ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks for the discussion in the pages that follow go first to the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, not only for encouraging me to undertake it, but also for providing me with resources to carry it out. A very valuable part of the Centre’s assistance has been the critical oversight of the chapters by Nicholas Sutton, the editorial work of Lucian Wong, and the organisational support of Lal Krishna. I am indebted too in clarifying my ideas here, as in all my efforts to understand Hinduism, to conversations with Professor Gavin Flood, Academic Director of the Centre, and to Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen, as also to several students and visiting scholars at the Centre in Trinity Term and Summer 2019. To Nandana Nagaraj, my thanks are due not only for her help with countless practical matters, but also for sharing with me her knowledge of worship practices. As for Shaunaka Rishi, the Administrative Director of OCHS, I shall say no more than that he has stood by me as a dear friend for many years now and has let me share his hopes for Hindu Studies in Oxford. In presenting my ideas and arguments here, I have drawn upon exchanges with my students at the University of British Columbia, learning through the years the art of clarity in word and thought. I have also gratefully benefited from the feedback of the anonymous reader of the book. To my husband Tirthankar Bose, my debts shall remain ever unpaid.

INTRODUCTION

This short study aims at introducing the reader to the challenging notion of womanhood in Hindu religious culture, including its formative influence on women’s situation in social life. Divided into seven related chapters following this Introduction, this monograph aims at encouraging reading and self-directed reflection, reinforced by a list of suggested reading material. The chapters proceed both historically and thematically, covering abstract philosophical ideas as well as concrete worldly conditions, from the earliest stages of Hindu society to the present, marking through time the evolving conception of women, their religious roles, and their social status as derived from Hindu philosophical thought. A theme followed through this monograph will be the paradox that while Hindu metaphysics centralises the feminine as the source of cosmic power, Hindu society has traditionally authorised the subjection of women. This downgrading of women is especially deplorable in view of the very great independence enjoyed by women in the earliest period of Hindu society, not to speak of the continuing idealisation – sadly, more in theory than in practice – of women throughout the history of Hinduism. At the same time, this study notes that Hindu women have consistently found in their faith resources for claiming selfhood both as religious and social subjects. At the very minimum, Hindu women have been able to create a niche of their own in their homes, where they perform religious rites often in their own way, while a great many have found space for worshipping through poetry, painting, dance, and music. Still more excitingly, in present-day social life Hindu women have gained the strength to claim decisive roles in shaping their own lives and the world at large. The chapters in this book will thus lead to understanding how women exist in Hindu society as religious subjects under social conditions that are deeply influenced by ideas derived – or claimed to be derived – from religious sources.

Before we venture into the discussion we would do well to keep in view a fundamental question: does it make sense to talk about women as a separate element of Hinduism? Or of any religion for that matter? Is a religion different for men and women? To the modern sensibility it is inconceivable that God (or the Supreme Being, if you prefer the term) is different for men and women or treats men and women differently. Were we to think so then we would be thinking of a religion actually as two separate belief systems, one for men, the other for women. Since we do not think so, we must proceed from the idea that there may be some difference in the way men and women think of God, feel God’s existence, and seek God. This idea is perhaps best captured by the commonplace image of seekers of the same treasure travelling by different paths. That image dominates Hindu thought.

For Hindus plurality is not a surprising idea. Hinduism has no central doctrine, no single authority to lay down what Hindus should believe and how they should worship. That makes difference in belief and practice entirely defensible and feasible. It follows that men and women, as gendered categories, may well have different ways of believing in the Ultimate spirit and different ways of finding that spirit while adhering to the same spiritual impulse. Whether that spirit exists or is said to be merely a piece of self-delusion is not relevant here; the object of this study is to consider the ways in which belief in such a spirit expresses itself and works in the minds and hearts of men and women.

Bound as the human world is by the rules and conventions of social life, it is an everyday experience that spirituality finds its way through different modes of thought, expression, and action within a body of religious conduct. Such difference is very often defined by gender and bound by social practices, which explains why Hindu women’s religious life is an amalgam of the worldly and the other-worldly, formed as much by spiritual impulses as by worldly necessities, whereby it has historically coalesced into a domain that is their own. To observe and understand the particulars of that domain and to chart the ways in which the Hindu religion shapes women’s religious life is the goal of the present study.

Each of the chapters that follow begins with a brief introductory paragraph, and proceeds through the exposition of the chapter’s topic supported by material quoted and cited from the source texts of the Hindu religion and related critical studies. Sanskrit texts, their translations, and critical studies referred to in the chapters are listed in the References section at the end of the book. Sanskrit texts cited here are standard editions in general unless noted otherwise; translated passages that appear without specific credit are mine. The purpose constantly pursued through the book is to encourage you, the reader, to develop and nurture your own understanding of the life of a woman as a Hindu. After going through the chapters you will, I hope, realise that there are endless opportunities for reflecting on and discussing the topics they deal with. Indeed, such reflections would be an essential part of the learning process, for the aim of these pages is not to load you with parcels of information and ready-made arguments or conclusions, but to build for you platforms from which you may launch your own enquiries. It is with that need in mind that I have listed broad topics for reflection, framed as questions, to keep the issue focused in your mind at the end of each chapter. They represent only a few of many possible issues and you will no doubt come up with many more. Although the discussion topics are presented as specific questions, please bear in mind that there is no single correct answer and you may find it useful to imagine each discussion as a debate within your own mind – unless you are fortunate enough to persuade somebody else to act as your foil. Your study and discussion will, I hope, be helped by a selective glossary of terms used in Hindu religious, philosophical, and sociological discourse, such as ‘mokṣa’.

All texts and critical works referred to in chapters are cited there, with full bibliographical information, as also in the References at the end of the book. To facilitate further enquiry and independent study, a briefly annotated list of books has been added at the end of the monograph. Note that compound Sanskrit terms, including titles of texts, have been separated into their elements, thus: dharmaśāstra appears as dharma-śāstra, Devībhāgavatapurāṇa as Devī Bhāgavatapurāṇa, and so on. When cited in published form, they appear as given on title-pages or journal citations.

A word of caution before we begin: Hindu religious culture is full of different views and narratives, many of them contradictory. There is no central, universally accepted narrative, let alone a unified doctrine. What we know is drawn from texts that vary quite widely in their views about gods, goddesses, and the world, and from worship practices, which vary of course even more widely. Dates too are often hard to pinpoint. Considering Hinduism’s antiquity and the millennia of its evolution, this is not surprising but calls for disciplined study and reflection and, above all, for avoiding quick opinions. Given the great range of Hindu culture across philosophical ideas, religious rituals and conduct, myths and legends, social rules and practice, the study of Hindu thought and practice is often a hazardous journey through a minefield of contradictory views. But not to attempt that journey is to miss an adventure. I confess I would rather attempt leaps of judgement across that minefield than none at all, so long as those judgements are open to revision through sober reflection.

I

DIVINITY AND FEMININITY

From its very beginning many thousands of years ago, Hindu religious thought has been deeply concerned with the idea of femininity. In this chapter we will look into the origins of that idea in Hindu philosophy and its development through time. Hindu religious beliefs and practices have pervaded the idea of womanhood, locating the feminine both in the material human world and in the realm of the spirit. How much force that tradition still exerts on Hindu social culture today with respect to women is an intriguing question and can lead to emotionally charged positions among Hindus and non-Hindus alike. The way that religious principles tend to turn into social and political rules and conventions will be part of the discussion developed throughout this book. So will the opportunities that exist within the Hindu religion for women to achieve self-determination both socially and spiritually. The present chapter will prepare the groundwork for that discussion.

ORIGINS

As in other world cultures, philosophical and religious thought – the two usually converging – in Hindu society began with speculations about the origin of existence and its process, and with explanations of natural life. At its most adventurous, Hindu philosophical thought admits that nobody really knows how and where it all began. A hymn in the ṚgVeda, the earliest Hindu collection of religious thought, says, ‘Existence, in the earliest age of gods, from Non-existence sprang’ (ṚgVeda 10.72.3), and a later one, the famous Nāsadīya hymn, asserts even more boldly:

Then was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it. What covered it, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?

Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day’s and night’s divider. That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.

Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos. All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit.

Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit. Sages who searched with their heart’s thought discovered the existent’s kinship in the non-existent.

Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it? There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder.

Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation? The gods are later than this world’s production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?

He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it, Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.

(ṚgVeda, 10.129)¹

Despite its confession of bafflement, this passage takes for granted the existence of an abstract Supreme Being who is self-originating and the source of all phenomena. Hindu thought attempted to grasp that abstract Being by picturing it in many forms as gods and goddesses. Imagined as divine beings in human shape and placed in a social order, Hindu gods and goddesses control everything that happens in the universe while they rule over human life. This belief in personified deities began to take hold of Hindu spiritual thought from its earliest phase, generally traced back to the fifteenth century BCE.²

Gods and goddesses are immensely more powerful than human beings, but they are modelled on human beings and they exist in relation to humankind and other forms of earthly life.³

They possess superhuman powers that they employ to regulate nature and support human life within a scheme of orderliness, mutual benefit, and justice.

In the earliest phase of Hindu spiritual thought, divinity in its full might resided mainly in male gods, who were worshipped as holders of power, and dispensers of both favours and punishment. While goddesses were part of the divine world, they performed only specific and usually narrow functions, mainly related to nurturing human life, ever-present but on the periphery of cosmic power. This vision of the divine world changed with new ideas developing some centuries later. In the classical period of the Hindu tradition, approximately from the fifth century CE, the idea of a single Great Goddess came to dominate Hindu thought as the energy that drives all creation.

That there is a gender division within the community of deities may seem startling, considering that they are not biological entities. But like other world cultures, Hinduism overlooks this inconsistency and treats divine beings as biological ones, treating every form of existence, whether open to direct human sense perception or not, as animated and gendered. Again, this is not uncommon in world culture but Hindu views on gender characteristics and roles are painstakingly elaborated and ceaselessly debated both in their theological positions and sociological implications. For practical purposes of capturing the indeterminate idea of an otherworldly life, Hindus, like others, have assigned biological presence to gods and goddesses. They have also placed gods and goddesses within a society that is their very own but again one that parallels human society.

Though they shared the same universe, Vedic gods and goddesses were not equal, for early Hindu thought held them within a hierarchy of power that included a hierarchy of gender as well. While the gods controlled cosmic forces and functions, such as the power of the wind, oceans/water, fire, thunder, and lightning, the goddesses were limited to prescribed tasks. Well into Vedic times when Hindu thought was crystallising into a distinct theology, goddesses were players in the support system of the universe rather than its controllers, carrying out a primarily nurturing role. From an early time, the gender division within the divine world determined the division of divine functions, with the broader, far-reaching control of creation resting upon male gods and the female deities carrying out particular tasks of keeping creation going. Another aspect of the gendering of deities is that goddesses were scarcely, if ever, independent actors but attached to gods in supporting roles. Any independence that some of them might have possessed initially eroded as the conception of the divine community firmed up through time. During the Vedic period, we find goddesses pushed to the periphery of power and influence. For sages and worshippers, goddesses diminished in importance in comparison to male deities such as Indra, Agni, Vāyu, or Soma, who were the principal gods of the time. Although we must not underestimate the importance of goddesses as philosophical notions or as objects of practical veneration, we do have to recognise their limitations. While the gods were controllers of the elemental constituents of the universe, the goddesses were nurturers, protectors, purifiers, energy givers, and mothers, as we may see in the profiles of Vedic goddesses, most prominent of whom were: Uṣas, Pṛthivī, Aditi, Sarasvatī, Vāc, and Śrī/Lakṣmī.⁴

EARLY GODDESSES

Goddess Uṣas, or Dawn, is described in the Vedas as an auspicious and bright being who wakes up the world with her light and regulates time. A nurturer, she leads human understanding to Ṛta, or Cosmic Truth. Goddess Pṛthivī, or earth, is the consort of Dyaus, or Sky, and nurtures the material world as its mother, supplying the needs of all human beings, birds, and animals. Goddess Aditi is important as the mother of the gods, free from their rule though not equal in authority, protector of Ṛta, and is later merged with Pṛthivī. A more complex figure is Goddess Sarasvatī, who first appeared as a nature spirit, a river, and thus a purifier who bestowed wealth, renewed and nurtured lives, and represented immortality. The epitome of purity, energy, eloquence, knowledge, music, and art, she was worshipped in Vedic times as the ruling spirit of sacrifices and was connected with other Vedic goddesses, such as ĪĪā, Māhī, Bhāratī, and Hotrā. Sarasvatī is the one exception to the general rule of submission to male dominance, because from Vedic times down to the present, she has survived and has been venerated as an independent entity, with Hindu sacred lore showing her shaking off all claims upon her by even the creator god Brahmā, including one of incestuous desire on his part. A goddess associated with Sarasvatī is Vāc, who later became one with Sarasvatī. Vāc was controller of word and sound, inspirer and creator of three Vedas, protector of sacrifices and rituals, which depended on precision of word and sound to be potent.

One of the most important of these early female deities was Śrī, the giver of wealth, good fortune, and royal authority, who was later assimilated into Goddess Lakṣmī. The latter became not only one of the most fervently worshipped deities for Hindus as the source of wealth and well-being, but eventually came to occupy the very centre of all divine power and action as Viṣṇu’s consort. Both theologically and socially Lakṣmī developed into one of the most influential goddesses of Hinduism, around whom entire systems of worship developed.

Among these early goddesses there were also others who were not so benevolent. Of negative aspect were Rātrī and Nrṛiti. Rātrī was the sister of Uṣas and exercised motherly care in facilitating sleep, rest, comfort, and safety but also induced hopelessness and barrenness. Nrṛiti was a distinctly threatening figure who commanded decay, greed, anger, cowardice, old age, and death, and was later identified as Alakṣmī, the spiteful opposite of Lakṣmī, the goddess of plenitude, much feared, and paid homage only to ensure her absence. In the conception of Nrṛti we may detect an instinctive fear of women’s presumed potential for destruction, a fear later to be attached to Kālī, as Gavin Flood points out.⁵

These disagreeable goddesses clearly represented what worshippers wished to keep at a distance and were not models for women, although they, especially Alakṣmī, could be cited to explain women’s misfortunes in the form of barrenness or laziness; she also became the model of wicked women. As with benevolent goddesses, the human-divine correlation holds true even for otherworldly malice.

PERIPHERAL GODDESSES

The goddesses we have looked at so far are those mentioned in Vedic literature. But Hindu religiosity existed beyond the cultivated communities, which fostered philosophical speculations, and composition of hymns and complex sacrifices that went with their worship. The larger rural population that existed outside these communities had their own deities and it is likely that some of the Vedic deities, such as Rātrī, originated as village deities and later took more sophisticated shape in the imagination of the Vedic seers. But many deities had—and still have—only regional followings or even narrower village bases. Village gods and goddesses lived on in the popular consciousness and many have survived into present-day Hindu religious life, including urban life. Several village goddesses have continued to command devotion as spirits who can reward and protect, or punish and destroy. Some are benevolent and worshipped for the boons they may give, such as Ṣaṣṭhī, who grants prayers for the birth of children, or Bathukāmmā, who brings renewal to fields of crops and flowers. Some other goddesses have to be more carefully treated, such as Śītalā, Manasā, and Māriāmman, whom worshippers have to propitiate with pūjā to be protected from disease and similar misfortunes. Although their ritual worship is usually attended and arranged by women, they are not