Purity and Impurity
The idea of ceremonial purity is one running through the whole of the dairy rites. Many of the details of the ritual, the purification of new vessels and of dairies revisited after a period of disuse, the ordination ceremonies of the dairyman, the elaborate ceremonies accompanying the making of new pep, all show a very deeply engrained idea that men and things have in themselves some degree of impurity, and that in order to be made fit for the service of the gods, they must be purified and sanctified by appropriate ceremonies.
As regards man two grades of impurity are recognised: (i.) the impurity of the ordinary man which is perhaps an absence of ceremonial purity rather than actual impurity; and (ii.) the special impurity which is the result of certain events and especially of those accompanying birth and death.
The impurity of the ordinary man does not prevent him from visiting the dairies of the lower grade, but it prohibits him from taking any part whatever in the actual dairy operations. With certain exceptions, he is rigorously excluded [[245]]from actual contact either with dairies or dairymen of the higher grades. He is perhaps regarded as unsanctified rather than impure. The definite impurity which is the condition of those who have attended funeral ceremonies or have been in relation with a woman in the period of seclusion after childbirth is something very different. Such a man is not merely unsanctified, he is unfit to hold any sacred office; even the prolonged ceremonies of ordination would not fit him to hold office in the dairy or to perform any part in the tendance of the sacred buffaloes, and he is not allowed even to approach the members of the higher grades of the dairyman-priesthood.