Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

nature and culture when death both challenges and
creates society and cosmos. Death is intensified life and
water is what intensifies it.
Structurally, the dissertation consists of four parts. In
Part 1: Cremating Death – Creating Life I start
analysing karma, which is the underlying premise for the
comparison of the different practices and beliefs. Then I
turn to the cremations of the kings after the Royal Palace
massacre in Nepal in 2001, which highlight
constructions of castes and Brahmans’ perceptions of
purity and impurity. These hierarchies are contrasted by
the Aghoris’ polluting practices and penances, and based
on Hocart’s interpretation of caste, the empirical
evidence is analysed in a cosmogonic perspective. This
theoretical approach together with new, empirical data
enables other interpretations of castes which synthesise
former controversial and ambiguous topics in the debate.
In Part 2: The Sisters Kali and Ganga I analyse lowcastes
in Bangladesh. There are two types of Mother
Goddesses in Hindu Bangladesh – one gives life and the
other takes life. Kali is traditionally seen as the Goddess
of Death and destruction, and Ganga as the almighty
life-giving Mother of the World. Kali is either seen as
the mother of Ganga or as the superior sister. The annual
floods in Bangladesh are a re-occurring problem, which
is incorporated into the low-religion of common people.
Each year the river kills people and destroys land, but
the river and floods are also pre-requisites for a
successful harvest and further life. The uncertainty of the
environment is incorporated into the goddesses of life
and death; too much water or too little water are seen
as wrong waters for life. In Bangladesh there are few
Brahmans due to historical reasons, but the low-castes
nevertheless maintain notions of castes. A discussion of
castes without incorporating low-caste perceptions is
insufficient, and this part stresses the low religion and
the practices as performed and perceived by the lowcastes
in the water-world of Kali and Ganga.
In Part 3: Reality, Materiality, and Spirituality I
investigate different types of materiality and the
interrelatedness between mind and matter. The
environment and the presence or absence of water in the
form of river and rain are crucial in the religious
incorporation of the life-giving waters in the body of
myths. The hydrological cycle is also metaphorically
linking micro- and macro cosmos. Holy rivers in
particular are uttermost divine revelations for Hindus,
but as shown in Nepal, if a river becomes highly
polluted, then religion and rituals, society and cosmos,
are threatened. Death and corpses are normally
conceived as contaminated and dangerous matters, and
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water may cleanse away pollution but also transfer it
onto other beings. The most potent type of materiality –
the human flesh – is invested with cosmology, and
corpses are normally perceived as highly polluted. In a
cosmogonic perspective emphasising the life-giving
waters, this process is inverted, and funerals are seen as
a purifying process creating the life-giving and vital
forces which are transformed into water for the welfare
of society. This is the ultimate outcome of karma,
whereby both the deceased and the society prosper from
an individual death.
In Part 4: Archaeology of Water-Worlds I move from
the present to the past aiming to trace parts of the
development of the religions on the Indian subcontinent
by an emphasis on the life-giving waters as the
structuring variable by which society is organised
around. The analysis starts in Nepal and moves to the
origin of karma as a doctrine by tracing connections
between ancient Greece and India. Through a journey
into Zoroastrianism, the analysis ends in the Indus valley
with particularly a discussion of religious syncretism at
Taxila in today’s Pakistan. Crucial in the discussion is
the ways water has been a medium through which
different interpretations have structured and enabled a
discourse or a horizon of mutual interrelatedness and
exchange of ideas despite the differences in beliefs and
practices. The life-giving water is one of the core
symbols which unite the various religious practices on
the Indian continent, and hence it has been an historical
agency in the development of caste and cosmos.
Finally, by combining both the empirical data and
theoretical approaches regarding both the present and the
past, a synthesis of death and life-giving waters is
presented in the conclusion, which puts emphasis on
water as a perspective that opens up new fields of
inquiry and gives other answers to the complex,
empirical world. Such an emphasis on the water-worlds
exemplifies various uses and meanings of water, how
rivers and rain have influenced religions, and how
concepts or particular constructions of nature have had
impact on the development of social organisations and
ritual practices. Water as an element in nature has rarely
been incorporated and analysed as an agent in the
construction of society and religion, and the materiality
and spatiality of the water-worlds are entry points into
the constitutive structures and mechanisms at work in
history (Tvedt 2004:3-7). Hence, a broad material
culture study is analytically an approach to encompass
these natural and cultural worlds because it combines
and unites the past and the present, mind and matter,
structure and agency, and the general and the specific.