Rules of untouchability in ancient and medieval law books: Householders, competence, and inauspiciousness

Abstract

Some concepts remain alive in scholarly discourse without any clear justifica tion in terms of theoretical definition or demarcation. 'Untouchability' is such a concept?it has been justified on empirical criteria which are more rooted in folk traditions of social attitudes than in sociological consistency,1 and as such it lacks a clear theoretical basis. Untouchables are 'at the bottom/ but what demarcates this bottom from the Mow/ apart from being the last in a declining series, is not clear. Whether untouchable castes were placed at the bottom of the ethnographic tables of transactional ranking of the 1950s or were seen as embodying the highest degree of impurity in the Dumontian hierarchical structure that prevailed for the next couples of decades, they were not distin guishable as anything but the last of an inclusive continuum. The Br?hmanical literary traditions, the Dharmas?stra and the epics in particular, have undoubtedly been influential in forming the concept of untouch ability. In this article, J shall argue that at least as far as these Br?hmanical articulations are concerned, the concept of untouchability does rest on a fairly well-delimited paradigm. J hope to demonstrate that the precolonial Br?hmanical construction of 'untouchability' as it gradually emerged in ancient and medieval law books was not simply a part of a more inclusive complex of purity ideas but that it formed an exclusive set of rules referring to an exclusive set of social characters and situations. In connection with the subject of untouchability, I will also have the opportunity to touch on more general theoretical discussions about pollution and the transferability or nontransferability of karma.