Woman and Goddess in Hinduism

by Tracy Pintchman

  Finally, as predicted, her husband Satyavndies.

  Then, thinking of the words of Nrada, the poor woman calculated the day, the hour, the time, and the moment. In a mere moment she saw a person wearing yellow, with a turban, stout of body and effulgent like the sun. He had dark, white and red eyes, he held a noose in his hand, and looked terrifying. He stood by the side of Satyavn looking at him. On seeing him, she rose with a start, slowly put down the head of the husband, and, with folded hands, spoke thus, with a trembling heart, feeling utterly crushed. “I know you are a god because your body is superhuman. Tell me if you will, O divine being, who are you and what do you want?”

  Yama said: O Svitr, you are devoted to your husband and practice asceticism. Therefore I am going to talk to you, O good woman. I am Yama. This husband of yours, Satyavn, the prince, his life has come to an end. I will tie him up and carry him along. This is what I plan to do.

  Mrkadeya said: O venerable one! The Lord of Death spoke to her in this way and then proceeded to describe in detail what he was going to do to her dear husband. “He is devout, handsome, and possesses many virtues. He deserves better than to be taken by my servants; therefore I have come myself.” Then Yama forcefully extracted a being of the size of a thumb with his noose from the body of Satyavn. The body then became lifeless, without breath, comatose, motionless, and repulsive to look at. Yama, tying him up, began to walk in the southern direction. The great and devout Svitr, of perfect vows, followed Yama, beside herself with grief.

  Yama said: Svitr, go back and perform the obsequies. You have done your duty by your husband. You have gone as far as you can.

  Satyavn, her husband, is dead. But although she belongs to the warrior caste,3 she does not even think of committing suttee. Once again the ideal woman of the tradition goes against the tradition.

  What is the Hindu tradition of the ideal woman then glorifying, if in point after point she goes against tradition? The tradition is obviously not glorifying her for conformity. Then what is it glorifying her for? Julius Lipner (1994: 262-263) gives us a hint:

  Svitr has always been held as a model of wifely devotion and resolution. But it was her practice of austerities and accumulation of tapas [Skt. Literally “heat,” signifying great spiritual energy/power acquired by intense austerities] which enabled her to convert these virtues into success. The text clearly implies that tapas is a lever of power. Avapati obtained Svitr through rigorous austerity, and Svitr won her boons in the same way. Thus as Yama unbends towards Savitr at the beginning of their meeting, he calls her “a devoted wife” (patirvratã) “having (the power of) tapas” (taponvitã; 3.281.12). When the sages are trying to comfort the parents in the absence of their son and daughter-in-law, one says: “Because his wife Svitr possesses tapas and self-control, and is of good conduct, Satyavan lives!” (3.282.10). And at the end, the story-teller concludes by saying: “Thus by mortification (krcchrãt) Svitrï saved all—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 in time, Svitr overcomes what symbolizes the irrevocable passing of time: old age (a hundred sons for her aging father) and death. Something similar happens in the vernacular traditions, many of which arise from (semi-Hinduised) folk culture. In the Bengali mangls, for instance, goddesses like Manas and Cand are placated by the observance of rigorous vratas [vows] by women for the welfare of their loved ones.4

  Thus, what makes the story of Svitr remarkable is its clear implication that the appropriation by women of difficult and demanding ascetic observances endows daughters, wives, and mothers with the kind of spiritual power associated with great ascetic yogis and seers (rsis). They (the ascetics) are highly revered precisely because they are capable of remarkable self-denial, largely due to their one-pointed dedication to personal spiritual liberation—just as the women, who have adopted many of their ascetic practices, have also proven their capacity for self-denial due to an intense singular focus. The difference is that for the women this focus in not on the spiritual liberation of the self. In contradistinction, it is on the self-less desire for the complete well-being of their families and husbands, in this life and the next.

  CONTRA-SUTTEE: THE IDEAL OF SAVITR

  AS A SUBVERSIVE ALTERNATIVE TO SAT-SUTTEE

  So much for the general argument. I now turn to the more specific argument that Svitr is meant as a countermodel for Sat-Suttee, that her ideal is subversive of the practice of suttee.

  The common picture of the Suttee is one of unredeemed horror, but within the tradition, the Suttee, somewhat like Christ, takes on the sins of others on herself and redeems them. By one reckoning, she washes away sins of seven generations, past and future, of her own and her husband’s family (Sharma, 2005: 92–93). Svitr does something similar without performing suttee. As she accompanies Yama, the God of Death, who is carrying her husband away, Yama begins to soften toward her, impressed by her devotion.

  Yama said: Return. I am pleased with your speech,

  Distinguished by clear enunciation and reason.

  Choose a boon other than your husband’s life

  O blameless one, I shall grant any wish of yours.

  Svitr said: My father-in-law, in the hermitage,

  Has lost his kingdom and now lives there.

  May he regain his vision and be strong,

  May he shine forth like the sun, by your grace.

  Yama said: O blameless one, I grant your boon in full;

  It will come to pass as you have asked.

  You seem tired by traveling,

  Return, go lest you get too tired.

  Svitr persists in accompanying him and this makes him relent further, after more conversation.

  Yama said: The words spoken by you to me

  Are cordial, wise, and salutary.

  Again choose a boon other than Satyavn’s life;

  Fair lady, choose a second boon.

  Svitr said: The kingdom that my wise father-in-law lost,

  May the king obtain his kingdom.

  May my father-in-law never stray from his duty.

  I choose this as the second boon.

  Yama said: He will soon regain his kingdom.

  The king shall not stray from his duty.

  I have fulfilled your wish, O princess,

  Return, lest you get too tired.

  Then Yama relents even further, after more conversation.

  Yama said: Like water to the thirsty,

  Are the words spoken by you.

  Again choose a boon other than Satyavn’s life;

  Good woman, choose the boon you desire.

  Svitr said: My father has no sons.

  May my father have a hundred sons, my siblings,

  Who will extend the family line.

  I choose this as the third boon.

  Yama said: Good woman, may your father have

  A hundred splendid sons to extend the family line.

  I have fulfilled your wish, O princess.

  Return. You have come a long way.

  Svitr’s persistence bears further fruit, until she lets her husband escape the noose of death. But before that happens she gets another boon:

  Yama said: The words you have spoken, beautiful woman,

  I have not heard from anyone else, good woman.

  They please me; other than Satyavn’s life

  Choose a fourth boon and go your way.

  Svitr said: May a child born to me and Satyavn

  Make the families of both of us flourish.

  A hundred strong and powerful sons,

  This I choose as my fourth boon.

  Yama said: A hundred strong and powerful sons

  O frail one, will be born to you and delight you.

  O princess, lest you get fatigued,

  Return. You have come a long way.

  We are now close to the end, with the key lines italicized.

  Yama said: As you go on speaking what is pious,

 
Pleasing, polished, and pithy;

  So my devotion to you increases.

  O firm in vows, choose any peerless boon.

  Svitr said: You have made no exception with this stipulation,

  As you have in the other cases, O bestower of pride.

  I choose life for Satyavn,

  For without my husband I am as good as dead.

  I do not want happiness without my husband.

  I do not want heaven without my husband.

  I do not want prosperity without my husband.

  I do not plan to live without my husband.

  A boon for the birth of hundred sons

  Was given by you, but you carry my husband away.

  I choose life for Satyavn.

  [For] your own words have to come true.

  This dramatic last boon tends to overshadow the other boons she obtains. Let us look at them again: (i) father-in-law regains his sight; (ii) father-in-law regains his kingdom; (iii) her own father is granted a hundred sons; (iv) “Make the families of both of us flourish.” In other words, Svitr is doing what the Suttee does—bringing blessings to both the families. And she is doing all this while staying alive.

  The other interesting point is that like the Suttee, she accompanies the dead husband, but instead of going over with him to the other world, her tapas is strong enough to bring him back to this world. To form an idea of the tapas she engaged in, one must go back to the Mahbhrata. As the day of Satyavns predicted death approached,

  Mrkandeya said: Then after much time had elapsed, the moment arrived, O king, when Satyavn was meant to die. Svitr, as she kept count of each passing day, always kept in mind the statement made by Nrada. That lady undertook a vow of three nights’ duration and kept standing day and night, keeping in mind that he was to die on the fourth day. The king became distressed when he heard this resolve of the bride. He arose and said to Svitr consolingly: “O princess, the vow you have undertaken is severe in the extreme. It is exceedingly difficult to remain in the same position for three nights.”

  Svitr said: Dear father, do not feel distressed, I shall carry through my vow. It is undertaken with resolve; resolution is its cause.

  Dyumatsena said: I dare not ask you to break your vow. The only proper thing for me to say is that may you make good on your resolution.

  Mrkandeya said: The high-minded Dyumatsena became silent after saying so. And Svitr stood there like a piece of wood. The night of the morning on which the husband was to die, Svitr spent standing, sore distressed, O best of Bharatas. “Today is the day,” she thought and lit the fire, and, even though the sun had risen only four cubits, performed the forenoon rites. Then having honored all the Brahmins, elders, mother-in-law, and father-in-law in order of seniority, she stood demurely with folded hands. All the ascetics and all the residents of the hermitage, wishing Svitr well, blessed her that she may never be widowed. Svitr, deep in meditation, accepted the words of the ascetics in her mind, musing that it might be so. The princess, waiting for the hour and the moment, felt extremely sad, thinking of the prediction made by Nrada. O best of Bharatas, then the father -and-mother-in-law spoke to her, when she was all by herself, out of affection as follows.

  Father-and-mother-in-law said: You have fulfilled your vow as prescribed. It is time to eat. Then do what needs to be done next.

  Svitr said: I shall eat when the sun has set after my desire has been fulfilled. Such is my heart’s resolve; I have made this covenant.

  This gives us some idea of the intensity of the tapas undertaken by her.

  CONCLUSION: RECLAIMING AND REENVISIONING

  It is time to bring matters to a conclusion. When Sat-Suttee-Svitr are held as models for Hindu women to emulate, the usual presumption is they glorify the traditional values associated with women, and that they reinforce each other as models of such traditional virtue. If one examines the life of Svitr closely, however, one finds that she should really be understood as a countermodel for such traditional values as (i) the birth of a son; (ii) the giving away of the girl to a husband selected by the parents; and (iii) recourse to suttee as a manifestation of extreme devotion to her husband. Svitr does not conform to these.

  Moreover, far from reinforcing Sat, who gives up her life for her husband’s honor (much to his horror), or even the Suttee, who mounts the funeral pyre of her husband, Svitr does no such thing, but through her tapas brings her husband back to live with her, rather than joining him in death. In this way, by examining Svitr’s life in some detail, one can reconstruct a new model for Indian women in terms of what Svitr actually stood for, as distinguished from what Svitr has been made to stand for.

  The opposition between Sat and Svitr however is not a case of total disjunction. In some ways they both positively reinforce the countermodel. For instance, in both cases, they chose their own husbands, and in both cases they chose them over the objections of their fathers. In t he case of Sat, the father, Daksa, had actua lly pronounced a curse on the would-be husband because he had not paid homage to father Daksa on a particular occasion:

  Meanwhile Sat grew up and set her heart on Shiva, worshipping him in secret. She became of marriageable age, and her father held a swayamvara, (or “own-choice”), for her—where she would choose her desired husband amongst the gathered—to which he invited the gods and princes from far and near, (with the sole exception of Shiva, whom the father, Daksa, refused to recognize as a divine personage). Then Sat was borne into the great assembly, wreath in hand. But Shiva was nowhere to be seen, amongst the gods or men. Then in despair she cast her wreath into the air, calling upon Shiva to receive the garland; and behold he stood in the middle of the court with the wreath about his neck. Daksa had then no choice but to complete the marriage; and Shiva went away with Sat to his home in Mount Kails. (Coomaraswamy and Nivedita 1967: 288)

  In the case of Svitr, her father asked her to find a groom for herself, as people felt too intimidated by her for him to find a husband for her. Interestingly, Manu says that if the father cannot find a husband for her, the daughter should find one herself. And Svitr does. This raises two points for us to consider: (i) Should not the ideal of Svitr be construed as suggesting that women should be encouraged to choose their husbands for themselves, rather than let the parents do so? (ii) Is it possible to be as devoted to one’s husband as Sat and Svitr were if one does not choose one’s husband on one’s own?

  Thus, both narratives, as they have had such a profound impact on Hindu perceptions of ideal womanhood, need to be reclaimed with the aforementioned points in mind, and re-envisioned in ways that affirm the traditional spiritual power/energy (tapas) that have been associated with women of profound ascetic capacity, but also in ways that recognize the necessity for women’s self-agency and authority that should be the natural outcome—as it is for men—of the exercise of that capacity.

  NOTES

  1. All the translations, unless indicated otherwise, are by the author, from the critical edition of the Mahbhrata: III. 277–III. 281.55.

  2. This, at least in theory, seems to have been a daughter’s right—that she could choose a man for herself right after puberty if her parents failed to find one. Some versions of the Pañcatantra contain a story in which the wife urges her husband to obtain a husband for their daughter who has now reached puberty, because, if he won’t do so, the daughter will find one on her own because: “When a girl remains in her paternal home after menstruation, it is laid down that she should offer herself to a husband, choose her husband” (Kale, 1986: 475). The following Sanskrit verse attributes this position to Manu (227):

  tumatyàmatutym tu tihantym svecchdnam vidhyate

  tasmdudvhayennagnm manu syyambhuvo’bravt.

  3. “Among certain clans and lineages, the practice of Sat became closely linked with both the ideal of female virtue and the kshatriya tradition, and so with the honor and status of the clan” (Major, 2007: xxv).

  4. Lipner, 1994: 262–263.

  REFERENCES

&n
bsp; Coomaraswamy, Anand K., and Sister Nivedita. 1967. The Myths of the Hindus and the Buddhists. New York: Dover Publications.

  Kale, M. R. 1986. The Pancatantra of Visnusarma. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

  Lipner, Julius. 1994. The Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. London: Routledge.

  Major, Andrea, ed. 2007. Sati: A Historical Anthology. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

  Sharma, Arvind. 2005. Religious Studies and Comparative Methodology: The Case for Reciprocal Illumination. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

  St ut ley, M a rga ret, a nd Ja mes St ut ley. 19 77. A Dictionary of Hinduism. London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

  C H A P T E R 2

  Female Beauty, Female Power: Seeing Dev in the Saundarya Lahar

  Francis Xavier Clooney

  INTRODUCTION

  The Saundarya Lahar is a Sanskrit hymn of one hundred verses praising the Great Goddess, Dev, daughter of the mountain, beautiful consort of iva, lord of the three cities.1 The hymn is popular and widely known, reproduced and commented upon. It has been translated into numerous Indian languages and a number of times into English. It is rooted in the context of South Indian tantra and is one of the more accessible flowerings of that tradition. Indeed, it seems of interest to scholars as a source of clues regarding its tantric context and what it tells us about tantra. Although by my reading the Saundarya Lahar is situated in that context in order to move beyond it toward a simpler and more public devotional discourse, and although my concern is to highlight how the Saundarya Lahar might contribute to a contemporary constructive Hindu/feminist theology,2 a few words on the tantric context are nevertheless in order.

  Tantra is an intellectual and ritual system that is notoriously hard to define, and we can be grateful to Andre Padoux (2002: 19) for highlighting a few distinctive features:

  The ideological aspect of the tantric vision is the cosmos as permeated by power (or powers), a vision wherein energy (akti) is both cosmic and human and where the microcosm and macrocosm correspond and interact. The ideology is important because it explains such tantric features as the concept and practice of kundalin, as well as a number of yogic and ritual practices for the use and control of that power. It also explains some aspects of the speculation and practices concerning the power of the word (vc), especially the nature and power of mantras, and so forth. This ideology not only colors, but orients and organizes, and gives meaning to all tantric practices and observances.