Purity

(shaucha) Along with its opposite,
impurity (ashaucha), purity is one of the
fundamental concepts in Hindu culture.
Although to outsiders purity can be easily confused with cleanliness, it is fundamentally different—purity is a religious
category marked by the presence or
absence of pollution or defilement,
whereas cleanliness is a hygienic category. In some cases these categories can
overlap, but in most their disjunction
becomes clear. For example, from a religious perspective, bathing (snana) in
the Ganges River makes one pure,
whereas from a hygienic perspective the
lower reaches of the Ganges are quite
heavily polluted.
On a personal level, purity can be
best described as the absence of defilement, gained through removing impurities in some manner, most often by
bathing. After becoming purified, one
remains pure until coming into contact
with a source of impurity. These sources
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Puri Dashanami
of impurity include essential bodily
functions, such as urination and evacuation; sexual activity; contact with
impure things both inside and outside
one’s home; and even contact with certain groups of people deemed impure.
Thus, although purity is always easy to
regain, it is impossible to retain, since it
is breached by many of the actions of
everyday life. It is also important to realize that impurity brings no moral stigma
to an individual—becoming impure
means simply that one has come into
contact with some contaminant, and
that this must be removed. The only
times when purity is particularly important are in worship and in eating—the
former to keep from contaminating
the deities and their environs, the latter
to protect oneself, since the circumstances surrounding what one eats
are considered to have long-term effects
on an individual.
Aside from its personal dimension,
purity has a social dimension as well.
Higher status groups, such as brahmins, are considered to have inherently
higher ritual purity. This social dimension of purity comes with birth and is
the religious basis determining the
hierarchical divisions in the traditional
social system. To some extent, a
group’s purity level corresponds to its
hereditary occupation. People who
had continual contact with substances
considered impure (such as latrine
cleaners, corpse burners, and scavengers) were seen as tainted by work,
and rendered impure. Brahmins, as
scholars and priests (the latter a task
that brought them in contact with the
gods), were the purest. Between these
extremes fell the other groups, whose
relative status in a specific locale was
determined by local factors. For theoretical consideration of the importance that purity plays in modern
Hindu life, see Louis Dumont, Homo
Hierarchicus, 1980; for another analysis of social ordering, see McKim
Marriot, “Hindu Transactions:
Diversity Without Dualism,” in Bruce
Kapferer (ed.), Transaction and
Meaning, 1976; see also Pauline
Kolenda, “Purity and Pollution,” in T.
N. Madan (ed.), Religion in India,
\1991. See also caste and jati.