Roy, Kumkum (ed.);
Women in early Indian societies
Manohar Publsihers and Distributors, 1999
ISBN 8173043825
topics: | india | history | gender | vedas | [manohar | book | svc | 08nov | rs188]
A collection of essays on the conditions of women in ancient India. The early papers, like Atelkar and Horner, date to the 1930s. Topics dealt with include women's status and how it changed, property rights, prostitution, sati, etc. To the modern reader, Altekar appears to be making statements without marshalling adequate evidence; he seems to be pining for the golden era of the past. For him the vedic and samhita era (upto 500BC) was a relatively golden period for indian women (they were allowed considerable freedom, except to property. they could even re-marry, although this is opposed by Kosambi see below). He compares the status of Indian wome to the Greek situation, and finds the Indian position better. The sati movement, according to Altekar, gained strength only after 500BC (for reasons unanalyzed). Some of these challenges to his claims have been highlighted by Uma Chakravarti in her essay on the "Altekarian paradigm".
I.B. Horner, on the other hand, paints a detailed picture of Buddhist period, citing primary evidence at each step, and the work appears far more credible. At one point, while listing the questions an almswoman would be asked joining the saMgha, she observes that she would be asked "Have your father and mother given their consent" - but not if her husband had. Since almswomen were not admitted before the age of twenty, well past the age of marriage, this is very interesting. Nonetheless, there are no stories of a wife declaring unilaterally to the husband her intention of joining (as there is of husbands). Society at large expected wives to follow their husbands, and although husband's consent was not officially a part of this list, it was actually an offence for the ordainer to accept a girl who had not the consent of her husband. The almswomen had eight belongings: three robes, alms-bowl, razor, needle, girdle, and water-strainer. She also had a bodice, saMkacchika, coming from below the collar-bone to above the navel, for the purpose of hiding the breast. This was apparently not the practice among ordinary women. Also, all forms of jewellery were strictly prohibited. At the same time, some of Horner's comments on the status of women appear to reflect modern conditions almost: In the pre-Buddhist days, the status of women in India was on the whole low and without honour. A daughter was nothing but a source of anxiety to her parents; for it was inauspicious and a disgrace if they could not marry her; yet, if they could, they were often nearly ruined by their lavish expenditure on the wedding festivities. Similarly, men are interested in marrying primarily to get heirs to perform his funeral rites. Another essay by N.N. Bhattacharya analyzes the notion of women's property, stridhan, which remains a concept even today in Indian law. In an article titled "Prostitution in ancient India", Srikumari Bhattacharji outlines the differing models of promiscuity, and distinguishes the particular cash-economic transaction called prostitution. However, such women, while being "illegitimate", did indeed have independent econoomic status, whereas legitimate (married) women did not.
The essay that I found most impressive was D.D. Kosambi's urvashI and purUravas, which was written in 1951 and was collected in [Kosambi, D D (1962): Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture, Popular Prakashan, Bombay]. It starts with an analysis of kAlidasa's vikramorvashiyam, the story of King purUravas of the lunar race and the nymph urvashI. Urvashi is abducted by the demon keshI, and is rescued by purUravas. But she is recalled to heaven, to act the part of Lakshmi in a play staged before Indra. When she mispronounces Purushottama as purUravas, the director Bharata sentences her to human life. This enables her to mate w purUravas, but the course of their love is interrupted again when she is turned into a vine for stepping into a sacred grove. But a charmed jewel restores her. The jewel is stolen by a kite, and when this kite is shot dead, the arrow is found to carry the legend that urvashI has borne te king a son. This results in another union, which is prolonged because heaven is busy fighting a war. Kosambi's interest is in tracing the sociological origin of the story and the transformation of the narrative, which is first glimpsed in the Rigveda, to the day of Kalidasa. He touches upon the commentaries of Keith and Max Muller, which he finds lacking in explanation. Geldner's analysis of eight sources, some identicalm, observes the transition of the story from a tragedy where the lovers are never united again, to a happy romance.
Rigveda X.95: (this version merges the more literal one on p.263 with the
slightly more fluid one on p.262):
1. (PurUravas): Oh, my wife, stay, though cruel in mind; let us discourse
together. Our chants unuttered will bring no joy in days to come.
2. (Urvashi): Why should I speak to you? I have passed away like the first of
the dawns. purUravas, go back to your destiny; I am like the wind,
difficult to catch.
5. (Urvashi): Thrice a day did you ram me with your member, and impregnated
me unwilling (as I was). purUravas, I yielded to your desire. O hero,
you were then the king of my body. ...
12. (purUravas): When will the son that is born yearn after his father? He
will shed flooding tears, knowing (what happened). ...
14. (PurUravas): Then let your lover fall dead, uncovered. let him go to the
furthest reaches, never to return; let him lie in Nirrti's lap (Goddess of
death); let him be eaten by raging wolves.
15. (Urvashi): O purUravas, you are not to die, not to fall dead, the unholy
wolves are not to eat you.
(PurUravas?Urv?): There is no friendship with womenfolk, their hearts
are the hearts of hyenas. ...
[In Kosambi's translation this last is said by P; in Eggeling's version,
embedded in the Shatapatha brAhmaNa XI 5.1, it is said by Urvashi]
17. P: I, the best (of men) submit to the atmosphere-filling, sky-crossing
Urvashi. May the blessings of good deeds be thine; turn back, my heart
is heated (with fear).
18. U: Thus speak the gods to thee, son of Ila; inasmuch as thou art now
doomed to death, thy offspring will offer sacrifice to the gods, but thou
thyself rejoice in heaven.
Kosambi's analysis focuses on the fact that in most versions of the story,
PurUravas eventually is killed in a sacrifice [in some versions, he becomes a
gandharva or a heavenly spirit, consort of the apsaras]. Kosambi's
explanation is that "purUravas is to be sacrificed after having begotten a
son and successor upon urvashI; he pleads in vain against her
determination. This is quite well-known to anthropologists as a sequel to
some kinds of primitive sacred marriage." p.265. He also emphasizes that
"the primary reason for the survival of any Vedic hymn is its liturgical
function." Kosambi views the dialogue as "part of a ritual act performed by
two characters representing the principals and is thus a substitute for an
earlier, actual sacrifice of the male." p.266 (italics Kosambi).
Part of Kosambi's justification for this analysis is lexical - P addresses
his wife as ghore, which means the grim or dreaded one, used for gods like
Indra; hardly a lover's term. The assurance "Thou is not to die" [15] is
given in almost identical terms to the sacrificed, cooked and eaten horse in
RV. 1.162.21 na vai u etan mr^yase.
Kosambi also attempts to analyze purUravas birth:
the learned purUravas was born of Ila, who was both his father and
his mother, or so we have heard. - (mahAbhArata 1.70 16):
and suggests that this may be a link to manu, and that the lack of paternity,
is "not unknown when matriarchy is superseded. The implication is that
purUravas is a figure of the transitional period when fatherhood became of
prime importance; that is, of the period when the patriarchal form of society
was imposing itself upon an earlier one." [p.269] This argument seems rather
thin, and is not pursued further. However, the speculation that the Aryan
story may reflect a transition from a matriarchal society is of considerable
interest.
The last part of the article analyzes the equivalence of urvashI with uShas, who in RV IV 1.15 is an high mother goddess: We seven sages shall generate from mother uShas, the first men sacrificers; we shall become aMgirasas, sons of heaven, we shall burst the rich mountain, shining forth. And in another verse she is said to have once been Indra's equal, but that her cult was smashed up by Indra. All these references may also point to a form of hetaerism (group marriage, women seen as belonging to the tribe as a whole), e.g. in RV I.167.4, where the goddess rodasI is common to all the mAruts, under the title of sAdhAraNI. Another interesting suggestion is that the ritual of widow-burning may be a leftover from the time when matriarchy was actively suppressed; in Greek myth, the first widow who survives her husband and re-marries, instead of entering his flaming pyre, is Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus. (see below)
Introduction.
I. Issues and perspectives:
1. The position of women in Hindu civilization: retrospect and prospect/
A.S. Altekar. a
2. Beyond the Altekarian paradigm: towards a new understanding of gender
relations in early Indian history/
Uma Chakravarti
3. Women under primitive Buddhism: laywomen and almswomen
I.B. Horner
II. Women and the economy:
1. Proprietary rights of women in ancient India
N.N. Bhattacharyya
2. Turmeric land: women's property rights in Tamil society since early
medieval times
Kanakalatha Mukund
3. 'Rural-urban dichotomy' in the concept and status of women: an
examination (from the Mauryas to the Guptas)
Chitrarekha Gupta
4. Aspects of women and work in early South India
Vijaya Ramaswamy
III. Socio-sexual constructions of womanhood
1. Polyandry in the Vedic period
Sarva Daman Singh
2. Prostitution in ancient India
Sukumari Bhattacharji
3. Woman and the sacred in ancient Tamilnadu
George L. Hart, III
IV. Religious beliefs and practices:
1. Urvasi and Pururavas
D.D. Kosambi
2. Women's patronage to temple architecture
Harihar Singh
3. The world of the Bhaktin in South Indian traditions--the body and
beyond
Uma Chakravarti
Bibliography
Bremmer and den Bosch have more on the Greek story of women joining their
husbands on the pyre, in:
Bremmer, Jan N.; Lourens van den Bosch;
Between Poverty and the Pyre: Moments in the History of Widowhood
Routledge, 1995, 258 pages
ISBN 0415083702
Wives joining their husbands on the pyre may have been common in ancient
Greece before 2nd c. BCE:
The 2nd c. traveller Pausanias names Gorgophone as the very first woman
who remarried after the death of her husband. In Euripedes' "Trojan
Women", Andromache decries a woman who takes on a new lover, and in his
Suppliants Euadne jumps onto the pyre out of love for her husband
Kapaneus. - p.34
This is a diverse exploration of women putatively called widows (the
classification proves surprisingly difficult, given the many strands of
religious / social history). Deals with Hindu satis, widows burned as
witches, or those who became prostitutes to survive, and also some case
studies such as Muhammad's first wife, the prosperous merchant Khadijah.
An interesting take on Muhammad's first wife Khadijah:
In 595, Khadijah, who had been widowed for the second time about a decade
earlier, employed Muhammmad as the agent in charge of her caravan (which
was supposed to equal all the other merchants' put together); he was a
distant cousin who was known for his honesty, with sobriquets like
"Al-Sadiq" (the truthful) and "Al-Amin" (the trustworthy). Eventually
they got married and Khadija was to become his first convert. ]
Kumkum Roy is Associate Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, School of
Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She also wrote The
Emergence of Monarchy in North India.
Review: Hindu, Seema Alavi ... a collection of essays on women in early Indian societies. A comprehensive and cogent introduction by Kumkum Roy attempts to link the seemingly disparate accounts of women in specific social-politico formations to the larger discipline of social history. Section one reproduces two very influential essays by I. B. Horner and A. S. Altekar which laid the agenda for women's studies in the early 20th Century. Both were, to some extent, a response to the colonial challenge to "masculine identities". They thus project a "glorificatory" picture of women in the Vedic and Buddhist past. A very useful survey essay by Uma Chakravarty critiques this nationalist response, in the face of colonial onslaught. She suggests that such reactions derailed gender concerns and subsumed them in the larger male dominated politics of the nation. Altekar's idyllic image of womanhood in Vedic times, she says, continues to pervade the collective consciousness of the upper castes in India. It has also come in the way of developing a more analytically rigorous study of gender relations in ancient India. The second set of articles identifies crucial elements in material structures and works out their gendered nature. N. N. Bhattacharya's insightful essay on the question of stridhan (women's property) shows how this movable property could not be put to productive use. It was thus retained as a right because it ensured the exclusion of women from productive processes. However, this was not true across the country. K. Mukund shows the variations in women's access to property across regions, sub- regions, castes, classes and families. Vijaya Ramaswamy discusses the participation of women labour in production and other activities and C. Gupta questions the urban rural divide that is often emphasised in studies of women. The centrality of marriage in structuring gender relations, the varied definitions of polyandry and the distinction between prostitution and other forms of sexual promiscuity are issues which are dealt by Sukumari Bhattacharji and others in an interesting section on sexual construction of womanhood. Bhattacharji, a Sanskritist, analyses textual references to various forms of promiscuity and says that these are different from prostitution since the latter is a part of cash economy. She highlights the economic relations that characterise prostitution: relation to the state, taxing of prostitutes and their unique financial status as compared to other women. The significant suggestions are that women whose social status was "legitimate" did not have access to an independent economic status as was possible for the prostitutes whose social standing was "illegitimate". This is the sense one derives from literary sources but it seems that they were shaped through lived social practice. Finally, the concluding section has essays which attempt to link the divine with the human as far as the notion of the "goddess" is concerned. Here worthy of note is Uma Chakravarthy's article which surveys types of women within the tradition of bhakti or devotional religion in early South India. Chakravarti views the bhakti tradition as providing a space within which social meanings could be questioned and reconstituted. She maps out the social context in which a range of relations were possible between the male deity and his female worshippers.