Download >> Vestiges of Totemism in Newar Society - Dr. Kamal P ...

each claiming a higher status than is ordinarily accorded it by others--became an
endemic feature of Newar society. If we accept Leach’s criterion, these competing
“grades within a single caste have the nature of social classes rather than of castes”
(Leach, 1960:11). A kind of social Darwinism reigned supreme, each grade closing in
upon itself in self defense, Except the status of the Brahmin at the top and the
untouchables at the bottom, the hierarchy, thus, has remained fluid. Today the Newars
may be said to have castes in Dumont’s sense that there is a hierarchy of the pure at the
top and the polluted at the bottom, but with a very confused situation in the middle.
Fortunately, for us there still survives the vestiges of forms of Newar social
organization which are based, not upon the ideology of hierarchy along the poles of the
pure and the polluted like castes, nor upon the principle of rivalry and privilege as the
classes, but simply on the principle of identity and difference. Surprisingly, so far no
social scientist who has studied the Newar social systems has even reported that the
Shresthas and Jyapus in Bhaktapur, Dhulikhel, Manandhars in Banepa, some Shrestha
families in Patan, and some Jyapus in Kathmandu have a system of social classification
which in Newari is called kuna^ short for kulan@ma (lineage name). Most of these
names are those of animals, plants, insects, flowers, artifacts, physical features which are
descriptive in nature. Among many primitive tribes divided into sibs (clan or gentes) the
sib name is derived from an animal, plant or natural object. The sib members display
special attitudes towards these creatures or things, which are their totems. The institution
which comprises the sibs, their totems, and attendant beliefs, costumes and rituals is
called totemism. Totemic syndrome, in brief, involves 1. clan organization 2. clans taking
animal or plant names as emblems, and 3. belief in a relationship between groups and
their totems. However, totemism can exist in different forms as social phenomenon
(formally identical but descriptively distinct sib characteristics) or as cultic phenomenon
attendant beliefs as a peculiar forms of socialised mysticism, with distinct attitudes,
rituals, and custom surrounding the totems as a mildly sacred realm of nature). Sib
characteristics, the drawing of a mildly sacred realm of nature into a social system as a
continuum and exogamy combine into totemism with “striking frequency”. However, in
recent years long debate continues between the nominalists, the functionalists
(Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown) and the structuralists (Levi-Strauss) on the
interpretation of totemic phenomena. Levi-strauss, who launched a stringent attack on
nominalist and functionalist positions, does not deny that totemism is” a logic that
classifies” and that totemic symbols are borrowed from nature by men “to create
differences amongst themselves” (1969: 108) as a basic schema of classification.
In the Newar social system, exogamous lineages are still more fundamental units
than status groups ordered in a hierarchy of the pure and the polluted. For instance,
marriages are decided at the lineage or Phuki-level, not at the caste level. The members
4