dietary law Religions of Indiareligion

Rules and customs in world religions » Religions of India

It is in the religions of India that one can most clearly observe the principles outlined above concerning the relationship between dietary laws and customs and the existence of social stratification, traditional privilege, and social, familial, and moral lines that cannot be crossed. Hinduism provides the best example, although the same principles also obtain in the religions of Jainism and Sikhism.

Food observances help to define caste ranking: Brahmins are the highest caste because they eat only those foods prepared in the finest manner (pakkā); everyone else takes inferior (kaccā) food. Pakkā food is the only kind that can be offered in feasts to gods, to guests of high status, and to persons who provide honorific services. Food is regarded as pakkā if it contains ghee (clarified butter), which is a very costly fat and which is believed to promote health and virility. Kaccā is defined as inferior because it contains no ghee; it is used as ordinary family fare or as daily payment for servants and artisans. When food serves as payment for services (e.g., barbering), the quality of the food depends on the relative ranks of the parties to the transaction; the person making the payment gives inferior food, such as coarser bread, to a lower ranking person performing the service. Performance of a service denotes that a person is ready to accept some kind of food, and giving food denotes an expectation that a service will be performed. Members of subordinate castes pick up the dirty plates of members of superior castes, as at village feasts. Food left on plates after eating is defined as garbage (jūṭhā); it is felt to have been polluted by the eater’s saliva. This garbage may be handled in the family by a person whose status is lower than the eater’s, such as a wife. Such food may be fed to domestic animals; among humans outside the family it can only be given to members of the lowest castes, such as sweepers. The highest Brahmins do not accept any cooked food from members of any other caste, but uncooked food may be received from or handled by members of any caste. Nor will such Brahmins accept water across caste lines. Cow’s milk is ritually pure and cannot be defiled, but a Brahmin will not accept milk from an untouchable—a member of the lowest caste groups—lest it has been diluted with water.

Water is easily defiled, but, if it is running in a stream or standing in a reservoir, it is not polluted even by an untouchable in it. Water in a well or container, however, is defiled by direct or indirect contact with a person of low caste. Thus, a ritually observant Brahmin will not allow a low-caste person to draw water from his well, although this rule is lapsing, possibly because of the introduction of plumbing and the removal of water from the list of scarce resources.

In the general Hindu system of purity–pollution, meats are graded as to their relative amount of pollution. Eggs are the least and beef the most defiling; but the highest caste Brahmins avoid all meat products absolutely. Also, certain strong foods (e.g., onions and garlic) are thought to be inappropriate to Brahminical status. Alcohol too is prohibited; it is not considered polluting in itself, but the prohibition seems related to the Brahminical value of self-control. Alcohol’s manufacture and trade is confined to members of lower castes.

People who eat at each other’s feasts hold equal rank. People who eat at every house in a village occupy a very low status, and refusal to take food from another constitutes a claim to higher caste rank. More generally, givers of food outrank receivers. This, however, is a definition of collective, not of individual, rank. If a member of one caste gives food to a member of a second, all members of the first caste are regarded as higher than a third, even if there is no direct transaction between the first and third castes. Thus, the behaviour of every person in a village has consequences for the entire village.

In actual practice, however, there is not an automatic enactment of these formal rules in village life; instead, they vary considerably according to local conditions. For instance, one of the formal rules of Hindu religious caste organization is that vegetarians outrank meat eaters, because contact with killed animals is regarded as polluting. Nevertheless, McKim Marriott, a U.S. anthropologist who has investigated village caste relationships, has found instances in which meat eaters outrank vegetarians. He concludes from his observations that it is caste rank—mostly in terms of the kinds of work that people in different castes do—that determines purity and pollution. In daily social relations this sometimes means that a caste of sufficiently high status may not be demeaned by receiving food from a lower caste if the latter is not too far below and if the proper food and vessels are used.

Status is rarely immutable over long stretches of time. In most societies, people who occupy low status try to exploit every opportunity to improve their position, and, Marriott found, Indian villagers are no exception. Because food in this culture is one of the principal indices of rank, it is used as a pawn in manoeuvres for social mobility. Specifically, members of a low caste will try to gain dominance over persons in another by feeding them, although the latter cannot be too far above the upwardly mobile group. There is no direct way of forcing a higher group to accept food; one of the techniques most often used is for the lower caste to threaten to withhold services unless a heretofore slightly higher caste receives food from the former. Such mobility, as noted earlier, affects not only the two castes concerned but also all other groups in the village, and the manoeuvring involves everyone in the community.

Marriott’s emphasis on occupation (and, therefore, rank) as the determinant of food customs has not been accepted by all students of Indian society. He continues to leave some aspects of caste behaviour unexplained, such as the extreme statuses of Brahmins and untouchables, to say nothing of the existence of the total caste system itself and the mechanisms by which it is maintained. These problems have yet to be worked out. In any case, there can be no doubt that concepts of pollution and purity in regard to food in India, as everywhere else, are governed by a systematic set of rules analogous to a language’s grammar and that applications of the rules are logical and consistent within the grammatical framework. Observations of daily village life do not contradict this concept of the codification of food rules; they only suggest that earlier “grammars” may have been too narrowly conceived.