We often hear that women and their arts are marginalized, but what does it actually mean?

One of
its implications is that women’s roles are circumscribed in religious texts. When we think of women
in epics, usually Sita comes to mind, the archetypal woman who is virtuous and does not have a voice.
That is how women are often portrayed in myths: those who are meek and mild are idolized, and
women often do not have a voice. But we have to take into account the fact that most of these
images come from written literature, and writing has always been the domain of men. Outside of
these domains too, literature exists, and that literature gives a much more rich and varied picture
of our society. In folk literature, women are portrayed in all their forms, and women are also
portrayed as powerful, wise and compassionate. Through this paper, I argue that women make up
for their lack of female role models through folk literature, and it is very necessary to document
this folk literature because we are in danger of losing it all and having only written literature to
contend with.

Gaura

Let me begin with an introduction to gaura. Gaura is a festival celebrated in August in Western
Nepal. It is a festival where married women get together and worship Shiva and Parvati. Women
often fast during this five day festival, and to pass the time, they sing songs. These songs are of
different types, some called Chait, Dhumari, Faag, etc. Most of them are about Mahabharata and
Ramayana, and there are also some songs about Shia and Parvati and loval heroes. It may be just
men, or just women, or mixed groups. People get together in a circle and walk around, singing, while
one group sings and another replies. Men also sing the songs, but it can safely be said that women
contribute majorly to creating these songs.

The song I present today is one such song, a dialogue between Devaki and Yashoda, the two mothers
of Krishna. We are all familiar with the famous canonical version: When Krishna is born, Vasudev
walks out of the prison doors, crosses the Yamuna, puts Krishna besides Yashoda who is sleeping,
blissfully unaware that she has given birth to a daughter, and brings back the daughter. The role of
women is fairly passive in this story. While one of the, Yashoda, is completely unconscious, the
other, Devaki, also does not have much of a role in the saving of her son’s life.

We shall see now that in one particular folk versions, that is not so. Women are portrayed as wise,
strong beings with a very active role.

This song I present is a dialogue between Yashoda and Devaki. I have collected it from Dadeldhura,
from the folklore expert Parvati Devi Paneru. Let’s first hear an edited version of this song, and
then I will explain it, for those of you who do not understand Nepali.

Song:

Yashoda: it has been twelve years since we met, sister. How many sons do you have?
 Devaki: My first son was as bright as the son. Kamsa the evil one killed him

(and so on about seven sons)

I had seven sons, and kamsa took them all. And now I am heavy with the eighth.

Yashoda: If you have a son, I will raise him. And I will give my daughter to be killed

Devaki: To kill you own and to raise another’s. Who would do that?

Yashoda: To kill mine and raise another’s. I would do that.

1. I think the first thing to note about this song is sisterhood. In the epic, these two women
are not sisters. Nanda is portrayed as Vasudev’s friend. But here we find these two women
joined in a universal, sentimental sisterhood. One where their concerns are the same:
motherhood, and the love for their children. Devaki finds that she can open up about her
tragedies to yashoda, as two women would to each other.
2. The second thing I noted about the song is pain. In most images, you think of kamsa hurling
Devaki’s children and killing them, but what about Devaki’s pain? Women add life to this
story by singing about this ignored aspect. And in fact, when Devaki sings: I had seven sons,
and kansa took them, that is the most powerful line where you would have a hard time
controlling your emotions. This line seems to embody all the pain that women go through
when they lose their children.
3. And the third and most important thing is the bravery and wisdom of Yashoda, who offers
up her daughter to Yashoda. In contrast to the canonical version where she is so passive,
here she is active and brave. Myths are so omnipresent in our lives and we draw examples
from them every day, but canonical versions fail women because by giving us so few role
models. But when women are the ones creating these materials, they create their own role
models, they create women who are wise, compassionate, strong, and active, who they can
look up to in times of distress.

Other tales

And this is not all, in Gaura I found many other references to such women, or to incidents where
women are shown as active and in positive roles. One such story is the story of Sulochana, wife of
Meghnad in Ramayana. After I heard her story, I looked for her in the canonical text, but I found
that such a character does not exist, that Sulochana is not even named in the epic. But an entire
sub plot has developed around her personality in folk songs. After the death of Meghanad, his hand
is severed from his body, and it flies to Sulochana. It then begins to write the story of its own
death. At this point, nobody knows what has happened to Indrajit. In my view, this
places Sulochana at an elevated position where she knows things that others do not know, she has
special knowledge and is omniscient at that point. And she uses this knowledge to go to Ram and beg
for her husband's body, again, a brave portrayal of a woman in traditional times. She cremates the
body with full rituals while Ravan is too distressed. So this again brings her to the foreground
where she is overshadowed in the written version of the epic.

(There are fragments where women's agency finds its way into epics. For example, there is one song
where Ravan begs Sita for Bhiksha and she makes one excuse after another to delay doing so. for
example, she says, let Rama come, then I will make you a kamandalu of gold, not now. Hence, instead
of the Sita in many written versions who crosses the Lakshman Rekha and willingly walks into her
doom, here we have a Sita who is doing all she can to avoid that fate)

Post Mahabharata

We have to also take into account that this song is written long after the Mahabharata was set in
stone: this is proved by the fact that yashoda says: I will raise your son, and I will give my daughter
to be killed. She already knows that she will have a daughter. Hence, this is how women have taken
the material that was presented to them, and decided to build strong women characters.

How have they done so? Where do these women’s versions fit in the epic universe? I say that these
versions fit in the margins, and that they bring the word ‘marginalized’ to life. These songs do not
interfere with the main story. Even if you ignore these stories, the main story will not be affected.
And hence, since they are not central to the plot, they lie ignored.

After Parvati Devi Paneru and her friend Damaru sang the song for in Dadeldhura, I asked them, so
how did Devaki and Yashoda meet? Devaki was in jail, so how did they manage to have this
conversation?

The women were taken aback for a while, and then one of them replied, maybe they met in jail. And
another replied, in a dream. And it is the same case with Sulochana, her episode is almost like a
dream sequence, and it comes and goes without really disturbing any of the stories.

Such songs are found in abundance where women are key contributors, as in gaura, but are also
found in other folk literature in general. Folk literature as a whole has significant contributions
from women, and is shaped by women’s viewpoints and inputs as well, as opposed to written
literature which is almost exclusively male. In fact, professor Chudamani Bandhu, who I had
interviewed when I did a report on this subject, agreed that women occupy a far broader space
that includes many positive depictions, in folk literature than in written versions. He had cited
examples where people sing songs of Kaikayi’s bravery, but not necessarily depict her as evil, and
there are many other such examples.

Conclusion:
I had with me another song that is sung by the gandharvas: travelling balladeers of Nepal. They
sang a short song about Rani Mandodari, the wife of Ravan. The song is very short, only four stanzas
that repeat the same motif. Rani Mandodari has a dream.

Rani Mandodari had a dream on the first prahar of the night.

She saw huts on the other side of the ocean.

The next morning, the dream came true.

Rani Mandodari had a dream on the second prahar of the night.

She saw a bridge across the ocean.

The next morning, the dream came true.

Rani Mandodari had a dream on the third prahar of the night.

She saw an army lined up outside Lanka.

The next morning, the dream came true.

Rani Mandodari had a dream on the fourth prahar of the night.

She saw Lanka destroyed.

The next morning, the dream came true.

Here too, the role of Mandodari is the same, it exists in a dream. In hindsight, after Lanka is
destroyed, we see that queen Mandodari had been quite wise, she was prescient, she had known
from the beginning. But again, this is a dream like sequence which is not taken seriously by anyone in
the story, and does not affect or interfere with the flow of the story in any way.

And yet, here there they are, these stories, because women need role models too. Women need to
sing about strong women to give each other solidarity, to learn from. Women need these songs for
their souls, so that they too can be strong.

In conclusion, not only are women’s songs marginalized by canonical versions, but even inside these
stories, the roles of women are circumscribed. And yet, within these margins, they manage to carve
their own niche, and within these margins, the wisdom and strength and compassion of women lives
in its full glory.

Song:
Rani Mandodari