ABSTRACT
In this section a brief explanation of the procedure of Narayan Nāgbali will be given. This ritual originated in Vedic times, and two different rituals (Narayanbali and Nāgbali) became one, known as Narayan Nāgbali. In summary, Narayanbali is a short version of the funeral rite, in which the usual 13-day funeral is held over three days for the ancestors, and the Nāgbali is performed as an expiatory rite for cobras.5 Five rituals (viddhi) are offered to Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva,
Yama and Preta during the three days. But the ritual for Brahma is now hardly seen outside of Trimbakeshwar, and few priests know about it. Therefore, people think it is most authentic and desirable to perform this ritual in Trimbakeshwar. People who perform the ritual are known as yajamāna (a patron) or bhakta (a devotee), and they visit Trimbakeshwar as a couple or as a family and stay at the priest’s house for three or four days. In light of this it is becoming common nowadays for priests to renovate their houses in order to have independent rooms and modern bath facilities to meet the needs of their visitors. The basic cost of Narayan Nāgbali ranges from 4,000 to 5,000 rupees, but the total cost would be more than 10,000 rupees, as new cloths, a small golden idol of a snake, and personal gifts (dān) for the priests are also required. About 300 Brahmin families engage in this ritual in Trimbakeshwar, and they constitute highly exclusive professional groups.6 In Hindu society, priests who engage in funeral rites are called mahābrahmin and are generally seen as much lower and more inauspicious than priests (purōhita) who are only involved in auspicious events (Fuller 2002). In fact, one village purōhita during my field research in Maharashtra told me that he cannot perform Narayan Nāgbali as it is associated with the inauspicious. According to him, the relation of a purōhita to a mahābrahmin (funeral priest) is equivalent to ‘a family doctor and a specialist’. The family doctor gives a diagnosis, writes a medical certificate and sends patients to a specialist if necessary. An apparent difference here is that the hierarchical relations between a family doctor and a specialist are contradictive in the case of a purōhita and a funeral priest. Marriage between them is strongly prohibited. However, the situation is quite different in Trimbakeshwar. The exclusive, highly professionalised Brahmin priest community forms almost 30 per cent of the population of Trimbakeshwar and is economically as well as politically quite dominant. They do not conduct actual funeral rites and mostly concentrate on performing Narayan Nāgbali and other rites such as Kālsarpa. After all, in such a unique place, where there are 300 priest families and most of the inhabitants other than Brahmin are also involved in the ‘religious industry’, to be a priest conducting ancestral funeral rites and removing sins from people does not have negative connotations and is not considered inauspicious at all by other social groups.
