Rust Is Not Purity

About This Talk

Chapter 9 rules that every metal implement with a name of its own is susceptible to impurity while anything that serves the earth or wood is not, so a door, a bolt, a lock, a hinge and its socket, a beam and a drainpipe stay pure even before they are installed, the scorpion of a muzzle is susceptible and the iron cheek plates are not until everything is joined to the reins, a detached ring shaped like a bowl is susceptible for its receptacle and its lentil for its name while the wire that enters the ear is neither, a broken cluster ring is pure, a girl's plain leg band is pure and a linked pair of them is an ornament and susceptible, snapped necklace links are each a vessel and remnants count while they still circle a girl's neck, lids are pure for want of a name except the lid of a samovar and of a doctor's prescription box, a lid scraped and polished into a mirror becomes susceptible, weights are susceptible until broken and susceptible again only once the pieces are designated as fractions of a litra, a hook or a chain follows the vessel it serves and is nothing on its own, and four handbreadths of a large bucket's chain and ten of a small one are susceptible. Chapter 10 decides everything by the work a thing does: pegs made to be pounded into wood or hung on a wall are pure while a hook made to open a door or lift a wick is susceptible, a doctor's cabinet door is susceptible because bandages are kept there and a homeowner's is not, plates set under a hot pot are susceptible and the same plates built into a range are pure, a metal bolt is susceptible and a wooden bolt coated with metal is pure, a pepper mill is susceptible three times over as metal, as receptacle and as sieve, a dismantled trumpet counts as a vessel only where a craftsman alone could rebuild it, and a saw wedged into a slit in a lintel is not susceptible although the household uses it. Chapter 11 measures how far a metal vessel must be broken before it stops being one, ruling that it stays a vessel as long as it can do something resembling its task, so a damaged bucket that still draws water, a wool comb with three inner teeth, a saw keeping a sit of teeth in one place, a blacksmith's split tongs that can still stir coals and a mirror that still shows most of a face remain susceptible, while a barber's split tongs, a halved shaver, a lengthwise split bellows and a drill cut in two are pure, a rusted needle is pure only if the rust prevents sewing, a rusted sword that is then smoothed or sharpened returns to its initial impurity, and a metal vessel fixed to a beam or a wall stays susceptible until its function is changed.