Abstract
Purity is an extremely varied and heterogeneous religious ideal that lies at the critical intersection between the individual physical body, the social body, and the cosmos as a whole. At once a material and a spiritual ideal, purity overlaps partially with but far exceeds modern notions of cleanliness or hygiene; indeed, it may in some cases even contradict the latter. One can distinguish five different forms of purity, each in this chapter illustrated by one primary example: physical purity, social purity, mental purity, sexual purity, and the ritual use of impurity. There is also a variety of contemporary theoretical approaches to purity, drawn from psychology, cognitive science, cultural anthropology, gender studies, and comparative religions.
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