Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

(seeds, food). In life a person becomes what one eats,
which highlights consumption of food, but also the
defilement from substances bodily disposed off such as
menstrual blood, semen, excreta, and death. All bodily
genera are descended from the original cosmic Purusa,
and “person and genera are thus conceived of as
channelling and transforming heterogeneous, eveflowing,
changing substances” (ibid:233).
In order to understand how the transactions of sin occur,
a metaphor may illuminate this process: the body is a
“vessel”. This “vessel” metaphor is crucial in the
understanding of castes as transactions of coded
substances. A pure person that has been defiled by
temporary impurity, basically through consumption of
water or food, has to purify his body (“vessel”) through
subsequent rites. Therefore, all interactions and
transactions of substances are potentially dangerous
because they may involve defilement of one’s purity.
Each substance has a value, an entity which in theory
and practice is both morally and religiously defined, and
society is structured around the different transactions
that are hierarchically regulated through sanctions and
taboos.
The body as a “vessel”, which each and everyone is
concerned about, is therefore fundamental in castes
28
perceived as moral substance codes. The Funeral priests
who conduct cremations and mourn the dead are called
Mahabrahmans, which literally means the “great
Brahmans”, but this sub-caste of Brahmans are also
knows as Mahapatra, which means “great vessels”
(Parry 1994:76). Their role in funerals is to function as
“great vessels”, which are filled with sin and pollution,
and this paradox is the matter of debate regarding the
caste hierarchy and the common assumption that
Brahmans are ranked highest because of their purity.
It has been argued that although theories of bodily
substances are highly developed, these notions belong to
the cultural domain of medicine and not to an
“ethnosociological” metaphysic of caste identity
(McGilvray 1982b:35), and further, that these notions
are hardly articulated in hierarchy disputes and claims
(ibid:88).
In normal and daily social interaction this might be true,
but within the realm of death they are both articulated
and disputed. I will therefore emphasise the moral
substance code approach for an understanding of castes.
Death is a social setting for the construction of castes
through the consumption of human flesh either
physically or symbolically, and this is the core theme for
the following chapters in part 1.