काट्टो,काट्टु,काटी,काटेको साझा खोजी.....
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Excerpts from Library.

Katto and the Funeral Priest
The Funeral Priests are a special group of Brahmans –Mahabrahmans.
The specialist that conducts the ritual is not only acting in service for the
deceased’s soul and family, theFuneral Priest himself becomes the pret or
pitr – the deceased’s soul – and he is worshipped as the deceased. Even
before the chief mourner shaves his head, the Mahabrahman should be
shaved as if he was the pret himself. The Funeral Priest is also consubstantial
with the deceased. The Nepali royal and aristocratic funerals are the most
explicit rituals in this regard (Parry 1980), and particularly the katto-ritual
whereby a Brahman priest eats parts of the king’s body. “Katto” means
literally “something not worth eating”.
Traditionally it is a part of the dead body, and in particular the brain,
which is eaten. The kattopriest is seen as a “sin eater”. By eating the “uneatable”
the priest becomes declared as an outcaste, and he is banned and chased out
of Kathmandu valley. The ceremony ensures the salvation of the king’s soul,
and the deceased’s body takes spiritual form on this day. The role of the Mahabrahman
is crucial because he enables the soul to cross towards the other world. The gifts to the
Funeral Priest are in fact a symbolic representation of the gifts to the deceased, or more
correctly, they are identical because the idea is that the departed receives the gifts in the
next world. The ideal gift is all the standard requirements needed for use in daily life for
one year – everything from food, clothes, furniture, money, and so on. This has its
rationale in the idea that the Funeral Priest is the deceased at the moment he receives
and accepts the gift. The power to bless and curse the deceased enables the priest to negotiate
and take advantage of the size of the offering, emphasising that the gift will be received
by the pret, and thus, the family has to offer a lot.

The katto Ceremonies of King Birendra and King Dipendra

The 75 year old Brahman priest Durga Prasad Sapkota ate
the katto of the late King Birendra on the 11th day of mourning,
Monday June 11 at Kalmochan Ghat. The elephant was
decorated traditionally, and the Brahman was dressed as the
king wearing a gold-embroidered Nepali dress. The priest
wore a replica of the crown; he used clothes, shoes and other
ornaments that belonged to the deceased king.
He was sitting in a tented room which was furnished with
offerings from the Royal Palace, such as a sofa, bed, and
study table together with more personal belongings of the
king including his briefcase and walking stick. On Thursday
June 14th, the katto ceremony of king Dipendra was held at
Kalmochan Ghat. Kalmochan Ghat is located by the Bagmati
River where it forms the border between the former kingdoms
of Kathmandu and Patan, and when the katto-Brahman
crossed the river, according to the tradition, the priest is not
allowed to return again, and he is so highly polluted that the
people would not even “see his face” again. When there were
only petty kingdoms in Nepal, Kalmochan Ghat and the
Bagmati River represented the country’s border, and the kattopriest
was expelled from the kingdom by the symbolic
crossing of the river. Nowadays the priest is expelled from
the Kathmandu valley.
Durga Prasad Sapkota felt that he was forced to do the katto
ritual, and afterwards he felt cheated. He demanded a house
and he was promised gifts worth 10,000 dollars, but he
received only some 300 dollars, and he now aims to sell the
king’s clothes and personal belongings he received for 10,000
dollars. He is living in his old house at
Pahupatinath because he has no other options. According to
him, the king’s flesh in the katto ritual is a relict myth from
the past. He cooked the meal himself which consisted only
of rice, vegetables and goat meat. Some people living in the
vicinity of Pashupatinath believed, however, that the kattopriest
ate the king’s flesh, and in particular the part of the
brain where the “third” eye is located. The priests who
cremated King Birendra said that some security guards
collected small parts of the ashes from the king which were
put into the katto-priest’s meals without Sapkota’s knowledge.
It was only symbolically, they believed, but it was a part of
the meal, because only goat meat would not have affected
and polluted the priest in such a negative way. Just after the
ritual Sapkota could not walk openly in the streets, and
especially not in the Pashupatinath area. People treated him
as excluded from the community, and he sat, predominantly,
in the backyard of his house, feeling guilty and impure after
the katto ritual. The other temple and funeral priests referred
to Durga Prasad Sapkota as “the priest who became a pode”,
meaning a “toilet-cleaner”. Sapkota, on the other hand,
emphasised that he was a Brahman, although he
acknowledged that he was impure and a katto-Brahman. His
wife also stressed that both of them were Brahmans, and they
categorically refused to hear anything about low-caste status;
Sapkota perceived himself as both a Brahman and a priest.
According to Sapkota, he was not treated as, and he had
definitively not become, a low-caste person or outcaste
(despite his impure condition after the katto-ritual, two years
later he had worked as a priest on several occasions).
Seen from the position of wider society, the priest eating katto
will attain the king’s sins. But the impurity of the priest does
in no way correlate to the sins committed by the king, who is
a living Vishnu, the supreme Godhead. Even low-castes detest
the priest and expel him out of the country stressing that the
priest is below the lowest in regards of purity. Low castes
may eat cows – another type of Vishnu’s flesh – but despite
their impurity they are purer than the katto-priest. Everyone,
except his family, see the katto-priest as the most polluted
man in the nation. It does not seem plausible, however, that
the king has been the most sinful person in his kingdom. The
pollution acquired through katto must represent other sins
than the king’s sins. This, it is argued, is a part of cosmogony
– the re-creation of society and cosmos, and has to be seen in
light of Hocart’s (1950) interpretation of caste and caste
theories in general.
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Caste – Ideology or Subtle Substance?

Brahmans work as priests, and religion is most often an
integral part of explanations of the caste system, its origin,
function and hierarchy. The problem is, however, to relate
text to context. Ideological and religious foundations of castes
are based on the Sanskrit texts, and among them, the
Bhagavad-Gita and Manu. The Bhagavad-Gita (Bg)
distinguishes four castes: “Brahmanas, ksatriyas, vaisyas and
sudras are distinguished by the qualities born of their own
natures in accordance with the material modes (…)” (Bg.
18.41). The duties and the qualities are further described:
“Peacefulness, self-control, austerity, purity, tolerance,
honesty, knowledge, wisdom and religiousness - these are
the natural qualities by which the brahmanas work. Heroism,
power, determination, resourcefulness, courage in battle,
generosity and leadership are the natural qualities of work of
the ksatriyas. Farming, cow protection and business are the
natural work for the vaisyas, and for the sudras there is labour
and service to others. By following his qualities of work,
every man can become perfect” (Bg. 18.42-45). Thus, there
are four classes in the hierarchical order: (1) the sacerdotal
and learned class, the members of which may be, but not
necessarily priests, (2) the regal and warrior caste, (3) the
trading and agricultural caste and (4) the servile caste, whose
duty is to serve the other three.
Declan Quigley argues that it is impossible to explain caste
as a product of a particular ideology, and he sustains a critique
not only of Dumont’s theory but all who emphasise the Hindu
ideas when explaining castes (Quigley 1996:1, 12-13). Louis
Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus (1970) has been the most
influential contribution to the recent debate on caste, but
nowadays few scholars advocate his ideas. Therefore, his
theory of the castes is a point of departure for the debate and
the disputes of the caste system(s). Fundamental in Dumont’s
concept of caste and hierarchy is totality: “So we shall define
hierarchy as the principle by which the elements of a whole
are ranked in relation to the whole, it being understood that
in the majority of societies it is religion which provides the
view of the whole, and that the ranking will thus be religious
in nature” (Dumont 1970:66, original emphasis). His theory
is based on a social principle; hierarchy, and thereby
distinctions between the castes. It defines groups in a
hierarchy of ritual purity and pollution and prescribes inter
caste relations, especially regarding marriage and
commensality (Bennett 1983:8). According to Dumont,
“Superiority and superior purity are identical: it is in this
sense that, ideologically, distinction of purity is the foundation
of status” (Dumont 1970:56). The fundamental opposition
between pure and impure is not the cause but the form of all
distinctions between caste (ibid:26). “It is generally agreed
that the opposition is manifested in some macroscopic form
in the contrast between the two extreme categories: Brahmans
and Untouchables. The Brahmans, being in principle priests,
occupy the supreme rank with respect to the whole set of
castes” (Dumont 1970:29). Dumont’s theory cannot cope
with the role of priests whose status is at best seen as
intensively ambiguous and at worst defiled (Quigley
1999:308). “Perhaps the central feature of caste is that one
cannot ride roughshod over one’s ritual obligations without
fear of losing one’s status, one’s very position in the
community” (ibid:313).
It is not necessary at this point to challenge or criticise
Dumont’s approach to caste, but it is cogent to merely point
out that his theory of caste represents one side in the debate.
The other interpretative framework, based on a “coded
substances theory”, is mainly advocated and developed by
the “ethnosociological school” or the “Chicago School” (e.g.
Marriott and Inden 1974, 1977, Marriott 1976, 1990). The
caste structures and principles are seen from the “inside”
and from the actors’ perspectives. Caste systems may be
defined as “moral systems that differentiate and rank the
whole population of a society in corporate units (castes)
generally defined by descent, marriage and occupation”
(Marriott and Inden 1974:982). In the “coded substance
theory” the stress is put on the non-duality of South Asian
social thought; “South Asians do not insist on drawing a
line between what Westerners call “natural” and what they
call “moral” things; the Hindu moral code books are thus
filled with discussions of bodily things, while the medical
books at many points deal with moral qualities” (Marriott
and Inden 1977:228).
Moral qualities are thought to be altered by changes in the
body resulting from eating certain types of food, sexual
intercourse and participation in rituals. When a Bengali
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The Proceedings of the Manchester Conference on Archaeology and Religion
woman is being married it is believed that her body is
transformed as well as her inborn code for conduct (Inden
and Nicholas 1977). “The code for conduct of living persons
is not regarded as transcendent over bodily substances, but
as immanent within it”, and as such “Bodily substances and
code for conduct are thus thought to be not fixed but
malleable, and to be not separated but mutually immanent
features: the coded substance moves and changes as one thing
throughout the life of each person and group. Actions
enjoined by these embodied codes are thought of as
transforming the substances in which they are embodied”
(Marriott and Inden 1977:228).
Seen from the “coded substance theory”, moral and social
codes are presumed to be inherent in every kind of generic
category, and each single person has an embodied moral code
of this world. Persons are therefore “unique composites of
diverse subtle and gross substances derived ultimately from
one source; and they are also divisible into separate particles
that may be shared or exchanged with others” (Marriott and
Inden 1977:232). These substances exist prior to birth in the
parents (seeds, food). In life a person becomes what one eats.
This high-lights consumption of food as fundamental in
transactions and creations of moral qualities, but also the
defilement from bodily substances which are disposed of such
as menstrual blood, semen, excreta, and those associated with
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).
Simply presented and with a container metaphor as point of
departure, 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 water or food consumption, has
to purify his body (“vessel”) through subsequent rites.
Therefore, all interactions and transactions of substances are
potentially dangerous because it may involve defilement of
one’s purity. Each substance has a value, an entity which in
theory is both morally and religiously defined, and society is
structured around the different transactions that are
hierarchically regulated through sanctions and taboos. Those
who perceive themselves as being purer than others are
particularly concerned about interaction with people they see
as less pure than themselves. These personal perceptions are
difficult or impossible to rank in one model because most
people put themselves on top of the social ladder in terms of
status and purity. There is a general concern about one’s own
purity and possible social interactions and transactions of
substances which may threaten the personal purity. The body
as a “vessel”, which each and everyone is concerned with, is
fundamental in castes when 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 known as Mahapatra which means “great vessels”
(Parry 1994:76). Their role in funerals as “great vessels”,
which are filled with sin and pollution, is the crux of debate
regarding the caste hierarchy and the common assumption
that Brahmans are ranked highest because of their purity.

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Hocart’s Interpretation of Caste
The main core of Hocart’s theory is in essence that all societies
are communities of persons organised for ritual purposes,
and their primary aim is to secure and procure life in its
broadest sense. This has to be seen in relation to the divine
king who was both God and human. Everything in service of
him was a ritual service. Accordingly, the caste system is a
distribution system of rights and duties connected to the royal
ritual and the king’s service (Raglan 1950). The caste system
is a sacrificial organisation where the aristocracy are feudal
lords performing rites by which they need vassals and serfs
because some activities involve pollution, and the lords
cannot become defiled (Hocart 1950:17). Hubert and Mauss
(1964) distinguish between the ”sacrifier” – those who
perform the sacrifice, and “sacrificer” – the ritual specialist
sometimes employed to perform the sacrifice for the sacrifier.
The sacrificial basis of the caste system is religious purity of
those worthy and excellent castes which are allowed to
participate in the sacrifice. The main object of these sacrifices
is immortality in the form of freedom from death and diseases,
it is to becoming a god and ascending to the world of gods.
Or in the words of a sage, “The sacrificer [sacrifier] passes
from men to gods” ([Hocart 1950:18] – Hocart builds parts
of his theory on the differences between sacrifier and
sacrificer, but he does not distinguish these ritual roles by
the terminology developed by Hubert and Mauss. I will use
Hubert and Mauss’ terminology when discussing Hocart even
though he does not use this distinction himself, and when
quoting Hocart, Hubert and Mauss’ terminology is added in
brackets and written in italics).
Obtaining immortality and eternal presence with gods is the
main goal and idealised outcome of the sacrifice. Corpses
are vehicles which can be used to move from this world to
the other world. The recent dead cling to this world although
the spirit is being transformed into other spheres. The dead
are truly liminal beings, and as such are highly polluted
(Kinsley 1997:237-238). The funeral aims to give the
deceased to the gods whereby he can attain the divine and
eternal sphere by becoming a god. Cremation is a
transformation and a medium to change and to transmute.
The king was “the sacrifier” in the state sacrifices in the
earliest texts. This means not necessarily that the king
controlled the total ritual, but he was the chief actor and the
sacrifice was his responsibility whereby he supplied the
offerings and covered the expenses.
In Rig-Veda (X, 90) it is expressed directly that castes are
made from sacrifice. The skeleton of the ancient caste system
is based on four groups of the population: 1) brahman, 2)
kshatriya, 3) vaisya, and 4) sudra. This model is based around
the king, which comes from the kshatriyas. The priests cannot
form a caste themselves due to the practice of celibacy, and
thus the priests are derived from the farmer caste or the
aristocracy. They hold the same place in the hierarchy and in
ritual as the Brahmans when priesthood became hereditary
(Hocart 1950:23-26). Later tradition has stressed that the
kshatriya caste is a warrior caste, and the Chhetris are
commonly ranked as second after the Brahmins in the fourfold
caste system. In the earliest prose writing the kshatriya caste
was nevertheless the royal caste, and only later the stress
was put on the warrior aspect. Therefore, the first caste is the
one that provides the king, and as such the royal one or the
nobility.
The difference between the king and the priest is their roles
in the sacrifice; “A nobleman gives but does not solicit; offers
sacrifice, but does not perform it, studies, but does not teach”
(Hocart 1950:34-35). The second caste supplies the priests,
namely the Brahmans. They perform the ritual for the king.
The priest may perform the sacrifice himself, but he is mainly
the person that officiates for the sacrifier, and therefore the
priests are more closely related to the royal family than the
farmers since it is the king that normally is the chief sacrifier
(ibid:37). The main function of the third caste is to support
the king and the priests, and to feed the sacrifice from their
lands and cattle (ibid:39-40). According to Hocart then, the
caste system is basically a sacrificial organisation where
everything is structured around the king and his sacrificial
role. The other groups in the society have different obligations
in relation to the sacrifices .

हँ गजब गजब को कुरो थाहा पाइयो बा!!! सायमि बुरो पनि काट्टो पिएचडि गर्न लाग्या हो कि? ल ल २ - ३ च्याप्टर त आजकै मालले भरीन्छ होला थेसिस ।