Moon and Cycle of death and rebirth

[Stephen Hodge]

Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan wrote:

> This led to
> Hart’s paradoxical view of CT groups associated with the
sacred being
> polluted people!

An interesting parallel exists in Japan with the "eta", a group whose
social status and role later became similar to Indian out-castes /
polluted peoples.  During (and prior to) the Nara Period (C6th CE) in
Japan Buddhism had just begun to make inroads but the native Shinto
beliefs were still very pervasive.  One trait of Shinto is the idea of
"imi" (taboo / pollution).   In its more extreme manifestation,
anything which altered the natural balance of things was "imi", death,
for example, and any contact which objects which caused a disturbance
to the natural harmony was to be avoided because of the associated
dangers.  The people who eventually became "eta" were precisely those
people who were thought to be endowed with extra-ordinary powers that
made them immune to and able to deal with e.g. death, slaughtering,
leather-working etc.   At that time, the "eta" also were often orphans
who were customarily adopted and raised by Buddhist monastic
establishments.   A gradual down-grading of the "eta" ocurred during
the following centuries and was also accompanied by a parallel social
devaluation of women in general, entertainers and a number of other
occupational classes, a process that seems to have been motivated by a
desire born of fear to control social groups who had previously been
considered to be endowed with special abilities that did not conform
to the status quo.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge