Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

Hence, I have a feeling that I am only scratching at the
surface of the body of knowledge, particularly in
Bombay (where I spent only two weeks), but partly also
in Manang, and the data from Varanasi are too scattered
to make a coherent presentation. I have tried to solve this
problem in three ways. Firstly, variation generates
knowledge. Since I have a certain general knowledge of
processes and premises, I have searched for the
differences that deviate from the traditional, orthodox, or
implicit presentations of social structures, for instance
the caste system or what the “standard” type of
cremation is supposed to look like. Both Durga Prasad
Sapkota and Hazera are two such persons who challenge
traditional understandings of social structures by an
examination of their actual practices. This relates to the
second strategy; I have tried to find data from my
particular theoretical approach and empirical case
studies that enable me to link up with the huge body of
literature which exists on the various topics. Thirdly, I
have emphasised material culture and the actors in death
rituals by observing what they actually do, and since
very few studies have focused on funerals as rituals, I
have hopefully been able to contribute with some new
knowledge.
Language and interpretation. Unless the informants
spoke English, which a lot of holy men and priests did,
particularly in India, I have relied on translations and
interpreters. This is unfortunate, but perhaps the only
solution if one is conducting comparative research. I
have had various experiences with interpreters. Some
have been superb; others have been less good. Hence, I
have adjusted the analytical level in accordance with the
data. Mythology, eschatology and symbolic expressions
necessitate not only good translations, but require often
first hand knowledge of the langue if one is to grasp and
conceptualise the metaphorical nuances. In some cases
when I have made interviews, I have had to ask “yes” or
“no” questions with cross-references to check the
answers (e.g. are unmarried women cremated? Are
married women buried?). Often, this has also been the
case when I have mingled in funeral processions and
asked the mourners directly. Therefore, despite the
problems with some imperfect translations, I am quite
confident that the knowledge in itself is quite right, and
this type of information is highly valuable in a
comparative perspective when it is put into a system or
an interpretative framework.
Presentation. The ways in which I have collected data
and the subsequent evaluation of the quality for
interpretations have implications for the analysis and
presentation. I have tried to distinguish between
informants’ statements, my interpretations of them, and
the use of literature to support and elaborate my
arguments, or to challenge existing models, although in
the narrative these different threads may conjoin and
seem inseparable. It is said that an “Interpretation is an
attempt to make clear…a text, or a text analogue, which
in some way is confused, incomplete, cloudy, seemingly
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contradictory – in one way or another unclear” (Taylor
1987:33). This is particularly the problem with
theological explanations presented and interpreted by
priests and holy men. All participants – informants and
researchers alike – interpret the social environment in
which they engage. This may dismiss the separation
between “insider” and “outsider” or being “within” a
culture and belonging to a tradition or not, because all
actors are re-interpreting social facts. This is not,
however, the same as acknowledging that all
interpretations are equally good and have the same
degree of relevancy, but only assessing that every culture
consists of pieces and fragments which may or may not
constitute some kind of a coherence. By presenting a
cultural logic, which common people may or may not
share explicitly, there are often small differences
between a researcher’s interpretation of indigenous
features and holy men or priests’ interpretations of the
same events or problems. In many respects both parties
are reasoning by using the internal, cultural logic. Thus,
“an interpretation shows us that a narrator is not simply
describing events but construing them. Sense is made,
not passively recorded…The point of interpretation is
not to understand a single individual but to enlarge our
conception of how sense might be made – or deformed”
(Ochberg 1996:102).
Mythology and symbols. To solve the latter problem and
by including the objections to the translations of parts of
the data, I have tried to collect and present most of the
mythological, eschatological and soteriological aspects,
based on secondary literature which has been translated
into English, in two separate chapters (chapter 10 and
11, and appendix D). These chapters are presentations
and interpretations of literature in general, whereas the
symbolic interpretations of the katto-ritual and the data
from Bangladesh are mainly based on primary data but
in combination with references to the existing debate.
Naturally, the different layers of interpretation are
impossible to separate totally both as narratives, model,
or theories, and “thick descriptions” made by spinning
webs of significance include all these features (Geertz
1973). Meaning does not arise in isolation, but in an
interwoven matrix of knowledge. The outcome of this
study becomes a book, which is a strange construction as
Foucault argues; “The frontiers of a book are never
clear-cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full
stop, beyond its internal configuration and its
autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of
references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it
is a node within a network…it constructs itself, only on
the basis of a complex field of discourse” (Foucault
1997:23). Nevertheless, I have tried to distinguish
between the different layers of interpretations, and in the
cases where my empirical data relate directly to the
external body of literature, as for instance the chapter on
the Zoroastrians, I have tried to present my data in one
paragraph and referring to the literature in the next, and
so on, and by this method building up an argument or a
model, which is successively used further on.