Cremation, Caste, and Cosmogony in Karmic Traditions.

The Funeral priest as Brahman
Returning to the Mahabrahmans, Jonathan Parry argues,
they “are in many contexts treated much like
Untouchables, and are described as achhut (“not to be
touched”). No fastidious person of clean caste will dine
with them. In theory, they should live outside the village
and to the south of it – that is, in the direction of
death…the Mahabrahmans’ relative degradation is rather
a consequence of the fact that they participate in the
death pollution which afflicts their patrons. Since they
have many jajman [clients] they are – as it were – in a
permanent state of impurity” (Parry 1994:77). A similar
situation is evident at Pashupatinath, where the
Mahabrahmans are called Ghati Bahun. They are
working on the ghats, mourning the dead, and they may
also light the fire during cremations if there are no sons
or close relatives. There is also an ayurvedic doctor
called Ghati Baidhya who sometimes predicts the exact
time of death for dying people in The house of the
Dying. None of these Bahuns are identified as low caste,
and they are also wearing the janai – the sacred thread.
They can go to houses of other Brahmans and they also
participate in rituals together with other Brahmans. The
Ghati Bahuns have been initiated into, as discussed
earlier, the bartamande ritual, which is mandatory for
being employed as a Funeral and Cremation priest.
When a Ghati Bahun dies, he may either be cremated at
Arya or Ram Ghat. The fact that he might be cremated at
Arya Ghat shows that he is treated as a Brahman and not
a low-caste, and the informants at Pashupatinath
emphasised that the Ghati Bahuns are Brahmans
regardless of their profession. Parry has stressed the fact
that even though the Mahabrahmans become highly
polluted and gain an ambivalent character because of
their work as funeral priests, “they are after all
Brahmans” although ill-omened ones (ibid:78).
The Mahabrahmans explain themselves that the reason
why they are treated as low-casts in some spheres is their
participation in death pollution. Since they have many
patrons they are in a state which seems to be similar to a
permanent state of death pollution (Parry 1980:94).
When other Brahmans treat the Funeral-priests as lowcaste,
it is not because they are not acknowledged as
Brahmans, but because their “vessel”-function is filled
with impurity. He is “worshipped as the deceased, he is
dressed in the dead man’s clothes, is made to wear his
spectacles or clutch his walking stick, and is fed his
favourite foods…At a rite which marks the end of the
period of the most intense pollution the chief mourner,
and then the other male mourners, are tonsured by the
Barber. But before even the chief mourner, the
Mahabrahman should be shaved as if he – as the pret
itself – were the one most deeply polluted by death”
(Parry 1994:76).
Quigley (1995:81) makes a point of Parry’s conclusion
that “but having said all this…He is after all a
Brahman” (Parry 1980:81, Quigley’s emphasis), and
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continues, “one might say with just as much conviction
that since the function of the Brahman priest is to be the
vessel of other people’s impurity, he is essentially
indistinguishable from those who remove pollution but
who are normally seen as belonging at the bottom of the
caste hierarchy” (Quigley 1995:81). His conclusion is
that if both Raheja and Parry had relied more on their
own ethnography, they would have ignored the
Brahminical and Dumontian hierarchy, which is based
on purity and pollution (ibid:81-82). Quigley argues
“when Parry, for example, writes that the Mahabrahman,
though in many respects treated like an Untouchable, is
“after all a Brahman”, he is effectively denying the
validity of his own observations, indeed of observation
in general. The ideal Brahman to whom he is ultimately
referring cannot possibly belong to the observable
world” (ibid:82-83).
I disagree with Quigley precisely because my own data
confirm Parry’s interpretation and strengthen Hocart’s
hypothesis of caste. I will argue that the debate has been
blurred due to the failure of distinguishing between the
state of flesh prior to the ritual and the polluted
consequences afterwards. The distinction between
temporary and permanent impurity is crucial when
approaching the problem why the Mahabrahmans are
impure but still Brahmans and not untouchables. A
Brahmin son cremating his father and observing the
obsequies is impure, and he has as such a moral duty to
observe taboos, which restrict normal social interaction
with his fellow Brahmans or his family. This means in
no way that he is a Sudra, although he is treated as an
untouchable during the mourning period. However, the
Brahmin son’s most impure state lasts for 11-13 days
only. Hypothetically, if he had 100 fathers and cremated
one each 11 th or 13 th day successively, he would have
been in a state of temporary death pollution for 1100-
1300 days, or more than 3 years. Nevertheless, he would
still have been a Brahmin and not a Sudra, although the
consequences of the obsequies would have put sincere
limitations on his social interaction.
A Ghati Bahun I met at Pashupatinath estimated that he
had cremated approximately 15.000 corpses during the
last twenty years. This is not more than approximately
two cremations every day, but his bodily “vessel”
accumulates sins and pollution continuously. Still, this
pollution is only a temporary impurity. Permanent
impurity (or purity) is only achieved through birth and
marriage. Consequently, at least theoretically, the
Cremation priest would have been pure after he had
observed the obsequies for all his cremations. But if he
is going to observe a 13 day mourning period for these
15.000 cremations it will take him more than five
hundred years (!) to regain the purity of a Brahman who
does not cremate. Nobody counts this way, but there is
an implicit agreement that the Funeral priest is impure.
Nevertheless, a Ghati Bahuns is treated as a Brahman,
but as a Brahman observing death pollution. Thus, there
are no structural contradictions that a Mahabrahman is