In general, the aim is to allow the younger married couple(s) of a joint or extended family to get on with their lives, while their elders stand back and help and advise in the raising of the children and running of the home. Human nature being what it is, however, the reality does not always mirror this ideal, and it is still not uncommon for the proverbial obstacle in Hindu domestic life to come into play, viz. tension between the daughter-in-law, introduced into the family circle, and the mother-in-law who is reluctant to relinquish control over household affairs and the allegiance of her son's affections.
The modern ideal of withdrawing from the world described here may be regarded as the equivalent of the more traditional idea of retiring to the forest, if not of total renunciation. Those who actually do seek to adopt a life of renunciation by leaving home are few and far between; usually male, they seek out an appropriate group or organization to follow their aspirations either full-time or part-time. The idea of the renouncer in the traditional mould, however, is generally still highly regarded in Hindu India among village and urban folk alike. For a readable account of monastic practice in India – which can take on many forms – and the life-histories of several ascetics in a holy Indian city in recent times, see Miller and Wertz 1976.
We can now consider an important idea underlying the practice of renunciation as a way of life, both in its traditional and modern forms, which has an interesting temporal dimension. This is the idea of tapas or spiritual energy. Renunciation builds up tapas. Renunciation means not only giving up certain things, e.g. sense-gratification, the desire for wealth, worldly ambition, etc., but also, doing certain things, e.g. cultivating a benevolent attitude of mind, and practising mental and physical austerities. This builds up a spiritual force or power in one called tapas. In both the Sanskritic and popular traditions of Hinduism, there are innumerable stories of renouncers who have built up a large store of tapas over many years by lives of single-minded and sometimes spectacular austerity (fasting for days, standing on one foot for considerable lengths of time, meditating motionlessly for long periods, and so on). There is a sense of linear progression here, for tapas is likened in the tradition to a physical substance that increases by accumulation.
One's store of tapas can be ‘used up’ in a number of ways: tapas can be willed to burn up one's past, outstanding karma; this enables one to draw closer to final liberation from saṃsāra. But one can also expend tapas by uttering a blessing or curse, or directing it to a specific end. Especially if one is a Brahmin renouncer, a curse or blessing uttered on the basis of accumulated tapas can be very effective, if the circumstances for its fruition are realized. But tapas can also be used up to no good effect by an act of self-indulgence such as a fit of anger or sexual activity that culminates in orgasm. The classic symbol of the loss of tapas is the voluntary discharge of semen. The tradition abounds in tales of awesome ascetics being seduced by beautiful maidens and so losing their accumulated tapas, with a resulting loss of their power to influence events by issuing curses or blessings.
This concept provides another context for the way women occupy an ambivalent religio-moral status in Hinduism. The typical seducer and symbol of obstacles to spiritual development (itself characterized as an increase of tapas) is the sexually attractive, unmarried female. Such women are spiritual hazards in that they can cause a renouncer to discharge tapas uselessly. However, there is another side to the coin: especially in the married state, women can be accumulators of tapas by the performance of (more or less rigorous) vows or vratas, which they can use to good effect for the benefit of their husbands and other family members. Overall, then, women are dangerously unstable social elements, viewed as able to manipulate tapas for good or ill, depending on circumstance. There are many stories about women being encouraged to accumulate tapas by the performance of some austerity or other such as a vow (vrata) and use it for the benefit of their families. Here is a famous story illustrating this theme;it is taken from the third book, the Forest Book or Araṇya Parvan, of the Mahābhārata (Chapters 277f. of the Poona critical edition).
Aśvapati, a virtuous and austere king, was childless and advancing in age;the kingdom had no heir. So for 18 years he fasted and sacrificed, uttering the sāvitrī mantra, until the devī (‘goddess’) Sāvitrī granted him the boon of fathering a child. A girl was born, and she was called Sāvitrī in honour of the devī. The king's daughter grew up to be beautiful and virtuous, but so intimidating was her splendour that no suitor came forward to ask for her hand. So, instructed by her father to look for a husband (he wanted that heir), she toured the land. In due course, she returned and reported that she had fallen in love with Satyavat, the son of a king who had become blind and whose kingdom had been usurped in consequence. Together with his wife, the king had brought up his son in the community of a forest hermitage. The sage Nārada, who was present when Sāvitrī returned to her father, knew all about Satyavat. He praised the boy's character and looks, but also revealed that he would die in a year to the day. But Sāvitrī would not be moved;she had set her heart on marrying Satyavat. Aśvapati had no option but to agree.
So they got married, and Sāvitrī lived happily with Satyavat and his parents in the forest according to the austere hermitage rules, which seem to have implied celibacy. As the year went by, Satyavat's impending death (which Sāvitrī kept to herself) weighed heavily on Sāvitrī’s mind. Three days before the fateful day, Sāvitrī undertook a rigorous vow to fast and remain standing the whole time (including the nights);and this she kept. Both by the lifestyle of the hermitage and by this vow, she had acquired tapas, and was now ready to see if any opportunity arose by which she might use this power to save her husband. On the appointed day, she (protectively) accompanied Satyavat on an errand into the forest to cut wood for a ritual. While he was engaged in this task, a fit of weariness overcame him and he lay down to rest with his head in Sāvitrī’s lap. To his wife's great anguish, his time had come.
As Satyavat lay unconscious, Sāvitrī saw the awesome figure of Yama himself, the Lord of death, come to claim her husband's soul. This he extracted with his noose from Satyavat's body in the shape of an individual the size of a thumb and began to lead him off to his realm. Sāvitrī, who had gently placed her husband's head on the ground, followed. Her place was by her husband's side, she said. Yama was touched, so he granted her any boon she desired except Satyavat's life. Sāvitrī asked that her father-in-law regain his sight. It was granted. Yama continued on his grim way and still Sāvitrī would not leave her husband's soul. Impressed, Yama granted her another boon, on the same condition. Sāvitrī asked that her father-in-law regain his kingdom. This too was granted. Yama told her that she must now return, but Sāvitrī refused. She would stay by her spouse, she replied, but since she realized that Yama was acting according to nature's law, she bore him no ill will. Greatly impressed, Yama offered her a third wish, on condition she would not ask for Satyavat's life. This time Sāvitrī requested that her own father produce 100 sons to continue his line. Yama assented and continued on his way;Sāvitrī followed again, telling Yama that love and a sense of wifely duty impelled her to do so. Choose a fourth wish, said the Lord of death, perhaps a trifle wearily this time, but do not ask for your husband's life. So Sāvitrī obeyed this instruction to the letter. She asked that she might have 100 sons – by Satyavat. Unmindful of what this request implied, Yama granted Sāvitrī’s wish. After more fine words, Sāvitrī spelled out her request: ‘Deprived of my husband, I want no happiness. Deprived of my husband, I don't want heaven. Deprived of my husband, I want no wealth. Without my husband, I don't want to live’ (Mbh. 3.281.62). Yama got the point;he could hardly go back on his word. So he released Satyavat's soul, which returned with Sāvitrī to the corpse. Sāvitrī once more placed her husband's head in her lap and he regained consciousness, safe and well. Meanwhile, Satyavat's parents had grown frantic at their absence, so that there was great rejoicing when they returned. Two of the other wishes had also started to
materialize, and everyone lived happily ever after.
Sāvitrī has always been held as a model of wifely devotion and resolution. In fact, her story has often been idealized and textually adapted to suit modern needs and prejudices, and appears in popular forms, from children's comics to magazine articles. But in the Mbh. it was her practice of austerities and accumulation of tapas as a married woman that enabled her to convert these assets into success. The text as a whole clearly implies that tapas is a lever of power. Aśvapati obtained Sāvitrī as a daughter through rigorous austerity, and Sāvitrī won her boons in the same way. Thus, as Yama unbends towards Sāvitrī at the beginning of their meeting, he calls her ‘a (vow-) devoted wife’ (pativratā) ‘empowered by tapas’ (taponvitā; 3.281.12). When the sages try to comfort Satyavat's parents in the absence of their son and daughter-in-law, one says: ‘Because his wife Sāvitrī possesses tapas and self-control, and is of good conduct, Satyavat lives!’ (3.282.10). And at the end, the narrator concludes by saying, ‘Thus by mortification (krcchrāt), Sāvitrī saved everyone – herself, her father, her mother, her mother-in-law and father-in-law, and her husband's line’ (3.283.14). By duly accumulating tapas over time, Sāvitrī overcomes what symbolizes the irrevocable passage of time: old age (100 sons for her ageing father, and for herself) and death. Similar teachings are endorsed in the vernacular traditions, many of which arise from semi-Hinduized folk culture. In the Bengali magals, for instance (see end of Chapter 8), goddesses like Manasā and Caṇḍī are placated by the observance of rigorous vratas or vows by women for the welfare of their loved ones (Smith 1976:4ff.).
For Hindus generally, sexual restraint acts as perhaps the chief means to acquire tapas. It is remarkable how widespread and deep-rooted the belief is, even among educated people, that sexual activity results in the loss of spiritual and even physical power to accomplish things. Here is an illustration of this conviction:
‘What is the test of a true sadhu [holy man]?’ [the interviewer asked the monk, Kamakara Brahmācharin]. Kamakara answered, ‘When you are not excited when you see a nude woman ... Then you will see the deity;then you will become a true sadhu. If you spend semen by lady or hand, then you will not get concentration’. This ‘test of a true sadhu’ represents an ancient folk tradition still popular among the less sophisticated ascetics.
(Miller & Wertz 1976:58)
We may add that this belief does not only represent an ancient ‘folk’ tradition, but is also ubiquitous in Sanskrit literature and among even sophisticated laypeople and ascetics. Even in those Tantric traditions in which sexual intercourse not only symbolizes, but is also envisaged as actually bringing about spiritual fulfilment, it is only intercourse as part of a strictly controlled discipline (in some traditions of which orgasm does not occur) that is endorsed.9
The traditional significance of tapas, with special reference to sexual restraint, was clearly in evidence during India's nationalist movement. It accounts for much of Gandhi's views on sex, and his personal implementation of ascetic practice. It is no accident that a number of early Hindu nationalist leaders advocated an ascetic or restrained lifestyle (which on occasion they exemplified personally by observing celibacy) as an effective means to bring about svaraj or ‘self-rule’, interpreted as personal, spiritual self-control which would then ground political sovereignty nationally. The thinking here was that tapas acquired by one and all could be converted into freedom from enslavement to the passions, the lust for power, and deracinating forms of behaviour, and then translated into a national polity that was culturally self-reliant. This view of the temporal acquisition and expenditure of tapas played its part in creating a new historical perspective, a new kind of progress, in which one kind of past – that of fragmentation and alienation by casteism and other social and political divisions – would be transformed into a qualitatively different kind of future, one of national unity and cultural integration. So it was that in his influential ‘proto-nationalist’ novel, Ānandamaṭh, Bankim Chatterji required the santāns or Children of the Motherland and of the Goddess, who would liberate the land from foreign rule, to be celibate till they had achieved their goal (see Lipner 2005:56–7).
Now consider another example of a Hindu understanding of timely progress. The ethic of the puruṣārthas or so-called goals of life may be regarded more specifically as the pursuit of artha (prosperity), kāma (pleasure and contentment) and dharma (right living) against a horizon of seeking mokṣa or liberation from conditioned existence. Ideally, the first three puruṣārthas could be cultivated only with liberation in mind. Here again there is an understanding of attainment working progressively. The timeless quality of liberation and its atemporal ethic of non-violence, benevolence towards all, truth-telling, etc. – ‘atemporal’ because it applies to all, in all circumstances and in all stages of life – must inform the time-immersed ethic of the other puruṣārthas, governed as this ethic is by considerations of the particularities of gender, caste, occupation, period of life, and so on. In the modern context, this means that, in the pursuit of artha, say, dealings must be honest, employment considerate, wages just, competition fair, advertising sensitive and truthful, etc. In this way, the accumulation of wealth becomes a timely rather than a time-serving occupation; it neither kills the spirit nor becomes an end in itself.
Let us consider one final example of temporal progression in Hinduism – that of life's rites of passage or saṃskāras. A saṃskāra is a ritual whose purpose is to purify, protect and transform the individual at particular phases of life's journey. The word derives from the root saṃs-kṛ, which means to cleanse and perfect.10 In this sense, saṃskāras have a ‘sacramental’ nature: they are formulated and enacted visible signs of social and religious accreditation, performed by designated persons (usually, but not always, a priest). By the action of the saṃskāras, the individual is supposed to be progressively and cumulatively protected from hostile influences and made ‘whole’ by occupying a definite position in the order of things as s/he progresses through life. In so far as Vedic utterances are used, the saṃskāras are ideally intended to be administered by, and for the benefit of, twice-born males. But Śūdras and females in general also fell under their scope in various ways on occasion, either as persons in their own right or in their roles as wives and mothers. Thus, some texts distinguish between garbha-saṃskāra and kṣetra-saṃskāra; the former kind focuses on the embryo (garbha), the latter on the ‘field’ in which the ‘seed’ is sown and nurtured, viz. the woman. But the texts also indicate that Śūdras too could receive some saṃskāras, for instance, at marriage and death, though the use of Vedic utterances here was generally disallowed;other purifying mantras were to be used. Many low-caste groups have evolved their own rites of passage, to be administered by their own priests. Today, it is by no means unknown for Brahmin priests to (discreetly) apply the Veda for Sudra clients, e.g. in ascribing their varṇa, as we have noted in Chapter 7, in which case they tend to make a distinction between touchable and untouchable Śūdras, and minister to the former. The Gṛhya Sūtras contain the earliest formal description of at least the major saṃskāras, though the Law Codes, Purāṇas and other ancient sources also deal with this topic.
There is no unanimity in the śāstras or sacred texts concerning the number of saṃskāras. As society changed, the number was added to and the rites elaborated, not least in the endless chain of paddhatis or manuals that were resorted to throughout the land for their local implementation. It must also be noted that the various calendars in use in administering the saṃskāras – for identifying auspicious days and times – are typically lunar in nature, as they are in the case of other religious observances, such as the performance of vows and pilgrimages, the building of shrines and temples, etc. Finally, a saṃskāra generally has variant forms, depending on regional practice (deśācāra), caste-practice (jātyācāra), family tradition (kulācāra), and so on. Such modifications were recognized as legitimate. As in other contexts of Hinduism
, variety is the spice of life with respect to saṃskāras too, both as to form and implementation. We will discuss sixteen saṃskāras here.11
The first three saṃskāras are hardly, if ever, used formally as a group today, and the authorities disagree as to whether they are to be implemented at the first pregnancy only or at subsequent pregnancies also. We start with (i) garbhādhāna or impregnation. Sexual intercourse, with a child in view, was to take place during the wife's fertile period, of course, which was reckoned to occur from the fourth to the sixteenth day after menstruation. It was believed, in the earliest phases of the development of the rite, that impregnation would be rendered more efficacious by the husband's invocation of certain Vedic deities (the saṃskāra was elaborated in time to include mention of other deities as well as other practices). The impression is given that this saṃskāra, which was performed by the husband,12 was intended to facilitate a healthy conception, and also to win heavenly and social approval for both husband and wife's embarking on a course of action, viz. childbirth, in a way that conformed to society's expectations. Ideally, the first-born would be a son;this would ensure the continuation of the father's lineage, proper observance of death-rites, and so on; it would also bring economic advantages later in life to the family. (ii) Puṃisavana was usually performed in the fourth month or so;the objective was to seek to ensure the child's birth as a male. The reader must bear in mind that, at the time, knowledge of the biology of conception and fetal development was rudimentary in the extreme. We have already noted the benefits of having a son in Hindu society. This rite was followed by (iii) sīmantonnayana or the ceremonial parting of the mother's hair, which was recommended to take place generally from the fourth to the eight month. By the performance of this saṃskāra, various good effects were thought to arise: protection of both mother and child from evil spirits, health and prosperity, the contentment of the mother, etc. (In Hindu culture, the hair of the head and its grooming are traditionally associated with well-being and fertility in women.) These three saṃskāras had, as their general aim, the contentment and health of the pregnant mother.
Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (The Library of Religious Beliefs and Practices) Page 51