BACK]
14. The idea of the effective transfer of a dangerous "substance" is general in South Asia as it is everywhere in the world. Stevenson noted that on the birthday of a Brahman boy in Kathiawar[ *] a "lucky woman" is brought to wave her arms toward him, and then, cracking her knuckles against her forehead takes on herself his ill luck" (1920, 26). [BACK]
15. Manu lists various procedures for cleaning inanimate objects according to their constituent materials, using ashes, earth, water, fire, Kusa grass, hot water, mustard-seed oil, cow urine, and cow dung (Buhler[ *] 1886, 188ff.). [BACK]
16. This is part of a general understanding that to be impure is a matter of discomfort and possible social embarrassment, but to cause someone or something (including oneself) to become polluted is a moral error, in the sense that it is a matter of personal responsibility. [BACK]
17. Lower thars, depending on their status and thar customs, make use of other personnel and procedures for purification. [BACK]
19. Nana is water that must be drawn on the same day it is used from a river, well, or tap, which must not be touched by a major source of contamination such as a menstruating woman, member of an unclean thar , or unclean animal. It is used for washing the face and hands in the morning, washing before puja s, the initial cleaning of puja equipment, and so forth. It is the least "powerful," the most ordinary, of the various kinds of pure water (app. 4). [BACK]
20. In most major purifications now only some nuchal hair is shaved off. Total shaving of the head (sparing an occipital tuft of hair) is generally restricted now to the closest male relatives in the purification following a death in the family. In some elaborate Tantric or ordinary puja s performed for some special purpose, however, both the officiating priests and the sponsor of the puja may have their head shaved during the preparatory purification. [BACK]
21. This may have been in part to prevent their use by a witch, a boksi , in "contagious magic." This possibility is known about but is considered a trivial risk. [BACK]
22. Although the Nau is not an untouchable, the minor bya(n)kegu after the Nau procedures may reflect to some degree a response to the Nau's borderline clean status as well as the completion of purification. Elsewhere, such as among the Coorgs as reported by Srinivas, "contact with a barber defiles a Coorg, and every Coorg has to take a purificatory bath after being shaved by a barber" (1952, 41). [BACK]
23. Veena Das's remarks cited above regarding the liminality of hair and nails, which both belong to the body and are at the same time outside of it, suggest that hair shaving and nail paring serve to delineate anew the clean boundaries of the body by dealing with the peripheral aspects of hair and nails as exuviae, first separating them and then distancing them from the body. [BACK]
24. Theoretically according to karmic theory the individual who has he-come polluted would be being punished for some past violation of the dharma , but, in fact, such theory is only made use of in special, and usually extreme and rare cases. [BACK]
25. Marriott and others (e.g., Marriott 1976, 1980; Marriott and Inden 1977) have interpreted some aspects of South Asian thought and behavior as based on conceptions of "dividuals" as open to a flow of substances which continually affect and constitute their individuality. These conceptions are widely represented in Bhaktapurian doctrine and ordinary discourse about the self. [BACK]
26. Disgust has something to do with powerful motivations for rejection of the ingestion of food or food-like substances. Only some kinds of substances that should not be ingested are disgusting; broken glass, for example, is not. "Disgusting substances" are organic and have some of the properties of food and thus represent some potential temptation for ingestion. "Disgust" implies a powerful blocking of a temptation for incorporation. In Bhaktapur the temptation to be "equal to all" has, for middle-status and upper-status people, a strong implication of being free to be equal to those lower on the scale. Dirtiness, rejection of hierarchical separations from lower-status people, and rejection of the special restrictive responsibilities associated with middle and upper status, are strongly tempting as well as threatening for middle-status and upper-status people in Bhaktapur for various reasons. Such temptations are associated, particularly for men, with a long period of freedom of association and action during childhood before the extensive differentiation, restrictions, and responsibilities that result from a sudden transition after initiation into full thar membership with the kaeta Puja rite of passage. The temptation is countered by obsession with the lowest thar 's contacts with dirt, particularly with feces, their evident dirtiness, and their "disgusting" moral behavior. [BACK]
27. An Important element in the marriage ceremonies of many thar s that also implies a unification of bodies is the ceremonial sharing by the bride and groom of food from the same dish, the sharing of each other's cipa (as it is phrased), which symbolizes the unification of the bridal pair. In upper-level thar s this is the only time that the husband takes the wife's cipa ; that is, following this unification, she, by taking his cipa , incorporates his and his lineage's substance, but he will not incorporate hers. [BACK]
28. In practice the persons who are concerned with contamination by contact with low-status people are mostly men—particularly Brahman men whose priestly activities would be compromised. Upper-status women's relatively domestic, household-centered life traditionally limited their chances of coming into contact with members of low thar s. [BACK]
29. The purification of ritual equipment and settings is, like individual purification, done through cleaning and washrag with various pure substances and varies, as does ordinary purification of the body, from perfunctory to elaborate. The condition to be achieved by such purification is usually phrased as making the area or equipment suddha or (more rarely, and mostly in Brahmanical usage) pavitra. "Suddha " means clean or pure in a general sense. " Pavitra " adds an additional meaning, it has been glossed as "pure, holy, sacred, sinless, etc." (Monier-Williams [1899] n.d.). Ritual equipment and areas not only are pure but also have supernatural power concentrated within the boundaries delineated by purification—and concentrated further in other smaller mandalic[ *] circles drawn within the larger purified mandala[ *] in which the supernatural aspects of the puja are located. " Pavitra ," as ''sacred,'' means both pure (i.e., clearly delineated) and powerful. Once the area and equipment are purified, the supernatural power is brought into them through additional procedures such as mantras and entreaties to the deities. [BACK]
30. This is complicated in Bhaktapur by the Rajopadhyaya Brahmans' esoteric functions as Tantric priests and the fact that they can eat certain meat. But when they are functioning as priests of the ordinary deities they share the purity and food restrictions which apply to those deities. [BACK]