Blog Post #6

A practice I found odd for the Brahmin religion is to bathe before any meal. I love to take showers myself and to be clean but I don’t know if I would necessarily want to before every meal. This is more or a ritualistic practice and is more commonly performed by wealthier men who have quite a bit of leisure time on their hands. While this practice of the Havik men is evident, the reading mentions that during some seasons it can’t in fact happen often, depending on if that individual should return to work. Then, another bath would be a requirement before another meal.

Chapter 2, Secular Defilement from the book Purity and Danger, also mentions the concept of pollution existing in food. Making sure food is not contaminated or diseased before being consumed. This chapter goes on to list different practices of the religion and ways food can and cannot be kept sanitary and free of diseases or pollution. One of the examples used is, when talking about what type of food has more contamination between cooked or uncooked food. I was surprised to find out that cooked food does have a higher chance of being contaminated. The reading does not explain why this may be the case, but I thought it might have to do with that fact that cooked food is usually passed around and touched by many people for consumption, while uncooked food still can cook off anything thing that may not be sanitary. And food that can be tossed into the mouth for consumption has that greatest chance to avoid pollution then food that has to be bitten into because of the contamination saliva carries.