The Hindu Lexicographer? A Note on Auspiciousness and Purity
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<pub-date pub-type="ppub"><month>07</month><year>1991</year></pub-date><volume>25</volume><issue>2</issue><fpage>267</fpage><lpage>285</lpage><custom-meta-wrap><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>sagemeta-type</meta-name><meta-value>Journal Article</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>search-text</meta-name><meta-value> The Hindu lexicographer? A note on auspiciousness and purity' Jonathan Parry This discussion note is written as a continuation of a personal correspondence in which I sought from T.N. Madan elucidation of his highly suggestive paper on the relationship between the Hindu concepts of auspiciousness and purity (Madan 1985). It is, of course, Professor Madan himself who deserves much of the credit for drawing attention to the significance of this theme for the study of Indian values; and the justification for publicly airing my private confusion is the possibility that there may be others who would welcome clarification of his position. But by returning to one of his landmark essays, in this last issue of Contributions for which he is to take responsibility, I also intend a tribute to his twenty-five year tapasyv at the editor's desk. By comparison with the pure/impure polarity, the opposition between auspiciousness and inauspiciousness has until recently attracted surprisingly little anthropological attention-'surprisinglv' in view of the amount of overt concern with which such matters are regarded by many H4indus. One reason for this imbalance, I infer, is that purity values have often been seen as being 'intimatelv related to the social structure' (Srinivas 1965: 109), and as providing the ideological foundation for the caste system (Dumont 1970). The relationship between notions of auspiciousness and mattters of social morphology is apparently far less obvious and direct-though it is by no means non-existent. Much to do with the position of women-as pre- pubescent virgins, wives and widows-is incomprehensible without reference to auspiciousness; and (in so far as it is possible to tell the two sources of their degradation apart) at least as much about the inferiority of the Jonaithain Parr' is Reader in Anthropology. Iondon School of Economics and Political Science. Houghton Street. London. WC2A 2AE. In draifting this paiper I haive grea.tlv henetited from helpful discussions with Chris Fuller. Murrav Milner and Maurice Bloch. Though inadequately acknowledged in the text. Bloch's recent Frazer lecture ( 1991 ) has hcn ain im)portant influence on the formuialtion of its arepumnent. Contributions to Indian sociology (n.s.) 25, 2 (1991) SAGE Publications, New Delhi/Newbury Park/London 268/JONATHAN PARRY Mahabrahman funeral priests would be explained by their inauspiciousness as by their impurity (Parry 1980). Along with a propensity to privilege the values of purity over those of auspiciousness has gone a tendency to conflate the two dimensions. Though in his Coorg study Srinivas presents them as separate categories, he includes them both under the wider rubric of the 'good sacred', and is therefore charged with blurring the distinction between them (Madan 1985: 20-21; Marglin 1985a: 1). Dumont (1959: 33) went further. Coorg marriage, he suggested, is the auspicious rite par excellenc precisely because no impurity is involved. Auspiciousness is by implication contingent on purity. Though for the most part implicitly, Srinivas (for example, 1965: 104) also postulated a basic continuity between the concept of purity as it relates 'to permanent features of the social structure like caste' and as it occurs 'in certain non-structural contexts' (like death). Dumont's formulation is again far stronger. The impurity of the Untouchable and the impurity of birth, death or menstruation are of the same kind (1959: 18-19). 'Ancient literature confirms that temporary and permanent impurity are identical in nature' (1970: 47, emphasis added). In different measure, then, both writers elide auspiciousness and purity on the one hand, and on the other the permanent impurity of castes with the temporary impurities which result from involvement with the organic processes of life. Das (1982: 140), Madan (1985) and Marglin (1985a) properly dispute the legitimacy of the first of these 'reductions'; Das (1982: 128-29) the second. Instead of the continuities, what is now stressed is an incommensurability. Some corrective of a too-easy conflation was no doubt called for; but an insistence on too rigorous a differentiation can also become a distortion of the way in which these concepts are put to use in the day-to-day world. Plainly, purity and auspiciousness are not the same thing; and the claim that 'temporary and permanent impurity are identical in nature' is an overstatement. But in neither case is it helpful to imply that we are dealing with two quite separate dimensions. With regard to auspiciousness and purity, for example, I shall point to evidence which suggests that the one may entail, or intensify, the other. They cannot therefore be properly understood as entirely independent variables, and the complex nature of the interaction between them is obscured by exaggerating their degree of mutual discreteness and autonomy. My sense of unease might be stated in another, more general, way. That Hindus inhabit a peculiarly systematic and coherent conceptual world has long been a tacit premise of much writing on the sociology of Indian values. But that they go about their business like lexicographers, equipped with fine-tuned dictionary definitions of neatly-bounded concepts, is surely even more unlikely. Yet this is what a great deal of recent writing on purity and auspiciousness comes perilously close to implying. The Hindu lexicographer? A note on auspiciousness and purity/ 269 in an attempt to substantiate this charge I consider three particularly impressive contributions to this literature. But in so doing I also hope to signal a more pervasive problem in the study of Hindu values: a tendency to treat words as a reliable guide to conceptual organisation, separate words as an indication of separate concepts, and words and concepts as having clear lexicon-like meanings. The first of these tendencies overlooks the obvious difficulty that a concept may exist without people being able to name it (cf. Lewis 1980: 71-72); the second ignores the fact that different words may express the same thought, while the third encourages a possibly futile search for 'real meanings' which may not actually exist. The implicit premise that words have firm semantic boundaries predisposes the socio- logist to postulate a clear-cut distinction not only between 'inauspiciousness' and 'impurity', but also within the latter between 'permanent' and 'temporary' forms of pollution. But the temporary impurity of birth and death can again be lexically distinguished (as sutak versus patak, for example)-raising the daunting prospect that an inventory of Hindu concepts would have to exhaust all the words in the dictionary. Rather than firm edges and fixed meanings, however, it is surely rather more likely that 'purity' and 'auspiciousness' are 'fuzzy concepts' which have blurred over- lapping boundaries, and that each is loosely articulated around a nucleus of prototypical instances. * * * The claim that these concepts should be seen as covering quite separate semantic domains is perhaps most forcefully stated in Raheja's important recent monograph (1988). Raheja is less cautious than Madan about taking her informants' use of language as a key to their conceptual categories-even though the way they use it sounds slightly idiosyncratic. In Pahansu, the notion of 'inauspiciousness' apparently subsumes the ideas of distress (kasht), danger (sankat), illness (rog), terror (dar), sin (pap), fault (dosh) and ghostly affliction (pret-badhd). All these terms are reportedly used 'for the most part interchangeably', and in association with verb forms (lagna, to become attached; charhna, to go upon; pahunchna, toS reach; uske upar d janda to come upon him) which imply that the affliction derives from a source external to the afflicted person. Raheja's central preoccupation is with the fact that all these various kinds of 'inauspiciousness' are transferred from one family to another through the mechanism of the gift (dan). Inauspiciousness is given away with the gift, and thus removed. Impurity can be 'spread' (phailna) by being transmitted to others, but is not thereby offloaded elsewhere. The polluted person remains polluted. Gifting has to do with the removal of inauspiciousness and not with the removaf of impurity. The contrast is clearly signalled in language. While 'inauspiciousness' becomes 'attached 270 / JONATHAN PARRY to' or 'comes on top of the one who suffers it, and has to be 'made for' or 'caused to go away', impurity simply 'is' (hona). It is something one 'observes' (manna) until it 'ends' (khatam hona) or 'dissipates' (likarna) through the passage of time (ibid.: 43-45). The difference is radical and easily summarised: First, impurity cannot be 'removed' through any sort of transferral to a recipient, as inauspiciousness is removed through the giving of dan .... Second, forms of impurity have little if any relevance for more generalized well-being or auspiciousness. Ill-health, lack of prosperity, failure to produce sons, death, madness, family discord, poor harvests, and many of the other misfortunes about which villagers are concerned and that receive much ritual attention are never attributed to impurity or hier- archical considerations of any sort, but rather are discussed primarily in terms of the nasubh (inauspiciousness) that must have brought them about. Pahansu villagers also make explicit statements that auspiciousness and inauspiciousness entail a 'different reckoning' (dusra hissab) from that involved in concerns with purity and impurity, 'dispositions about high and low' (ac-nic ka bhav), or with health and disease as endogenous, merely bodily (sardrik), states' (Raheja 1988: 46). With regard to the linguistic usages recorded for Pahansu, I can report that in the Hindi of my Banaras informants the various terms which Raheja includes under the general category of inauspiciousness are not used 'for the most part interchangeably'. Pret-badha (which specifically refers to a ghostly affliction) has a far narrower semantic range than a term like kasht ('trouble' in a very general sense); and though either may be a product of 'sin' (pap), neither is a synonym for it. Nor, I believe, could any of these concepts be properly described as a sub-species of 'inauspiciousness' (asubh, amangal), and the only way of arriving at such a conclusion would be by a method comparable to inviting an Englishman to answer 'yes' or 'no' to the question, 'Is it "inauspicious" to suffer from cancer or to stand in the fast- lane of a motorway?' 'Yes'-but it is a strange choice of words. I can also confidently record that the verb forms which Raheja associates with the discourse of inauspiciousness are regularly used in connection with impurity (e.g., sutak lagta hai-'death pollution is attached'), and that those she associates with impurity commonly occur in conjunction with concepts she assimilates to 'inauspiciousness' (e.g., mujhe dosh hai-'to me sin/fault is'). Death pollution is alternatively known as patak, the dictionary gloss for which is 'sin' or 'misdeed'. Physical contact with some- body in a state of pollution is described as sparsh dosh ('a fault of touch'), and the adjectival form dushit is widely used in the sense of 'impure' or 'contaminated'. Linguistic quibbles aside, the evidence is overwhelming that notions of The Hindu lexicographer? A note on auspiciousness and purity/ 271 'sin' and 'pollution' commonly shade seamlessly into each other. In the well-known story, a quarter share of the sin of Indra's Brahmanicide was passed on to women, from whom it emerges in the form of menstrual pollution. Like Brahmanicide, cow-slaughter is the source of both sin and impurity, requiring elaborate rituals of expiation involving bathing in the Ganges and donations to the Brahmans. Although it is perfectly true that in the Banarasi idiom the gift embodies 'sin', it would not only be straining the evidence to claim that priestly donations deal with the (spiritual) sin while bathing in the river is merely a matter of (bodily) pollution, but also an odd line of argument for a Chicago-valt, given that jdti's insistence on the essential monism of South Asian thought (e.g., Marriott 1976). An eclipse is a pre-eminently inauspicious time. For its duration the world is said to be in a state of sutak-a word which Banarasi Brahmans otherwise use for the pollution of birth and death.2 Images of the deities should not be touched; unless it is protected by kusha grass, all food and water should be thrown out of the house, and certainly none should be consumed. When the shadow of the planets Rahu or Khetu fall on the sun, people say, it is like the shadow of the shadow of a Dom funeral attendant falling on a Brahman. By offering dan (gifts) to the Doms, they hasten its end and a return to both auspiciousness and purity. The two aspects seem difficult to unravel. Again, when Raheja claims that misfortune is 'never attributed to impurity', she is describing a quite different world from the one with which I am familiar, for my informants regularly attribute illness-or even death-to an impure diet, and attribute spirit affliction to the filth and pollution of its victims. But not only my own informants. Amongst others, Bean (1981), Harper (1964), Hershman (1974) and Srinivas (1965) offer illustrations of a cultural premise that pollution is a potent source of ill- being. When Raheja (1988: 33) cites O'Flaherty (1976: ch. 6) as an important inspiration for her own analysis, the irony is that in the chapter referred to, O'Flaherty clearly shows how notions of sin and impurity consistently overlap (cf. Bean 1981; Fuller 1979: 472-73; McGilvray 1982: 55; Renou 1974: 78). Das (1976) goes so far as to suggest that pollution is merely an 'idiom' for sin. Given all this, it is surely the Pahansu ethnography which stands out as atypical-though not, I suspect, quite so atypical as Raheja's representation of it suggests. Yet much of her discussion proceeds as if her material should be seen as the paradigmatic case against which the reliability of other accounts can be judged. Heesterman is therefore chided for a 'conflation' which 'fails' to distinguish 'evil' and 'impurity' (1988: 33, 268), and Trautmann is misleadingly credited with the mistaken view that the poison in the gift is 2 Birth pollution is distinguished as vriddhi sutak-'the sfitak of increase'. Qualified as masik dharam sutak, the term can also be used for menstrual pollution. 272/ JONATHAN PARRY 'simply' a matter of the 'impurity' it embodies (ibid.: 251). What Trautmann (1981: 287) actually suggests is that gifts represent 'the offscourings of the body' which are one's sins. The two types of 'stain' are therefore difficult to disentangle, as Trautmann's sources clearly demonstrate. * * * While Raheja's case for a clear differentiation between 'auspiciousness' and 'purity' relies heavily on her informants' use of language, Madan is plainly embarrassed by the recognition that the way in which Hindus often express themselves seems to subvert the distinction he would like to establish. His solution is to suggest that the metaphorical nature of many of their statements obscures the clarity which these concepts in fact possess (though for whom is not entirely obvious). Shorn of its metaphorical extensions, the real referent of auspiciousness is to time and temporal events, to 'the intersection of cosmic and individual life trajectories . . .' (Madan 1985: 16). The prototype case would there- fore seem to involve the influence of astral forces on human destiny. People, places and objects can only be said to be auspicious by their association with auspicious times. Purity and impurity on the other hand 'are attributes of animate beings, inanimate objects and places with which a human being comes into contact in the course of everyday life' (ibid.: 17). Though Madan disclaims any intention of producing 'tidy-looking dichot- omies' (ilid.: 24), it is not clear that he has avoided doing so. On the assumption that 'auspiciousness' and 'purity' are adequate English approximations for the Hindu categories shubh and shuddh, there would seem to be one level at which some such contrast is almost self-evidently valid. By definition, 'auspiciousness' has the sense of 'predicting good'; it is a portent of future time or events. 'Purity' is more complex, but (like shuddh) its semantic range clearly overlaps with the idea of 'cleanliness', which in turn evokes a physical entity which has this quality. It is pre- eminently (if not exclusively) someone, some thing or some place which is 'dirty' or 'polluted'. Though it is admittedly possible to have 'impure thoughts', or even 'a dirty mind' infected by 'the moral pollution of our time', I think we might be justified in claiming that 'impurity', 'dirt' and 'pollution' are here used in a metaphorical sense. But if it therefore seems unexceptionable to sav that 'auspiciousness' always has a temporal referent, whereas purity and pollution are most likely to be attributes of people, places and things, it is also plainly tautological. As I understand it, however, Madan's argument is different. Rather than the true but tautological proposition that what is signified by auspiciousness is some future state of well-being, and that consequently the concept always has a temporal referent, he is claiming that the signifier of auspiciousness is always in some way associated with time or a temporal event. No longer a tautology, it is no longer clear to me that the proposition is true. The Hindu lexicographer? A note on auspiciousness and purity/ 273 At least on the face of it, the exceptions appear to be legion: inanimate objects and animate beings may be auspicious, like pots of curd, turmeric, cows, married women whose husbands are alive and Washermen with laden donkeys; or inauspicious, like owls, crows, widows, Mahabrahman funeral priests, or an Oil-presser met in the morning-unless, that is, he smiles so broadly that you can see all thirty-two teeth.3 The problem is not so much that this last eventuality assumes an implausibly high standard of dental health, but that many such examples only refer to a teniporal event in so far as almost anything might be said to have some such association. Thus (though Madan has a different explanation), widows and Maha- brahmans might be said to be inauspicious by association with death; women with living husbands auspicious by association with marriage. The same argument might apply to turmeric, though it does not seem to me entirely self-evident that turmeric is auspicious because it is associated with marriage, rather than being associated with marriage because it is auspicious. But if more or less any connection with some kind of 'event' is admitted, the hypothesis can of course always be saved. Nor is the fact that things and people regularly serve as indexical signs for auspiciousness the only difficulty. Temporal events (like birth, death and eclipses) may trigger impurity. The clear-cut distinction seems hard to sustain. Madan is plainly aware of such problems, but explains them away as instances of metaphor and of the 'transferred epithet'. When people speak of married women as auspicious and widows as inauspicious they have switched from literal to figurative language; and 'because we have tended to follow too closely what the informants say' (1985: 24) we have wound up missing the point. But what is not clear is what justifies us in ignoring our informants' statements when they contradict our account of the way in which their concepts are structured, or allows us to relegate them to a penumbra of metaphorical extensions.4 For Madan, 'our task as anthropologists would seem to lie in overcoming ambiguity and decoding figurative language and bringing out clearly what we receive through interrogation and observation confusedly' (1985: 25). This programmatic statement is open to several possible interpretations, but none of them entirely reconciles me to a job description which places such a premium on 'overcoming ambiguity'. In this questionable endeavour, ' Though I am unable to shed any light on why it is particularly unsmiling, or toothless, Telis (Oil-pressers) who are unpropitious, the general explanation I was offered for the inauspiciousness of this caste is that the process of extracting oil involves the sin of blindfolding the bullocks which work the press. But this is also the reason given for their extreme impurity as a caste from whom no fastidious Brahman should accept water. In short, the sinful nature of their traditional occupation is held to account both for their inauspiciousness and their impurity. For a statement to be regarded as metaphorical, most linguists demand that it should be accompanied by some linguistic indications of its metaphorical nature. Madan's argument would, of course, be considerably strengthened by evidence that this is the case for such statements as 'widows are inauspicious'. 274/JoNAAThIAN PARRY Madan has in my view been altogether too successful. If ambiguity is part of the data, then it is no part of the anthropologist's task to suppress it. To this last proposition I imagine Madan might in principle assent; but it seems to me that such a suppression is an almost inevitable consequence of his unstated premise that words are precision instruments with definitive dictionary-like meanings, and that there must exist somewhere a basic meaning for such terms as shubh and shuddh. Much work in linguistics (see, for example, Aitchison 1987) and psychology (see, for example, Smith 1988) would suggest that this is improbable. But even if we suppose that such a meaning exists, and that Madan has successfully identified it, it is perhaps pertinent to ask who else is in on the secret. I infer that most of his Kashmiri iniformants are not; and neither are my own. The chances are that we are therefore confronted with the paradoxical situation that 'auspiciousness' and 'purity' have 'real meanings' which the majority of our informants cannot actually specify, despite the fact that they endlessly employ these words and that the concepts they denote govern much of their daily behaviour (cf. Aitchison 1987: 46). At the very least, the sociological significance of such opaque meanings requires elucidation. Something somewhere seems amiss-my suspect being the 'fixed meaning' notion of concepts which we anthropologists so often take for granted. Where Dumont is said to have gone wrong was in ignoring 'the need to examine the independent character of the relations of auspiciousness' (Madan 1985: 2(-21, emphasis added). While what is pure may also be auspicious (e.g., marriage and initiation), what is impure may also be inauspicious (under most circumstances death), there are also cases in which the impure is generally auspicious (e.g., birth). The other theoretical possibility-events which are pure but inauspicious-is allegedly merely theoretical for 'no such situation is acknowledged in practice, emphasizing the overriding quality of auspiciousness' (ibid.: 18). How the absence of this combination emphasises any such thing, why Madan apparently attaches such significance to this reiterated point, or how auspiciousness can be said to 'override' purity if the two dimensions are truely independent, is not very clear. Nor is it obvious that the empirical observation is valid. In Banaras, most colleges of traditional Sanskritic instruction are closed on ashtaniz (the eighth day of the lunar fortnight) and pratipada (the first day). For the guru, I was told, it is especially inauspicious to teach on ashtamf, while for the pupil it is particularly unpropitious to receive instruction on chaturdashi (the fourteenth day)-though this last incon- venience is generally ignored (suggesting perhaps a general sociological law about the priorities of higher education the world over). Amdvasyd (the last day of the dark fortnight) is bad for both, but worst of all is pratip add when what is surely a pre-eminently pure activity is held to be highly inauspicious. In Banaras again, it is said to be inauspicious to meet three (presumptively The Hindu lexicographer? A note oni auspiciousness and purity / 275 pure) Brahmans as you set out on a journey. From many parts of south India it is reported that Untouchable castes believe that they will suffer financial disaster, sterilitv, disease or even death if a Brahman should enter their hamlet (Bean 1981: 5855; Beteille 1969: 35; Dubois 1968: 63; Gough 1962: 49-50). While from the Brahman's p6int of view such an intrusion may certainly be polluting, from the Adi-Dravidas' point of view the intruder is surely pure but inauspicious. The sacrificial bali offerings made to blood-thirsty deities and demons in many temples are regarded as inauspicious, but in order to conduct them the priest must certainly be pure.' A chief mourner should be even more meticulous when he performs the unambiguously inauspicious tripindl sraiddh ritual for the restless spirits of those who have died a 'bad death' , Lord Ram, it will be recalled, eventually repudiates Sita because she has become inauspicious, even though she is pure (Hiltebeitel 1985: 46). In both the north Indian areas in which I have worked, it is held that a bride or groom who is mangli or manglik-(an astrological condition which is particularly dangerous for marriage)7_would be so inauspicious for any non-mdnglik partner that the latter would surely die. As far as I am aware there is no question of a manglik bride being less pure than anly other. In 'orthodox' high caste communities, a widow is almost prototypically inauspicious, but the daily regime she is expected to follow is one of extreme purity, and provided she observes it she does not seem to be regarded as particularly impure. This already tedious list of examples could go on, but the result would be no more conclusive, for it is always open to Madan to rule such cases out of court on the grounds that they do not involve 'temporal events' of the sort he has in mind. But as I have already indicated, it is not clear how he limits this category. The main source of my unease, however, is with the insistence on seeing purity and auspiciousness as two quite separate dimensions with an 'in- dependent character'. I have already drawn attention to the fact that eclipses are pre-eminently inauspicious times which also enltail, or precipitate, a condition of cosmic pollution. In other instances, inauspiciousness seems to exacerbate the impurity which is anyway present. In Banaras, as else- where, there is said to be a grouping of six nakshattras (lunar asterisms)-of which the 'hardest' and 'bitterest' is mul-during which birth is particularly inauspicious. The daughter of a friend was born in hospital during mul. I am indebted to Chris Fuller for this point. Since tripindi Srdddh is generally performed some months or even years after the death. there is no question of the mourners being still subject to death pollution. Though strictly ghost' rather than 'ancestor propitiation'. Das ( 1982: 143) was in this case at least justified in including such rituals in the pure but inauspicious quadrant of her diagram. ' Paradoxically, the second of these words itself means 'propitious'. For the first, a standard dictionary gives: 'a boy or girl whose horoscope has Mars in the fourth, eighth or tweltth place'. 276/JONATIHAN PARRY Their Brahman landlord refused to let the mother and child return to the house for twenty-seven days, on the grounds that there was a temple in the courtyard; whereas it had previously been agreed that normal birth pollution would only require their exclusion for thirteen days. My friend was strongly advised not to shave or comb his hair during this period, not to accept food from his wife, and-above all-not to see the face of his child. At the end of this period he performed a pacification ritual during which he looked into the child's face for what should have been the first time by seeing her reflection in a brass bowl of sesame oil. The bowl was donated, along with seven types of grain and seven pieces of iron, to the Brahman who officiated. The landlord himself had had the misfortune of a grandson born in mul, and had retused to set eyes on him for twelve years, or to shave in the interim. Since the dangers of mul usually only affect the family itself (and in particular the father), and since inauspicious states (like widowhood) do not of themselves preclude contact with the gods, I infer that in my friend's case the inauspiciousness had somehow compounded the pollution. The fact that he was strongly advised to tonsure his head at the final pacification ritual, an act of purification which is not normally required at the termi- nation of birth pollution, might also be seen as pointing to the same conclusion." In the general case, of course, birth is auspicious though impure.9 There is even some evidence to suggest that the more auspicious it is, the greater the impurity. The birth of a boy is a more auspicious event than the birth of a girl; yet, according to my priestly Kanya Kubja Brahman informants, the mother is polluted for forty-one days in the first case, but only for twenty days in the second (cf. Khare 1976: 162)."' There are instances too in which an auspicious activity may trigger impurity. Bhim Chandi is one of the principal way-stations on the Panch-krosh( pilgrimage route which ' Though interpreted wholly within the framework of inauspiciousness, Raheja's evidence (1988: 103) suggests something very similar. According to my Banarasi informants, the impurity of birth is much less intense than the impurity of death because 'a very great merit (punyt) has arisen'. In the case of death it is 'sin (pdp) which arises'. With the chief mourner-who may un'der no circumstances enter a temple-fhh0n-chhJnd band hai ('touching is stopped'). By contrast, physical contact with the Jather of a newborn is not polluting, and most people say that he may enter a temple although he should not touch the images of the deities. "' Though it seems safe to conclude that heightened auspiciousness here goes along with heightened impurity, it is not of course obvious that it is the auspiciousness-rather than some other consideration--which intensifies the pollution. Given that people are in general more polluted by the birth or death of those they are most closely related to and dependent on, it might be possible to interpret the difference in terms of a cultural premise that the mother's being is less bound up with a daughter than with the son on whom she will ultimately depend. Given thast males are in principle purer than females, it seems unlikely that the answer lies in the different degrees of impurity inherent in the two sexes, and I know of no ethnographic warrant for Khare's explanation (1976: 162) that girls are less polluted at birth than boys. The Hindu lexicographer? A note on auspiciousness and puritv / 277 circumambulates the sacred space of Banaras. Darshan (an auspicious 'sight' or 'viewing') of the goddess in Bhim Chandi's most celebrated temple is de rigueur, but is said to be likely to bring on a woman's menstrual period (which means that she is then disqualified from completing the pilgrimage). In order to reduce the risk, knowledgeable Marwari women will enter the temple through a side-door so that thev do not suddenly come into the goddess's direct line of vision. In these examples, then, an auspicious or inauspicious event is liable to precipitate impurity (as in the case of darshan of the goddess or an eclipse), or exacerbate its intensity (as in the case of the birth of a son rather than a daughter, or birth during mutl nakshattra). The fact that a super-abundance of either auspiciousness or inauspiciousness is associated with this second result suggests the possibility that extreme movements on the auspicious- ness axis may have a kind of 'muttiplier effect' on the purity-pollution axis-intensifying the existing state. Conversely, changes on the purity axis may bring about or compound a condition of inauspiciousness, or simply be inauspicious in themselves. Kaushik (1976: 287) reports (for Banaras again) that at the end of her period 'the mother after bathing is in a state of extreme purity, which is believed to be very potent in that if she were to touch the child without eating (i.e., becoming jatha) she would cause sukhandi' (a wasting disease in children). Though the version I heard was that the threat is not from the mother, but from another woman who may be unconsciously envious of her child (cf. Hershman 1974: 279), on the point at issue our information tallies: a highly charged state of purity may in certain circumstances be dangerous and-I infer-inauspicious. In order to defuse the danger a woman must eat something. Certainly some acts of purification are extremely unpropitious at certain times. Hershman (1974: 281) reports that it is inauspicious for a Punjabi woman to wash her hair or clothes on certain days, or until a departing guest has reached his final destination. If a widow were to wash her hair during mourning' 'and if any other woman were to walk over the dirty water flowing from it in the gutter then they would most certainly be very ill and might probably die.' Saturday (shanivar) is named for Saturn (shani), a particularly 'hard', 'cruel' and 'inauspicious' planet. On that day 'traditional' Banarasis will never be shaved or have their nails or hair cut by the Barber. Here, then, we seem to have some indication that by heightening purity one may also heighten inauspiciousness. Both mourning periods and Saturdays are inauspicious times when such procedures would exacerbate the danger. On the rather limited evidence available, it therefore seems plausible to suggest that a movement on either axis is liable to intensify whatever condition obtains on the other. But whether subsequent research supports 278/ JONATHAN PARRY this speculative hypothesis is beside the limited point I am concerned to emphasise here: that the two dimensions clearly interact, and that it would be a distortion of my data to overemphasise their 'independent character'. * * * In apparently postulating a sharp distinction not only between purity and auspiciousness, but also between the impurity of birth and death on the one hand and the impurity of the low castes on the other, Das goes further than either of the other two writers on whose work I have commented." As she represents it, the world of the sacred is divided into two parts: auspicious life-affirming rituals in which the right hand predominates, and inauspicious rituals associated with death in which the left hand pre- dominates. Both marginal ghosts and incorporated ancestors belong to the inauspicious side of the dichotomy, but it is only rituals addressed to the liminal ghost which involve impurity. The opposition between purity and impurity is not therefore congruent with the more fundamental opposition between the auspicious forces of the life and the inauspicious forces of death. We are dealing with two different dimensions: auspiciousness has to do with the opposition between life and death; purity to do with the opposition between incorporation and marginality-between articulation and disarticulation. 'The rules of impurity basically serve as a metaphor for liminality' (Das 1976: 252). It is occasioned by birth and death because the newborn and the deceased are marginal to the ordered categories; because the social world is experienced as being 'disarticulated' from the cosmic order. Caste impurity, which does not readily fit such a model, is held to be something distinct-as is indicated by the distinct terms which are used to describe it. This stark opposition between auspicious life-affirming rituals and the unequivocally inauspicious nature of the rituals associated with death is open to the obvious objection that in certain contexts death is auspicious (Marglin 1985a, 1985b; Narayanan 1985), as-I was told-are many of the sraddh rituals addressed to the incorporated ancestors. Morevoer, the opposition between life and death is far from absolute, in that death is represented as rebirth on a new and higher plane. What I want to focus on here, however, is Das's discussion of impurity. Dumont's claim that the impurity of birth and death is identical in nature to the impurity of caste is rightly said to be 'problematic' (Das 1976: 259).2 For the first kind of pollution there are specific terms; for the second there are in some regions no terms at all, while in others the terms which exist " The discussion of auspiciousness is located in the new epilogue to the 1982 edition of her book (pp. 14(041). On the relationship between different types of impurity, see in particular 1976: 259 arid 1982: 128-29. 2 Cf. Das (1982(: 128) where the same position is also attributed to Srinivas. The Hindu lexicographer? A note on auspiciousness and purity/ 279 are unrelated to those for the impurity of birth and death. It is true, she concedes, that in the Hindi-speaking areas the word chhut (cf. achhut, 'not to be touched') may signal either type of impurity, but 'this refers to the mode by which impurity may be conveyed (i.e., physical contact) rather than to its nature' (1982: 128). There is also the obvious contrast that-in theory at least-the lower the caste, the more extended the period of impurity resulting from birth or death; while in the case of 'caste' pollution it is the other way about: the higher his caste, the greater the intensity of pollution an individual suffers as a consequence of a breach of the rules. Das's 'discomfort at identifying these as constituting a single type' is therefore understandable, and her suggestion that 'the existence of many lexical items to express different kinds of impurity points to the need for examining these separately in the first instance' seems unexceptionably moderate (1982: 148, emphasis added). The problem, however, is that the whole thrust of her argument suggests something much more radical. Impurity is an idiom for liminality. Since caste impurity must clearly be explained in some other way, and has a different vocabulary, we are led to suppose that it must be a different thing altogether. In the abstract, my Banarasi Brahman informants were disposed (perhaps predisposed) to endorse this conclusion with enthusiasm. Suitak (the pollution of birth and death), they said, is of an entirely different order from caste pollution. There is a yonigat bhed-'a species difference'-between them. While it is true that even a Brahman chief mourner becomes temporarily untouchable, this does not for the time make him anything like a Leather- worker. Though both might be described as ashuddh, one could not possibly say that the disabtility of the Leather-worker stemmed from the sutak of his caste. It is perhaps because these different types of impurity are different that many mourners go to considerable length to prevent the outcaste Dom funeral attendants from touching the corpse (though one could also construe this as evidence of its purity as a sacrificial offering [cf. Das 1982: 120-26; Parry 1981, 1982]). But life is complicated. My Mahabrahman informants also regularly attributed the degraded status of their caste to the fact that they participate in the death pollution of their patrons by virtue of representing the ghosts of thie moribund (Parry 1980); and it is an inescapable fact that his caste- fellows' contact with the chief mourner is restricted in very much the same way as their contact with persons of inferior caste. When I pointed this out, and naively insisted on being told why the two types of impurity should be regarded as different, conversation invariably collapsed in mutual in- comprehension and frustration. What did emerge from these interrogations, however, is that there is also 'a night and day difference' between the sutak of birth and death. Someone who is suffering from birth pollution cannot eat with, or even touch, a caste fellow afflicted by maran ashauch (the impurity of death). It is not as 280/ JONATHAN PARRY thougn the two types of impurity put them on a par. Banarasis of Maha- rashtrian origin say that if a woman dies in childbirth, her corpse should be purified by 108 baths before it is fit for the cremation pyre-again suggesting the incommensurability of the two types of impurity.'3 As we have just seen, Das distinguishes between the mode by which impurity is transmitted and its nature. But one of the difficulties in explaining the difference between different types of pollution is that it is surprisingly hard to discover the real 'nature' of any one of them. Though I cannot appropriately document the point in any detail here, my Banaras data strongly suggests that there is a consistent ambiguity over whether the impurity of death derives from the polluting nature of the corpse; from the contagion of death spread through shared body particles; or from 'the sin of burning the body hairs' and the violence perpetrated on the deceased by the chief mourner when he performs his terrible duty of releasing the vital breath (pran) from the cranium by cracking it open with a stave as the corpse lies burning on the pyre. Some say that it is only at this point that death pollution begins; though others claim that it starts as soon as normal physiological functions (pulse, heartbeat, breathing) stop. It is no more clear what the rigorous regime of mourning followed by the daigty ('the one who gave fire') is supposed to accomplish. Some informants represent it as a kind of quarantine imposed by impurity; others as an expiation for the 'crime' he has just committed, and yet others as a kind of tapasya which enables him to accumulate the power to re-create the deceased as an ancestor. 14 As I have a'ready indicated, I see it as no part of my duty to overcome these ambiguities, or to decide upon the 'real' meaning of 'death pollution'- let alone of 'pollution' in general. We are dealing with 'fuzzy' concepts, and if we are to be true to our data we should resist the temptation to turn them into dictionary definitions. In reflecting on her analysis of the categories Brahman, king and sanydsf, Das (1982: 150) retrospectively records that it has persuaded her that 'words can be thought of as pulsating with lHe, and with a dynamism that comes from the totality of meanings they can be made to evoke.' Yet it seems to me that her discussion of impurity comes close to assuming that words have fixed meanings which denote different- non-overlapping domains. The fact that there are different words for caste impurity, and the impurity of birth and death, shows that they are different in nature and that she is therefore justified in proposing a definitive meaning (viz., liminality) 7 The funeral priest of Maharastrian origin who presides over these rituals made it very clear to me that this practice should be seen in such terms. No such purification is required for the corpse of a person who died while suffering from the pollution occasioned by a previous death. This. he explained, is because that pollution was the same type. '" For a more detailed consideration of these points, see Parry (1981, 1982, 1985 and 1989). The Hindu lexicographer? A note on auspiciousness and purity/ 281 for one that cannot apply to the other. At a certain level it is, of course, true that a difference exists. The impurity of the chief mourner and the Sweeper is not the same; but nor is that of the mourner and the newly- delivered mother. Such refinements might go on and on, distinguishing more and more 'types'. But it is not clear whether such a procedure is more likely to be productive of new insights or scholarly breakdowns. Dumont was certainly incautious in speaking of an identity between 'temporary' and 'permanent' impurity; but I am not persuaded that it can be right to split them apart in the radical way which Das's discussion in effect requires. The victims of both are surely ashuddh, and the way they are treated clearly demonstrates that they have something in common. A more promising strategy, I suggest, would be to ask ourselves Wittgenstein's (1958: 66-67) question about 'the proceedings we call "games". I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?' The answer, of course, is that there is no one common factor, and that the category consists only of 'a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing'. There is no definitive meaning of 'game'; and ball-games and board-games are neither identical in nature, nor entirely distinct, but members of a 'family' sharing certain 'family resemblances'. The same surely goes for Hindu notions of impurity, and we might do better to think in terms of 'family resemblances', rather than assuming an identity or implying a clear-cut distinction between them. * * * Auspiciousness and inauspiciousness are similarly slippery concepts. For Madan, their real referent is to 'the intersection of cosmic and individual life trajectories'; for Das they denote 'events involving life and the future, and events involving death and the termination of the future' (1982: 144); while for Raheja inauspiciousness is an all-embracing concept of misfortune, something to be dumped on others by making them gifts. The fact that each of them glosses these notions in a different way should perhaps alert us to the possibility that we might only discover their 'true' meaning at the end of a rainbow. If I am right about where these writers go wrong, then the problem lies in postulating clear-cut boundaries between concepts which in fact overlap and intersect in complex ways. 'Sin' cannot be represented simply as a sub- species of 'inauspiciousness' and then radically opposed to pollution; purity and auspiciousness do not have a totally 'independent characte'r', and the impurity of birth and death is not something quite separate from the impurity of caste. Not only are such distinctions ethnographically implaus- ible; they are also unlikely in the light of what we know about concepts in general. 282/JON.ATHAN PARRY The problem, as I see it, is that-when it comes to the contrast between purity and auspiciousness"-all three writers have a tendency to treat concepts as coterminous with words, and as having clear, fixed and non- overlapping definitions. But in the case of a great many everyday concepts, it is extremely difficult to decide which of its characteristics should be regarded as defining and which non-essential; and-as with 'games'-it is often impossible to specify any one set of defining features shared by all of its instances (Aitchison 1987. 45). Consider tiger. For most people, its properties include 'striped' and 'carnivorous'. If we came across a tiger, however,whose stripes have been painted over and whose digestive system has been altered surgically so that it could only eat vegetables, most likely we would still want to call it a tiger. Hence 'striped' and 'carnivorous' cannot be defining properties. But if they cannot, what can? Arguments like these have led scholars to conclude that many natural concepts are not mentally represented as definitions (Smith 1988: 21-22). As the case of stripeless vegetarian tigers already suggests, there is good reason to suppose that not all instances of a concept are equal, as they should be if each is matched against a single definition. Rather. some are more 'typical' or 'representative' than others, and provide 'prototypes' or 'best examples' at the centre of essentially 'fuzzy' concepts. 'Natural language concepts', says Lakoff (quoted in Aitchison 1987: 39-40), 'have vague boundaries and fuzzy edges'. They 'are formed through reference back to rather vague and provisional "prototypes" which anchor loosely formed "families" of specific instances' (Bloch 1991: 604). Even concepts which do have definitions consisting of a set of necessary and sufficient properties (e.g., 'bachelor'-adult, male, unmarried) are often mentally represented as prototypes (e.g., 'bachelor'-eligible male with fast car [Smith 1988: 26-271); and it would seem that when we learn concepts, either as children or adults, we start by representing them in terms of prototypes and only later reorganise them in terms of their defining features-suggesting that the extent to which concepts take the form of defiru'tions is at least in part a function of considerable krnowledge (Smith et al. 1988: 383). It is a mistake, say Lakoff and Kovecses (1987: 217-18): to try to find a single cognitive model for all instances of a concept. Kinds of anger are not all instances of the same model; instead they are variants on a prototypical model. There is no common core that all Thc proviso is important, for Raheja plainlv allows for a good deal of overlap between the notion of inauspiciousness and the ideas of distress, danger, illness, sin and spirit affliction; while in another part of her book. Das brilliantly shows how the category Brahman shifts its meaning in diftferent contexts. The Hindu lexicographer? A note on auspiciousness and purity/ 283 kinds of anger have in common. Instead, the kinds of anger bear family resemblances to each other. What applies to the anger of north Americans might also go, I am suggesting, for the auspiciousness of Hindus. We are, I recognise, still a long way from being able to specify 'a prototypical model' of auspiciousness. But it is surely clear that not all instances of the concept are equal, and that some are more exemplary-and knowledge of them more widely diffused-than others. It takes a learnied Pandit to list all of the six nakshattras during which birth is inauspicious; only a well-informed adult is likely to be aware that it is unpropitious to meet an Oil-presser in the morning; but any 10- year old of twice-born caste in 'traditional' Banaras could tell you that cows, brides and the goddess Lakshmi are auspicious, and that owls, widows and Mahabrahmans are inauspicious. And how would he or she have acquired this knowledge? In the absence of detailed empirical work, we cannot be certain; but it seelTrs reasonable to suppose that the child learns about these matters in much the same way as I (and dozens of other ethnographers) have had to-largely by putting a foot in it: by asking a widowed auntie why she has been left behind when everybody else is attending a marriage; by taking some inauspicious person's name in the morning when everyone else refers to them only by elaborate circum- locutions; by expecting the rickshaw-wallah or boatman to take one only a short distance, charge only the usual fare, or accept money proffered with the left hand, when it is his first business of the day.'6 In short, what one acquires is a set of stereotypic instances which, so far from consigning cows, widows, brides and Mahabrahmans to some metaphorical penumbra, locate them right at the heart of the concept. It is experts who organise their knowledge in terms of definitions, and if they happen to be professional astrologers I can well imagine that Madan's is the one they might choose. But ordinary people-which is to say the vast majority-do not. My own 'best examples' of the Hindu concept of auspiciousness are, of course, no more than anecdotal evidence. But the cognitive sciences have provided us with a sophisticated set of experimental methods by which we might put such hunches to the test, and systematically investigate the extent to which concepts are represented in the same way by different segmcnts of the population. Not only can people distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' examples of most everyday concepts, but the most typical instances (which is not the same as the most frequent) are retrieved from memory more rapidly than atypical ones, are more likely to be acquired early in the learning process, and subjects respond to them rnuch more quickly when asked to decide whether they are instances of the concept (Smith 1988: 22). My suggestion, then, is that instead of continuing to 'These particular earnings are known "s bohni, and are a portent of his fortunes that day. 284/JONATHAN PARRY drown in a sea of speculation about what is really at the core of our informants' notions of 'purity' and 'auspiciousness', we might actually be able to find out-by collaborating with, and even perhaps appropriating some of the methods of, cognate disciplines. REFERENCES AITCHISON, JEAN. 1987. Words in the mind: An introduction to the mental lexicon. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd. BEAN, S.S. 1981. 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Cambridge: University Press. MADAN, T.N. 1985. Concerning the categories subha and suddha in Hindu culture: An exploratory essay. In J.B. Carman and F.A. Marglin, eds., Purity and auspiciousness in Indian society, pp. 11-29. Leiden: E.J. Brill. MARGLIN, F.A. 1985a. Introduction. In J.B. Carman and F.A. Marglin, eds., Purity and auspiciousness in Indian society, pp. 1-10. Leiden: E.J. Brill. 1985b. Types of opposition in Hindu culture. In J.B. Carman and F A. Marglin, eds., Purity and auspiciousness in Indian society, pp. 6S-83. Leiden: E.J. Brill. MARRIOrT, MCKIM. 1976. Hindu transactions: Diversity without dualism. In B. Kapferer, ed., Transactions and meaning: Directions in the anthropology of exchange and symbolic behaviour, pp. 109-42. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. The Hindu lexicographer? A note on auspiciousness and purity/285 Mc-GiLtVRAY, D.B. 1982. Mukkuvar vannimai: Tamil caste and matriclan ideology in Batti- caloa, Sri Lanka. In D.B. 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<p>1 In drafting this paper I have greatly benefited from helpful discussions with Chris Fuller, Murray Milner and Maurice Bloch. Though inadequately acknowledged in the text, Bloch's recent Frazer lecture (1991) has been an important influence on the formulation of its argument.</p>
<p>2 Birth pollution is distinguished as <italic>vriddhi sūtak</italic>—`the sūtak of increase'. Qualified as <italic>māsik dharam sūtak,</italic> the term can also be used for menstrual pollution.</p>
<p>3 Though I am unable to shed any light on why it is particularly unsmiling, or toothless, Telis (Oil-pressers) who are unpropitious, the general explanation I was offered for the inauspiciousness of this caste is that the process of extracting oil involves the <italic>sin</italic> of blindfolding the bullocks which work the press. But this is also the reason given for their extreme impurity as a caste from whom no fastidious Brahman should accept water. In short, the sinful nature of their traditional occupation is held to account both for their inauspiciousness and their impurity.</p>
<p>4 For a statement to be regarded as metaphorical, most linguists demand that it should be accompanied by some linguistic indications of its metaphorical nature. Madan's argument would, of course, be considerably strengthened by evidence that this is the case for such statements as `widows are inauspicious'.</p>
<p>5 I am indebted to Chris Fuller for this point.</p>
<p>6 Since <italic>tripindīśrāddh</italic> is generally performed some months or even years after the death, there is no question of the mourners being still subject to death pollution. Though strictly `ghost' rather than `ancestor propitiation', Das (1982: 143) was in this case at least justified in including such rituals in the pure but inauspicious quadrant of her diagram.</p>
<p>7 Paradoxically, the second of these words itself means `propitious'. For the first, a standard dictionary gives: `a boy or girl whose horoscope has Mars in the fourth, eighth or twelfth place'.</p>
<p>8 Though interpreted wholly within the framework of inauspiciousness, Raheja's evidence (1988: 103) suggests something very similar.</p>
<p>9 According to my Banarasi informants, the impurity of birth is much less intense than the impurity of death because `a very great merit (<italic>punyā</italic>) has arisen'. In the case of death it is `sin (<italic>pāp</italic>) which arises'. With the chief mourner—who may under no circumstances enter a temple—<italic>chhūnā-chhānā band hai</italic> (`touching is stopped'). By contrast, physical contact with the <italic>father</italic> of a newborn is not polluting, and most people say that he may enter a temple although he should not touch the images of the deities.</p>
<p>10 Though it seems safe to conclude that heightened auspiciousness here goes along with heightened impurity, it is not of course obvious that it is the <italic>auspiciousness</italic>—rather than some other consideration—which intensifies the pollution. Given that people are in general more polluted by the birth or death of those they are most closely related to and dependent on, it might be possible to interpret the difference in terms of a cultural premise that the mother's being is less bound up with a daughter than with the son on whom she will ultimately depend. Given that males are in principle purer than females, it seems unlikely that the answer lies in the different degrees of impurity inherent in the two sexes, and I know of no ethnographic warrant for Khare's explanation (1976: 162) that girls are less polluted at birth than boys.</p>
<p>11 The discussion of auspiciousness is located in the new epilogue to the 1982 edition of her book (pp. 140-41). On the relationship between different types of impurity, see in particular 1976: 259 and 1982: 128-29.</p>
<p>12 Cf. Das (1982: 128) where the same position is also attributed to Srinivas.</p>
<p>13 The funeral priest of Maharastrian origin who presides over these rituals made it very clear to me that this practice should be seen in such terms. No such purification is required for the corpse of a person who died while suffering from the pollution occasioned by a previous death. This, he explained, is because that pollution was the same type.</p>
<p>14 For a more detailed consideration of these points, see Parry (1981, 1982, 1985 and 1989).</p>
<p>15 The proviso is important, for Raheja plainly allows for a good deal of overlap between the notion of inauspiciousness and the ideas of distress, danger, illness, sin and spirit affliction; while in another part of her book, Das brilliantly shows how the category Brahman shifts its meaning in different contexts.</p>
<p>16 These particular earnings are known as <italic>bohnī,</italic> and are a portent of his fortunes that day.</p>
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<name name-style="western"><surname>Wittgenstein, L.</surname></name> 1958. <source>Philosophical investigations</source> (trans. G.E.M. Anscombe). <publisher-loc>Oxford</publisher-loc>: <publisher-name>Basil Blackwell</publisher-name>.</citation>
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