4 - Sacrificial practices and partitions

Summary

The rules which govern sacrifice and killing, their associated groups and inter-relations on a daily basis in Nepal are an extension of a larger socio-sacrificial cosmogony, one which exposes the causal relationship between blood sacrifice and socio-political organisation, in much the same way as they did in ancient Greece (Vernant 1979).

Two main principles emerge from the ethnography of sacrificial practices in western Nepal: first, that whosoever is entitled to kill is also entitled to sacrifice (with the result that killing and sacrificing are little differentiated in practice) and, second, that only those who are entitled to kill can themselves be killed. The right to kill thus traces lines of partition within society, lines which trace out a social structure which is parallel to that of the castes.

Whosoever can kill can sacrifice

In the region formerly occupied by the Twenty-Four and the Twenty-Two Kingdoms, apart from the Brahmins, who are forbidden to kill any animal whatsoever, any man can be a sacrificator or butcher, in the absence of caste-based specialisation in these roles, as is seen in the Kathmandu Valley. Killing is thus strongly associated with masculinity and takes on an initiatory character. Since childhood, boys aspire to be entrusted with this responsibility and it is not uncommon to see them insisting on the right to kill their first chicken. Permission is granted to them by their parents only once they are old enough not to cause the animal undue harm. Indeed, causing the victim to suffer is a fault, pāp, one which brings harmful consequences to the one who causes it. If a young boy kills a chicken in the wrong way, a member of his family rushes to blow phuphu on the sickle used in order to ‘drop the blame’. Sometimes even in a ritual context, a botched sacrifice must be repaired by another small sacrifice, of a baby chick.

Anyone who is entitled to kill can also sacrifice, at least for themselves. There are some Nepalis who have never killed an animal nor consumed meat outside of a sacrificial framework, like a Sārkī family I met in Dullu in 2012, for instance.