Sekine tries to criticize it by throwing the one-sidedness of its definition into relief and to present a more valid theoretical framework for understanding Hindu women. Following an examination of the Tamil view of women the author extends the scope of discussion to embrace the wider context of Hindu women in general. Sekine claims that pollution and purification of "Brahman culture" continues to exert influence not because of any historical continuity but "as a reference point for the villagers actions in the context of today's new Sanskritization" (p.222) The idea here is not very clear. This is followed by references to the Manusmriti and evidently a secondary source is used to elaborate on the actual mechanisms governing pollution and the various means mentioned by which the pollution may be removed. The observation of the author that ritual acts associated with a high degree of abstract thinking are generally confined to certain ritually high-ranking castes and in the non-brahman village where the writer lived were quite irrelevant to the majority of the villagers. Sekine has advocated two ways of interpreting pollution. First, pollution that ensues from an affirmative and receptive attitude bore of abiding within the marginal state of pollution. This is to be distinguished from the negative manifestation of pollution, which the author calls "impurity" that results from standing outside the marginal state of pollution. And looking down on it from the centre of the established order. The former regards pollution as an "incident" that has a generative and dynamic perspective that looks outward from within pollution and the latter treats pollution as a "thing" considering it in "fixed" terms from without. Many of the arguments in this article are obfuscated by extremely long winding sentences. The writer tries to simplify them by giving parallels from other writer's theories not with much success. The bifurcation into two ideologies is usually quite negligible among lower-status people and so the ambiguous character of lower status women is not so distinct. The final article by Y. Yagi is concerned with women's participation in the main rites of passage in northern India. She emphasizes the distinctive roles of female participants and ritual specialists in contrast to the male brahmanical priests. The latter being related more to the concepts of fertility and auspiciousness than to pure and impure ideas. The author claims that the rites of passage of the lower castes, as well as the roles of the service castes and women involved in these rites, cannot be understood only by means of the concepts of purity and impurity. She looks upon her research as the