(shaucha) Purity, like its polar opposite, impurity
(ashaucha), is a key notion in Hindu culture.
Although purity and cleanliness are sometimes misunderstood
by outsiders, they are fundamentally different—purity is a theological category
defined by the presence or absence of pollution or defilement, whereas
cleanliness is a sanitary category.
These categories may overlap in some circumstances, but in
the vast majority of cases, their separation is obvious.
Bathing (snana) in the Ganges River, for example, purifies
one from a religious standpoint, although the Ganges' lower levels are
extremely polluted from a sanitary one.
On a personal level, purity is defined as the lack of
defilement, which is achieved through eliminating impurities in some way, the
most common of which is bathing.
Once cleansed, one stays pure until they come into touch
with an impurity source.
Essential body processes like urine and evacation; sexual
activity; contact with unclean items both inside and outside one's house; and
even interaction with certain groups of individuals considered impure are all
causes of impurity.
As a result, although purity is always simple to reclaim, it
is hard to keep since it is shattered by so many of life's deeds.
It's also vital to remember that impurity has no moral
connotation; being impure simply implies that one has come into touch with a
contaminant, which must be eliminated.
The only occasions when cleanliness is especially important
are during worship and eating—the former to avoid contaminating the deities and
their surroundings, and the latter to protect oneself, since the circumstances
around one's food are thought to have long-term consequences on a person.
Purity has a societal component in addition to its personal
dimension.
Greater rank groups, such as brahmins, are seen to have a
higher level of ceremonial purity by default.
The theological underpinning dictating the hierarchical
divides in the old social structure is the social dimension of purity, which
comes with birth.
The purity level of a group is related to its hereditary
vocation to some degree.
People who worked with unclean substances on a regular basis
(such as latrine cleaners, corpse burners, and scavengers) were regarded soiled
by their labor and turned impure.
Brahmins were the purest as academics and priests (the
latter a duty that brought them into touch with the gods).
Between these two extremes, there were the other groups,
whose relative standing in a particular location was dictated by local variables.
See Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchicus, 1980, for a theological
examination of the importance of purity in modern Hindu life; McKim Marriot,
"Hindu Transactions: Diversity Without Dualism," in Bruce Kapferer
(ed. ), Transaction and Meaning, 1976; and Pauline Kolenda, "Purity and
Pollution," in T. N. Madan (ed. ), Religion in India, 1991, for another
analysis of social ordering.
Also see caste and jati.
