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 WOMEN
and
WORK in
PRECOLONIAL INDIA
 WOMEN
and
WORK in
PRECOLONIAL INDIA
A Reader

Edited by
VIJAYA R AMASWAMY
Copyright © Vijaya Ramaswamy, 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without
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 Contents

Foreword by Aparna Basu xi

Prefacexiii
Acknowledgementsxv
Introductionxvii
Vijaya Ramaswamy

Section I: W
 omen and the Household: Canonical Prescriptions
and Their Feminist Critique 1

Chapter 1:  The Daily Duties of Women 3

Julia Leslie

Chapter 2:  Position and Status of Women in the Upaniṣads 9

T. R. Sharma

Chapter 3: Woman in the Household 13

M. A. Indra

Chapter 4: Economic Rights of Ancient Indian Women 22

Sukumari Bhattacharji

Chapter 5: Dynamics of Women’s Work in the Śāstric Sources:

Household and Beyond 37
Kavita Gaur

Chapter 6: Tracking Economic Transitions: Tamil Women from

Tribe to Caste and Changing Production Roles 49
Vijaya Ramaswamy

Chapter 7: The Question of Women’s ‘Agency’: Women, Work and

Domesticity in Early Textual Traditions 65
Jaya Tyagi

vii
viii WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

Section II: Women and Work in Early Textual Traditions 89

Chapter 8:  The Woman Worker 91

I. B. Horner

Chapter 9:  Of Dasas and Karmakaras: Servile Labour in Ancient India 98

Uma Chakravarti

Chapter 10:  Women and Work in Kautilīya’s Arthaśāstra 120

Upasana Dhankhar

Section III: Women and Economic Resources: Women’s Property Rights 135

Chapter 11:  Proprietary Rights during Coverture 137

Anant Sadashiv Altekar

Chapter 12:  Proprietary Rights: Inheritance and Partition 150

Anant Sadashiv Altekar

Chapter 13:  The Legal Status of Women: Their Right of Inheritance 177
M. A. Indra

Chapter 14:  Property Rights of Women in Ancient India 185

N. N. Bhattacharyya

Chapter 15: Turmeric Land: Women’s Property Rights in Tamil Society

since Early Medieval Times 195
Kanakalatha Mukund

Chapter 16: Property Rights of Women in Medieval Andhra 209

A. Padma

Section IV: Contextualising Women’s Work in the Public Domain 215

Chapter 17: State of the Field: Perspectives on Women and Work in

Early South India 217
Vijaya Ramaswamy
   CONTENTS ix

Chapter 18:  Women’s Professions in Medieval Andhra 243

A. Padma

Chapter 19:  Temple Women and Work in Medieval Kēraḷam 259

Anna Varghese

Chapter 20: Gender, Caste and Labour: Ideological and Material

Structure of Widowhood 277
Uma Chakravarti

Chapter 21: Work and Gender in Mughal India 310

Shireen Moosvi

Section V: Devaradiya: Hand-maidens of God or Sex-workers? 327

Chapter 22: Courtesans 329

Vatsyayana Mallanaga

Chapter 23: Temple Women as Temple Servants 352

Leslie Orr

Chapter 24: In the Business of Kama: Prostitution in Classical Sanskrit

Literature from the Seventh to the Thirteenth Centuries 392
Shalini Shah

Chapter 25: Prostitution in Ancient India 418

Sukumari Bhattacharji

About the Editor and Contributors 443

 Foreword

It is with some hesitation that I write this Foreword. Firstly, because I am not a scholar
of ancient and medieval India with which this volume is largely concerned and secondly,
because I am not a labour historian. I agreed to write at the insistence of Professor Vijaya
Ramaswamy for whose scholarship and dedication to her work, I have the greatest admira-
tion and respect. She asked me perhaps because I have worked extensively in the area of
women’s history, but of colonial and contemporary India.
The majority of women in every country and in all ages have usually been workers. Their
participation as workers has always been necessary for social and economic development.
In all societies, they are usually involved in household activities such as child rearing, cook-
ing, cleaning, fetching water and fuel and care of the elderly and sick. This kind of work is
not recognised as work but as a woman’s duty. Women have worked outside the home as
well, especially in the domain of craft work and labour. Women’s participation as workers
in the public sphere increased in Europe and Great Britain after World Wars I and II when
men were fighting and women had to work in factories and offices.
In India, with women’s participation in the freedom struggle and growing women’s
education and awareness, women started emerging out of the kitchen and began to take
their place alongside men as supplementary breadwinners. Today, women can be seen
as doctors, lawyers, journalists, architects, in the media and in almost every profession.
However, as wage earners or self-employed entrepreneurs, they continue to be responsible
for their domestic duties. Thus, women bear a double burden, unless they are affluent and
can afford domestic help. They have to balance their jobs with looking after the children
and other housework. Therefore, women suffer from a sense of guilt about their inability to
do adequate justice to either their jobs or their duty as homemakers.
The 1980s and 1990s were the decades of great creativity in Indian labour history. Study
of labour moved from trade unions to a study of workers themselves. The growing interest in
labour history led to the first conference devoted to Indian labour history at the International
Institute of Social History in Amsterdam in 1995 and the founding of the Association of
Indian Labour Historians in the following year. The dynamism of the intellectual horizons
of Indian labour history in that period is captured in the work of three labour historians—Raj
Chandavarkar, Dipesh Chakravarti and Chitra Joshi.
In the majority of labour histories, however, till a few decades ago, the presence of
women in the domestic or public domain as workers was missing. Their contribution to
the household income or the overall economy was absent. Women were represented either
as good wives or prostitutes. In more recent times, we have had feminist historians such

xi
xii WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

as Samita Sen, Tanika Sarkar, Chitra Joshi, Bina Agarwal, Jayati Sen, Devaki Jain, Radha
Kumar and others who have focused on women’s labour.
Women’s work when outside the home was sporadic, ill-paid and mostly in the unorgan-
ised sector. Even today, 94 per cent of Indian women work in the unorganised sector. Men
were regarded as producers, as breadwinners and women as consumers. Men performed
work outside the house which was more hazardous, since it was believed that outside work
required physical strength. Men’s work was considered to be the opposite of women’s work.
This volume is a scholarly study of women’s unrecorded presence in the household
economy as well in the wider production process. It covers a vast historical span and links
the theme of woman and work from ancient to late medieval India. It stops at the beginning
of colonial rule in Indian history, as feminist economic historians have worked on this theme.
This anthology is perhaps the first of its kind in mapping ways of looking at women and
work in precolonial India through essays by distinguished scholars drawing on a variety
of sources such as the Upanishads, Arthashastra and other epigraphical records as well as
literary works and canonical texts. It deals with themes such as changing production role of
Tamil women from tribe to caste, women’s property rights in ancient and medieval India,
devadasis and prostitution in precolonial India and various other issues.
The volume provides a panoramic survey of women and work in precolonial India. The
authors have salvaged available data on women’s paid and unpaid, visible and invisible in
order to highlight their contribution work to the economy.
It is a path-breaking book and should be of great interest not only to labour historians,
but also to all students of history. I would like to congratulate Professor Vijaya Ramaswamy
for her very informative and scholarly Introduction and for bringing out this much needed
volume.

Aparna Basu
Formerly Professor of History
University of Delhi
 Preface

My mother Sethu Ramaswamy worked all her life and passed away at the ripe old age of
88 in 2012, cooking for the family till the last. In her autobiography Bride at Ten, Mother
at Fifteen (2003, 2010 and 2013), she wrote that her whole life seemed to consist of end-
less meals cooked and waiting to be cooked. Yet, she had never been a ‘working woman’
in the accepted definition of the term. The hours spent in stitching clothes for us because
my parents could not afford to buy ready-made garments (expensive in the 1950s) and the
time she spent in tutoring us after finishing her household chores made it seem as if her day
consisted of more than 24 hours.
As an economic historian with feminist ideas, I realised how very little the work of
such ‘house wives’ was reflected in our social histories. There were, however, instances of
‘working women’ such as spinsters (women who spun yarn for a living), housemaids and
prostitutes in ancient records, literary texts and inscriptions. I began salvaging evidences
of women and work from the historical sources available for ancient and medieval India.
In the process, I came across the writings of feminist historians like Uma Chakravarti who
had made pioneering studies in this area. In more recent times, a number of scholars have
begun to seriously engage with the historical material on women and work. Many of these
figure in this volume. Courses on ‘Women and Work’ have also been introduced in the
curriculum of women’s studies across the country.
It is in this immediate context that this volume was born. This reader addresses the needs
of students and scholars who have become participants in the process of ‘salvaging’ the
history of women and work from the grey regions and inner recess of Indian social history
where they have been partially but dimly visible.
Since its inception, academic activism within the Indian women’s movements has been
seen as social activism, and it is hoped that this volume will also be seen as a small but sure
step along the long road to redressing gender imbalances in this country.

Vijaya Ramaswamy

xiii
 Acknowledgements

I am extremely grateful to the following publishers/authors who have allowed the essays
to be reprinted in this reader:
Oxford University Press for allowing me to reproduce a brief section from Julia Leslie’s
book.
The Department of Ancient History and Archaeology, Banaras Hindu University to repro-
duce the essays from the late R. P. Tripathi edited volume, published by the department.
The essays reprinted here in this reader are by late N. N. Bhattacharya and T. R. Sharma.
Indira Chandrasekhar, publisher of Tulika Books, and Uma Chakravarti for their permis-
sion to reproduce sections from Everyday Lives, Everyday Histories: Beyond the Kings and
Brahmanas of Ancient India (2006).
Sudhir Kakkar and Wendy O’Flaherty for extending their permission to publish a chapter
from their translation of Vatsyayana’s text Kamasutra.
Harbans Mukhia of the Medieval History Journal and Shalini Shah for extending their
permission to reproduce the article ‘In the Business of Kama: Prostitution in the Classical
Sanskrit Literature from the Seventh to the Thirteenth Centuries’.
Tanika Sarkar for her gracious permission to reproduce two essays on ‘Economic Rights
of Ancient Indian Women’ and ‘Prostitution in Ancient India’ from her late mother Sukumari
Bhattacharji’s celebrated book Women and Society in Ancient India.
The management of Economic and Political Weekly and Kanakalatha Mukund for grant-
ing permission to reproduce the essay ‘Turmeric Land: Women’s Property Rights in Tamil
Society since Early Medieval Times’.
Leslie Orr for her ready consent for the reprinting of sections of her chapter ‘Temple
Women as Temple Servants’ from her book Donors, Devotees and Daughters of God:
Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu.
I am also deeply grateful to Professor Shireen Moosvi for giving her consent to reprint
her article ‘Work and Gender in Mughal India’.
I am grateful to A. Padma for her kind consent to reprint her essays—‘Women’s Property
Rights in Medieval Andhra’ and ‘Women’s Professions in Medieval Andhra’ for the pres-
ent reader.
I would like to specially acknowledge Jaya Tyagi, Kavita Gaur, Anna Varghese and
Upasana Dhankar for specifically writing essays for this reader.
I recall with gratitude and reverence I. Horner and M. A. Indra for their remarkable
essays written in the early decades of the last century which have been reproduced here for
the benefit of young scholars.

xv
xvi WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

I am in debt to Motilal Banarsidass Publishers for permitting the reprint of two chapters
from A. S. Altekar’s pioneering study The Position of Women in Hindu Civilization from
Prehistoric Times to the Present Day published in the 1930s, at a nominal fee. I would like to
warmly thank Mr B. N. Verma of the Primus Publishing House for negotiating this consent.
My grateful thanks to the SAGE Publications team for making this volume available to
our students. Their gracious cooperation has made putting together of this reader a pleasure
for me.
 Introduction*

VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

Women live like bats and owls, labour like beasts and die like worms…
Margaret, the Duchess of Newcastle, England, circa 1660 ce1

In a majority of labour histories till a few decades ago, the presence of women either in the
domestic or in the public domain as workers, contributing to the household income or the
overall economy, was conspicuous by its absence. Women’s work within the household
was seen as their ‘duty’ rather than as ‘work’, while their work outside the household was
sporadic, ill-paid and not part of the formal sector of ‘wage-earning’ labour. Enforced
invisibility or distorted visibility within patriarchal spaces can only be contested through
a rigorous study of women’s unrecorded presence in the household economy as well as
in the broader domain of production. This book is an effort to understand the ‘being’ and
‘doing’ of women, to map the interweaving of women and work over a vast historical span
of time, beginning with women’s writings on the theme of women and work, and going on
to historically plot women’s agency in labour processes.
Women, as a biological and social category, have been on the margins of history for cen-
turies and the correlation between women and work is its most neglected segment. Women’s
labour, by and large being considered informal, was neither recognised nor recorded, not just
by men but perhaps also by women themselves. History passed them by. To quote Virginia
Woolf in her celebrated classic A Room of One’s Own:

I saw a very ancient lady crossing the street... And if one asked her, longing to pin down the moment
with date and season, what she was doing on the fifth of April, 1868, or the second of November,
1875, she would look vague and say that she could remember nothing. For all the dinners were

* I am extremely grateful to the anonymous reviewer for her invaluable comments which have helped me to revamp
this introduction as well as re-organise the text for the benefit of the scholars who would seek to use it.
1
Quoted in Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (London: Hogarth Press, 1974[1929]), 93.

xvii
xviii WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

cooked, the plates and cups washed; the children sent to school and gone into the world. Nothing
remains of it. All has vanished. No biography or history has a word to say about it.2

Feminist historians have already written much about the absence of women from histories.
What is even more offensive to women’s sensibilities is their limited and, therefore, distorted
inclusion in historical spaces. Women were invariably represented in terms of bi-polarities—
either as good wives or as prostitutes, either as pious ‘private’ women or seductive ‘public’
women. The presence of women, either in the domestic or in the public domain as workers,
contributing to the household income or the overall economy, is conspicuous by its absence
within the patriarchal register.
In a thought-provoking article on ‘Folklore, Anthropology and Social History’, E. P.
Thompson talks about the neglect of women’s history by historians due to their preoc-
cupations with ‘becoming’, a process in which ‘women are rarely seen as prime agents in
political, military or even economic life’.3 On the other hand, he points out:

If we are concerned with ‘being’ then, the exclusion of women would reduce history to futility. We
cannot understand the agrarian system of small cultivators without examining inheritance practices,
dowry and the familial development cycle…. The economy can only be understood within the context
of a society textured in these kinds of ways. The ‘public’ life arises out of the dense determinations
of the ‘domestic’ life.4

To Thompson’s statement, I am further adding that the ‘domestic’ is not distinct and separate
from the public. The ‘housewifisation’ of much of women’s labour is a major cause of this
dichotomous thinking.
If the problem is seen as vexatious in terms of mapping the history of women and work in
colonial India, it is doubly so in the case of precolonial India where women’s presence was
recorded only in certain normative/stereo-typical ways, leaving out for the most part of their
historically marginalised but socially significant contribution to the economy both within the
household and outside it, in the public domain of labour. This collection of essays takes the
theme of women and work in India from ancient times up to the late-medieval period but stops
on the threshold of colonialism except where the authors have found it necessary to provide
inter-connections between the precolonial and colonial phases in the perspective of the changing
facets of women’s work. This anthology stops at the precolonial period because the subsequent
period has been, fortunately, covered comparatively better by feminist economic historians.

SITUATING THE THEME OF WOMEN AND WORK IN

WESTERN AND INDIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY
In this section, I propose to look at some select contributions to the historiographical trope on
women and work, commencing from the pre-historic period, covering the whole of ancient

2
Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 134.
3
E. P. Thompson, ‘Folklore, Anthropology and Social History’, The Indian Historical Review III, no. 2 (1977).
4
Thompson, ‘Folklore, Anthropology and Social History’.
 Introduction xix

India up to the eighth century, and concluding with essays focusing on the medieval world
of women and work. Since women and work in the colonial period are, technically, out of
the frame of the present book, the discussions around this period essentially involve the
ways in which scholars of colonial India have studied various ramifications of mapping,
quantifying and computing women’s work/labour in different economic domains. These
insights are relevant since they have been used by the scholars of ancient India and medieval
India to understand women and work in the precolonial milieu.
In this chapter, I have plotted out, at some length, the course taken by Western (in the
present European context) historiography on women and work. The purpose of such an
exercise is not to suggest close parallels in terms of women’s work cultures between two
very divergent spatial tropes, traditionally described as the ‘occident and the orient’ and
located in entirely different eco-geographical and cultural zones. Rather, in the absence of
similar historiographical traditions in the precolonial Indian context, this extensive exercise
forays into Western studies on women and work, and is intended to suggest potential areas
of analysis and possible methodologies one could employ in explorations into women and
work in the Indian context.
The present anthology is perhaps the first of its kind in mapping ways of looking at
women and work in precolonial India, through scholarly essays that draw on different kinds
of sources, ranging from epigraphical records to literary works and canonical texts. While
many of the essays have been reproduced here with the permission of the publisher/authors
who are vested with the copyright, quite a few essays have been presented specifically for
this book. Since both the scholarly works and historical evidence in the Indian context are
few and far between, this chapter seeks to intersperse the history of women and work in the
European context with the evidence presented in these essays in the present anthology on
similar or related themes.

WOMEN HUNTERS AND WARRIORS: EVIDENCE FROM

ARCHAEOLOGY AND LITERARY TEXTS
Archaeologists are struggling to gender work from the sparse evidence available during
pre-historical and early historical periods. An intrepid explorer of this area was Margaret
Ehrenberg.5 In 1989, in her book, Women in Pre-history, she discussed the importance of
women in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic foraging societies6 in which women not only hunted
small animals but gathered plant food such as fruits, nuts, leaves and roots, bulbs and undo-
mesticated wild crops like millets. Since women gathered nearly 80 per cent of the food,
Ehrenberg calls them ‘major food providers’.7
It is noteworthy that women hunters were also a familiar part of the earlier economies
on the Indian canvas and the Sangam texts refer to Valli, the consort of the deity of the
hilly tracts ‘Marudam’ as a ‘skilled hunter’. This role of women also finds its sculptural

5
Ehrenberg, Women in Pre-history: Oklahoma Classical Cultural Series (University of Oklahoma Press, 1989).
6
Ibid., 50−62.
7
Ibid., 52.
xx WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

r­ epresentations from around the eighth century, as for instance a sculpture in the temple built
by a Pandian king at Vallimalai in North Arcot district of Tamil Nadu. Adrienne Mayor in
her book, The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World,
has interesting information on women hunters and warriors drawing upon sources as varied
as the Mahabharata, the Puranas and sculptural depictions. There is some information on
women warriors and hunters in the Agni Purana which describes their proficiency in fenc-
ing and archery. Female hunters with bows are depicted in the Bharhut reliefs of the third
century bce from north-eastern India. Full breasted bow women (Svaghni) appear in ancient
and medieval carvings on temples at Palitana (north-western India) and in the temple at
Bhatkal in Karnataka.8 Anil K. Tyagi’s book, Women Workers in Ancient India, makes some
references to women who took to hunting.9

THE BEGINNINGS OF FARMING AND WOMEN IN

AGRICULTURE
Farming became well established in Southwest Asia by 6000 bce and a little later in South
Asia. Ehrenberg points out: ‘The discovery of farming techniques has usually been assumed
to have been made by men, but it is in fact very much more likely to have been made by
women’.10 The irrefutable logic in this argument lies in the fact that it is women who through
their ‘gathering’ activities first became acquainted with crops that could be domesticated.
My essay in this anthology attempts a brief overview of women in the farming sector in
early Tamizhaham (also spelt Tamilaham) roughly defined as the age of the Sangam—the
third century bce to the third century ce—parallel to the megalithic period in Peninsular
archaeology. The movement from tribe to caste got reflected in the peasantisation of many
tribal groups, referred to in the Sangam texts and in subsequent Tamil inscriptions as ‘kudi’.
It appears that, while women played a predominant role in hoe-cultivation, the ‘over-­
determination’ of farming characterised by the Marudam tinai (arable ecozone) in compari-
son to the other ecozones such as Mullai tinai (pastoral ecozone) and Kurinji tinai (forest
ecozone) changed gender equations in the agricultural domain. Over a period of 400 years,
from the late-Sangam age (third century onwards) to beginnings of state formation under
the Pallava and Chola rulers, the Peninsular region witnessed major developments such as
the royal donations of Brahmadeya lands to non-cultivating Brahmins and lands to military
chiefs under the Chola dynasty. These developments resulted in socio-economic stratifi-
cation in the agrarian sector, consisting of kudi (cultivator-tenants), kadaisiyar (land-less
agricultural labour) and the rent extracting Brahmin landlords. Inevitably, Brahmanisation
also meant the beginnings of patriarchy with women losing their right to handle the plough,
although many of the other back-breaking activities in the agricultural sector ranging from

8
Adrienne Mayor, The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University, 2014), 408−09.
9
Anil K. Tyagi, Women Workers in Ancient India (New Delhi: Radha Publications, 1994), 34, 116 and 123.
10
Ibid., 77.
 Introduction xxi

seeding, transplanting, weeding, irrigating to harvesting were still being handled by women
(Ramaswamy, Chapter 6 of this book). These tasks, however, reinforced the patriarchal
subordination of women, rather than endowing them with either any significant income or
power within the economic domain. The technological transition from hoe to plough agri-
culture has been recorded as one of the important markers in changing the gender balance
within the agricultural domain in the context of traditional Asian (and African) economies,
although there are other variables as well, such as changing the societal structure due to
Brahmanisation and the beginnings of temple urbanism in both northern and southern India.
This is a major plank of the arguments raised by Ester Boserup in her discursive analysis
of Women’s Role in Economic Development.11 To quote from Boserup12:

The main farming instrument in those regions, the plough, is used by men helped by draught ani-
mals, and only the hand operations—or some of them—are left for women to perform…. The land
is prepared for sowing by men using draught animals, and this thorough land preparation leaves
little need for weeding the crop, which is usually the women’s task. Therefore women contribute
mainly to harvest work and to the care of domestic animals.… Sometimes such women perform
only purely domestic duties, living in seclusion within their own homes and appearing in the vil-
lage street only under the protection of the veil, a phenomenon associated with plough culture, and
seemingly unknown in regions of shifting cultivation where women do most of the agricultural toil.

At the same time, Boserup made up certain dichotomous categories such as the association
of men with cash crops and women with subsistence crops, male dominance deriving from
plough agriculture in contra-distinction to women’s dominant agency in hoe agriculture and
their subsequent marginalisation with the change in technology from hoe to plough.13 Some
of these observations are only partially true and certainly cannot be seen as dichotomous
categories. Many of Boserup’s observations have been set aside by later-day scholars.14
One of the sharpest critiques of Boserup’s study on women and work is the observation
that, although her work is centred around colonised ‘developing’ countries such as India,
she predominantly uses Western frames of reference. The result of such an approach being
‘constructed in poverty, elaborated on negation, African women became passive objects

11
Ester Boserup, Woman’s Role in Economic Development (London: Earthscan, Sterling, 2007[1970]), 12–14 of the
section ‘The Plough, the Veil and the Labourer’.
12
Ibid., 13–15.
13
Ibid., 47 ff. For the impact of the technological shift from hoe to plough on the gendering of agricultural labour,
see section ‘The Plough, the Veil and the Labourer’ in Chapter 1 on ‘Male and Female Farming Systems’, pp. 12–23.
14
Contrary to her impression that women’s participation in labour will decrease in the capitalist set-up, historians
have been able to identify what they have called ‘feminization of labour’ in the age of capitalism and colonialism.
This meant increased use of ‘cheap’ female labour within the rural economic sector on the one hand, and the femini-
zation of even the male work force on the other. As a “fallout of the changing nature of employment where irregular
conditions, once thought to be the hallmark of women’s ‘secondary’ employment, have become widespread for both
sexes”, men also became part of the informal, unorganized sectors of labour (pre-dominantly identified with ‘working
women’) under certain conditions. For a very interesting discussion on ‘feminization of labour’ read ‘Introduction:
Boserup Revisited’ by the editors Nazneen Kanji, Su Fei Tan and Camilla Toulmin in the 2007 edition of Ibid., ix–xi.
xxii WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

of study, to be poked, prodded and stripped of any redeeming quality and dignity’.15 Since
this criticism would also apply to her analysis of the Asian women, the applicability of her
conceptual categories to the Indian historical situation becomes fraught with some tension.
Her study is, nevertheless, invaluable because it was one of the pioneering works that sought
to look at the Asian and African contexts of women’s labour in the agricultural sector.

WOMEN IN THE POTTERY SECTOR IN THE PRE-HISTORIC

AND EARLY-HISTORIC PERIODS
Ehrenberg refers to the seminal contribution of women to the linear pottery culture which
flourished in Central Europe and South America between 5500 and 4800 bce.16 It is worth
comparing her statement in the European context with the arguments raised by Indian
scholars on craft work.17 Women in Peninsular India are visible through the Tamil Sangam
literature, making pottery and weaving basket in the economy of the Sangam age (circa 300
bce and 300 ce), a perspective that has been discussed by me in a chapter in this anthology.
The presence of women potters was ubiquitous and one of the famous women poets of the
Sangam period was Veni Kuyattiyar, and literally ‘the potter woman called Veni’.
I would also like to draw attention here to the recent archaeological excavations at Indor
Khera (not too far from the famous Harappan site Hatranji Kheda) near Bulandshahr in Uttar
Pradesh. The site has yielded both pottery and evidence of potters’ dwellings. Archaeologists
Supriya Varma and Jaya Menon have studied pottery production within potters’ households
on the basis of archaeological evidence from Indor Khera.18 However, they are unable to
draw definitive conclusions about women potters from their evidence. Supriya Varma tells
me that while it is clear that pottery production involved the whole household, it is not pos-
sible to make out the precise gender division of labour. While women would obviously have
been involved in kneading the clay and painting the pots, it appears that the potter’s wheel
may have been wielded exclusively by men although one cannot say this with certainty.19

MAPPING WOMEN AND WORK IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD

How did women perceive the nature of their work within the framework of the many societ-
ies present in the medieval European world? Here I would like to examine a few books−the

15
Julie McCune, ‘Problematic Aspects of Ester Boserup’s Woman’s Role in Economic Development’, from the
internet site www.africaresource.com, Friday, 16th June 2006, Essays and Discussions.
16
Ehrenberg, Women in Pre-history, 90−91.
17
Vijaya Ramaswamy, ‘The Kudi in Early Tamilaham and Tamil Women from Tribe to Caste’ in From Tribe to
Caste, ed. Dev Nathan (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1997), 223–46.
18
Varma and Menon in Kumkum Roy, ed., Looking Within Looking Without: Exploring Households in the Subcontinent
Through Time (New Delhi: Primus Books, 2015), 19–48.
19
Conversation with Supriya Varma, Associate Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
on the possibility of gendering pottery production at Indor Khera, 5th May 2015, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New
Delhi.
 Introduction xxiii

medieval text The Treasure of the City of Ladies or the Book of the Three Virtues written
by Christine De Pisan in 1404;20 and modern works such as Judith Bennet’s book Ale, Beer
and Brewsters21 and Eileen Power’s incisive study of Medieval Women22 which has a major
chapter on women and work in medieval Europe. Unfortunately, there are no comparable
studies in the Indian context. Quite a few of the essays that have endeavoured to tackle this
theme find space in this anthology including the three essays by me, A. Padma and Shireen
Moosvi (Chapters 16, 18 and 21, respectively).
In the context of medieval Europe, the effort to record women’s histories in the spheres
of work and labour had begun way back in the fourteenth century. Christine de Pisan
(1365–1430) was a rare presence in medieval Italy—a woman who was a professional writer.
She was a renowned poet and the author of a biography of Charles V of France, whose
patronage her family had enjoyed. The Treasure of the City of Ladies was, however, her
most significant work from a gender perspective. Her representation of medieval European
women has substantial sections on women’s actual and potential contribution to the economy,
both within their households and beyond it. Her focus is, however, primarily on the upper
class/royal households and not on the common working women. She states that the princess
should discuss and supervise the financial health of the state and hold periodic meetings
with administrators and revenue collectors. She should try to ensure that there is no unjust
tax burden on the poor. She should also similarly maintain a tight supervisory control over
the finances of the royal household. Here the work of upper class women is seen primarily
as one of regulating the distribution of resources especially food.23 Of greater interest are
her sections on the wives of merchants, artisans and servant maids. She also has a section
on the trade of prostitution.
In the section ‘Of Wives of Merchants’, Pisan points out the affluent lifestyles of the mer-
chants’ wives in commercial towns such as Genoa, Venice, Florence, Lucca and Avignon,
referring primarily to the merchant wives of the cities along the Mediterranean coast. Pisan
makes the point repeatedly that their wealth was obtained not through wholesale trade but
through petty retail trade. After deprecating their aping the manner and sartorial habits of
the women of noble birth, she concludes by telling the wives of tradesmen: ‘If you rich
women want to be saved… see that in your business dealings you do not deal fraudulently or
deceitfully with your neighbours’.24 The wives of artisans are advised by Pisan to thoroughly
learn the crafts practised by their husbands so that they can continue the business even in
the absence of their husbands.25 Pisan makes the very interesting distinction between the
craft groups such as goldsmiths, embroiderers, armourers and tapestry makers who benefit
from growing demand and live in cities, on the one hand, and poor crafts families such as

20
Christine De Pisan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies or the Book of the Three Virtues, trans. Sarah Lawson
(Penguin Books, Chaucer Press, Suffolk, England, 1985[1404]).
21
Judith Bennet, Ale, Beer and Brewsters (London: Oxford University Press, 1999).
22
Eileen Power, Medieval Women: Cambridge University Series, ed. by M. M. Postan (Cambridge: CUP, 1997).
23
Pisan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, 76–77.
24
Ibid., 156.
25
Ibid., 167–68.
xxiv WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

the shoemakers and masons who lead a less comfortable yet socially secure life, on the
other hand.26
This unique text authored by Pisan has no parallel in the medieval Indian situation.
However, the fifteenth century Telugu text Kreedabhiramamu of Vinukonda Vallabharayadu,
which borders on the erotic, does refer to working women like Teliki (oil mongers) women,
Medara (basket makers) women, etc. In fact, the text states that Medara women were so
poor that they sometimes took to the profession of prostitution in order to raise their families
(Ramaswamy, Chapter 17 of this book). The Kreedabhiramamu also refers to small eateries/
inns owned by women where a meal cost merely one ruka.
A major production sector where women have registered their presence is in the domain
of liquor brewing which was usually done at home by women to supplement the family
income. Women’s work in the sector for the production and sale of liquor is brought out in
Judith Bennet’s Ale, Beer and Brewsters,27 which looks at the location of the Brewster in
the seventeenth century English economy and society. Women at this time were part of the
workforce engaged in low-skill jobs, such as ale brewing, which were also poorly paid. Like
spinsters, who spun for their living, in the absence of a spouse to support them, the female
brewster was also usually unmarried, although married women from low-income families did
join the profession. Ale brewing required limited capital and simple equipment and women
could work from their homes. However, in the course of the fifteenth century, as ale became
transformed into beer, rendering it more profitable, control over its production increasingly
passed into the hands of men. Bennet also looks at the late-medieval literature to show that
ale-women/wives were seen as cunning cheats whose religion was also suspect since ‘they
consorted with Jews’. A classic example of such negative portrayals of the brewster was to
be found in John Skelton’s poem The Tunning of Eleanour Rummyng, written in 1517. The
obvious logic to this negative portrayal was the male takeover of breweries and the need
to eliminate competition from the well-entrenched female brewsters who fought to stay in
business despite their lack of capital and other resources.
If one were to compare the European situation with the Indian one, it is noteworthy that,
even as early as the Sangam period in South India (300 bce to 300 ce), the Sangam texts
state that women were in charge of brewing of liquor in their homes and their daily door-
to-door sale. Women distilled strong liquor from rice soaked in water for several days till it
ferments (similar to the Japanese Saaki) and also from fruits (see Ramaswamy, Chapters 6
and 17). Shireen Moosvi in her essay on work and gender in the Mughal Empire, a part of
the present anthology, refers to the employment of women belonging to the liquor distilling
castes by the Mughal emperors. Women were employed to serve liquor in the court and it
can be presumed that these women were also involved in the production of home-brewed
liquor. Women also served as wine servers in taverns. Moosvi points out that there is an
interesting pictorial representation in the Miftåul Fuzala of a tavern where women are serv-
ing wine and eatables and also entertaining the guests by singing with musical instruments.
Women’s involvement in liquor distilling and sale in the precolonial Indian context continued
till such time as it became big business at which juncture men took over the liquor industry.

26
Ibid., 167.
27
Bennet, Ale, Beer and Brewsters.
 Introduction xxv

Eileen Power, who lectured and wrote extensively on medieval women in the European
social milieu, provided a fascinating range of women as doers—whether it was in farming or
crafts, whether as social workers, nuns or educationists. Her essays were published posthu-
mously by her colleague M. M. Postan under the title Medieval Women.28 Here, I shall only
take up for a brief review the third chapter of her book titled The Working Woman in Town
and Country. After a brief allusion to women’s work within the home and its importance in
adding up to the economic life of nations, Power goes on to discuss women’s presence in
the medieval labour market, hiring out their skills. For married women, working meant the
supplementing to a meagre family income. Even guilds, which technically debarred women
from entering a trade, recognised women’s participation in household craft production. In
1372, when articles were drawn up for the leather workers and pouch makers of London
and for dyers serving these trades, wives of dyers of leather were sworn together with their
husbands to do their calling.29 Power writes:

…the wife of a craftsman almost always worked as her husband’s assistant in his trade, or if not, she
often eked out the family income by some such bye industry as brewing and spinning; sometimes
she even practiced a separate trade as a femme sole.30

References to Women craftspersons in the medieval Indian context are few and far between.
In an article in which I had surveyed the history of crafts and craftspersons in medieval
Peninsular India, I had attempted to look at the gender division of labour within crafts.31
Women in most cases worked in an ancillary capacity in the crafts sector and were involved
with etching, ornamenting and polishing work but rarely with primary production. There
were, however, two notable exceptions both from Dharwar pertaining to the eleventh cen-
tury and twelfth century, respectively. One from Gadag inscribed under the image of Uma
Mahesvara says that Revakabbarasi, the wife of Vavanarasa, made the sculpture.32 The other
from Kalkeri says that Saraswati Gandidasi Malloja made the image of Suryadeva.33 In the
first case, the female sculptor is essentially defined in terms of her marital relationship,
whereas in the second, only the name of the father is given which was the usual practice in
all the inscriptions.34 The mention of just two women out of nearly 80 inscriptions relating
to craftsmen’s names shows that the exception may prove the rule. However, it does suggest
that women might have sometimes taken to crafts out of economic necessity. In the present
anthology, Shalini Shah’s essay on prostitution draws our attention to an extremely interest-
ing reference in the Jayamangala, a ninth century commentary on the Kamasutra written
by Yasodhara. In his ninefold classification of prostitutes, she includes the silpakarika who

28
Power, Medieval Women, 7–8.
29
Ibid., 55.
30
Ibid., 53.
31
Ramaswamy (2004).
32
Annual Report of Epigraphy, 464, Southern Circle (Madras: Govt. of Tamil Nadu, 1961–62).
33
Ibid., 109 of 1949–50.
34
Vijaya Ramaswamy, ‘Vishwakarma Craftsmen in Early Medieval Peninsular India’, Journal of the Economic and
Social History of the Orient 47, no. 4 (n.d.): 548–582.
xxvi WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

were female artisans. Yasodhara describes them as wives of dyers and weavers (Chapter
23) who also practised the trade besides taking to prostitution.
Power provides the very interesting statistics for medieval Europe that the population
of women was higher than that of men—in 1383, in Frankfurt, it was 1100 women to
a 1000 men; in 1449, in Nuremberg, it was 1207 women to 1000 men and in Basel, in
1454, women outnumbered men with a ratio of 1246:1000.35 This meant that there were
many unmarried women. While the high born entered nunneries, the others hired out
their services. Spinsters and destitute women had to take on some occupation for their
survival. It is believed that the term spinster for an unmarried woman came from the
compulsion of her single status which forced her to take to spinning as her livelihood
for her mere survival.
The evidence from India moves in tandem with the evidence presented by Power.
Spinning was women’s work in the Indian plains, whereas in the hills men would spin
on a wooden spindle. In the Sangam literature, spinsters were described as alir pendir
(woman without a husband) or as parutti pendir (the cotton women). The medieval
Indian literature is also replete with instances of women spinning, either to supplement
the family income or if they were unmarried women or widows, for sheer survival.36
The Palnattu Viracharitra of Srinatha, written in the fifteenth century, states that, while
men worked in the fields, women spun thread at home.37 A few essays in this collec-
tion look at women spinsters (and weavers as in the case of Dhankar’s essay) in the
handloom industry (see Dhankar, Ramaswamy and Shireen Moosvi in Chapters 10, 17
and 21, respectively).
Power points out that, in medieval Europe, it was customary for widows to carry on
their husband’s trade. Men used to mention in their wills that their apprentices should
serve out their term with their widows, and they also used to will their tools and imple-
ments of their craft to their wives.38 Power gives the detailed business career of an English
widow named Rose de Burford in the fourteenth century. A medieval trade record called
‘The Hundred Rolls’ of 1274 mentions, among great wool merchants, the widows of
London like Isabella Buckerel who ‘make great trade in wool’. Widows in the Indian
context entering the trade of their husbands was quite rare, although not completely
absent. Among the Gudigara caste of itinerant goldsmiths in the Karnataka region, it
was customary for the widow to carry on her husband’s trade. An extremely significant
theoretical exploration by Uma Chakravarti in the present collection is titled ‘Gender,
Caste and Labour: Ideological and Material Structure of Widowhood’. The connection
between work and widowhood is also drawn in the essays by Sukumari Bhattacharji
(Chapter 25). The historical fact of widows taking to prostitution out of sheer economic
compulsion is figured in quite a few of the essays in this anthology under the section on
prostitution as profession.

35
Power (1999), 55.
36
Vijaya Ramaswamy, Textiles and Weavers in South India, 2nd edn. (Delhi: OUP, 2006).
37
Ibid.
38
Power (1999), 55–56.
 Introduction xxvii

WERE THERE GUILDS OF WORKING WOMEN?

In the context of medieval Europe, it has been argued that women were not, and possibly
could not, be organised into guilds because of their involvement in multiple crafts usually
at an informal level. A woman could spin at home, brew ale and also go out to work in the
textile industry, thereby making a tidy income. Women were major participants in the tasks
of shearing the lamb and all processes connected with the textile industry which included
combing and carding of wool, spinning and weaving. They also made bread and ran small
inns most successfully. They also retailed all kinds of products from salt to butter, cheese
and flour. A medieval text Mirour de l’Omme writes that women were sharper than men
as retailers and did not let go off a single coin.39 There was considerable male opposition
to the competition offered by women in trade and business reflected in the many laws that
were framed to confine and limit women’s participation in economic enterprises.40 It is
logical that male artisans and businessmen should be opposed to the very idea of women
organising themselves into guilds.
The medieval text Piers Plowman refers to Rose the Regrater who did weaving and
supervised spinning (probably by employing women spinners), brewed ale at home and
did retail (huckster) business:

My wife was a weaver and woollen cloth made

She spake to the spinners to spinnen it out
…I bought her barley malt, she brew it to sell
…Rose the Regrater (retainer) was her right name
She hath holden huckster all her life time.41

Daryl M. Hafter’s work Women at Work in Industrial France is significant for its insights
into the formation of women’s guilds.42 Her two outstanding chapters, ‘The Use of Gender
in Economic Life’ and ‘Guildswomen and Ouvrieres’, situate the position of women in early
modern economy and the ambivalent attitude towards women’s guilds. In 1750, the guild
of female linen-drapers of Le Havre consisting of 69 women put in a request to the parlia-
ment at Rouen to allow them to join the all-male guild of 88 merchants so that they could
benefit from the trade in cotton and woollen textiles since their own trade was limited to
linen goods. Their request was turned down.43 Men feared women’s competition and tried to
exclude them from capital, other resources as well as a place in their well-organised guilds.
However, guildswomen enjoyed certain special privileges and powers which their less for-

39
Ibid., 68.
40
Ibid., 60.
41
William Langland, The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman ed. W. W. Skeat (Oxford, 1886), 51;
vide Ibid., 62.
42
Daryl M. Hafter, Women at Work in Industrial France (State College, PA: The Pennsylvania State University, 2007).
43
Ibid., 51.
xxviii WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

tunate ‘working’ sisters, did not have. To quote Hafter, ‘Guildswomen are a quintessential
example of privileged women in a man’s world.’44
It is noteworthy in the medieval Indian context that the only group of working women to
band themselves into an organisation—Sani Munnoouru—were the dancing girls or pros-
titutes. Around the fourteenth century, this corporate organisation from the Andhra region,
which was a part of the Vijayanagar empire, also enjoyed the privilege of being a part of the
temple trustees in areas such as Simhachalam (Vishakhapatnam district) and Pedakallepalli
(Krishna district) in the present-day Andhra.45

WOMEN IN MENIAL AND MISCELLANEOUS SERVICES:

MAIDS, WET-NURSES AND MOURNERS
There are scattered references to women labourers and menials, especially women slaves,
in many Hindu canonical texts as well as Buddhist sources. Clarisse Bader, who was among
the earliest women scholars to write about Indian women, uses some of this information in
her book written in French as far back as 1867. Its English translation was done by Mary
E. R. Martin around 1880. She gives the example of the Brahmanical women who ‘laboured’ in
collecting kusa grass and the soma plant for Vedic sacrifices.46 While the work by the Brahmin
women would be regarded as a part of their ritual duties rather than as labour, there is also
reference to dasis or menial women who gathered firewood and cut reeds for basketry. In
Buddhist texts and to some extent in administrative tracts like Kautilya’s Arthashastra there is
reference to women’s labour. Uma Chakravarti has looked at the Buddhist evidence on dasis
and karmakaras in Ancient Indian society and her short but insightful piece on the Agrihinis
forms a part of the present anthology (Chapter 9). The reference to women’s labour in the
Arthashastra has been looked at in the present volume by Upasana Dhankar (Chapter 10).
Sometimes the status of the paricharika or maid servant was almost synonymous with
that of the dasi or slave. She is literally and figuratively turned into a commodity in the
Buddhist saying of Visaka, ithi bhandanam uttamam,47 which would translate as ‘this is a
high quality commodity’. The story of Jabala in the Chandogya Upanishad provides a case
in point where so many men sexually exploit the paricharika that she cannot say who the
father of her child is. A book which seeks to put together some of this evidence is Anil K.
Tyagi’s Women Workers in Ancient India.48 Tyagi devotes much space to the paricharika or
karmakari. The terms can indicate both the domestic servant as well as female slaves called
dasis. He points out that perhaps slaves were expensive and so free labour might have been
preferred by the employers.49 The servant was supposed to do the sweeping and swabbing,

44
Ibid., 60.
45
Ramaswamy (2010), 69.
46
Uma Chakaravarti reads Clarisse Bader against the grain in her article, ‘Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi?’
in Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, ed. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Delhi: Kali for
Women, 1989), 44–45.
47
vide Bimla Churn Law, Women in Buddhist Literature (Varanasi: Indological Book House, 1981), 37.
48
Tyagi, Women Workers in Ancient India. Unfortunately, it was not possible to include any chapter from Anil
Tyagi’s book in the present anthology because the copyright clearances could not be obtained from the publishers.
49
Ibid., 69.
 Introduction xxix

bathe/message the master or mistress, apply scents, wash their feet, fetch water from the well
or the river, clean the rice and wash the dishes. Buddhist literature also contains references
to women hawkers, oil and liquor sellers. The text Boghasamharapeta, in fact, says that
four women hawkers were caught cheating by using false weights.50 Scattered references
to women in Jain societies pertain particularly to the lower castes of women including wet
nurses, attendants, messengers and the inevitable courtesan.51
My essay (Chapter 17) refers to the employment of women as wet-nurses. In the Sangam
literature these women are referred to as chevili thai or ‘foster women’. For the medieval
period, Moosvi’s essay (Chapter 21) deals with the employment of slave women in vari-
ous menial capacities. It is, however, noteworthy that the wet-nurses of the Mughal kings
cannot be described as ill-used or powerless since wet-maids like Maham Anaga enjoyed
the king’s confidence and played an active role in court politics.
Construction work was another work domain where women worked for very low wages.
An unusual essay on the theme of women and labour was Stephen Blake’s ‘Contributors to
the Urban Landscape: Women Builders in Safavid Isfahan and Mughal Shahjahanabad’.52 In
my essay on women and work in early India which provides a bird’s-eye view of women in
different occupations from the ancient to the medieval period, I have referred to a thirteenth
century inscription from Tiruvamattur in which there is reference to both men and women
being engaged in construction work with the clear injunction that women workers were to
be paid as wage (kooli) just half of what was paid to their male counterparts (Chapter 17).
Before I close this section, I would like to refer to the professional option women found
as paid mourners in any house where a death had occurred. In fact, a thirteenth century
inscription from the Pudukkottai state records that when death occurred in any household,
the Valaichchi women (low caste/untouchables) put a cloth over their heads and mourned
the dead with loud wails.53 The singing of these lamentation songs constituted a special
repertoire since songs meant for young wives dying in child birth would be very different
from the songs on the death of the master of the household or the almost celebratory tone
of the dirges sung at the death of elderly persons. Cleaning of the death-polluted house the
next day with cow dung was also their job. They were paid for both. Professional mourning
as women’s work has no parallel in Western societies to the best of my knowledge and has,
therefore, escaped the critical gaze of Western feminist scholars.

WOMEN IN THE HOUSEHOLD

Kitchen as Woman’s Place: Kitchen as Woman’s Space
What does the kitchen signify for women as their work space and equally their personal
and social place? If one were to bring together the notion of ‘kitchen work’ and ‘kitchen
space’, it is important to understand ways in which intimate places have been experienced

50
B. C. Law cited in Ibid., 63.
51
K. C. Jain, Bodh aur Jain Sahitya me Nari Jeevan (1967) vide fn 1 of Ibid., 28.
52
Gavin R. G. Hambley, ed., Women in Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage and Piety (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1998).
53
Inscriptions of the Pudukkottai State, No. 601.
xxx WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

and understood. A pioneering attempt in this direction was Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics
of Space.54 Out of the house (especially the kitchen) spin ‘worlds within worlds’ what
Bachelard describes as ‘personal cosmoses’. Although Bachelard’s book does not explore
the tantalising possibilities of kitchen spaces, his broad perceptions can be extended to a
gendered landscaping of the interior of the household. Here, in the kitchen, women cre-
ated dishes, controlled and directed the pecking order, deftly handled finances to manage
household requirements including food provisions and contested the intrusion of other
women into their kitchen space. The contestations typically involved the mother-in-law and
daughter-in-law or the ‘co-wives’/wife and mistress.

Women’s Work and Women’s Role Within the Household

Manusmriti,55 an ancient canonical text has been dated between the second century bce
and the second century ce. The Manusmriti can be seen as a text illustrating the nature of
the work that was assigned to women within the household in traditional societies. This
obviously involves her work within the household. According to Manu, a woman’s main
duties were oriented towards taking care of her husband, children and the extended family
as nurturer and provider.56 In addition, she had to perform the physical tasks of drawing
water from the well, churning, husking, winnowing and other such ‘homely’ tasks.57 Manu
interestingly, also credits her with a head for finance. She had to manage the everyday run-
ning of the household and balance the family budget.58 As the controller of her husband’s
earnings she was in charge of domestic finances and was the paymaster. Manusmriti points
out that collecting and spending money was in the hands of the housewife59 because she
was expected to exercise frugality. The Grihyasutras also detail the kind of work women
could do within the household both in the ritual and in the social sphere. This anthology
has a major section on situating women and work within the space of the household as well
as beyond it. The essays by Jaya Tyagi (Chapter 7) and Kavita Gaur (Chapter 5) specifi-
cally look at canonical texts to explore women’s agency and spaces within the household.
Both these essays have been written specifically for this volume and both seek to re-open
traditional texts in order to look at women’s work within the household and beyond it by
factoring in women’s agency.

54
Gaston Bachelard. The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places, tr. Maria Jolas
from French (MA: Beacon Press, 1964). (French original in 1958.)
55
Patrick Olivelle, ed., Manusmriti as Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition And Translation of the Manava-
Dharmasastra, with Editorial Assistance of Suman Olivelle (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), chapter IX,
verses 10–12. See also Narayan Ram Acharya Kavitirtha, ed., Manusmriti (commentary by Kulluka), 10th edition
(Bombay: Nirmaya Press, 1946), IX: 10–12.
56
Olivelle, Manusmriti, Chapter IX, verse 27, 751.
57
Ibid., verses 10–11, 748.
58
The assumption that the wife is expected to handle the domestic expenses occurs in quite a few of the verses from
the Manusmriti. For example verse 150 in Chapter V says ‘she should be alert in the handling of household matters
and tight fisted (literally, since the expression used is amukta hastaya) in dealing with household expenditure (p. 588).
59
Ibid., Chapter IX, verse 10, 748. The exact line is ‘arthasya sangrahe cha enam vyaye’.
 Introduction xxxi

The Manusmriti is only an entry point to the nature of women and work in the context of
Peninsular India. While it gives an indication of canonical thinking on the prescriptive role of
women, the contextual variations in the case of South India make it necessary to understand
the historical trajectories in the Sangam age (roughly datable from 300 bce to 300 ce as with
the Manusmriti) in terms of the Peninsular problematic rather than the Indo-Gangetic. The
Sangam Tamil texts of the early Christian era talk about the household and the duties of the
housewife as the qualities expected of an illal or manaivi. The very nomenclature used for
a married woman in Tamil firmly locates her within interior spaces. The term illaval (also
called illa kizhathi and illal) for the wife is derived from the term illam60 for a house. The
synonymous term manaivi is derived from the term manai61 meaning ‘house’, again refer-
ring to the ‘house-wife’. An even more evocative term is aham62 which indicates interiority
(for example as in ‘aham’ poetry like Ahananuru) as well as, specifically, the house-site.
The word for wife which is derived from aham is ahamudaiyal literally meaning ‘she who
is the mistress of the home’.
The karpiyal of the Tolkappiyam deals entirely with the prescriptive role for women. As
with the Manusmriti, this normative text from the Sangam era, roughly contemporaneous
with the Manusmriti, also stresses on chastity, the qualities of mothering and nurturing.
Cooking, feeding, cleaning, etc., have been defined as the ‘unwaged’ labour of the
housewife. The Sangam text Maduraikanchi63 states that illara magalir, literally meaning
‘housewives’, should wake up at dawn and sweep their homes. The Nedunelvaadai instructs
them to light iron lamps with wicks soaked in clarified butter.64 They should also commence
their household chores at the crack of dawn. The housewife’s space and the woman’s place
have been perceived traditionally by feminist scholarship as a reflection of patriarchal
oppression and the undervaluation of the woman’s household labour.
Feminist debates in recent times have, however, opened up fresh ways of perceiving
‘domestic space’. In her management of her domestic space, a woman does not merely
assert her agency but also achieves control and power. The hermeneutic analysis of the
terms used for the ‘housewife’ in the Tamil language opens up some very interesting lines
of discussion on the nature of power exercised by the housewife and her agency and control
over the domestic space. The potential power implied in the Tamil terms for housewife ties
up this discussion with the more general debate on the household space. The recent debates
among feminist scholars explore the notion of the domestic space of the housewife as an
empowering space. Anthropologist Felicia I. Ekejiiuba, writing in the context of West
African society, states:

60
E. V. Anantharaman, ed. Kalittogai, with commentary by Nachchinarkiniyar (Madras: Saiva Siddhanta Kazhagam,
1967/1925), verse: 110:12 and 94:15; U. V. Swaminathaiyyar, ed., Kurunthogai (Madras: Kapir Achukootam,
1962/1972), verse: 8; and A. Narayanaswami, ed., Natrinai Nanuru (Madras: Saiva Siddhanta Kazhagam, 1962/1967),
verse: 295.
61
Swaminathaiyyar, Kurunthogai, verse: 181.
62
Ibid., verse: 371–74.
63
Maduraikanchi, verse: 664 vide Vidyanandan, 1954, 254.
64
Nedunelvaadai: 42, Ibid.
xxxii WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

The concept of the household as it is currently applied, is itself part of a subtle ideological transfor-
mation which has facilitated the assertion of colonial power, nationally, and male power domesti-
cally. The concept clouds the true pattern of gender interaction and power relations, portraying the
impression of men as sole providers and of female dependence and passivity, as opposed to their
active participation in socio-economic processes.65

In contrast to the notion of ‘housewifization’ and the passivity of the housewife, Ekejiuba
offers the concept of a ‘female-directed hearth-hold’ as an empowering space for women. The
hearth-hold centres on the hearth or stove where a woman is responsible for food security.66
This relates specially to the agricultural domain where the woman controls and probably
directs the ‘sharing of the grain heap’ within the ‘domestic’ space.
Essays on gendering the household and situating the nature of women and work within
the household (as well as beyond it) form an important section of this anthology. The lead
piece is an extract from a chapter of Julia Leslie’s book The Perfect Wife, which deals with
women’s household duties delineated as ‘sthri dharma’ in the Sthridharmapaddhati, repro-
duced here with permission from the Oxford University Press. Apart from the essays by Jaya
Tyagi and Kavita Gaur, written specifically for this volume, this section also reproduces an
essay by T. R. Sharma based on canonical sources from a seminar organised by the Late
Professor Tripathi in Banaras Hindu University. The editor is grateful to the Department of
Archaeology and Ancient Indian History of Banaras Hindu University for granting permis-
sion to reproduce this brief but useful article presented at this seminar.
Women’s property rights have been given a special place in this analogy because of
the close connection between women’s financial need and economic security, which often
is the cause of their joining the workforce. While an extremely useful essay by Sukumari
Bhattacharji situates the economic rights of women in ancient times, the essays by Altekar,
Indra and Bhattacharya (Chapters 11–12, 13 and 14, respectively) look at the canonical
positions on women’s property. Kanakalatha Mukund (Chapter 15) looks at the histori-
cal course of the Manjakani (also called sthri dhana) rights in the region of South India. I
am grateful to the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Indian History and Culture of
Banaras Hindu University for granting permission to include the Late N. N. Bhattacharya’s
piece on women’s property rights.

MOVING BEYOND THE HOUSEHOLD:

PROBLEMATISING THE DEVARADIYAR
Prostitution is the only domain that was recognised as ‘women’s work domain’ from the
earliest times. This is reflected in all early textual and literary traditions from the Manusmriti
and Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra (dated between 400 bce and 200 ce) to political and literary

65
Felicia Ekejiuba, ‘Down to Fundamentals: Women-Centred Hearthholds in Rural West Africa’, in Women Wielding
the Hoe, ed. Deborah Fahy Bryceson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 50.
66
Ibid., 47–61.
 Introduction xxxiii

texts like the Arthashastra and plays such as Shudraka’s Mrichakatika, written around the
second century bce, which revolves around the prostitute Vasantsena. Beginning with an
extract from the Kamasutra, the present anthology looks at the economic and social rami-
fications of prostitution in early India through essays by Sukmari Bhattacharji and Shalini
Shah for the ancient period, while A. Padma’s essay focuses on the Andhra region for the
medieval period.
In the historiography of the Mughal period, it is predominantly the courtesans or
prostitutes that have attracted the attention of scholars of Mughal history with some
notable exceptions like Shireen Moosvi who has mapped women’s work in other
spheres as well.
While prostitution as a profession situates women within the public work space, some
historians have chosen to conflate the categories of Devaradiyar, ranging from temple
menials to professional dancers and wealthy and influential temple trustees. The Devaradiyar
are located not in the public domain but within the sacred precincts of the temple, and
branded as sacred prostitutes, a term that is as inaccurate as it is misleading. Two essays in
this anthology look much more critically at the role–functions of temple women, thereby
complicating the neat connection that had been drawn between the Devaradiyar and prostitu-
tion. Leslie Orr looks at the Devaradiyar of the Chola period in terms of the multiplicity of
their functions, as temple-servants, dancers, musicians and even temple trustees (Chapter
23). Prostitution does not figure in this trope. The issue is raised more sharply by Anna
Varghese in her essay which is titled ‘Temple women and work in Medieval Keralam’,
moving the discussion beyond prostitution as the work (and sole work) of the Devaradiyar.
This essay is, therefore, placed under the Section ‘Contextualizing Women’s Work in the
Public Domain’ (Chapter 19) rather than in the last section which historically situates
prostitution as women’s work.

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
In recent years, gyno-critical studies of everyday life, re-evaluating women’s work and
the process of housewifization, have become a major area of research within the post-
colonial discourse. The challenge lies in steering clear of all abstracted textual forms
which feed directly into the requirements of either capitalism or bureaucratic power and
control. Such efforts in the context of Indian history must, perforce, remain very tentative.
This book which seeks to place before scholars a panoramic survey of women and work
in history in precolonial India covering the period from the ancient to the late-medieval
period, should be seen as initial steps towards a much more ambitious feminist enterprise.
The primary endeavour has been to salvage available data on women’s work both paid
and unpaid, both visible and less-visible, in order to highlight women’s contribution to
the work domain and indicate directions of movement and change in women’s work/
labour history.
xxxiv WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original Texts (in Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada or Telugu)
Tamil Works:
Sangam Texts
(The Sangam texts referred to in this introduction can be dated roughly between third century bce and third century ce)
Ahananuru ed. with commentary by Venkataswami Nattar N. M. and R. Venkatachalam Pillai (Madras: Saiva
Siddhanta Kazhagam, 1943).
U. V. Swaminathaiyyar and S. Kalyana Sundaranar, ed., Aingurunuru (Madras: Kapir Achchukootam, 1957).
Malaippadukadam from the Pattupattu, Anthology, ed. U. V. Swaminathaiyyar (Madras: Kapir Achukootam, 1965).
Perumppanatruppadai in Pattupattu, Anthology, ed. U. V. Swaminathaiyyar (Madras: Kapir Achukootam, 1965).
U. V. Swaminathaiyyar (ed.), Perunkadai (Madras: Publishers not known, 1924).
Porunaratruppadai in the Pattupattu Anthology, ed. U. V. Swaminathayyar (Madras: publishers not known, 1937).
U. V. Swaminathayyar, ed., Purananuru (Madras: Kapir Achukootam, 1963).
V. R. Ramachandra Dikshitar, ed., Silappadikaram of Ilango Adigal (a Post-Sangam text) (New York: New York
University Press, 1954 [originally published in 1939]).

Sanskrit Texts
Arthashastra of Kautilya (third century to second century ce) ed. and trans. in three parts by R. P. Kangle (Bombay:
University of Bombay, 1965).
Manasollasa (12th century Sanskrit text) of Somesvara III, ed. Shrigondekar (Baroda: 1939), verses: 1817–18.

Medieval Texts in Tamil, Telugu, Persian and French

Kreedabhiramamu of Vinukonda Vallabharaya ed. and transl. Rao, Velcheru Narayana and David Shulman under
the title, Kreedabhiramamu: A lover’s guide to Warangal (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002).
Kreedabhiramamu of Vinukonda Vallabharaya, ed. Veturi Prabhakara Sastry (Muktiyala/Hyderabad: Manimanjari,
1960).
A. S. Usha, ed., Futuhat-us-Salatin, trans. Agha Mehdi Hasan, 3 volumes (Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University,
1976–77).

Epigraphical Records (inscriptions on rocks and copper plates)

K. R. Srinivasa Aiyar, ed. and trans., Inscriptions of the Pudukkottai State (Pudukkottai: Pudukkottai State Press,
1941–46 [originally published in 1929 by the Sri Brihadamba State Press of Pudukkottai]).
South Indian Inscriptions (Madras: Govt. of Tamil Nadu, 1890 onwards).
S. Subramanya Sastri and V. Viraraghavacharya, eds., Tirumalai-Tirupati Devasthanam Inscriptions, 6 vols. (Madras:
1931–38).
T. N. Subramanian, ed., South Indian Temple Inscriptions (Madras: Madras University, 1957).
 Introduction xxxv

Secondary Works in English (also includes works translated from

other languages into English)
Clarisse Bader, Women in Ancient India: Moral and Literary Studies, trans. Mary E. R. Martin, reprinted under the
Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series, vol. 44 (Varanasi: Chowkhamba Publishers, 1964 [originally published in French
in 1867 and the English translation in 1925)].
Alice Clark, The Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge, 1919).
Stephen Blake, ‘Contributors to the Urban Landscape: Women Builders in Safavid Isfahan and Mughal Shahjahanabad’,
in Women in Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage and Piety, ed. Gavin. R. G. Hambley (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1998).
Uma Chakravarti, Everyday Lives, Everyday Histories: Beyond the Kings and Brahmanas of ‘Ancient’ India (New
Delhi: Tulika Books, 2006).
B. Hemlatha, Life in Medieval Northern Andhra (New Delhi: Navrang Publishers, 1991).
Olwen Hufton, ‘A History of Women in the West’, in Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes, ed. Natalie Zemon
Davis and Arlette Farge, General Editors Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot, volume III (Cambridge, MA and
London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993), 15–45.
J. K. Kamat, Social Life in Medieval Karnataka (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1980).
Vijaya Ramaswamy, ‘Women and the “Domestic” in Tamil Folk Songs’, Man in India 74, no. 1 (1994): 21–37 and
reprinted in Kumkum Sangari and Uma Chakravarti, eds., From Myths to Markets: Essays on Gender (Shimla:
Manohar and the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1999), 39–55 and 41–42.
Vijaya Ramaswamy, ‘Women and Farm Work in Tamil Folk Songs’, Social Scientist 21, nos. 9–11 (1993, September–
November): 113–29.
Vijaya Ramaswamy, ‘Aspects of Women and Work in Early South India’, Indian Economic and Social History
Review, no. 23 (1989): 81–99.
Wilhelm Rau, Weben und Flechten in Vedischen Indien (in German) (Weisbaden: University of Wiesbaden, 1970).
Aloka Parashar Sen, ed., ‘Temple girls and the Land Grant Economy’, in Social and Economic History of Early
Deccan: Some Interpretations (New Delhi: Manohar, 1993), 240–77.
Women and the Household:
Canonical Prescriptions and
Their Feminist Critique

Section I
 Chapter 1 The Daily Duties of
Women*
(strīṇām āhnikam; Sdhp. 2v.
5–21 r.3)

JULIA LESLIE

‘Now the daily duties of women are examined.’1

The daily practice of the orthodox Hindu householder (male) is an important topic of
dharmaśāstra, described in detail in numerous sṃṛtis, purāṇas and digests (e.g. Gaut.1.5,
1.9; Āp.II.l.l–II.4.9; Yājñ.1.96–127; Mārk.P.29–30,34; Kūrm.P.II.18–19; Sm.C.I.p.88–232;
Sm.A. p.18–48; etc.). For of all the āśramas—Vedic student (brahmacarya), householder
(gṛhastha), forest hermit (vānaprastha), and renouncer or ascetic (saṃnyāsin, yati, etc.)—
that of householder is repeatedly described as the best.
The āśrama theory, examined in detail by Olivelle (1974; 1978; 1984), involves a gradual
progression through three main stages of development. In the first, only the householder
state receives wholehearted recommendation. The second encourages the notion of a choice
between four separate and permanent states (vikalpa, ‘alternative’). The third regards the
four āśramas as a continuous series of temporary states (samuccaya, ‘together’; i.e., in
sequence in one lifetime). In all three versions of the theory, however, the householder state
is held to be the best.
The earliest exposition of the āśrama theory is presented by Gautama and Baudhāyana.
(For an analysis of the corrupt text into ‘Proto-’ and ‘Deutero-Baudhāyana’, see Olivelle
1984.) Gautama notes the idea of a choice in the form of a pūrvapakṣa (āśramavikalpam;
Gaut.I.3.1–2), without approval. For, in Gautama’s view, the householder is quite literally
the source (yoni) of the other three: only he produces children (aprajanatvād itareṣām, Gaut.
1.3.3; cf. Rāgh. on Manu VI.87; Baudh.11.6.11.27). Moreover, the order of householder is the
one explicitly enjoined (pratyakṣ-avidhānād; Gaut. 1I.4.35) in all the Vedas, dharmaśāstras,
itihāsas and purāṇas (Har. on Gaut.I.4.35). Baudhāyana even denies that there is a choice.
The notion of four alternative paths is dismissed as a misunderstanding (Baudh.II.6.11.9)
or the invention of a demon (Baudh.II.6.11.28). Baudhāyana stresses the importance of

* Reproduced with permission from the publisher from Julia Leslie, The Perfect Wife: The Orthodox Hindu Woman
According to the ‘Stridharmapaddhati’ of Tryambakayajvan, Oxford University Press, Delhi (1989), pp. 44–50.
1
tatra Strīṇām āhnikam nirūpyate //sdhp. 2 v. 5

3
4 JULIA LESLIE

family life; the payment of the three debts (to the seers by study, to the gods by sacrifice, to
the ancestors by sons); and thus the urgent need to produce children (Baudh.II.6.11.33–4).
The next stage in the development of the āśrama theory is shown in the views of
Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha. The four orders are now seen to be equally valid in the sense
that one may attain liberation through any one of them (Āp.II.9.21.1–2), but they are still
mutually exclusive and permanent. (It is important to distinguish here between studentship
as a temporary first stage and perpetual studentship as a permanent state of celibacy; cf.
Olivelle 1984: 85.) Nonetheless, Āpastamba devotes a large number of sūtras to proving
that the householder state is superior to any of the celibate alternatives (Āp.II.9.23.3 ff.).
The third stage may be found in Manu, Yājñavalkya and the later smṛtis. The āśramas are
now no longer alternative states but successive stages, each leading to the next in a steady
progression towards liberation (Manu IV.1, VI.33). But still the householder stage is best
(Manu III.77–8, VI.89–90). This remarkably persistent eulogy of the householder underlines
the fact that all dharmaśāstrins are, of course, householders themselves.
In order to fulfil his significant part in the scheme of things, the householder must observe
a clearly defined timetable of ritual and quasi-ritual activities, all included under the general
heading of gṛhasthadharma, the ordained rites and duties of the householder.
The day is sometimes divided into two (pūrvāhṇa, ‘before noon’, and aparāhṇa,
‘­afternoon’); or three (prātaḥsavana, ‘morning’ mādhyandinasavana, ‘midday’, and
tṛtīyasavana, ‘evening’, corresponding to the three pressings of soma); or five (prātaḥ
or udaya, ‘dawn’, saṃgava, ‘morning’, i.e., when the cows are collected for milking,
mādhyandina or madhyāhna, ‘midday’, aparāhna, ‘after-noon’, and sāyam, sāyāhna or
astagamana, ‘evening’). Most commonly, however, the division is into four parts (pūrvāhna,
madhyāhna, aparāhṇa, sāyāhna), further subdivided into eight: that is, sixteen divisions
covering the twenty-four hours of day and night (e.g., Daksa II.4–5; Kaut. I. 19; Kāty. quoted
by Apar. on Yājñ.II.i; and even Vidyārṇava’s twentieth-century presentation of the āhnika
rules, 1979:1). The normal unit of calculation is thus one and a half hours.
With regard to the different varṇas, no specific āhnika rules are laid down for the vaiśya
or śūdra. These men would presumably adjust the āhnika rules prescribed for brahmin
householders to suit themselves. The āhniḳa rules for a king are given in detail in Kaut.
I.19 (of. also Manu VII. 145–7, 151–4, 216–26; Yājñ. I.327–33). In the first part of the day
(6.00–7.30 a.m.), the king should attend to matters of defence, income and expenditure;
in the second (7.30–9.00 a.m.), he should consider the affairs of the people; in the third
(9.00–10.30 a.m.), he should bathe, eat and study the Veda; in the fourth (10.30–12.00
noon), he should receive revenue and assign tasks; in the fifth (12.00–1.30 p.m.), he should
consult his ministers and consider the secret information brought by spies; in the sixth
(1.30–3.00 p.m.), he may amuse himself; in the seventh (3.00–4.30 p.m.), he should review
his army; in the eighth (4.30–6.00 p.m.), he should confer with his commander-in-chief.
At the end of the day, he should perform the evening saṃdhyā (V.9–17). In the first part
of the night (6.00–7.30 p.m.), he should consult his secret agents; in the second (7.30–9.00
p.m.), he should bathe, eat and study; in the third (9.00–10.30 p.m.), he should enter his
­bedchamber; in the fourth and fifth (10.30 p.m.–1.30 a.m.), he should sleep; in the sixth
(1.30–3.00 a.m.), he should wake and contemplate the śāstra (i.e. of politics) and the duties
of the coming day; in the seventh (3.00–4.30 a.m.), he should meet with his councillors
and send out secret agents; and in the eighth (4.30–6.00 a.m.), he should receive blessings
 Chapter 1  The Daily Duties of Women 5

from his priests, see his doctor, chief cook and astrologer, perform the appropriate rituals,
and go to court (v. 18–24). Alternatively, as Kautilya adds (thereby undermining the entire
system), the king may divide his days and nights as he needs (v. 25).
Although Tryambaka probably intended his treatise for the edification of the women at
court (who were presumably of largely kṣatriya families), the āhnika rules it prescribes for
women have little in common with the rulings given above for their king. It is thus more
appropriate to compare Tryambaka’s rulings for women with those prescribed for brahmin
householders.
Daksa, for example, also divides the day into eight parts (II.4–5). For practical purposes,
the day’s timetable begins in the last division of the night (i.e. 4.30–6.00 a.m.) when a man
should wake, perform the necessary ablutions and the ācamana ritual, clean his teeth, bathe,
and observe the twilight rituals (saṃdhyā). In the first division of the day (6.00–7.30 a.m.),
he should worship his special deity and pay homage to his teacher. In the second (7.30–9.00
a.m.), he should study the Veda. In the third (9.00–10.30 a.m.), he should work for the main-
tenance of his family, following only those professions permitted to his varṇa. In the fourth
(10.30–12.00 noon), he should bathe and perform the midday saṃdhyā. In the fifth (12.00–1.30
p.m.), he should perform the five great sacrifices (pañca mahāyajñāh): to brahman (brah-
mayajña, by the study or recitation of the Veda), to the gods (devayajña, by ritual offerings
into the fire), to the ancestors (pitṛyajña, by the ritual of tarpaṇa), to all beings (bhūtayajña,
by bali ­offerings), and to men (manuṣ-yayajasña, by offering hospitality to guests). These five
observances absolve the householder of the five types of sin committed every day in the home
(of. Manu III.68–71; Vis.Sm.59.19–20 etc.). In the fifth part of the day, the householder should
also take his main (midday) meal. In the sixth and seventh (1.30–4.30 p.m.), he should study
secular literature (epics, purāṇa and so on). In the eighth (4.30–6.00 p.m.), he may receive
or visit friends and perform the evening saṃdhyā rituals. From 6.00 p.m. until 9.00 p.m., he
should attend to the duties omitted during the day and spend time with his family. From 9.00
p.m. until 4.30 a.m., he may take rest (Dakṣa II; Vidyārṇava 1979: 1–2).
Let us compare these typical basic divisions with the daily timetable prescribed for women
by Tryambaka. The first point to notice is that Tryambaka divides the night (and presum-
ably the day as well) into six parts instead of the usual eight (Sdhp.2v.8). This ruling is not
specific to women, for the quotation cited is addressed to the householder ‘together with
his wife’ (patnyā saha). For Tryambaka then, the unit of calculation is two hours instead
of one and a half. However, since Tryambaka rarely specifies the exact times or periods
during which a particular duty should be performed, Figure 1.1 contains a rough timetable
demonstrating the parallels between a woman’s day as he describes it and that of a (brahmin)
man as described in smṛti literature in general.
A large proportion of the āhnika rulings cover activities to be carried out in the last
division of night. In addition to most of the duties prescribed for men, a woman must also
prepare the day’s quota of rice or millet, sweep the house and smear it with cow-dung, per-
form the ritual of threshold worship, and attend to the cows. When her husband performs
the morning fire sacrifice, she assists him. At dawn, she makes an offering to the sun. In
the morning, while her husband studies the Veda and works at his profession, she attends
to her household duties. At midday, when he performs, the five great sacrifices, she assists
him. When he eats, she serves him, eating what he leaves. After the meal, while he studies
the epics and purāṇas, she clears away the meal, washes, sweeps and cleans. In the evening,
6 JULIA LESLIE

while he is visiting friends, she is still doing housework, for the food for the evening meal
must be prepared afresh. At the evening sacrifice, she assists him again. Her final āhnika
duties concern going to bed and sexual intercourse. Several of these duties are beautifully
illustrated in two palm-leaf manuscripts in the British Library collection: milking the cows,
cooking, serving food to her husband, tending her children, nursing an infant, massaging her
husband’s feet as he lies in bed, eating the remains of his meal, and a variety of postures for
sexual intercourse (British Library: OR. 11689, OR. 11612; cf. Lostly 1980: 14–45; cf. Gaur
1980: 23–5). The paintings depicting children and the wife’s involvement with them draw
our attention to a curious omission in the Strīdharmapaddhati; while Tryambaka assumes
that the good wife will produce sons, he not only shows no further interest in them, but
makes no allowance for them in her day.

Topics discussed in relation to women Equivalent topics for men

Before dawn
1. waking waking
2. housework (grinding grain etc.)
3. ablutions ablutions
At dawn
1. fire worship fire sacrifice
2. offering water to the sun saṃdhyā ritual
worship of special deity
Topics discussed in relation to women Equivalent topics for men
Day
1. paying respect to elders homage to teacher
2. housework Vedic study
work for maintenance of family
3. midday rituals: bath and saṃdhyā
devapūjā pañca mahāyajñāh (i.e., Vedic recitation to
vaiśvadevapūjā brahman; sacrifice to the gods; tarpana for
atithipūjā the ancestors; bali offerings for all beings;
atithipūjā)
4. meal time duties: midday meal
serving at meals,
bali offering,
clearing away, study of epics, purāṇa,
housework, etc. visiting friends, etc.
Evening
1. fire worship, etc. evening samdhyā
2. going to bed and intercourse
Figure 1.1 Parallel Timetable for Women and Men
 Chapter 1  The Daily Duties of Women 7

Tryambaka also specifies no time when a woman may simply rest. Indeed, he lists ‘sleeping
in the daytime’ among the six things that corrupt women and which they should therefore
avoid (see section IV, p. 275, note 6). Since it is assumed that a woman has no education, it
is less surprising that she is not advised to study. Judging by Tryambaka’s prohibitions on
‘roaming around’ and spending time in other people’s homes (section IV, p. 275, note 6),
we would not expect her to be allowed to visit friends, certainly not on her own. Taken at
face value, then, a woman should always be busy about her work. The traditional pattern of
an Indian day, however, suggests that the hot period after the midday meal might well be
given to rest. It is at this time that women might be encouraged to listen to readings from
the epics or purāṇas, or even from a work such as the Strīdharmapaddhati (Introduction,
pp. 22–23 and 232–23).
Before embarking on a discussion of each ruling, it may be instructive to consider at the
outset what types of rullngs these may be. The crucial question is how each ruling relates
to its equivalent for men. The answer takes the form of four quite distinct categories.
First, there are those rulings which, according to Tryambaka, are exactly the same for
women as for men. These include the rulings concerning what one may or may not see
first thing in the morning (darśanīyāny adarśanīyāni ca; section IIA, pp. 54–57), urinat-
ing and defecating (mūtrapurīṣotsargah, section IIA, pp. 69–71), and cleaning the teeth
(dantadhāvanam; section IIA, pp. 78–82). This group of rulings clearly requires the opera-
tion of the ūha of gender (see section I, pp. 40–43).
Secondly, there are those rulings which are the same in principle for women as for men,
but different in detail. For example, the rules on purification (śaucam) are applicable to men
and women except that for women the colour of the earth used and the number of lumps
required is different (section IIA, pp. 71–72). The rule concerning sipping (ācamanam) and
bathing (snānam) also fall into this category. When a twice-born man sips, the water must
touch his heart, throat or palate; when a woman sips, it need only touch her mouth (section
IIA, pp. 75–77). A man performs his ritual bath with mantras, a woman without (section
IIA, p. 83). Generally speaking, however, both rituals are applicable to women as well as
men. Similarly, both men and women must wake early, but the wife should wake before
her husband (section IIA, p. 52). Both must eat but the wife should serve her husband and
eat only what he leaves (section IIC, pp. 221–27). This is a large group of rulings and the
implications are interesting. I shall deal with each in its place.
The third category, a very important one, consists of those rulings in which the wife
assists her husband in his ritual obligations (pativratabhāginī). In the early morning medi-
tation (devatādhyānam), for example, the man must meditate ‘with his wife’ (section IIA,
pp. 52–54). In the fire sacrifice (agniśuśrūṣā), although the wife has little to do, she must
be present for the ritual to bear fruit (section IIB, pp. 132–41). In the ceremony of paying
homage and hospitality to guests (atithipūjā), the wife must prepare the food and serve the
guest on her husband’s behalf (section IIC, pp. 210–14). These rulings indicate the role and
status of the wife in the joint ritual duties enjoined upon the married couple. I shall deal
with this in some detail in the section on serving the sacred fire (agniśuśrūṣā) (section IIB,
pp. 107–15).
Finally, there are the duties peculiar to women. These are predominantly rulings concern-
ing housework, such as grinding grain (section IIA, pp. 58–9), cleaning the house (p. 59),
­smearing it with cow-dung (pp. 59–63), clearing away way after the meal (section IIC, pp.
8 JULIA LESLIE

229–33), and so on. As is clear from the parallel timetable, these duties are to be performed
when the husband is studying religious literature or working for the family maintenance. They
are thus both part of a woman’s religious path and her contribution to the family. The parallel
with the man’s religious duties becomes more apparent in the context of Manu’s dictum on
marriage for women a wife serving her husband is like a student serving his teacher; and her
household duties are equivalent to her husband’s performance of the fire sacrifice (Manu II.67;
see Section I, p. 35, note 16). Looked at from this point of view, household tasks become part
of the powerful vrata or religious observance of the wife. Hence the high tone in which these
apparently mundane tasks are described.
 Chapter 2 Position and Status
of Women in the
Upaniṣads*

T. R. SHARMA

The Upaniṣads are the repository of ancient philosophical discussions as visualised by

the Āryans. The Āryans being very much impressed by the phenomena of the nature right
from the time of the Ṛgveda had started interpreting the nature in a philosophical manner.
This tradition got fully matured in the times of the Upaniṣads. The vast majority of the
philosophical analysis, as depicted in the Upaniṣads, points at this maturity of the early
Āryans. A careful reading of the Upaniṣadic literature shows that the whole gamut of this
philosophical analysis was not in isolation with regard to man and woman taken together
representing the whole universe. We can very well form an imaginative picture of the posi-
tion and status of women from the speculative thinking of the seers of the Upaniṣads, whose
prime concern was to establish the supremacy of the Ātman doctrine. It may be pointed out
here that it is not an easy task to extract exact information from the Upaniṣads which are
more metaphysical in nature than social.
Among the major Upaniṣads it is the Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad, according to which, woman
is an essential and integral part of man’s personality, and he becomes complete with the
company of a woman only. This Upanisad tries to emphasise that husband and wife are like
the two parts of sky. The whole of the firmament is visualised as two parts of the sky in the
Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad (1.4.3)1 in the form of husband and wife. It is stated in this connec-
tion that one part is incomplete without the other. This clearly shows that women played an
important role in the society and she provided a sense of completeness. It is partinent here
to examine the comments of Śaṅkara2 who observes that half of the sky in the form of man
is empty without the woman, and man becomes complete with the company of woman by

* Reproduced with permission from L.K. Tripathi (ed.) Position and Status of Women in Ancient India, Seminar Papers,
Vol. I. Published by Department of Ancient Indian History Culture and Archaeology, Banaras Hindu University,
Varanasi–221005 (1988), pp. 41–46.
1
Tasmād ayamākāśaḥ strīyā pūryate.
2
Yasmāt ayaṁ pūruṣārdh ākāśaḥ striyārdhaśūnyaḥ punar udvahanāt tasmāt pūryate striyārdhena.
Śaṅkara on BU., 1.4.3, Gorakhpur, Saṁvat, 2029.

9
10 T. R. SHARMA

­ arrying her. This passage very vividly points out that man’s personality is incomplete
m
without the partnership of woman and his personality is developed into a complete one by
marrying her.3
The Upaniṣads generally follow the tradition of the Saṁhitās in holding the woman in high
esteem. From the early times the woman is supposed to look after the household affairs of the
family. The Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad (4.5.1) speaks of Yājñavalkya having two wives, namely
Maitreyī and Kātyāyanī. Out of these two, Maitreyī is more popularly known as Bhrhmavādinī
for her philosophical bent of mind. It is mentioned in this Upaniṣad that ordinarily the woman
folk was mainly interested in the household affairs, and such women were known as Strīprajñā.
This word (Strīprajñā) has been explained by Śaṅkara as those women is have the intellect
concerned (only) with the household affairs.4 Kātyāyanī was this type of a lady, whereas the
other one, that is, Maitreyī, being not much interested in the household affairs, was popularly
known as Brahmavādinī or Brahmavadanaśiiā. That is the reason why Yājñavalkya chose
Maitreyī for philosophical discussion leaving aside Kātyāyanī.5 Incidentally this passage is
indicative of the fact that polygamy was prevalent in the times of the Upaniṣads.
Like modern times, the woman was considered as a biological necessity for the birth of a
son in the Upaniṣads. It was thus the duty of the woman to take care of the semen deposited
in her by the husband and she was very much protected by the husband in this process.6
Woman has been rightly associated with Kāma in the Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad (3.9.11).
Śaṅkara7 in this connection observes that the association of a man with a woman in love is
a spiritual union and woman is its chief deity. This passage indirectly reflects the ancient
Indian tradition of considering Kāma (love) as part of the spiritual discipline of a man.8 The
Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad (6.4.6)9 compares woman with wealth and praises her by saying that she
is the best form of wealth (Lakṣmī) among the whole of the womanfolk in the world. Woman
was not considered as a mere means of enjoyment in the times of the early Upaniṣads. It is
noteworthy that how ancient seers of the Upaniṣads had tried to give a religious feeling to the
mundane act of sleeping with a woman. In the Chāndogyopaniṣad (2.13.1)10 the act of sleeping

3
Cf. (i) Ardho ha vā eṣa ātmano yaj jāyā. Tasmāt yāvaj jāyāṁ na vindate naiva tāvat prajāyate’sarvo hi tāvad
bhavati. ŚB., 5.2.1.10.
(ii) Ardho ha vā eṣa ātmano yat patnī. TS., 6.1.8.5.

(iii) Tasmāt puruṣo jāyāṁ vittvā kṛtstaram ivātmānaṁ manyate. AA., 1.2.5.
4
Strīprajñā-striyāṁ yā ucitā sā strīprajñā-saiva yasyāḥprajñā gṛhaprayojanānveṣāṇalakṣaṇā sā strīprajñā tasmin
kāle āsit Kāty āyānī.  śaṅkara on BU., 4.5.1.
5
Athaivaṁ sati ha kila yājñavalkyo’ nyat Pūrvasmād gārhastha-lakṣaṇāt vṛttāt pārivrājyalakṣaṇāṁvṛttam
upakariṣyann upācikīrṣuḥ san. Ibid.
6
 (i) AU., 2.1, Gorakhpur, Saṁvat 2029.
(ii) Ibid., 2.2.
(iii) Ibid., 2.3.
7
Ya evāyaṁ Kāmamayaḥ puruṣo’ dhyātmamapi kāmamaya eva. Tasya kā devateti striya iti hovāca; strīto hi kāmasya
dīptirjāyate.  Śaṅkara on BU., 3.9.11.
8
For a similar idea, see BU., 4.1.6 and 4.3.13.
9
 (i) Śrī ha vā eṣā strīṇām.
(ii) Cf. Strīyāś ca śriyaś ca geheṣu na viśeṣo’ sti kaścana.
MSm, 9.29.
10
Ṣtriyā saha śete sa udgīthaḥ.
 Chapter 2  Position and Status of Women in the Upaniṣads 11

with a woman has been described as Udgītha. The sight of a woman was always considered to
be auspicious in the times of the Upaniṣads. The Chāndogyopaniṣad (5.2.7-8) while speaking
of a ritual known as Mantha states that if a man sees a woman then he should think that his
ritual has become prosperous.11 It is further stated in this Upaniṣad, in relation to the works
associated with the fulfilments of desires, that if a man sees a woman even in a dream then he
should think that there is prosperity or fulfilment of the objects of the actions being performed.12
Women enjoyed a very respectable position in the times of the Principal Upaniṣads—this
fact is very well borne-out by the above analysis. There is another class of the Upaniṣads
known as Sectarian or minor Upaniṣads. These Upaniṣads are many and varied in nature.
They are popularly known as Sectarian for they eulogise the main deity of a particular sect.
Some of them are designated as Vaiṣṇava, some as Śaiva, and some as Śākta Upaniṣads;
among them Viṣṇu, Śiva and Śakti are respectively elevated to the position of the supreme
God. From the study of these Sectarian Upaniṣads it can be said that the old bias against
the woman of the Vedic times and of the Manusmṛti has greatly influenced some of their
Vaiṣṇava Upaniṣads. It is well known that the Śūdra and the woman are debarred from the
Vedic studies in the Smṛtis. It is very important to note that this bias against women regard-
ing Vedic studies is nowhere reflected in the principal Upaniṣads. A somewhat plausible
explanation for this bias against the women is offered by Altekar who observes:

It must be pointed out that exclusion of woman from Vedic studies and sacrifices was not due to
any deliberate plan to lower their status. Custodians of the Vedic lore honestly believed that no one
should be allowed to recite and use the Vedic mantras who had not studied them properly. Women
found it impossible to devote the necessary time for this purpose on account of their early marriage.
It is therefore, but fair they should not be allowed to invite on themselves and their relatives those
dreadful calamities, which were honestly believed to result from an incorrect recitation of Vedic
stanzas. The desire was not to humiliate woman but rather to save them from dire consequences.13

Among the Vaiṣṇava Upaniṣads, the Nṛsiṁhatāpinyupaniṣad (Pūrva)14 (1.7) declares that
the preceptors do not desire to give Sāvitrī Praṇava, Yajus and Lakṣmī to the women and
the Śūdras. Furthermore, this Upaniṣad makes the general statement that whosoever knows
the 32 lettered Sāman mantra, such as a man, obtains immortality.15 According to this
Upaniṣad, if a Śūdra or a woman per chance knows Sāvitri, Lakṣmī, Yajus and Praṇava,
he or she goes down dead.16 There is a clear-cut direction for a preceptor not to give any

11
Sa yadi strīyaṁ paśyet samṛddhaṁ karmeti vidyāt.

Ch. U., 5.2.7.
12
(i) Yadā karmasu kāmyeṣu strīyaṁ svapneṣu paśyati samṛddhiṁ tatra jāniyāt.  Ibid. 5.2.8.
(ii) Śaṅkara interprets prosperity as the fulfilment of the objects of actions.
 Cf. Yadā karmasu kāmyeṣu kāmārtheṣu strīyaṁ svap neṣu svapnadarśaneṣu
svapnakāleṣu vā paśyati samrddhiṁ tatra jānīyāt. Karmaṇāṃ phalaniṣpattir bhaviṣyatīti jāniyād ityarthaḥ.
Ṡaṅkara on Ch:. U., 5.2.8.
13
Altekar, A. S., PWHC, Delhi, 1962, pp. 205–6.
14
Sāvitriṁ praṇavaṁ yajurlakṣmīṁ strīśūdrāya necchanti. p. 180.
15
Dvātriṁśad akṣaraṁ sāma jāniyād yo jānīte so’ mṛtattvaṁ ca gacchati. Nṛsiṁhapūrvatāpinyupaniṣad, 1.7, Adyar,
1953, p 180.
16
Sāvitriṁ lakṣmīṁ yajuḥ praṇavaṁ yadi jānīyāt strī śūdra sa mṛto’ dhogacchati.: Ibid., 1.7, p. 180
12 T. R. SHARMA

of these four to a Śūdra or a woman.17 If a preceptor gives any one of them, he also goes
down dead along with him or her.18 The commentator Upaniṣadbrahmayogin observes in
the commentary thereon that if a woman or a Śūdra happens to know the Sāvitrī etc. through
some other means, she and the Śūdra go down dead just by its knowledge.19 The worst type
of Narakas are recommended for a preceptor who gives such a knowledge to either a Śūdra
or to a woman, according to the commentator Upaniṣadbrahmayogin.20
As we have seen above, the sectarian Upaniṣads, particularly the Vaiṣṇava Upaniṣads
do not recommend the Vedic studies for women in general. There is another Vaiṣṇava
Upaniṣad known as Kṛṣṇopaniṣad which compares women with the hymns of the Ṛgveda.
This also states that they are of the form of Brahman.21 This comparison of women with
Brahman clearly indicates two diametrically opposed positions, as enjoyed by the women
in the times of these Upaniṣads. On the one hand they were despised to the extent of being
denied the knowledge of Sāvitrī, Praṇava, Yajus and Lakṣmī and on the other hand they
were held in high esteem because they are described as of the form of Brahman.22 A pos-
sible explanation for such a situation in the times of the sectarian Upaniṣads can be offered
by saying that on the one side these Upaniṣads were holding women in high esteem and on
the other side they were greatly influenced by the popularity of the Smṛti literature, which
had just preceded these Upaniṣads, wherein the law-givers had debarred the Śūdras and
the women from the Vedic studies. From the study of these sectarian Upaniṣads and more
so the Vaiṣṇava Upaniṣads it appears that they were greatly influenced by this social bias
against the women particularly in the field of education.
In the above lines a brief survey has been made with regard to the position and status of
women in the Upaniṣadic age. This survey has also included for this purpose the sectarian
Upaniṣads. After a careful study of the principal Upaniṣads it can be said that women in
general enjoyed a very respectful position in the society. There were mainly two types of
women in the society, that is, one type of women devoted themselves to the higher learning
and the other type of women was mainly engaged in the household affairs. The personality
of a man was supposed to be incomplete without woman. His personality was completed by
marrying a woman. It goes without saying that woman was praised as the best form of Lakṣmī
(wealth) among the whole of the feminine world. Influenced by the Smṛti literature the sectar-
ian Upaniṣads in general and the Vaiṣṅava Upaniṣads in particular developed a particular bias
against the women. These Vaiṣṇava Upaniṣads did not allow women to be given the knowledge
of Sāvitrī, Praṇava, Yajus and Lakṣmī. The Upaniṣads held women in general in high esteem.


17
Cf. Bhāryā putraś ca dāsaś ca traya evādhanāḥ smṛtāḥ/
Yatte samadhigacchanti yasya te tasya taddhanam//
MSm. 8.416.
18
Tasmāt sarvadā nācaṣṭe yadyācaṣṭe sa ācāryas tenaiva sa mṛto’ dho gacchati. Ibid.
19
Sāvitryādikaṁ strīśūdraJātiḥ upāyāntareṇa yadi jāniyāt vedanamātreṇa sa mṛto’ dho gacchati. Upaniṣadbrahmayogin
on Ibid., 1.7, p. 180.
20
Yadyācaṣṭe tadā strīśūdraguruḥ so’ yam apakīrtibhāk vyādhyādināmṛṭaḥ kumbhīpākādinarakajātam anubhūya tataḥ
śūkarādiyoniṁ sthāvarabhāvaṁ vā gacchati. Ibid.
21
Brahmarūpā ṛcaḥ strīyaḥ Kṛṣṇopaniṣad, 13, Adyar, 1953, p. 24.
22
Cf. Tā vai striyaḥ brahmarūpā eva bhavantītyarthaḥ.
Upaniṣadbrahmayogin on Ibid., 13, p. 27.
 Chapter 3 Woman in the
Household*

M. A. INDRA

The home, in ancient India, was a perfectly human institution. It was a living organism,
every part of which was vital and fully conscious of the other part. Its unity and solidarity
was unique; no incidental wave of disintegration or disruption could ever disturb it. For
ages, this wonderful institution exercised a very healthy influence over all aspects of national
and corporate life. In this pattern of vitality and unity, woman filled, by no means a place
of insignificance. Here in this sphere at least, she enjoyed abundance of honour, affection
and sympathy.
In the Rigvedic time, we find the home well- established, with the father as patriarch, pos-
sessing complete control over the household, where the centre was primarily the woman—the
very embodiment of that great moral and spiritual force, that ultimately worked itself out in
the creation and development of modern civilised society.
It was the renowned sage Vishvamitra, who realised the moral and the spiritual force of
woman, thousands of years ago, and ecstatically declared, ‘Fayedastam’, that is, the wife
is the home (3-53-4)’ and nobody has spoken a greater truth since those remarkable and
memorable words were uttered.
The wife was verily the home1 and woman the main spring of those human activities that
uplifted the race from its savage condition. The ancient Aryans never looked upon woman as
the cause of human downfall-as she was later supposed to be. On the other hand, the important
part that she played in advancing human civilisation was fully appreciated and recognised.
The very creation of the universe was ascribed by the Aryans, to the union of Prakriti and
Purusha ‘nature beneath and will or Power above’ (X-129-5). Woman is Prakriti and man is
Purusha and union of these two has created the home and made the world what it is to-day.

* Previously published in The Status of Women in Ancient India. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers (1955). pp. 22–40.
1
Shatapatha XII—8—2—6. According to the Shatapatha Brahman, the proper place for woman is the home. Therefore
they should be respected in all matters of the household. (x`gk% oS iRU;S izfr‘Bk%)

13
14 M. A. INDRA

Thus, wife was regarded an indispensable member of the family without whom the
consummation of human life was not possible. It was generally made imperative on all for
the proper discharge of their duties-spiritual and earthly-to marry and to have progeny. The
necessity of a female partner was so great that the scriptures allowed man to remarry at once
after the death of his wife; else he could not perform any religious rite.
According to ancient ideals, the wife is the half of man and hence as long as he does not
obtain her, so long is he not regenerated, for so long is he incomplete.2 This idea has been
well-preserved even so late as in the Epic literature which clearly lays down that a man’s
half is his wife; therefore she is called Ardhangini. The wife is her husband’s best of friends.
The wife is the source of dharma, artha and Kama. The wife is the source of salvation.’3
Again, ‘those that have wives can perform religious acts; those that have led domestic lives,
those that have; wives, can be happy and those that have wives can achieve good fortune’.4
The Mahabharata does not indulge in any exaggeration when it goes to the extent of
saying that ‘the sweet-speeched wives are their husbands’ friends on the occasion of joy.
They are as fathers on occasions of religious acts. They are as mothers in hours of illness
and woe’.5 Indeed in the domestic life, woman used to be supreme. In regulating activities
in the home, her word was to be final. Immediately after her marriage, she is instructed
to ‘go to the house to be a mistress there’.6 She is further asked to bear full sway over her
husband’s father, mother, brothers and sisters.7 She is again and again addressed as the
queen of the house, who rules over all the members of the family as ocean rules over all the
rivers of the world.8 In another verse of the Rigveda she, after being blessed with happiness
and prosperity, is asked to look after the affairs of the house and to guard its interests, as
sedulously as possible.9
From the preceding references, it is abundantly plain that in the Vedic India, women
occupied a very proud position in the household. They were not merely slaves of their lords,
as they decidedly became in the later ages. To them were entrusted the heavy responsibilities
and duties of maintaining good order in the family. All the component parts of the house
owed their systematic working to the central authority—the wife, who never failed to make
her presence felt. In fact, she was the very axis on which the wheel of household-life in
ancient India turned.10
If we compare the above position of an Indian woman with that of her sister in the ancient
history of any western country, we have every reason to keep our heads erect with just pride
about the comparative loftiness of our hoary civilisation.

2
Shatapatha Brahman, V—2—1—10.
3
Mahabharata, Adiparva, 74—40.
4
Mahabharata, Adiparva, 74—42.
5
Mahabharata, Adi Parva, 74—43.
6
Rigveda, X—85—26.
7
Ibid, X—85—46.
8
Atharva, XIV—l—43.
9
Rigveda, X—85—27.
10
The words Pati (master) and Patni (mistress) used in the Rigveda, signify the equality of position of husband and
wife in the household.
 Chapter 3  Woman in the Household 15

Under the laws of Rome, the son and the wife were classed, not as a person, but as a
thing in the family of pater familias over whom the latter exercised absolute jurisdiction
of life and death.
If the wife was seduced by another, the action maintainable against the seducer was not
that of adultery, but one for theft. As both the son and the daughter occupied the position
of a chattel, they could not marry without their parents’ consent.
A Roman marriage differed from a Hindu marriage in that the contracting parties in the
one case were the husband and wife, While the husband and wife play no part at all in a
Hindu marriage, Which is arranged for them by their parents.
In Greece, the wife looked after and performed other menial offices; in Rome, the wife
was somewhat free from those obligations, but still her position was not that of a mistress.
The position of the Hindu wife in the household was certainly more that of a domina than
that of a dependant.
We may again quote here at some length the passages from the Mahabharata which
will conclusively elucidate the point that the place of women in the household was that
of honour and respect and that as wives they enjoyed not only the rights of equality, but
even the privilege of superiority: ‘Her father and brothers and father-in-law and husband’s
brothers should show her every respect and adore her with ornaments, if they be desirous
of reaping benefit, for such conduct on their part always produces considerable happiness
and advantage.’11
‘If the wife does not like her husband or fails to please him from such dislike or absence
of joy, the husband can never have children for increasing his family.’12
‘Women O King, should always be adored and treated with honour. There the very gods
are said to be propitiated, where women are treated with respect.’13 ‘Those houses which
are cursed by women meet with destruction and ruin, as if scorched by some Atharvan rites.
Such houses lose their splendour. Their growth and prosperity ceases.’14
‘By respecting women, man is sure to acquire the fruition of all his objects.’15
The inference that in the household women were treated with honour and due consid-
eration, is also supported by those two erudite scholars—Macdonell and Keith. As per the
distinguished professors,

[The poetical ideal of the family] was undoubtedly hight (Rv. VIII-31-5, 6) and we have no reason to
doubt that it was often fulfilled. Moreover, the wife on her marriage was at once given an honoured
position in the house, she is emphatically mistress of her husband’s house, exercising authority over
her father-in-law, her husband’s brother and his unmarried sisters. No doubt, the case contemplated
is one, in which the eldest son of a family has become the head, owing to the decrepitude of the par-
ents, his wife then taking the place of the mistress of the joint family, while the brothers and sisters
are still unmarried. It is not inconsistent with the great stress elsewhere (Rv. VIII-6-24) laid on the
respect due to a father-in-law, who then is probably regarded as still in possession of his faculties

11
Mahabharata, Anushasan Parva XVI—3.
12
Ibid. XVI—4.
13
Mahabharata Anushasan Parva XVI—5.
14
Ibid. XVI—6.
15
Ibid. XVI—7.
16 M. A. INDRA

and controls,the house, while his son continues to live with him. The respect would no doubt equally
apply if the son had set up a separate home of his own.16

Now a few words may also be said about the duties and responsibilities which a wife in the
household generally used to perform. A rough idea of her daily programme, can be formed
from a few passages in the Rigveda which will throw as well an interesting side-light on
the status allotted to the fair sex.
A woman in ancient India was regarded as an excellent housewife, who rose early with
the dawn and roused all from sleep and sent the servants about their respective business,17
She at once applied herself to the performance of her household duties-dusting, sweeping,
and washing the floor that admitted of washing and cleansing the cooking pots and utensils.
She bathed early and offered jointly with her husband the morning oblations to the sacred
household-fire, the Lord of the house. Another oblation was offered in the midday and a
third in the evening.
Her first and foremost duty was to keep the sacred flames alive. As soon as the cows were
milked and milk brought home in pails, she stirred it over the fire churned some of it for
butter and proceeded to prepare the meals of the day. The young daughters took charge of
the little ones and duly fed and nursed them. After midday meal she attended to her toilet,
dressed herself and the children neatly.18 Often she had male and female servants under her,
whom she employed in their respective duties and treated kindly.19
She also looked after the cows and other domestic animals and supervised the work
entrusted to her.20 Occasionally, accompanied by other women, she rambled about and
climbed the hills to pluck flowers.21 She was dutiful to her husband’s parents affectionate
to her husband’s brothers and sisters, and devotedly attached to her lord, who was never
slow in reciprocating her sentiments.22
The conception of an ideal housewife is still more advanced in the Epic literature. But we
have every reason to believe that this conception was hardly translated Into actual practice
and it does not in any way reflect the real conditions, prevailing in those ages However,
we feel persuaded to record it, only to give a faint idea of the existing beliefs and notions,
obout ideal womanhood.

16
Vedic Index, I—pp. 485–6.
In ‘Vedic religion’ Professor Macdonell also writes (pp. 158):
‘The normal household had one husband and one wife on a level of equality; at the hearth which was the altar
of sacrifice and even sometimes composed the hymns’.
17
Rigveda, I—124—4.
18
Rigveda, I—123—11.
19
Ibid. X—85—43.
20
Ibid. X—85—44.
21
Ibid. 15—6—2.
22
Rigveda, X—85—46.
 Chapter 3  Woman in the Household 17

Thus in the Anushasan Parva23 of the great Epic:

Gifted with a good disposition, endued with sweet speech, sweet conduct and sweet features and always
looking at the face of her husband and deriving as much joy from it as she does from looking at the face
of her child that chaste woman who regulates deeds by observing the prescribed restraints-comes to
be considered as truly righteous in her conduct. Listening to the duties of married life and performing
all those sacred duties, that woman who considers virtue as the foremost of all the objects of pursuits,
who observes the same vows which are observed by her husband, who adorned with chastity looks
upon her husband as a god, who waits upon and serves him as if he were a god, who surrenders her
own will completely to that of her husband’s—who is cheerful, who observes excellent vows, who
is gifted with good features and whose heart is completely devoted to her husband, so much so that
she never thinks even of any other man, is considered as truly righteous in conduct. That wife who,
even when addressed harshly and looked upon with angry eyes by her husband, appears cheerful to
him, is said to be truly devoted to her husband. She who does not cast her eyes upon the moon or
the sun or a tree that has a masculine name, who is worshipped by her husband and who is gifted
with beautiful features, is considered to be truly righteous lady. The woman who treats her husband
with the affection which one shows towards her child, even when he happens tn be poor or diseased
or weak or worn-out with the toil of travelling, is considered to be as truly righteous in her conduct.

Shukracharya,24 a post-epic authority on the subject, records the real conditions and describes
the duties that a woman in the household was to perform. Thus, she was required to rise
earlier than her husband and after performing toilet she changed her night dress. Then she
smeared the floor of the house with cow-dung and cleansed the vessels of the daily sac-
rifice and the kitchen. The utensils were washed with hot water. After having done these
minor things, she daily bowed before her father-in-law and mother-in-law and then put on
the clothes which were given by her husband or father or other relations. She was further
required to follow her husband like the shadow of a tree and always be at his command
like a slave. She was to take meals when her husband had taken them. She was to spend
the whole day in considering matters entirely related to the house and was particularly to
be attentive to the needs and desires of her lord—always subordinating her own comforts
and convenience to his.
The above uncharitable remarks about women in the Sanskrit literature have led many
an English scholar to believe that the status occupied by women was far from honourable.
Says Dr Barnett in his ‘Antiquities of India’ (pp. 109), ‘Women per se, however did not
rank high in the eyes of the law which laid down as a principle that a woman is for all her
life in tutelage, first to her father, then to her husband and lastly to her son. A wife who bore
only daughters or no children at all could be superseded by her husband marrying another
woman, who then took precedence of her. Even under the most favourable conditions the
nuptial bed was not one of roses for the wife. She was expected to show her devotion to her
husband by the most humble and minute services, preparing all the meals of the household,
eating the food left by her husband and sons, washing the kitchen vessels, smearing the
floors with burnt cow-dung aud respectfully embracing her lord’s feet at bed time’.

23
Mahabharata, Anushasan Parva, CXLVI.
24
Shukhra, IV—4, 6, 7, 14.
18 M. A. INDRA

The foregoing strong views expressed by the learned doctor are perhaps an over-statement,
but by no means, without some foundation. In fact, they are substantially true. Manu—the
highest authority on social matters—concedes to women only a place of dependence in
the household. According to him, a woman must be kept in subordination, day and night,
by the males of the family.25 Not only a girl or a young woman but even an aged one is not
to do anything independently even in her own house26. For, it is again emphasised, that a
woman’s father protects her in childhood, her husband protects her in youth and her sons
protect her in old age, she is never fit for independence.27 (Na stri swatantryam arhati)
In household affairs she is so much subservient to her husband that her very individuality
is submerged in that of her lord’s. A wife has been compared to a river and a husband to an
ocean27. After reaching the latter the former completely loses its separate entity. The qualities
of a wife are said to be identical with those of the husband. She falls or rises with the fall
or rise of her male associate. It is said that Akshamala, a woman of the lowest birth, being
united to Vasishtha and Sarangi being united to Mandapala became worthy of honour.28
Thus they attained eminence in the work by the respective good qualities of their husbands.
For guarding and controlling women, an interesting expedient has been devised by Manu
that ‘the husband should employ his wife in the collection and expenditure of wealth, in
keeping everything clean, in the fulfilment of religious duties, in the preparation of his food
and looking after the household utensils’.29
The idea of the subordination of woman in the household is supported by Yajnavalkya
also, who lays down that a woman should never be separated from her male protectors.30
The Mahabharata echoes the same sentiments in the Anushasan Parva, by observing that
‘a woman, at no period of her life, is free’.31 Again the great Epic gives expression to its
profound belief in the subservience of women by saying that, ‘Manu, on the eve of his
departure from the world, made over women to the care and protection of men, for they are
weak and that they fall an easy prey to evils.’32 Shukra generally holds women to be false

25
Manu, IX—2 2. Ibid, V—147.
26
Manu, IX—3 and V—148. Also Narada writes ‘Through independence woman goes to ruin, though she be born in
a noble family. Therefore the lord of creatures ordained dependence on them’ (XIII—30). See Baudhayana II—2—3,
4 5 and II—2—4—2 also Vasishtha V 1, 2. A woman is not independent; the males are her masters—including
father, husband and Sons.
The perpetual tutelage is however explained by some as nothing more than a control or supervision over the morals
of women, by those versed in the sacred scriptures and who are by reason of such training supposed to possess virtue
and selfcontrol. Thus a woman during the several guardianships at different periods of her life is restrained from
the doing of something –Akarya karanat–as Mitakshara puts it, and not that there is any restraint on her in respect
of the observance of what is commanded by the Shastras. (‘Position of Women’, pp. 41. by Dr. Dwarka Nath.) See
also Manu, IX 6, 7.
27
Manu, IX—32.
28
Ibid., IX—24.
29
Manu, IX—11.
30
Yajnavalkya, III—86.
31
Mahabharata, Anushasan Parva, XLVI—14—7.
32
Ibid., XLVI—14—2.
When Bhishma is asked by bewailing Draupadi as to the right of her husband Yudhishthira to pawn her in the
game of dice, when he himself was no longer a free man, having been lost to Shakuni, the royal sage is faced with
 Chapter 3  Woman in the Household 19

and treacherous. He instructs a husband never to trust his wife in a matter of dispute without
testing her words by his own direct observation.33 However, these remarks of Shukra are
insignificant in comparison with the greatly objectionable remarks about the female sex
which disfigure some of the chapters of the Anushasan Parva.
The subject is introduced in this way. The great sage Narada, in order to gain an insight
into female nature approaches courtezan Panch Shura, who after pretending reluctance to
besmirch the fair fame of her own sex, lets herself go with a venge ance and her delinea-
tion as explained by the gloss of the commentator Nilakantha is so obscene in some parts,
that it is impossible to quote it. Suffice it to say that it rivals the most depraved methods of
sensuality practised in the last days of the Roman Empire or in some of the modern coun-
tries of the West.34
Lest we console ourselves with the thought that nothing better could be expected of a
hardened sinner like Pancha Shura, in the next chapter, Yudhishthira is made to say very
uncomplimentary things about the female sex and his considered opinion is that ‘their
virtue is a mere tradition’. This is confirmed in the following chapter by no less a person-
age than Bhishma himself, who observes that women were virtuous in ages long past, and
tells the story of Ruchi-the wife of the sage Deva Sharma-who was long pursued by the god
Indra with foul designs, but without success, thanks to the vigilant care of the sage’s pupil,
‘who did not hesitate to cast the previous record of this lustful god in his teeth much to his
discomfiture and did his best to save her from being licked up by the King of the gods as
mischievous dog licks up the butter deposited at the sacrifice’.35
However, Bhishma in the end is charitable enough to say that both kinds of women, virtu-
ous and unchaste, are to be found in the world and then follow some verses full of dignified
respect for the gentle sex-which are more in consonance with the spotless character of the
great hero, who had led the pure life of celibacy in order that the sons of his step-mother
might not be deprived of the throne.
‘This mighty earth’, pronounces the great royal sage, is upheld by the great virtue of chaste
women—the mothers of the people. They should be respected, adorned and protected—the
gods delight to dwell where they are treated with respect; and where they are disregarded, all

anigmatic bewilderment and hesitatingly concedes to Yudhishthira the right of pawning Draupadi in as much as
she being his wife was perpetually subordinate to him even after be had been vanquished. A fully packed house
of ministers, preceptors, sages and law-givers also gave its tacit consent to Bhishma’s utteranee and witnessed the
molestation, of an Aryan lady, who but for the divine miracle, stood completely senseless at the imbecility of her
elders and resigned herself to the justice of her Lord. Needless to say that man’s injustice to woman was indemnified
by the merciful God in His strange manner.
33
Shukra, III—163.
34
‘Throughout her life,‘says a woman writer discussing the position of her sex in the days of Rome’s supremacy,
‘a woman was supposed to remain absolutely under the power of father, husband or guardian and to do nothing
without their consent. In ancient times this authority was so great that the father and husband could after calling a
family-council put the woman to death without public trial. The reason that women were so subjected to guardianship
was on account of unsteadiness of their character, wickedness of their sex and their ignorance of the legal matters’.
Eugene Hecker ‘A short history of woman’s rights with special reference to England and U.S.A.’, pp. 2.
35
Mahabharata, Anushasans Parva Ch. 46.
20 M. A. INDRA

religious observances come to naught. Prosperity is synonymous with women; a house which
is accursed of women does not shine, nor increases in prosperity, but loses all loveliness.
But the above excellent remarks are followed by the enunciation of the old Roman doctrine
which relegates woman to a perpetual state of tutelage.36 This doctrine, it will be observed,
has been, at first, expounded in Manu, where the good and bad points of the gentler sex are
described in detail. And it is clear from the perusal of other Dharma Shastras as well, that in
the post-epic ages, the place allotted to women in the household was that of subordination
and her voice, though supreme in ordinary domestic affairs, was of secondary importance
in matters, vitally affecting the whole family. The reason for the dependence and subser-
vience is mentioned by Asahya, a commentator on the Narada Smriti, who observes that
the Lord of creatures has ordained women to be dependants, because they have no right to
study the Shastras and consequently lack the knowledge to discriminate between right and
wrong and between Dharma and Adharma, since such discrimination is derived only from
the study of the Shastras. Thus we can understand that in the early Vedic age when women
could be initiated in the sacred lore, their position was not one of subordination and their
rights were equal to those of men; but with the withdrawal of that right, their general status
suffered. Really the incompetency of women to study the Vedic lore reduced them to the
inferior status of Shudras, who also were debarred from performing any sacrificial act. This
is also the reason why in numerous metrical texts of the Smritis and Epics, Stri and Shudra
are generally classed together in one category.37
There is one thing more to which we should like to refer here in the end, that the Hindu
Law was most one-sided and unfair towards women regarding conjugal fidelity. Even in this
delicate matter women were left cruelly alone and in a state of utter helplessness. While no
faithfulness was required on the part of a husband who could keep openly as many concubines
as he liked, without any detriment to his marital rights, the slightest unfaithfulness on the
part of a wife was severely punished. Says Manu, ‘Though unobservant of approved usage
or enamoured of another woman or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must certainly,
be revered as a god by a virtuous wife.’38
But the slightest unfaithfulness could deprive a woman of her conjugal rights, including
the right of maintenance. A husband however depraved, decrepit and destitute, was to be
worshipped by women as a god; but a wife on the least pretext could be put to severe social
ostracism, though not actually forsaken. The common sense as well as the sense of fair-play
requires that the rules of constancy and faithfulness—if they were held to be good—ought
to have been held uniformly good on either side. It is simply adding insult to injury, to
render the already weaker sex still more incapacitated in the eyes of law, and thus make it
absolutely dependent on and subservient to the sterner sex.
It is these unjust and inhuman rules that seem to have made the lot of women unbearable.
The subordination of women in the household appears to have gone to such proportions as

36
Mahabharata, Anushasana parva, Ch. 46.
37
Institutes of Narada by Dr Jolly, pp. 186.
Another reason for woman’s subjection to man is that a woman has to perpetuate the race; so she has to be pro-
tected in every way from the sordid struggles of the world and not to be exposed to physical and economic strain.
38
Manu, V—154 also Gautama, XVIII—2, 3.
 Chapter 3  Woman in the Household 21

to allow husbands to have complete mastery over their persons and even to permit their sale.
These indications in some Dharmashastras which go to prove the fact that at certain stages
of the Indian civilisation, women could be bought and and sold like ordinary movable and
immovable property. Says Narada in Chapter 12, verse 53 of his Dharmashastra,
‘The issue of these women, who have been purchased for a price, belongs to the begetter,
but when nothing has been paid for a woman, his off-spriug belong to her legitimate husband.’
The Asura form of marriage among the ancient Hindus was nothing but a sale of the
daughter by the father. According to the Mahabharata, the practice of sale and purchase of
daughter has been known to human beings for a long time. But it goes to the credit of the
royal sage Bhismha that he disapproves of the practice by laying down that ‘no one should
bestow his daughter upon any person by sale. A wife should never be purchased. Nor should
a father sell his daughter.’
Manu also is not uncharitable in this respect. He unequivocally denounces the usage of
giving daughter for a price. ‘Even a Shudra’, says he,

ought not to take a nuptial fee when he gives away his daughter, for he who takes a fee, sells his
daughter covering the transaction by another name. Neither ancients nor moderns who were good
men have done such a deed. Nor have we heard in former creation of such a thing as the covert sale
of a daughter for a fixed price, called a nuptial fee. Therefore no father who knows the law must
take even the smallest gratuity for his daughter; for a man who through avarice takes a gratuity is
seller of his off-spring.39

Baudhayana’s protest also against the sale of a daughter is vehement. He declares that ‘a
female who has been purchased for money is not a wife; she cannot assist at secrifices
offered to the gods or the manes’. He ordains heavy punishment for fathers who sell their
daughters for a fee.40
Notwithstanding the above sympathetic observations made by Manu, we have every
reason to believe that his general attitude towards women was one of respectful distrust
and reverent disbelief.41 He, most certainly, treated them as caged birds in the household
and regarded them as unworthy of sharing the serious responsibilities of man. In his opin-
ion, women were ornaments of the house, who were to be kept safe and-looked after with
utmost care and vigilance. The only duties that they had to discharge were confined to the
four-walls of the house. Even in this limited sphere woman was not an absolute mistress as
she certainly was in the Vedic times, but a mere dependant always subordinate to the male
members of the family. This is what was the position of woman in the household.

39
Manu, IX—100.
40
Bandhayana, I—11—21—2.
41
Manu, III—51.
 Chapter 4 Economic Rights of
Ancient Indian Women*

SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

The Vedas (especially, the Rig Veda Saṃhitā) are generally silent about the economic con-
ditions of women in that period. Although some data may be gleaned occasionally for the
economic position of men, their profession and their prosperity, very little is known about
the women. We know that Vedic women carded and possibly spun wool, fetched water and
tended cattle but we do not know whether they earned anything other than the bare main-
tenance for these services. Undoubtedly women looked after household duties; the kitchen
and the nursery were in their charge, but then as now, these services were not measured in
economic terms and, therefore, no payment was made. The maid had no separate identity,
this she acquired, after a fashion, only at marriage. The Brāhmaṇas categorically call a son
a blessing, a girl child a curse; so except affectionate parents, others would look upon the
daughter as a nuisance, to put it mildly, on sufferance at home until she is given away at
marriage.
Atri in a late Saṃhitā, however, says that a maiden had a share in her father’s, brother’s
or ancestral property.1 This property she was free to sell, mortgage or hold as her own.
Obviously, we are now thinking of the kulapā kanyā, the ‘amāju’ or ‘amājurā’, the old maid.
In literature, we do not see her except as a virtuous ‘brahmacārinī’, the ‘Sāṃkrtyāyani’ or
the ‘Paṇḍitakauśikī’, the spiritual descendants of the Upanisadic ‘brahmavādinī’ to whom
possessing, selling or mortgaging property had not the least of significance. Possibly
there were other old maids who were neither learned nor given to meditation, who needed
money to live on and perhaps to live well and independently. It may be that in exceptional
circumstances they could own property. But even Atri does not mention the right to donate
property. We shall come to this later.
‘A maiden who is bought or sold should never be taken as a wife.’2 This proves that
maidens could be bought or sold.

* Reproduced with permission from Tanika Sarkar. Previously published in Sukumari Bhattacharji’s Women and
Society in Ancient India. Basumati Corporation Limited. Calcutta (1994), pp. 42–61.

22
 Chapter 4  Economic Rights of Ancient Indian Women 23

In dire circumstances by the consent of both the parents, say some scriptures. The son
begotten on a wife bought as a girl was debarred from performing the obscquial rites for the
father. For the sake of marriage a virgin’s respectability, that is, social viability as a virgin
could not be tarnished at will. He, who does so out of spite, had to pay a fine of 225 panas:3
so her social prestige had an economic value. He who gives a girl with some defects, sup-
pressing them, to the groom has to pay a fine of 96 paṇa.4
‘A twice-born who knows his wife’s friend (presumably a virgin)…should perform an
ordinary penance and give away a milch cow.’5
Manu lays down that Brahmin brothers should separately give a quarter of their shares
(in parental property) to an unmarried sister. Failing to do so brings doom upon them.6
Gautama says that unmarried daughters not well settled in life shall inherit the property of
the mother’s deceased husband.7 There is a controversy about whether the dowry of the
unmarried daughter should be provided by the brothers before or after the mother’s death.
But Baudhāyana and long before him the Taittirīya Samhita around the eighth century bc
says ‘strīyo nirindriya adāyādīh’.8 That is, women in general (and sisters in particular) are
not entitled to a share of the family property.9
When the betrothed of a maiden dies, she belongs to her father alone. If a maiden is
carried away forcibly and not married by the abductor she may be lawfully married to
another.10 ‘A newly married daughter-in-law, an unmarried daughter, a sick female inmate,
an enciente—these the householder may feed before feeding his guests.’11 Girls were some-
times given some instructions, though the Vedic lore was denied to them; the Bharadvāja
Gṛhya Sutra12 names four inducements for marrying a girl—wealth, beauty, intelligence and
family. For intelligence the Mānava Gṛhya Sūtra substitutes the world ‘vidyā’, learning. The
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad lays down a rite for obtaining a learned daughter.13 Such texts
explain the appearance of Gārgī, Sulabhā and other learned women. But although gram-
marians lay down rules for framing feminine forms for women who were teachers on their
own14 yet we have no way of knowing whether they could earn by teaching. Possibly not,
but exceptionally may be. Only a very late tantric text says, ‘a householder should instruct
the daughter equally as his sons.’15
In some of the eight forms of marriages it was the bride’s father who paid the groom’s
party; only in the ‘Āsura’ form of marriage payment was made by the groom’s parents.
In the ‘Āsura’ form of marriage the bridegroom pays money to her father and to the bride
herself, out of the promptings of his own desire.16 In the ‘Brāhma’, ‘Daiva’ and ‘Ārṣa’ forms
the bride’s father has to give wealth, ornaments, a pair of oxen or other gifts according to
his ability. In the ‘Brāhma’ marriage, a well-attired and be-jewelled girl was given, in the
‘Ārṣa’ the bride was given after an ox and a cow or two oxen and two cows were given to
the groom.17 Apparently, the current social distaste for the practice is expressed in the name
‘Āsura’. But at marriage, when wealth changed hands, it was the bride or her parents who
benefited from it. What is known as ‘strīdhana’, the bride’s wealth, could be of three kinds:
‘pana’, with which the bride was purchased; ‘yautaka’, gifts given to the girl at marriage by
her relations and friends and ‘saudāyika’, gifts given to the bride or to the couple either at
her or at his place by the respective friends and relations. Yājñavalkya18 says: what has been
given to a woman by the friends, mother, the husband, or brothers, or is received by her at the
nuptial fire, or presented to her on her husband’s marriage with another wife is ‘strīdhana’.
24 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

What has been given to her by her kindred (i.e., persons related through her mother or
father) as well as her fee or gratuity or what has been presented to her after marriage by her
husband or her father’s family is also ‘strīdhana’.19 Clearly society at one time disapproved
of the bride’s father accepting money from the groom; Manu says20 that an erudite father
should not take any bride price ‘kanyāśulka’, for, by taking a dowry (kanyāśulka) out of
greed, he (the girl’s father) becomes the seller of his offspring…Even the acceptance of a
pair of cows and bullocks (by the father of the bride from the bridegroom) is designated as a
dowry by certain authorities. (The acceptance of a dowry be it costly, or be it of insignificant
value constitute the sale of a girl.) We notice that while the practice of paying dowry to
the groom is present in palpable or incipient forms, there is no text forbidding the groom’s
father accepting it, no one calls the transaction a ‘sale’ which in reality it was.
‘This injunction against ‘kanyāśulka’ signifies a radical swing to ‘varapana’, an inevitable
sign of Sanskritisation during the Kushana age when the earliest version of Manusaṃhitā
was composed. Modern dowry is entirely the product of the forces let loose by British
rule’.21 ‘Dowry is characterised by asymmetry, uncertainty and unpredictability.’22 Dowry
for the groom is a sign of hypergamy ‘rampant in castes with continuous hierarchy; dowry
mainly at the upper levels, and bride price mainly at the lower levels, and both dowry and
bride price among status-seeking middle ranking families.’23
Whether it is dowry or bride price—it indicates affluence in society but much more so in
‘dowry’ than in ‘bride price’. But this reluctance to accept bride price presumably signifies
many social changes; apart from affluence which enabled the bride’s family to pay a dowry,
it may signify the cessation of large-scale warfare numerically reducing the male population,
a desire for hypergamy, social climbing through wealth and, in the final analysis, it may have
been based on some notion of potlatch whereby the bride’s father realised that what he spent
as dowry would be realised back at his son’s wedding. And it definitely signifies the social
demotion of women, for, when a man marries and thus saves a girl from the ignominy of
maidenhood, her father had to pay him a price for this good office. A desire for ostentation
and display was also there. Manu, who along with the Bhagavadgītā and Vātsyāyana was
a formidable influence in society in the early centuries ad, calls the tune for the next two
millennia. He enunciates the different forms of marriage, in the first three of which it was
the bride’s father who pays money, gives gifts to the groom; only in the ‘Asura’ form is
the reverse true. Its pejorative name ‘Asura’ may hark back to its origin from the Dravida
countries where it was widespread until a couple of centuries ago.
But ‘Kanyāśulka’ had been imbibed as a custom prevalent from the later Vedic age. We
hear: ‘Indra, you are a greater donor than a partially fit son-in-law or brother-in-law.’24 So,
defective grooms compensated with money. An effort to reconcile dowry with ‘kanyāśulka’
is found in the Āpastamba Dharmasūtra (II: 6 : 13 :10 :11) which says ‘there is no selling
or buying of the issue. At marriage a hundred great charioteer’ fighters should be given
and then they should be returned to the giver; there ‘buying’ is merely a word of praise; the
relationship is based on religion.’ Kautilya says, ‘For mlecchas the sale of daughters was not
condemned.’25 Yājñavalkya very rationally says that neither son nor daughter could be sold.26
The Mitākṣarā gloss on the passage says that ‘though one cannot sell one’s wife or
daughter, one is their owner’. We remember that Śunahśepha, a son, could be sold by the
father, but there are also instances of sale of daughters.
 Chapter 4  Economic Rights of Ancient Indian Women 25

Dowry has been explained as the cost of the bride’s maintenance. This theory holds no
water, because she contributes to the household work and produces, with luck, an heir to
the family wealth. It has also been said to be the ‘dakṣiṇā’ of the ‘kanyādana’. This also is
fallacious because frequently the so-called ‘dakṣiṇā’ is out of all proportion to the ‘dāna’,
the woman, a social non-entity. Esther Boserup says that after the withdrawal of women
from the outdoor productive labour force, dowry come in is a compensation because men
had to be hired in their place 27 There may be an element of historical truth in it.
Dowry is not ‘strīdhana’ because it was given at the instance of the groom’s father.
‘Peninsular India’, says M. N. Srinivas, ‘was the bride-price area including among the
Brahmins; from there it spread to the north through a hankering for hypergamy, for social
climbing’.28
Now, the dowry paid by the bride’s father was given to the groom and his father, hence
it did not constitute any part of ‘strīdhana’, the wife had no say on its use or misuse. If the
would-be bride dies after ‘kanyāśulka’ has been paid by the groom, he takes back what he
had paid.29 A late text by Aparārka categorically says that ‘the ‘saudāyika’ was under the
full control of the wife’; she could sell or give even immovable properly. She could keep it
intact; neither the husband nor her sons or her (or his) brothers could take it or give it away;
the woman had complete control over it. But what was given to her by friends and relations
at the time of wedding at her parent’s place was definitely ‘yautaka’, a form of ‘strīdhana’
and what was given to the couple at her or his place at/after wedding was ‘saudāyika’ and
the bride was entitled to at least half of it. Manu also says: ‘To a woman whose husband
marries a second wife, let him give an equal sum as a compensation for the supersession,
provided no strīdhana has been bestowed on her but if she has been allotted, let him allot
half’.30 But ‘on the death of a son-less ‘putrikā’ the husband shall unhesitatingly take the
entire estate left by her.’31 Viṣṇu, however, says that the property of a son-less person goes
to the wife, then to daughters, and then to the brothers and the brothers’ sons.32
In these texts we find local, regional and temporal variations of customs and attitudes.
Some authors took a more humane stand than others. But the general picture is bleak and
uncharitable for the wives. What the husband gave to her at his subsequent marriage was
entirely hers. Nārada says that the husband had to give one-third of his property to the first
wife at his second marriage. And this she was free to handle at her will. At least theoreti-
cally. Yājñavalkya33 says that the husband has no right to touch the ‘strīdhana’ except during
a famine, a necessary religious purpose, at times of disease or during his imprisonment.
Although the extenuating circumstances all sound quite innocuous, they actually provide
plenty of loopholes for interpretation suitable to the husband. At another place Yājñavalkya
says, ‘A husband is not liable to make good the property of his wife taken by him in a famine,
or for the performance of a duty, or during illness or under restraint’.34 In yet another text
he says: ‘The separate properly of a childless woman, married according to Brāhma ‘Daiva’
‘Arṣa’ or ‘Prājāpatya’ (modes) goes to her husband’ So society just could not visualise or
tolerate a woman handling her own personal property. And Vaśiṣṭha defines it quite clearly:
‘What has been given to her on her husband’s next marriage, what was given to her by kin-
dred (as ‘saudāyika’ or ‘yautaka’) and her ‘sulka’ or what was given to her after marriage
is the woman’s property, her ‘strīdhana’.35 Manu says that the mother’s dowry is the por-
tion of her daughter, and the daughter’s son shall take the entire estate of a son-less man.36
26 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

But, then, Manu says37: ‘Friends or relations of a woman, who out of folly or avarice live
upon the property belonging to her, or the wicked ones who deprive her of the enjoyment
of her own belongings such as cloth, etc., go to hell.’ Now, first, theoretically her personal
belongings could include much beyond mere ‘cloth, etc.’, for it could be something, as the
text says, which ‘friends and relations could live upon out of avarice.’ A very early text,
the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā, a later Vedic text of approximately the eighth century bc says:
‘Relations of a woman who live by selling carts, clothes, and gold ornaments which are
her ‘strīdhana’ commit a sin and suffer a worse fate in the next world.’38 So ‘clothes, etc.’,
was a mere eye-wash; the in-laws sometimes—possibly more often than not—shamelessly
lived upon the wealth she brought with her. Thus, even a rich father’s daughter—as her
‘strīdhana’ amply testify—had no real security at her in-laws’ place. Debarred from academic
training and, therefore, from a lucrative vocation, helpless, in a hopeless, minority among
an overwhelming majority of avaricious in-laws she had no real way of protecting what
was her very own, let alone enjoy it. Therefore, such things happened, the author is neither
making empty conjectures nor putting ideas into innocent heads. And one wonders how far
the fear of going to hell or a worse fate in the next life deterred, those who lived upon the
poor girl’s ‘strīdhana’. Enjoying unearned property is in most cases quite alluring. Devala,
however, maintains that ‘kanyāśulka’ and the profits from usury are the woman’s personal
possession, the husband has no control over it. Jaimini also says that women do hold cer-
tain kinds of property. But Kātyāyana says that what wealth a woman earns through crafts
or what is given by other in love, the husband is the proprietor of all that. What remains
is ‘strīdhana’.39 Clearly, not much would remain, for, this text brings her earnings and her
gifts under her husband’s control. It is difficult to imagine any other kind of ‘strīdhana’.
What is the wife’s role in administering the household funds and property? Āpastamba says:
‘The couple administered the family wealth.’40 Even the philosophical text Pūrvamīmāṃsā
says that ‘the couple owns the property jointly’.41 We remember the Indo-European root
of the Sanskrit word ‘dampatī’: it comes from domos + pati, the lords of the house, and
who was it? The couple. Clearly both Āpastamba and the Pūrvamīmāṃsā hark back to the
original meaning of the words.
‘When the husband leaves his home on a business trip he must go after making provi-
sions for the wife’s maintenance.’42 ‘If during his absence the wife drinks or attends public
dances she should be fined six ‘kṛṣṇalas.’43 But a woman is not bound44 to repay the debt
contracted by her husband or sons. The, debt contracted by the wives of milkmen, wine
sellers, actors, washer men and hunters should be liquidated by the husbands, for, their
livelihood depends upon them, that is, upon the earnings of their wives. A debt which she
has promised to repay, that which she has contracted along with her husband and what she
had taken herself must be repaid by the woman; nothing else a woman is bound to repay.
‘The taker of a debtor’s wife has to repay her husband’s debt.’45 The very question, of
repayment of debts presupposes a woman’s financial ability to pay. But in such cases the
payment was made from the common household funds, and when she had no access to it,
presumably from her ‘strīdhana’. At the back of this notion is the assumption that a woman
should not, and therefore cannot, possess wealth. Medhātithi46 says that whatever a woman
earns is the husband’s, Ā says that ‘some predecessors think that ornaments belong to wife
and also such wealth as came from her agnates’.47 There seems to be a controversy regard-
 Chapter 4  Economic Rights of Ancient Indian Women 27

ing the bride’s ownership of even her ornaments, about those she brought from her parents’
place! Baudhāyana says, ‘The daughter inherits her mother’s, jewellery and whatever else
is customary.’48 Manu sets an upper limit for ‘strīdhana’—up to 2000 panas.49 But land and
houses do not constitute ‘strīdhana’, say these authors, presumably because they cannot be
removed to her in-law’s place. Jaimini agrees that women do and can own certain types of
property. Manu says that the sources of ‘strīdhana’ are six: at marriage, during the bridal
procession, gifts given out of love; from brothers and from parents. Kātyayāna adds an
interesting rider: ‘what she earns through crafts, and what she is given out love is under the
husband’s control the rest is ‘strīdhana’.’50 It is a cruel realisation that what she earns herself
is not her own. ‘Yautaka’ technically means, what is given to the couple (yutaka) when
they are seated together.51 ‘A wicked spendthrift wife has no right over her ‘strīdhana’.’52
It was not very difficult for wicked avaricious in-laws to prove that a wife is a spendthrift
and thus snatch away from her what legally belonged to her. ‘Strīdhana’ promised by the
husband has to be paid to the wife.’53
The payment of ‘kanyāśulka’ laid a burden on the wife, because she and everybody else
regarded her as a bought commodity. ‘This’, says the ancient text, the Mailrāaṇī Saṃhitā,
‘is acting false, when a woman bought by her husband commits adultery with others’. But
we should remember that when the dowry system came into vogue the groom never regarded
himself as a purchased commodity although he was that in a much truer sense than the bought
wife, because ‘kanyāśulka’ had always been a mere nothing compared to dowry which is a
status symbol, besides being an unfair and unashamed extortion.
Manu says,

Wives cannot be kept by force; it is by the application of the following expedients that they can be
kept under control. They should be employed in storing and spending money (i.e., looking after the
family economy), in maintaining the cleanliness of their persons and of the house, the beddings,
wearing apparels, household furniture. Imprisoned in the house and guarded by their male relations,
(bad) women are still not sufficiently protected.54

So, one of the measures for keeping the wife under control, so necessary as a guarantee of
a legitimate heir, was to engage her in household work of various kinds which were never
translated into monetary terms, so that she was always made to feel that she was a financial
burden to the family.
Once the woman lost her husband, society began to look upon her as a financial menace
and liability. In an agricultural society where the joint family was the unit, the threat of
segmenting the cultivable land owned by the family was very real. This could happen if at
the husband’s death the land came to the widow, she remarried and her new husband was
to be given her share of the land. Both ideas must have been repugnant to the other broth-
ers. Later Vedic lawmakers, except one or two, laid down that the widow should be burned
alive with the corpse of her husband. Or if she was allowed to live at all, the law-givers
made her life a living death with a thousand pinpricks in her daily existence to remind her
that she had no economic shelter.
Yājñavalkya says that ‘a woman having no husband should be taken care of by the
father, mother, son, brother, mother-in-law, father-in-law; otherwise she will be an object
of censure.’55 In the list of her guardians all except the last two are members of her own
28 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

family who were expected to take her into their custody and be her financial provider.
Āpastamba, Manu and Nārada agree that the widow of a son-less husband cannot inherit,
Gautama, however, says that she is an heir with her ‘sapiṇḍas’ and ‘sagotras’.56 Elsewhere,
Yājnāvalkya lays down that a sonless man’s widow is his first heir;57 in this he is joined
by Viṣṇu and Kātyayāna. If a woman’s husband is not heard of for eight or ten years she
may remarry.58 If the husband leaves a separate individual property and a son or sons, the
widow is entitled only to maintenance. Manu is ambivalent regarding ‘niyoga’—another
man begetting a son on the widow, he condemns it.59 Widows, and for that matter, women
in general, cannot adopt a child by themselves, because they cannot pronounce the neces-
sary Vedic mantras. So they could not by themselves adopt a child on whom they could
lean financially.
One of the seven fates Narada visualises for a widow is for her to be purchased by
a foreigner.60 Remarriage, which is technically enjoined upon her by Parashara makes
her a ‘punarbhu’ who forfeits her rights to her husband’s property. She could also be
given to a stranger by her elders and she had no say in the matter, but even then she had
to forego the right to her husband’s property. We may recall that because in the area
controlled by the Dayabhaga rules, widows did inherit the husband’s property, which
they could not do in the areas under Mitākṣarā; between 1815 and 1818, total 2,366
widows were burned in Bengal, of which 1,845 were from Calcutta alone. A widow
has been a pitiable creature even in the Rgvedic times or we would not have a prayer
for non-widowhood. But the epics and even Manu do not condemn them to death,
Kunti and Gāndharī and the three queens of Daśaratha, widows in Buddhist and Jain
literature lived and lived respectably. Among the lower ranks, before the unfortunate
contamination of Sanskritisation reached them, there was no widow burning, it caught
on with Sanskritisation. Literature does not give us instances of the widows of the so-
called lower ranks.
The economic problem of widows was considerably complicated by polygamy and by
the social ‘weightage given to the mother of a male child. Widows with daughters only
or childless widows suffered economically and generally had to fall back on their parents
or brothers. At their in-laws’ places they were looked down upon as an imposed liability.
Besides, a man with wives from different castes left his affairs in a further tangle where
authors of the Smṛtis differed with each other regarding the fate of the widows; some
upheld the widow’s claim to maintenance, others to bare subsistence. Sometimes there
are discrepancy between scriptures and practices recorded in literature. Gautama61 says
‘the estates of a childless person go to his wife’. Yet in the Abhijñānaśakuntal,62 we hear
that when such a case was reported to Dusyanta, he says that the scriptures say that these
estates will be forfeited by the crown. He possibly had a different authority or mere local
customs to guide him.
Divorce was not accepted in the Western sense of the term. Although there are scriptural
texts which lay down that even a hostile wife could not be forsaken. But if there is mutual
hatred, the couple can separate.
 Chapter 4  Economic Rights of Ancient Indian Women 29

If a husband wishes separation, because of some change for the worse in a wife, he should return
what he had taken from her. If a wife desires freedom because of a similar change in the husband
then he should not give her what he had taken from her. In religious weddings there is no divorce.63

Clearly the text reluctantly grants both parties the rights to separate on the ground of hatred,
but while the man’s initiative to separate is respected, the woman is punished financially,
because on separation she loses her ‘strīdhana’.
Rape, a common feature in all societies, is treated somewhat leniently. Yājñavalkya says64
that a man pays 10 paṇas for raping a maidservant. If he rapes a female religious mendicant
he pays 24 paṇas.65 The first question that strīkes us about the master raping the maid was
how was she to force the man to pay? Who would believe her, who would take her side?
While a female mendicant’s words have more credibility and it is likely that she would get
paid if she insisted, but the whole proposition sounds somewhat unreal.
Literature gives us umpteen instances where the rapist goes scot-free. Besides, laws and
customs were so lenient to the upper caste men that women of the so-called lower castes
were easily available without any payment. Hence the text was not expected to act as a
deterrent. The abject position of women in society rendered her eminently vulnerable to
man’s lust, and such men acted with impunity with the connivance of the law-givers and
with social sanction.
Unchaste wives were punished with horrendous cruelty; the Dharmasūtra texts on such
punishment reads like passages from sadist authors. Other texts lay down:

One should deprive an unchaste wife of all her rights, make her live poorly, taking only ‘one morsel
of food. She should always be chidden, and should lie on the ground but she should live in her
husband’s house (so that she might withdraw from her sinful courses).66

Now, the question is: what happens when she mends her ways? Does she then get a full
meal and the right to his bed? ‘If a husband renounces a wife who carries out his command,
is skilful in work, has given birth to heroic sons, such a wife should be given one-third of
(her husband’s) properly and maintenance.’67 What makes the wife’s life lack economic
and social security is that even a flawless wife could be dismissed with only one-third of
the husband’s property. Not only did society have a double standard for men and woman,
but it is difficult to see the wife who falls out of her husband’s favour getting even her legal
claim in full. ‘A false wife should be kept imprisoned in a room on an allowance of daily
sustenance. A wife violating the duties of chastity undergoes penance; she should be kept
under guard and given food.’68 An adulterous woman should be deprived of her authority
(over servants, etc.), made to wear dirty clothes, given a bare minimum of food, for subsis-
tence. If she conceives from the other man, she should be driven away.69 Vaśīṣṭha says:70
‘Wives of the three upper castes committing adultery with sūdras should be driven away.
If the wife tries to kill the husband or the instructor (guru), she should be driven away.’71
Gautama lays down that ‘if a wife of the three upper castes commits adultery with a man
of a lower caste she should be devoured by dogs.’72
30 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

On the other hand, Āpastamba73 and Baudhāyana74 both lay down that a son should always
serve the mother without speaking to her, even if she becomes outcaste for some grievous sin.
An outcaste father may be abandoned, presumably because he could fend for himself,
and he controlled the family funds, but the son should never abandon his mother even if
she is fallen.
There are inherent contradictions between the texts stipulating harsh punishments for the
unchaste wife, and the essential, but basic and minimal humanity of the son not abandoning
his mother. Literature presents a totally different picture; ‘fallen’ wives are cursed, punished,
abandoned and even killed (cf Sītā, Ahalyā and Reṇukās).
Prostitution in India is known from the Vedic times. The many synonyms possibly sig-
nify many grades or classes, the highest of them was the ‘gaṇikā’ who was trained in the
various arts at the state’s expense; her charges were also the highest. Buddhist texts say that
Sālāvatī at Rajagṛha charged a hundred kārṣāpanas per night and Amrapali’s fees led to a
dispute between Rajagrha and Vaisali. The play Mṛcchakatika tells us of a client sending
a thousand gold coins for her favour; the story of Ardhakāśī is well known. The ‘gaṇikā’
lived in a palace, sumptuously, had many servants, maids, procurers, Vitas, Pīṭhamardas,
male attendants, and musicians at her service. Kauṭilya says that the ‘gaṇikā’ was paid a
monthly salary from the royal treasury and the ‘pratigaṇikā’, her substitute, got half of this
sum. ‘Possibly the ‘gaṇika’s’ palace, entourage and establishment were state property with
life interest.’75 This means that the ‘ganikā’ did not only not possess it but could neither
sell, nor mortgage nor donate it. This rule holds for those who belonged to an establishment;
but there were others, beside the avaruddhās, that is, women kept temporarily by men who
provided for them, who ran an establishment singly. We may conjecture that what these
women earned became part of their own possessions, after paying obligatory taxes to the state.
The court paid the courtesans an annual salary of between 1,000 and 2,000 paṇas.
Anyone who wished to redeem a courtesan and make a free woman of her, or marry her
paid the state redemption money of 24,000 paṇas. This was a considerable sum of money,
but then her salary also was high. One of the reasons why the state undertook to bear the
courtesān’s education was that the king and his nobles often summoned young and pretty
courtesāns to entertain them. Another reason was that the superintendent of the courtesans,
the ‘gaṇikādhyakṣa’ was frequently employed to extort politically relevant information
which the ‘gaṇikās’ would skilfully make their customers divulge to them.
But ‘gaṇikās’ were often quite rich on their own; in most cities the best of them were
known as ‘nagarśobhinīs’, that is, decorations to the cities, and could attract wealthy cus-
tomers. In the Dhammapada commentary we hear of Sālāvatī’s daughter Sirimā earning
1,000 paṇas every night. A rūpājīva who was socially and accomplishment-wise inferior
to a ‘gaṇika’, and who usually lived with wine- or meat-sellers, etc., earned only a fee of
48 panas. If a man forcibly assaulted a ‘gaṇikā’s daughter he had to pay a fine of 54 paṇas,
also a fine of 16 times her mother’s fees, possibly a kind of hush-money used at the time of
her marriage. A ‘pumścalī’, in the bottom rung of the hierarchy had no fixed fees, Kauṭilya
says that old and retired prostitutes should be employed as cooks, store-keepers, cotton-
wool, and flax spinners and in certain other manual jobs. They could also be employed as
matrons, ‘matṛkas’, in brothels or be trainers of courtesans and earn something. But the pen-
 Chapter 4  Economic Rights of Ancient Indian Women 31

sion promised by Kauṭilya in the Arthāśastra was something that had very little guarantee
for these otherwise helpless women: A prostitute was obliged to inform the brothel-keeper
about her income and expenditure.76
The ‘devadāsīs’ or temple prostitutes were paid in grain as some others employed by
the states also were. The devadāsīs’ income is nowhere stated clearly nor were their duties
specified. Their ranks swelled from the pious wish of rich patrons who desired to earn merit
for the next world by buying girls for the temples. No courtesan whether in the brothel or in
the temple enjoyed security of the person; the Gautama Dharmasūtra categorically states
that ‘the murder of a prostitute is no crime’.77
We have seen that in general, women were not allowed to earn or possess property. The
Śatapatha Brāhmana, an early text, presumably of the eighth-seventh centuries bc say’s
that the wife had no property rights, nor had she any right over her own body (IV 4: 2:13).
Quite early, around the seventh century bc the Śatapatha Brāhmana gives a ritual justifi-
cation of this. In a rite the sacrificial butter was beaten with a stick, ‘so should a husband
beat his wife so that she had no right over her body or over any property.’78 Yet we have
evidence of women donors in society. Not only queens but a female Jain disciple of the
venerable Jayasena, or the female Jain convert of Sīhamitra, the female pupil of Sathisiha, the
female pupil of Puṣyamitra, etc.,79 Dharmasomā, the wife of a caravan-leader, or Kocchā, a
female lay disciple of ascetics, gave various kinds of gifts to the pious Jain brethren and the
temples. The Bṛahatkalpabhāṣyasutra mentions the gift of a grove by courtesan Āmrāpalī.
Ānāthapiṇḍada’s daughter fed Buddha and thousands of his disciples. We also hear of gifts
by courtesans and other Buddhist women who donated monasteries, ‘caityas’ ‘viharas’,
groves, bridges, wells, ponds and money. In the fifth century ad Chandragupta II’s daughter
queen Prabhavatī gave rich gifts. In the Bhaumaka dynasty in Orissa is listed six queens
out of a total of seventeen monarchs. Diddā Khemā in the Rājatarangiṇi ruled as a regent
and later as a monarch. In the same book queens Chuddā and Damarī led armirs in battle.
Doubtless, these queens wielded economic power also. But most of these are late evidences,
post-Tantric, after a time of widespread deification of the woman as a goddess. No wonder,
queens, were looked up to as exercising a kind of extra-human potency as agents, like the
kings. They, too, had been revered all through history;80 then so was the queen who handled
wealth on her own authority and power.
Now the question that strikes us is: if women did not possess any money how could they
make such expensive gifts. One answer is that rich ‘gaṇikās’ who ran their own establish-
ments owned the wealth they earned after paying the state tax. A sense of moral guilt often
prompted them to spend substantial portions of their wealth in pious enterprises. Secondly,
not everyone in society obeyed the rules laid down by the scriptures verbatim, some women
did possess their ‘strīdhana’, which if they came from royal or noble or merchant families,
could be quite substantial and often they found themselves in a position to silence slander
or censure, because money talks. So they could and did make gifts. Thirdly, parallel laws
with different sanctions co-existed, especially, in matriarchal regions, Fourthly, not all gifts
recorded as donations from women, saints, wives, widows or courtesans are to be taken liter-
ally, quite often some devotee or disciples made donations in the name of pious, powerful
32 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

or famous women. Also some generous husbands would encourage such pious expenditure
although Āpastamba says that ‘when the husband is away from home, the wife may make
the usual expenditure; that shall not be counted as theft.’81 The clear corollary is that if she
undertakes some unusual expenses, she should be regarded as stealing the husband’s money!
Yet society provided enough loopholes through which in exceptional circumstances women
could donate or spend what was their own.
We hear of Sparta of the 4th, 3rd centuries bc that ‘Nearly two-fifths of the whole
country belongs to women, because there are many heiresses and because of giving large
dowries.’82 In Athens if a dowry was given, the law did require that it should be returned
if the marriage came to an end.83 Under Roman law ‘Brides could be purchased’.84 If the
husband put her away for any other reason (than adultery) he had to give her one half of
his property,85 the reminder being forfeited to the goddess Ceres, the ‘peculium’ which
they might use as if it were their own, though technically it belonged to the pater.’86 ‘The
Voconian law provided that a person in the first class in the census, the wealthiest, could
not appoint a woman heir’,87 In Crete, ‘A daughter could be given her portion without
waiting for her father’s death.’ The son-less father’s property came to the daughter known
as ‘patroiukhos’ (or ‘epikleros’)88. Thus we see that except the Voconian law prescribing
for the wealthiest section of society, at places under different laws, women could and did
inherit property in Greece and Rome.
Under the Gortyn law ‘A married female slave could herself possess property for the
divorce regulations state that she may take her movables (presumably personal property)
and small livestock.’89 Thus even the slave under the generous Gortyn law could possess
property. But the general picture is dismal even in Greece and Rome compared to their
men’s right of possession and use of property, although compared to India the laws were
more liberal. Control over women’s property by men is part of a paradigm of an all-round
control over her, ordained by the state through its religious instructor.

The state in order to be a control of the means of reproducing human beings and in order to submit
these means to the interests of the economic system which happens to be in force at the time, has
been obliged to extend its control and subjugation to that of her own body. She has, therefore, lost
the real ownership of her own body.90

We remember how the Brāhmaṇa injunction of beating sacrificial butter with a stick gives
a ritual justification: ‘thus beaten the wife loses control over her own body and property.’
The juxtaposition of body and property is significant; the body also is a part of the property.
We must remember Draupadī’s question to Duhsasana when she was being dragged to
the court for public insult. She asked him, ‘Did King Yudhiṣṭhira stake and lose himself in
the gamble before he lost me?’ The question is extremely pertinent: she insinuates that if
Yudhiṣṭhira had lost himself first then he had no right to stake Draupadī. In other words,
she admits tacitly that if he had staked her as a free agent then she was really under the
hold of the Kauravas, that is, she is virtually a possession of her husband who could pawn
her. Long before, the gambler in the Ṛgveda laments that he had pawned his wife. So, the
wife was treated as the husband’s possession. Devayānī was part of Sarmiṣṭhā’s dowry; but
Yayāti who married Sarmiṣṭha enjoyed Devayānī slyly and begot Anu, Puru and Druhyu in
 Chapter 4  Economic Rights of Ancient Indian Women 33

her. So, just as the inanimate parts of the dowry could be misappropriated by the husband,
so could the human entourage which accompanied the bride.
That women could be used as commodity is proved by the story of Mādhavī. When
Gālava, unable to procure fees for his preceptor, asked king Yayāti for a donation, the
latter pleaded a depleted treasury. But he offered Gālava an option: the king’s pretty young
maiden daughter could be borrowed and lent out to kings for a year until the latter had a
son by her and in gratitude offered Gālava some money. Gālava lent her to three kings, in
succession for a year each, until he raised enough money to pay his fees for the preceptor.
Neither Yayāti, nor Gālaya nor the four kings found this method foul or heinous; and the
preceptor accepted the fees, presumably cheerfully. Only Mādhavī expressed her profound
disgust at the whole affair by firmly declining to marry. She had been used as a lucrative
chattel and her innermost soul revolted at this. She undertook penance.
Analysing the deprivation of ancient Indian women from earning, possessing or dis-
bursing money, from selling, pawning, mortgaging and donating money or other kinds of
property, we find several reasons. After the Aryans had conquered the major portion of
northern Indian land-tract, they had a supply of inexpensive slaves. Before, women of the
family assisted their menfolk in outdoor economic activities and were thus a recognised
part of the productive system. They enjoyed a modicum of human dignity as breadwinners
or breadwinners’ assistants. But with a large force of slaves at the Aryans’ beck and call,
women did not have to participate in the strenuous outdoor work. By then the surplus in
production and trade both inland and overseas, accumulated in the hands of a privileged
few in a class-divided society. From the Brāhmana literature onwards, we have mention
of conspicuous consumption by a handful of families belonging to the upper stratum of
society.
Then, the anxiety to leave the property to the legitimate heir led to strīcter confinement
of women in the inner apartments and greater vigilance by the males. Besides, this way by
keeping indoors, the women preserved the delicacy of their appearance, most welcome to the
male owners of property. Then, it became clear that women, most of whom were virtually
illiterate, skilled only in the domestic chores, were economically a burden to their husbands
and this facilitated the process of their being looked upon as chattels. In the second century
bc Vātsyāyana openly says about women twice in two different contexts—about the maiden
and about the prostitute—that they should dress up richly and attractively ‘because women
are a commodity’.91
Now if women themselves are looked upon as commodity, as possession or property,
one does not expect them to enjoy any freedom to handle property or wealth. Society was
afriad to treat them as human individuals.
Women’s contribution to housework was never measured in terms of money, hence
although many of them did a lot of household chores, they were treated as economically
dependent on men for food, clothes, shelter and other necessities of life. Even being engaged
in productive work is not enough, she is still treated as a liability and is expected to be sub-
ordinate to the father, brother, husband or son. When she has cash and real property that she
can handle at will, only then is her economic identity recognised. It is the legal sanction,
plus a conscious freedom to spend, save or do what she likes with her wealth that gives
her the recognition of a woman of substance. The ‘strīdhana’ or ‘saudāyikā’ or ‘yautaka’
34 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

was theoretically entirely her own; but the consciousness shared by society and the woman
herself’ that she was a ‘bharyā’ or ‘bhāraṇīya’, that is, to be fed and therefore in bond under
the husband and in-laws for her maintenance, like the ‘bhṛītya’, servant, facilitated the plun-
der of the ‘strīdhana’ by the in-laws. Only the very rich women, like queens whose wealth
was augmented by political power had real control over their money. Or the courtesan who
‘earned’ her own money, paid tax and sometimes was really so rich that the king and mer-
chants had to take cognizance of her power was occasionally free to wield power in society
through their money. Besides, rich donors are everywhere respected and money carries no
taint to greedy donneés. Pious works launder the taint in money everywhere and at all times.
But apart from these exceptions, the ordinary maids, housewives, or widows were quite
under the thumb of the men of their families, because their labour at home, however heavy,
was not regarded as productive; their sole worth lay in their reproductive role. But even
there, they were seen as ‘the field’, the harvest belonged to the seed-owner. For long cen-
turies, society slowly but surely removed from under the women’s feet the bottom board
of self-confidence by depriving her of education and by assigning such a mindless role to
them within the house, that their general intelligence was curbed and men proclaimed that
the women neither need money nor could be trusted with it.

NOTES
1. VV 380.
2. Ibid.
3. Manu, VIII
4. Manu, VIII: 244.
5. Saṃvarta 162.
6. Gautama: IX, 118.
7. Gautama: XXIX, 11.
8. V: 5 : 8 : 2.
9. Nirindriyā adāyādāśca striyo iti matah. Adāyādā bhaginyeti.
10. Vaśiṣṭha XV.
11. Visnu LXVII : 30.
12. I: 11.
13. VI: 4: 17
14. ‘Ācaryā and upādhyāyā’.
15. Mahānirvāṇatantra VIII: 35, 47.
16. Manu III: 317.
17. Manu II X : 29.
18. DS II.
19. Yāj II: 145, 147.
20. III: 51.
21. M N Srinivas 1989, The Cohesive Role of Sanskritisation, OUP, p. 102.
22. Ibid., p. 16.
23. Ibid., p. 121, FN 5.
 Chapter 4  Economic Rights of Ancient Indian Women 35

24. RV I: 109: 2.
25. III: 73.
26. II: 175.
27. Women’s Role in Economie Development, George Allen and Unwin, 1970.
28. Srinivas, op cit, 1989, p. 100.
29. Yajn̄ avalkya DS II: 146.
30. III: 52.
31. Vyāsa DS IV: 30.
32. Viṣṇu DS VIII: 4, 5.
33. V: 95.
34. II: 151
35. XV: 11: 18.
36. IX: 131.
37. III: 52.
38. MS: 1: 11.
39. V: 904.
40. II: 6: 13: 17–18.
41. VI: 1: 17–21.
42. Manu IX: 74.
43. Ibid.
44. To repay the debt.
45. Saṃhitā II: 49–52.
46. On Manu VIII : 416.
47. DS II: 6: 14: 9.
48. DS II: 2 : 49.
49. VIII: 416; also Kātyāyana DS 902.
50. 904.
51. Kātyāyana DS 905, 907, 911.
52. Kātyāyana DS, op cit, 914.
53. Kātyāyana DS, op cit, 916.
54. Manu IX: 10, 11.
55. I: 86.
56. XVIII: 19.
57. II: 135.
58. Nārada DS Strīpurusau Section VV 98–101.
59. IX: 64-8.
60. V: 45.
61. DS XXIX: 9.
62. Act V.
63. Kautilya: Arthaśāstia: Dharmasthīya III: 16.
64. Arthaśāstra Dharmasthīya II, II: 294.
65. Arthaśāstra Dharmasthīya II, op cit, 296.
66. Yājñavalkya DS I: 70.
67. Yājñavalkya DS, op cit, I: 76.
68. Gautama DS XXIII last verse.
69. Yājñavalkya DS I: 70, 72.
70. DS XXI: 12.
36 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

71. DS XXI, op cit, 10.

72. XXIII: 24.
73. DS I : 10: 28, 29.
74. DS II: 2: 48.
75. Moti Chandra: The World of Courtesans, Vikash, 1973, p. 48.
76. See my article, ‘Prostitution in Ancient India’ in Social Scientist, No. 165, February, 1987, included in this
collection.
77. XXII :2.
78. IV: 4: 3: 13.
79. Epigraphia Indica, Vol. IV, p. 199.
80. cf ‘aṣṭanām lokapālānām mātrābhirnimito nrpah’.
81. II: 6: 20.
82. Civilisation of the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece and Rome, Vol. I, p. 594.
83. Civilisation of…, op cit, 596.
84. P. 613.
85. The individual property of’ women and slaves.
86. P. 614.
87. P. 620.
88. P. 592.
89. Sarah B Pomeroy: Goddess, Whores, Wives and Slaves, New York, 1975, p. 41.
90. Nawal El Saadawi: The Hidden Face of Eve, Zed Press, 1980, p. 63
91. II: 1: 13; IV: I: 1.
 Chapter 5 Dynamics of Women’s
Work in the Śāstric
Sources: Household
and Beyond

KAVITA GAUR

In the context of the representation of women in early historic period, historians often throw
light upon the economic roles of women through specific angles/perspectives. The notion
of ‘women workers’1 is confined to certain categories such as hired labourers, prostitutes,
wet nurses, espionage, domestic servants, singers, and dancers, who are explicitly identi-
fied as women earning their livelihood.2 On the other hand, the familial roles of women are
valorised; and their domestic labour is never translated into economic terms.3 The interface
between social and economic status of women is succinctly described in this statement:
‘women whose social status was legitimate, did not have equivalent legitimate access to an
independent economic status, whereas women whose socio-sexual status are ambivalent at
best, were more easily recognised as independent actors.’4
The interplay of women, work and class has been studied by historians. With respect
to engagement of women in economic processes, it has been argued that women of rural
classes participate actively in economic activities along with their men while women in
urban societies are less likely seen to be involved in economic roles.5 The representation of
women in a rural–urban scenario is conceptualised in another work where author suggests

1
A. K. Tyagi, Women Workers in Ancient India (New Delhi: Radha Publications, 1994).
2
By women workers, Tyagi meant women engaged in productive activities such as agricultural and craft activities;
weaving, dyeing and washing professions; occupations such as nurses, espionage, maid servants; women slaves;
singing, dancing and prostitution (Tyagi, Women Workers, 3). The author also points out that the idea of exploitation
appears to be linked with the working class women in the context of early India.
3
Sukumari Bhattacharji, Women and Society in Ancient India (Calcutta: Basumati Corporations, 1994), 50. Bhattacharji
argued that wives are supposed to undertake household duties of various kinds but it is not translated into monetary
terms. And above this, wives are regarded as the financial burden of the family.
4
See Kumkum Roy, ed., Women in Early Indian Societies (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 1999).
5
See Vijaya Ramaswamy, ‘Aspects of Women and Work in Early South India’, Indian Economy and Social History
Review 26, no. 1 (1989): 81–89.

37
38 KAVITA GAUR

that women have limited control over economic processes either in rural or urban areas.6
While commenting upon the relation of gender, labour and class, Chakravarti argued that
women of lower classes, despite having relative economic independence, were not regarded
as equivalent to men.7 Till now scholars have mainly confined themselves to viewing the
relation of women and work in specific paradigms. This chapter seeks to examine the layers
in which women engage with work activities within and beyond the household sphere.8
This chapter inquires into the dynamic engagement of household women in varied range
of domestic and economic activities. It points out the distinction noticed in the śāstras with
regard to women undertaking economic activities through the household and women’s
engagement in economic activities outside the household. It draws attention to upper class
wives who, though located in household sphere, contribute to wider economic processes
through domestic space and are identified as ‘government employees’. It also brings forth the
categories of upper class women being engaged in undertaking varied range of productive
activities within the domain of the household. The nature and extent of economic activities
are studied in detail. It also analyses the provisions related to livelihood being outlined for
women of the household in situations of the absence of men. Further, it also assesses the
notion of working women being frequently tied or associated with the profession of sex-
workers or a degraded class in normative texts.
This chapter is based on three principle śāstras in the Brahmanical framework, namely
the Arthaśāstra assigned to Kauṭilya, the Manusmṛti ascribed to Manu and the Kāmasūtra
ascribed to Vātsyāyana. Each text is supposed to be compiled over a period ranging from
200 to 500 years or more.9 The date and origin of these texts remain a complex and debat-
able issue amongst historians. However, the Arthaśāstra is generally placed between the
fourth/third century bce to the second century ce;10 the Manusmṛti is located between the
second century bce to the second/third century ce;11 and the Kāmasūtra is supposed to be
placed around the end of the third century ce.12 Hence, these texts belong to an almost con-
temporary period ranging from fourth century bce to the third century ce, therefore, being
used for this chapter.

6
See Chitrarekha Gupta, ‘ “Rural-Urban Dichotomy” in the Concept and Status of Women’, in Position and Status
of Women in Ancient India, ed. L. K. Tripathi (Varanasi: Benaras Hindu University, 1988), 188–96.
7
See Uma Chakravarti, ‘Gender, Caste, and Labour: The Material and Ideological Structure of Widowhood’, Economic
and Political Weekly 30, no. 36 (1995): 248–56.
8
This chapter is a part of an unpublished PhD thesis: Kavita Gaur, ‘Understanding the Household: Norms and
Everyday Lives in Textual Traditions (c. 3rd century bce to 5th century ce)’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, 2014).
9
See Kumkum Roy, ‘The King’s Household: Structure/Space in the Śāstric Tradition’, Economic and Political
Weekly XXVII, nos. 43–44(1992), 55–60.
10
R. P. Kangle, Kautiliya Arthaśāstra, Part I (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2003), 98–106.
11
Patrick Olivelle (tr.), Dharmasūtra Parallels (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2005), 18–25.
12
H. C. Chakladar, Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vātsyāyana’s Kāmasūtra (Delhi: Bhartiya Publisihing
House, 1976), 11–35.
 Chapter 5  Dynamics of Women’s Work in the Śāstric Sources 39

I
Here, an attempt to examine the representation of the women of the household in economic
and domestic activities and their contribution to domestic resources is being made. One also
needs to point out here that some women may have been engaged in economic activities
within the household, while others may have been engaged in activities outside the household
and providing support to their households. Besides, there are certain domestic activities,
though not defined in economic terms, yet increase the resources of the household.
The Arthaśāstra appears to engage women of the household in spinning; and they are
supposed to perform activities within the household. The state makes provision for female
slaves who are supposed to supply raw-materials to these women at home. This is evident
in the statement:

And those women who do not stir out, those living separately, widows, crippled women or maid-
ens, who wish to earn their living, should be given work by sending his own female slaves to them
with a (view to) support (them). Or, if they come themselves to the yarn house, he should cause an
interchange of goods and wages to be made early at dawn. The lamp (should be there) only for the
inspection of the yarn. For looking at the face of the woman or conversing with her on another matter,
the lowest fine for violence (shall be imposed), for delay in the payment of wages, the middle fine,
also for payment of wages for work not done. (AS II.23.11–14)13

Possibly, these women such as aniṣkāsiṇyah would have belonged to the upper castes; as the
text mentions that they do not come out of the household. The kind of restrictions outlined
in interactions with these women is indicative of the fact that they may have belonged to
the upper caste. Interestingly, the provision regarding the wages (vetana) of these women is
also an issue of discussion in the text. The state appears to be vigilant in outlining the issue
of the wages of wives. Interestingly, this provides us an instance where productive activities
are undertaken within the household whose economic value (payment) has been recognised.
Another significant aspect noted here is that the above injunction includes different types
of women such as widows, crippled women, maidens, and mentions that it includes women
who were living separately and wished to earn their living. It needs to be pointed out here
that this economic role is assigned to women who are old and needed a livelihood for their
maintenance. Or it could be said that this provision is specifically to provide maintenance to
elderly women members of the household. Interestingly, the inclusion of the maiden along
with other categories of secluded and elderly women suggests that the text may be indicat-
ing the presence of unmarried women in the household. The employment of these maidens
suggests that they may have been able to earn their livelihood through these means, and
they were able to maintain themselves in the natal household.
Another instance in the Arthaśāstra reiterates the notion of wives being regarded as
generators of resources through making provision for their employment in spinning. This
is evident in the statement:

13
AS stands for the Arthaśāstra.
40 KAVITA GAUR

He should get yarn spun out of wool, bark-fibres, cotton, silk cotton, hemp and flax through widows,
crippled women, maidens, women who have left their homes and women paying off their fine by
personal labour, through the mother of the courtesan, through old female slaves of the king and
through female slaves of temples whose service of the gods has ceased. (AS II.23.2)

It could be noted here that women who had left home (pravrajitā) or were performing labour
to pay their debts (daṇḍa pratikāriṇībhī) are talked about in the statement.
The above discussion suggests that some women may have performed work within the
household and some women may have opted to undertake work in the place of produc-
tion. It could also be suggested that the state appears to have provided employment to both
types of women. The state appears to have encouraged these women of the household to
work harder by giving gifts to them on festive days. This is noticed in the statement: ‘After
finding out the amount of yarn, he should favour them with oil and myrobalan unguents.
And on festive days, they should be made to work by honouring (them) and making gifts’
(AS II.23.4–5). Interestingly, the role of wives in assisting their husbands (kuṭuṃbināh)
on the manufacture of white liquor on festive occasions for medicinal purposes is outlined
in the text. This is evident in the statement: ‘Women and children should make a search
for (ingredients used in) in liquor and ferments’ (AS II.25.38). Here, the manufacturing of
liquor appears to be more of a domestic activity instead of an economic activity as they are
permitted to produce for particular purposes. And, the division of labour between husband
and wives is noticeable.
There are certain instances in the Arthaśāstra where the involvement of wives in economic
transactions is not clearly mentioned. However, the indications of their earning capacity
are observed in the text. For instance, wives in certain communities appear to have gener-
ated resources for the sake of the household. The earning capacity of wives is reflected in
the responsibility for debt assigned to them. This is noticed in the statement: ‘And the wife
(shall not be held liable) for the debt incurred by their husband, if she has not assented to it,
except in the case of cowherds and farmers tilling for half the produce’ (AS III.11.23). This
implies that wives of cowherds (gopālaka) and farmers (ardhasītikebhyah) were liable for
the debt incurred by their husbands. The relationship between husband and wives in certain
communities appear to be in stark contrast to the conventional household. The provision of
sharing the responsibility for debt in lower communities is also indicative of the rights and
responsibilities of both man and woman to earn a livelihood. The notion of the debt-paying
capacity indicates that wives would have generated resources.
The wives, presumably belonging to lower communities such as naṭas, nartakas, etc., are
recognised as tax-payers in the Arthaśāstra. This is indicated in the statement: ‘Their musi-
cal instruments, when coming from foreign lands, shall be charged a fee per show of five
paṇas’ (AS II.27.26). Wives of naṭas, nartakas, etc., were also supposed to pay a special fee
on performing in specific cases. The levying of taxes means the charge (of the state) upon
the property or income of the individual; it presumes that the individual is earning income
or generating revenue resources. Hence, it appears that wives of these communities could
be regarded as generating resources for their households. The role of wives in procreative
activities contributed to further production processes; however, it is not emphasized much
in the text. It could be argued here that wives would have played a role in both productive
and reproductive processes related to households.
 Chapter 5  Dynamics of Women’s Work in the Śāstric Sources 41

In the Manusmṛti, the text does not recognise the role of women of upper classes as gen-
erating resources or participating in productive activities. In an instance, the text includes
men who live upon the livelihood undertaken by their wives as committing a secondary sin
(upapātaka) which leads to loss of caste (MS XI.64). The term stryajīvo abhicāro is mentioned
here which means wives obtaining a livelihood through transgressive activities (vyabhicāro).
However, the text does not clearly mention what constitutes transgressive activities.
The Manusmṛti also provides an insight into the household of lower communities where
wives are envisioned as earning wealth or providing subsistence, hence contributing to the
generation of resources in the household. This is evident in the following statement: ‘The
above rule does not apply to wives of travelling performers or to wives who earn a living
of their own, for such men get their women to attach themselves to men and, concealing
themselves, get them to have sexual liaisons’ (MS14 VIII.362).
It has been mentioned in the context of outlining the sexual crimes of women of twice-
born men where the definition of adultery and its punishments have been laid out. Within
this background, the text mentioned that sexual liaison is seen as a form of livelihood in
lower communities; hence, exceptions were made to the norms defined earlier in the text.
The above statement also indicates two or three features related to the household of lower
communities. Wives of lower ranks were expected to earn a livelihood for their families
through sex work. Interestingly, the authority was vested with their husband, and hierarchi-
cal relations within the household were not altered despite the earning of their wives. The
husbands were expected to conceal their identity probably due to the low status associated
with the profession of their wives.
Interestingly, the Kāmasūtra speaks of a diverse range of productive activities undertaken
by wives within the household and without payment. In the situation of the presence of the
husband as well, the engagement of wives in various domestic and productive activities
is discussed in the Kāmasūtra. The role of wives in the generation and supervision of a
diverse range of resources is highlighted in contrast to the role of the householder. This is
evident in the statement: ‘In well-weeded plots of ground she sees to the planting of beds
of herbs and green vegetables, and clumps of sugarcane, and patches of cumin seeds and
caraway, mustard seed, parsley, soy-beans, and bay-trees’ (KS IV.1.6). ‘And in the orchard
she makes charming plots of open ground and has a well dug, or a pool or a pond, in the
middle of it’ (KS IV.1.7–8).
Here, the wife is represented as sowing various fruits, vegetables and edible plants, such as
radishes, arrowroot, ginger, wormwood, mangoes, melons, cucumber, eggplants, pumpkins,
squashes, round yams, trumpet-flowers, horse-eye beans, sesame, etc. (KS IV.1.29). The
productive activities seem to have been undertaken within the domain of the household. The
text does not explicitly clarify whether these productive activities are undertaken to meet
the requirements of the household or are used commercially as well.
Wives were also expected to undertake weaving and spinning within the household. This
is apparent in the statement: ‘She spins threads from cotton balls and then weaves clothes
with those threads’ (KS15 IV.1.33). Their role in the supervision of agricultural and pastoral
activities within the household is also mentioned in the text. It states: ‘She sees to the tilling

14
MS stands for the Manusmṛti.
15
KS stands for the Kāmasūtra.
42 KAVITA GAUR

of the fields, the care of the cattle, and the upkeep of the carriages. She looks after the rams,
cocks, quails, parrots, pheasants, cuckoos, peacocks, monkeys, and deer’ (KS IV.1.33). This
suggests that her responsibility was not to be confined to the boundaries of the household
but her supervision of agricultural fields is also highlighted.
The term ‘grāmīṇa yoṣitā’ is used for women (presumably wives) belonging to rural
classes in the section on other men’s wives. They are mostly represented as engaged in
activities related to agriculture and pastoral work such as doing chores, filling granaries,
working in the field, purchasing cotton, wool, flax, linen and bark, spinning thread, and
buying, selling and exchanging goods (KS V.5.6). The possibility of their belonging to
lower classes cannot be denied either. At the same time, this provides an insight into the
generative activities undertaken by wives of lower communities for the sake of the subsis-
tence of their households.

II
This section discusses the control, organisation, management and utilisation of the collec-
tive resources of the household by wives. The Arthaśāstra does not talk much about the
domestic duties or their control over household resources.
As expected, in the Manusmṛti, the role of women of twice-born men participating in
economic activities does not find any mention. With respect to domestic activities, the text
states that serving the husband and taking care of the house is viewed as equivalent to con-
secratory rites for women (MS II.67). The domestic duties of the householder are discussed
elaborately in the text in the context of ritual activities outlined for him. It is beyond doubt
that in the preparation of various offerings, the assistance of the wife would have been pri-
mary. But the text does not mention it, probably to undermine the significance of the bride
in an ideal household; the text merely mentions the responsibilities of wives.
The domestic duties of wives have been precisely summed up in the following injunction.
The text says: ‘he should employ her in the collection and the disbursement of his wealth,
in cleaning, in meritorious activity, in cooking food and in looking after household goods’
(MS IX.11). However, one should treat the above statement with a degree of caution as it
is intended for the purpose of confining wives within the realm of the household. It has also
been noticed that the husband is represented as commanding and employing her (niyojayet)
in these activities. The role of wives in various aspects such as ritual, economic, cooking and
household requirements (pāriṇāhya)16 has been acknowledged as ‘assistance’ in the text.
The participatory role of wives in the distributive function and management of resources
could be noticed in the fact that they are expected to look after the collection of wealth and
expenses, and cooking and taking care of the household (MS IX.11). There is a mention of

16
The term pāriṇāhya initially referred to the goods that a bride used to bring with her after the marriage. The term
could be said to be associated with the term pariṇaya which means leading the bride round the fire and the goods
which were brought by her after marriage termed as household goods. See Patrick Olivelle (tr.), Manu’s Code of Law:
A Critical Edition and Translation of the Mānava Dharmaśāstra (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), 323.
 Chapter 5  Dynamics of Women’s Work in the Śāstric Sources 43

the performance of elaborate ritual activities for the householder on an everyday basis. Wives
would have played a crucial role in the preparation of offerings or making arrangements for
providing hospitality to various social categories. But here the active role of wives is neither
mentioned nor expected of this text. Wives are also expected to be economical in consump-
tion. This is evident in the following statement: ‘she should be always cheerful, clever at
housework, careful in keeping the utensils clean and frugal in her expenditures’ (MS V.150).
The interaction of wives with other social categories seems to be restricted. The role of
wives of twice-born men in the management and allocation of resources is not explicitly
mentioned in the text. Their occasional participation in such processes is suggested in the
following statement: ‘Mendicants, bards, men consecrated for sacrifice and the artisans
may converse with women, unless they have been explicitly banned’ (MS VIII.360). As
the household is regarded as the source for providing almsfood to the mendicant student,
the role of wives in distribution may be assumed.
The optimum utilisation and management of resources are supposed to rest on wives in
the Kāmasūtra. This is evident in the following statement:

She makes butter from the milk left over from meals, and also from sesame oil and molasses; she
oversees the grinding and pounding when the rice is boiled, she makes use, afterwards, of the water,
the froth, the husks, the uncooked kernels, and the coals. (KS IV.1.33)

The management and supervision of resources of the household by wives is further elaborated
in the subsequent statement: ‘She increases capital and decreases expenditures as much as
possible, by authorising buying and selling to be accomplished by incorruptible servants
carrying out orders’ (KS IV.1.46). The command over servants in the household is supposed
to have vested in wives. They were the ones who were expected to know the wages and
maintenance of servants (bhṛtya) in the household (KS IV.1.33). Wives were conceived as
directing the limits and norms for each servant (bhṛtyajananīyam) and honouring them on
festival days (KS IV.1.41).
Regarding control over resources of the household, the text states that wives are supposed
to manage the finances of the household on behalf of their husband. The wife is expected
to keep a track of the income and expenditure of the household by supervising the stock
and use of pots of wines and liquor, and the transactions related to household goods (KS
IV.1.35). She is represented as undertaking purchases when the prices are reasonable. This
is evident in the statement: ‘When the price is right, at the right time, she buys household
goods made of clay, bamboo, wood, leather, and iron’ (KS IV.1.27). She is also permitted
to speak to her husband regarding financial matters which is evident, for instance, in the
statement: ‘If he has spent too much or spent the wrong amount, she tells him in private’
(KS IV.1.14). This implies that wives had autonomy in the utilisation of resources, in other
words, in organising the financial affairs of the household.
The control over distribution of resources of the household is also conceived to have
being enjoyed by wives. The wife is represented as keeping an account of the annual income
and undertaking expenditure accordingly (KS IV.1.32). The text states: ‘She collects the
man’s discarded, worn-out clothes, both many coloured and pure white, and gives them as
favours to servants who have done good work, and as gifts that bestow honour, or she uses
them for something else’ (KS IV.1.34).
44 KAVITA GAUR

This implies that wife is represented as the one deciding on the disposal of items, its
recipients and utilisation.
Though the control over disposal of resources is supposed to be undertaken by wives,
they are expected to disclose everything to their husband (KS IV.1.40–41). The involve-
ment of wives in transactions is acknowledged; and wives are responsible for organising
productive activities related to the sowing of various fruits and vegetables. The acquisition
and management of resources for the sake of the household is underlined in the text. In other
words, to maintain the availability of all the required household goods, she is supposed to
keep the stock of household items. It states: ‘She lays in a stock of salt and oil as well as
hard-to-get perfumes, spices, and medicines, and keeps them hidden within the house’ (KS
IV.1.28). It should be pointed out that wives are not represented in a participatory role in
various tasks mentioned above whereas their active role in supervision and management of
resources within the household is emphasized in the Kāmasūtra.
It could be suggested here that wives were expected to play a key role in household activi-
ties, agricultural activities and pastoral services. Surprisingly, wives of the urban area seem
to be regarded as having control over a diverse range of resources within the household and
were provided with the right to manage and organise the expenditure according to the budget.

III
In the brahmanical theoretical construct, the householder is generally presumed to be the
generator as well as the upholder of the household. And, the householder is regarded as being
responsible for making provision for sons and wives before leaving the household. There
are instances where women are assigned roles to maintain the household in the absence of
the householder in the śāstras. This section addresses the conditions outlined for the women
in the absence of the householder.
However, the notion of ‘absence’ of the householder, in the texts, differs. For instance,
the Arthaśāstra mentions that the brāhmaṇa (householder) may have gone abroad for the
purpose of study or may have become a wandering monk (AS III.4.28, 37).17 On the other
hand, the Manusmṛti mentions that the householder may have gone abroad for business (MS
IX.74), for learning or fame for six years or for pleasure for three years (MS IX.76). The
notion of absence in both these texts seems to be the physical absence of the householder
for some objectives. However, in the case of the Kāmasūtra, there is no discussion on the
absence of the nāgaraka. In other words, the text does not define the reason of absence of
the urban man; it only talks about the provisions with regard to the wives’ behaviour in the
absence of the nāgaraka.
Maintenance is an act of providing means of subsistence to the family members in the
absence of the householder. According to Agnes, the term ‘maintenance’ signifies a notion of
dependency and reduces the wife to a subordinate position and does not award ­recognition to

17
This also implies that the householder, even at this stage, would have diverged from their household obligations.
 Chapter 5  Dynamics of Women’s Work in the Śāstric Sources 45

her as an equal partner in marriage.18 Here an attempt has been made to examine the notion
of maintenance outlined for the householder in the three śāstras and to explore the flow of
resources in the household in the absence of the presumed head of the family.
In the Arthaśāstra the provision of maintenance (bharmaṇya)19 to wives by their husband
is defined in two ways. The text states that if the maintenance is supposed to be fixed and
to be paid at regular intervals, the husband is supposed to pay in instalments (AS III.3.4).
In case the maintenance is not fixed and paid after a certain time, then he is expected to
provide food and clothing according to the status of the dependents (AS III.3.3). The provi-
sion of maintenance is also applied in the context of providing the wife with a bride-price
(śulka), woman’s property (strīdhana) and compensation (adhivedanikā) for supersession
(AS III.3.5).20 This implies that the maintenance is provided to wives out of the resources
which are their own, that is, strīdhana, in case of separation. The text reiterates that the
husband is permitted to remarry if he provides compensation and a suitable maintenance
(vṛtti) to the previous wife (AS III.2.41). However, the text states: ‘If the (wife) is staying
in her father-in-law’s family or has become separated, the husband is not to be sued’ (AS
III.3.6). This means that if the wife, though superseded, stays in the śvaśurakula, she is not
expected to be provided maintenance. Or, if ‘she lives separately’, the husband is not sup-
posed to make provision for her.21 The possibility of the wife being provided a share of the
property beforehand or earning livelihood could have been the reason for the absence of
maintenance in the latter case. The above passage also suggests that the concept of mainte-
nance is not defined in explicit terms; the concept of maintenance does not carry additional
resources from the side of the husband. Rather, it is the strīdhana which is considered as a
form of maintenance and supposed to be provided to wives.
The Arthaśāstra outlines the conditions of providing maintenance to wives. Another
instance indicates the situation where the husband would have gone abroad without
providing for her and is supposed to be liable for the loan undertaken by the wife in
his absence (AS III.11.24). Here, the legal entity of the wife is visible and the role
of undertaking transactions on behalf of the husband in the latter’s absence could
be pointed out. In the context of renouncing the household, the text states that if the
husband renounces without making provisions (apratividhāya) for sons and wife, the
lowest fine for violence shall be levied upon the householder (AS II.1.29). Interestingly,

18
Agnes Flavia, ‘Conjugality, Property, Morality, and Maintenance’, in Handbook of Gender, ed. Raka Ray
(New Delhi: OUP, 2012), 58.
19
The term bharmaṇya is defined as the allowance given for maintenance of a wife separated from the husband. The
term grāsacchaādanam is the usual expression for maintenance given to a person. See R. P. Kangle (tr.), Kautiliya
Arthaśāstra, Part II (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1972/2003b), 201.
20
Supersession means replacing the wife with the other one. In the Arthaśāstra, the wife may be replaced if she
does not bear offspring or bears only daughters (AS III.2.38). In order to obtain a son, another wife is supposed to
be brought in the household (AS III.2.39). See Kangle (2003b, 199).
21
Rangarajan has interpreted the verse as: if she is financially independent, she is not provided for maintenance
(L. N. Rangarajan (tr.), Kautiliya: The Arthashastra [New Delhi: Penguin Group, 1992], 374). Kangle has appropriately
translated if the wife has separated herself as the term vibhaktāyām is mentioned in the Sanskrit text. See R. P. Kangle,
Kautiliya Arthaśāstra, Part I (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965/2003), 100.
46 KAVITA GAUR

the maintenance of the wife (strīvṛtti) does not come under the purview of the state’s
responsibility (AS III.5.28).
In one of the instances, women whose husbands have gone abroad (proṣita) are included
amongst women who wish to maintain themselves, and they are supposed to be employed
by the superintendent of yarns in spinning (AS II.23.11). This indicates that in order to
support her household, the women could be employed under the state for spinning. This
provision could have been in situations where the husband may not have provided for the
wife or household members.
Alternatively, the text directed the wife to utilise her maintenance, which is part of her
strīdhana, to look after the extended family of her son and daughter-in-law (AS III.2.16).
This is supposed to be undertaken in the absence of any provision by the husband who
has gone abroad. Wives are also expected to be kept under the kinsmen of the conjugal
household for a period of four or eight years in the absence of any provision by the husband
(AS III.4.26). Afterwards, wives are supposed to be released by the kinsmen (AS III.4.27).
Probably, the wife could have been permitted to stay at her natal household. The text also
states that when the household has fallen to critical times or the prosperity of the household
has faded with the absence of the head of the household and the wife is released by the rela-
tives, women are supposed to remarry for the sake of their livelihood (AS III.4.30). This
may imply that wives are not preferred to be engaged in economic activities to meet their
household requirements in the absence of the owner; instead, they are obliged to remarry
to secure the means of subsistence.
Interestingly, the Manusmṛti critically states that if the householder with means (śakta)
gives to others (parajane dātā) instead of providing subsistence to his own people (svajane
dukhajīvini), this is declared as fake law (dharmapratirūpakah). This is evident in the state-
ment: ‘When a man of means gives to outsiders while his own people live in misery that is
counterfeit Law, dripping with honey but poisonous to taste’ (MS XI.9). The householder
also warned that he will suffer in his life and after death if he did not make provision for
dependents. The text says: ‘If a man does anything for his welfare after death to the detri-
ment of his dependents, it will make him unhappy both when he is alive and after his death’
(MS XI.10).
The Manusmṛti also lays down the provision of the maintenance of the wife in the absence
of the husband but not with the same zeal as mentioned in the Arthaśāstra. The text states
that any woman will deviate from the righteous path if starved for livelihood (avṛttikarṣitā)
in the absence of the husband (MS IX.74). In the absence of such provision, wives are
expected to maintain themselves by engaging in craft activities. This is noted in the text as
follows: ‘If he provides for her before going away, she should live a life of restraint; but if
he leaves without providing for her, she may maintain herself by engaging in respectable
crafts’ (MS IX.75). The text emphasises upon the fact of living a restricted life for wives
in case they are provided for.
The text does not clearly mention the ‘respectable crafts’ (śilpae agarhitaye) which are
supposed to be undertaken by wives. However, craft activities, in the Manusmṛti, are rep-
resented as being reserved for the śūdra varṇa and associated with the notion of ‘serving
the twice-born men’ (MS X.100). It could be suggested here that wives could be regarded
as generators of resources in the absence of the husband through employment in craft
activities. Their employment in a specific activity suggests the underlying role assigned to
 Chapter 5  Dynamics of Women’s Work in the Śāstric Sources 47

wives, in the absence of the husband, in the text. Hence, they are not visualised as making
any significant contribution in productive activities.
Similarly, the text mentions the period for which wives should wait for their husbands who
have gone abroad. This is as follows: ‘A wife should wait for eight years when her husband
has gone away for a purpose specified by Law, for six years when he has gone for learning
or fame, and for three years when he has gone for pleasure’ (MS IX.76). Surprisingly, the
text does not deal with the issue of what the wife has to do after the lapse of this period
of waiting. The text is completely silent about the issue of maintenance of wives in such
a situation. On the other hand, the Arthaśāstra provides for the remarriage of women for
maintaining themselves. No such provision is noticed in the Manusmṛti. Probably, the text
is against the issue of remarriage of women, and therefore has not dealt with this issue.22
In contrast to the Arthaśāstra and the Manusmṛti, the Kāmasūtra does not recognise
the role of the conventional householder as the preserver of the household. In other words,
expectedly, the role of the nāgaraka as the maintainer of the household is not at all recog-
nised in the Kāmasūtra. On the other hand, all major household responsibilities are supposed
to be managed by wives in the presence as well as absence of the husband. At times when
husbands are away on a journey, wives are expected to manage the household (gṛhānvekṣet)
(KS IV.1.44). However, in this text, the husband is not represented as making provision
for his wives in his absence. Instead, wives are represented as carrying out their usual and
daily tasks (nityaṃ naimittikā) along with the mission to accomplish the work (karmaṇā
samāpane) begun by their husbands. This is evident in the statement: ‘She spends the
usual amount on undertakings for daily tasks and special occasions. She also sets her mind
on accomplishing those undertakings that he has begun’ (KS IV.1.44). This also implies
that wives are recommended to manage and organise the finances of the household in the
absence of husbands. It has been observed here that the Kāmasūtra is totally indifferent to
the presence and absence of the urban householder.
Interestingly, the text also addresses a similar issue in relation to the daughters of a
king and ministers of the state. It states that in case of separation from their husband, the
daughter of a king and ministers of the state (rājaputrī, mahāmātrasutā) were permitted to
make their living on the basis of the 64 fine arts (KS I.3.20). The 64 arts include weaving,
garland making, wood-working, carpentry, architecture, metallurgy and cultivation of athletic
skills which indicates various economic avenues related to craft activities for these women
in the absence of their husbands (KS I.3.15). It needs to be emphasised here that livelihood
opportunities are recognised for women of upper classes in this text.
In contrast to the Arthaśāstra, the Manusmṛti is more emphatic about the responsibility
of the householder towards his dependents. Both texts seem to have a different logic for
dealing with this issue; the Arthaśāstra prefers remarriage while the Manusmṛti prefers
occupation rather than remarriage. The Manusmṛti suggests that the lack of livelihood leads
women to deviate from the righteous path; hence, the avenue of livelihood is permitted.
On examining the Kāmasūtra, one observes that the text is not addressing households in
misery. Another interesting observation in the Kāmasūtra is that though wives are expected

22
The Manusmṛti states that after the death of the husband, the wife is expected to eat flowers, roots and fruits
and is prohibited to mention the name of the other man. She is expected to live a celibate life until her death (MS
V.157–158). See Olivelle (2007, 146).
48 KAVITA GAUR

to wear religious symbols and perform vows and worship in the absence of the householder,
which suggests that ritual dependency is outlined for wives, economic dependency is not
mentioned in the text.
This chapter attempts to highlight the dynamics of household women and work in varied
spheres. The instances of unmarried old women being engaged in economic activities is also
noticed in the Arthaśāstra. The Arthaśāstra mentions the involvement of different categories
of women of the household in economic activities whereas the Manusmṛti permits wives to be
engaged in productive activities under certain conditions. On the other hand, the Kāmasūtra
discusses the role of wives as generators of resources within the domain of the household.
Specifically, in the Arthaśāstra, the notion of women working from within and beyond the
domain of the household is acknowledged. However, the Manusmṛti does not mention the
spatial context of work of the household women while the Kāmasūtra explicitly mentions
the range of work being performed by wives within and outside the domain of the household.
The diverse range of commodities to be grown in the household of the nāgaraka indicates
the possibility of commercial transactions but the text does not mention it. It also highlights
the households of the lowest communities where wives are regarded as undertaking work
to maintain their households, even as hierarchical relations within such households is seen
as being upheld in the Manusmṛti.

IV
Another issue which could be emphasised in the text is that wives of lower communities are
treated and stereotyped as ‘sexual servants’ or performing similar activities as of veśyās. Is
it because they are moving out of the households to provide subsistence to their family? Or
is it because their husband, that is, actors, dancers, singers, musicians, story-tellers, bards,
rope-dancers, showmen and wandering minstrels are supposed to be employed within the
institution associated with the courtesans. Possibly, these are lower communities which are
the necessary adjuncts to the institution of courtesans; therefore, wives of these men may
have been conceived or treated similar to veśyās in the text. Even the dāsis who are sup-
posed to learn the arts of courtesans are prescribed for one who lives by stage (AS 2.27.28).
Similarly, in the Kāmasūtra, the inclusion of Paricārīkā, Natī and Śilpakārikā as categories
of courtesans indicates that the category of working women of lower classes are labelled
as ‘sex-workers’. They are basically the wives of occupational categories. They seemed to
have been incorporated in the framework of ‘sexual labour’ only and, therefore, may have
been termed as courtesans in the Kāmasūtra. However, the categories of Kulaṭa, Svairiṇī and
Prakāśavinaṣṭā are basically the wives who broke away from their household to fulfil their
desires. Their description suggests that they may have been termed as courtesans because
they posed threat to their conventional role. It is interesting to note that some category of
wives are employed as courtesans with the label of ‘wives’ while others are identified as
‘courtesans’ due to the fact of either being employed in work activities or because they are
wives of lower working classes.
 Chapter 6 Tracking Economic
Transitions: Tamil
Women from Tribe to
Caste and Changing
Production Roles*
VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

This essay is aimed at situating women and work in the Tamil region in terms of indigenous
structures and concepts linked to the broader question of tribe to caste transition. Since
this will be primarily a study from below based on Tamil sources, any resemblance to any
of the existing models or paradigms will be, by and large, accidental. The term Kudi has
been used here since it is historically specific and is a generic term meaning ‘inhabitant’.
In locating the place of gender in any societal transformation, some of the significant vari-
ables would be the role of women in production; social status of women especially in the
context of notions of female sexuality, marriage and widowhood; and women in religion.
This study will concentrate only on the core area of work and will study the role of women
in production and overall economy in the context of tribe to caste transitions and societal
transformation in early Tamil Nadu known as the Sangam age.

TAMIL SOURCES AND DATING PROBLEMS

This study will be based on the extremely rich data on the culture of the Tamils available
in Sangam literature. The classical Sangam age goes back roughly to the third century
bce and forward into the second/third century ce Sangam literature can be divided into
three major categories, each consisting of collections of poetic anthologies—Ettutogai,
Pattupattu and the Pandinen Kilkanakku. Ettutogai comprises the following eight
anthologies: Narrinai; Kurunthogai; Aingurunuru; Padirrupattu; Paripadal; Kalittogai;
Ahnanuru (Aham); Purananuru (Puram). The second major collection, Pattupattu com-
prises the following ten: Tirumurugatrupadai; Porunarartruppadai; Siruppanartruppadai;

* This essay draws upon my previously published article ‘The Kudi in Early Tamilaham and the Tamil Women from
Tribe to Caste’ in Dev Nathan (ed.) From Tribe to Caste. Published by Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Shimla.
pp. 223–246. The essay is, however, only concerned with tracking the changes in women’s work as a result of the
transition from tribe to caste.

49
50 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

Perumpanartruppadai; Mullaipattu; Maduraikkanchi; Nedunalvadai; Kurinjipattu;

Pattinappalai; Malaipadukadam. The last category consists of the 18 works known as
Pandinen Kilkanakku. These are by and large didactic in nature and characterised by the
prominent presence of Jain and Buddhist theology and ethics. The most celebrated ethical
text from the last category is the Tirukkural, which among other things can be treated as
a catechism of patriarchy and its author Tiruvalluvar is believed to have been a Jain. The
authors of the didactic texts Naladiyar and Palamoli Nanuru (four hundred proverbs) were
also Jains. As a part of the same collection, Kapilar, said to have been a Brahmin, wrote
Inna Narpatu, literally, 164 maxims enumerating the things to be avoided in one’s life.
Sangam literature gets its name from a college or Sangam of Tamil poets who flour-
ished under the patronage of the Pandyan kings of Madurai. The literature is divided into
three phases-the beginning (mudal Sangam), the middle (idai Sangam) and the end (Kadai
Sangam). A chronological classification of this literature is crucial to an understanding of the
processes, which brought about societal transformation whether in terms of tribe to caste, in
terms of the emergence of patriarchy or changes in religion and the Dravidian world-view.
The chronological categorisation of the plethora of Sangam texts is however, fraught with
difficulties. Dates for the Tokappiyam, a detailed work on Tamil grammar and poetics, range
from the pre-Panini dating assigned to it by the celebrated Tamil scholar Maraimalai Adigal
and following him E. S. Varadaraja Iyer (1948: XIII) who give 450 bce as a rough date, to
P.T. Srinivasa Iyengar (1930: 70) who prefers the date first or second century ce. At the
end of the spectrum is George Hart who is inclined to date it to the fifth century ce (1976:
41). The range of dates for the Tirukkural is no less, stretching from the pre-Christian era
(Dikshitar: 1930: 135–9) to the sixth-eighth century (Srinivasa Iyengar: 1930: 584). Another
major problem is that even within a particular anthology such as the Puram Nanuru (hence-
forth Puram) there could be later interpolations. Again, even the Ettutogai group which is
generally taken to be the earliest one, contains texts like the Kalittogai and the Paripadal
which have been dated to the fifth century ce.
Given all these problems of dating and chronology, Tamil scholars are now looking at this
literature in terms not only of its language and style but also the social context in an effort
to contextualise it. One of the most recent efforts in the direction is that of Sundara Rajan
(The Socio-Economic structure of the Tamil Country: 1991). Although this work does not
attempt a chronological classification of Sangam literature, it is a positive contribution in the
understanding of societal transformation. In the present paper a chronological categorisation
of Sangam literature is attempted on the understanding that such a division is vital to study
any society in transition. Keeping in view as many variables as possible—Sanskritisation of
language and customs, changes in the religious pantheon and ritual, changes in the peasant
economy and beginnings of urbanisation, emergence of patriarchy and state formation—the
literature of the Sangam age can be divided into three historical blocks.

THE HISTORICAL BLOCKS IN EARLY TAMILAHAM

Early Tamilaham was divided into different regions on the basis of terrain and ecology.
The logic of change and development in these eco-zones was also different. The Kudi of
each zone followed different subsistence patterns and therefore the forces of caste strati-
 Chapter 6  Tracking Economic Transitions 51

fication, Brahmanisation and socio-economic transformation operated in different ways

in each zone and among the various kinds of Kudi. The transition from tribe to caste,
which theme informs the logic of the three historical blocks, is most true of the peasant
societies, especially in the Marudam region, The hilly and coastal regions of Tamilaham
do not subscribe to the transition pattern outlined in these historical blocks. These blocks,
however, are important in that they represent the mainstream changes in Tamil society
and the Kudi of the other regions have to be seen in terms of their differential response
of these changes.
Ettutogai seems to belong to the period from the fourth-third century bce to the early
Christian era. The primary preoccupations were aham dealing with the ‘domestic’, the
interior, themes of love and puram, which dealt with the public, the exterior, themes of war.
The aham and puram themes form a part of all the five tinais or eco-zones into which the
Tamil landscape was divided by the Sangam writers. In this phase Kalavu or pre-marital
courtship seems to have been the norm and elopement was fairly common. Marriage ritual
involved only the tali made of tiger’s nails, which the hunter gave his beloved. Marriage
involved no ritual around the sacred fire, which is so central to Vedic Brahmanism. Women
usually exercised full initiative over the choice of a husband. They were also co-sharers and
equal partners with men in all economic activities. It appears likely that the earlier parts of
the Tolkappiyam (the Tamil grammatical work comparable to Panini’s Ashtadhyayi) were
written in this phase. The settings for the Ettutoqai poems were rural. The existence of
metallurgy and metal crafts is proved by the material artifacts found in archaeological mega-
lithic sites- Kannattur and Kanchipuram (Chingleput district); Tirukkampuliyur and Alagiri
(Tiruchchirapalli district); Arikkemedu in Pondicherry and Adichachanallur (Tirunelveli
district). The nature of gender division is the metal crafts is not quite clear. On the basis of
the evidence of the world-view of the early Tamils gathered from their material culture and
its literary expression, Thani Nayagam (1970: 6) makes the interesting observation: ‘The
only fact which is clear is that most, if not al of the Tamil-speaking groups were originally
matrilineal and even, in some cases matrilocal’.
The Pattupattu group of anthologies seems to have the characteristic of a society in transi-
tion and may be said to represent the second of the historical blocks. Mayon, the shepherd
god of the Mullai region, is very clearly identified with the Sanskritic-Brahmanical god
Vishnu. The Mullaipattu likens clouds to ‘Mal who holds in his large hands the discus and
conch, in whose breast resides Lakshmi and who rose up after the water was poured (by
Mahabali) into his hand’. All these constitute references to the dashavatara (ten incarna-
tions) of Vishnu. This phase witnessed the gradual transition to the Vedic-Brahmanical form
of marriage and therefore gradual control over the sexual freedom of women. There are
increasing references to Brahmanical practices. The Kalittogai which technically belongs to
the earlier Ettutogai group but can be placed in this phase in terms of its style and content,
uses a Sanskritic simile when it says: ‘my breath comes out in gasps like the smoke of the
yajnas performed by the Brahamanas learned in the Vedas’ (Kalittigai I: 35, II: 22-56 vide
Srinivas Iyengar: 1989: 570).
The fifth to seventh centuries can be said to constitute the third historical block by when
the agrarian tracts had been more or less transformed into caste societies with an overarching
patriarchal framework. The concepts of purity and pollution were used against both women
and the social groups, which were now becoming identified as untouchables.
52 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

The entire Kilkanakku texts as well as the epics—Silappadikaram, Manimekalai, Neelakesi

and others—are described as post-Sangam texts. Many of the epics of this period were written
mostly by the Buddhists and Jains. The Kilkanakku texts like the Tirukkural were didactic
and prescriptive in nature emphasising patriarchal values. The plurality of voices which is
heard in the early Sangam texts is absent in the historical phase after the third century ce.
Our of the early Sangam anthologies while there are at least 154 poems among the 2,381
which carry the signatures of women, there are no women writers either in the Kilkanakku
or the post-Sangam epics. In this phase patriarchy seems to have become steadily dominant.
This trend is most clearly perceived in the Naladiyar and the Tirukkural which deal with
the three purusharthas or objectives of life: dharma or righteous living, artha or material
wealth and kama or love/desire.
These texts increasingly describe the values of a caste based society, essentially in the
agrarian tracts but gradually spreading to other regions. The obsession with the Brahmanical
elite male concepts of purity and pollution were reflected in the attitudes towards both
women and lower castes. Naladiyar warning against female beauty comments that women
were merely ‘a pack of bones, nerves, blood, marrow and skin’. (Naladiyar: 46 vide Sundara
Rajan: 1991:155). Menstruating women began to be considered polluting. In one of the
later poems in the puram which could belong to the third century or later, a menstruous
woman is called ‘kalamtodamagal’ that is ‘one who cannot touch the plough (Puram: 299
vide Hanumanthan: 1979:32). From being partners of men in the ‘domestic’ and public’
spheres women become snares and temptations. At the same time negative attitudes towards
life’s pleasures came to be emphasised in the doctrines of Buddhism and Jainism and were
reflected in the epic Manimekalai. The attitudes highlighted in these tended to reinforce
the Brahmanical image of women as potentially dangerous who had to be controlled. In
the overarching patriarchal structure which came to dominate Tamilaham by the sixth-
seventh century ce, women (of all social classes) and the men of the lower castes/class
were marginalised and dominated.
These three historical blocks of early Tamilaham based on Sangam literature are not
there in absolute terms. Due, perhaps, to interpolations or the inherent chronological
uncertainties a text from the first phase could reflect the characteristics of the second
or third phase. Secondly, the poems of the puram dated from a very early to a fairly
late (fourth century ce) period. But in broad terms it is possible to discuss the theme
of women from tribe to caste especially in peasant societies in terms of these three
historical blocks.

THE KUDI OF THE FIVE TINAIS

The eco-system and the societal structure of the early Tamils were based on five categories
or eco-types called Tinai enumerated in the Tolkappiyam. Each region was inhabited by
occupational groups called ‘Kudi’. The term ‘Kudi’ meaning ‘Inhabitants’ seems preferable
to the term ‘tribe’ since not all inhabitants of the various eco-zones could be described as
tribal in character. Each tinai was presided over by a deity and named after a characteristic
flower or tree.
 Chapter 6  Tracking Economic Transitions 53

Kurinji: Kurinji stands for the mountain region. Kurinji was a flower grown in this region
and the deity was Murugan or Seyon, ‘the red one’, also meaning ‘the beautiful one’, the god
of war. This name in the later phase gets translated into the Sanskritic tradition as Kartikeya,
the son of Siva and the commander-in-chief of gods. The Kudi are referred to as Kavanar.
These later on come to be called ‘Urali’ literally ‘nomads’ and are listed as a scheduled tribe
in the Census of India,1951 (and the subsequent ones) and also in the Mandal Commission
report (Mandal, 1991). However the 1961 census clarifies that while the Urali is a scheduled
tribe in the Tamil region, they are in the scheduled caste list in Kerala (Ramamurthy and
Rajan: 1961). The Kudi who specialised in hunting were the Eyinar and the Vettuvar. The
Kuravar are another social group referred to in Sangam sources. Their womenfolk were called
Kuratti or Kuramagal and these women were know for their skill in foretelling the future
and their medicinal knowledge. Thurston citing the 1901 census lists the Kurava as a tribe
and equates them with the Korcha (name specific to the ceded districts) and the Yerukala of
Andhra. Thurston describes the Kuravan and Kuratti as thieving gypsies (Thurston: 1909:
III: 438). The Mandal Report also lists the ‘Malai Kuravan’ as a scheduled tribe (Mandal:
1991: 47).
It is noteworthy that the Kurava do not figure merely as hunters but primarily as hill side
agriculturists. They grew food crops like beans, seasamum, panicum, rye and a particular
variety of rice called chamai which is said to have grown ‘in a bamboo filled with small
leaves’ (Puram: 120: 1–14). Cultivation was heavily dependent on rain irrigation (Puram:
168:5–6; 129:1). The Kuravar also grew sweet potatoes and ground nuts, which constituted
an important part of their diet (Puram 109: 3–8). Extraction of honey was another major
preoccupation of the Kurinji region. Both men and women were equally involved in both
agriculture and honey extraction. In fact the Puram verse quoted above, after describing
rice cultivation, says that they could also get things which did not involve use of the plough
and then describe honey extraction, etc.
Early Sangam literature also contains references to the Kurava as petty chieftains. The
poetess Ilaveyiniyar, herself a Kuratti, composed a poem in praise of Erakkon describing
him a great Kurava chieftain (Puram: 157: 1–8 vide Hanumanthan: 1979: 128). What is of
special significance is that the Kuravas had a matriarchal system.
Mullai: One of the pioneering writers on the Sangam age assumes that there was an
evolutionary process by which the ancient Kudi of the Tamil country moved into the Mullai
or pastoral region. He states: ‘When human beings multiplied in the Kurinji region and
available food supply began to shrink, they migrated to the next region, the Mullai or forest
land… Cattle breed fast, especially in the Mullai and hence arose the institution of private
property’ (Srinivasa Iyengar: 1989: 9). This evolutionist view is however difficult to prove
in terms of the south Indian evidence where right from the period of the Tolkappiyam the
five tinais seem to have more or less co-existed. Moreover, agriculture was practised not
only in Marudam which is the river valley eco-zone but also in Kurinji, the hilly tract and
in Mullai the pastoral tract. Nor is there evidence to indicate that only shifting cultivation
was practised in Kurinji and Mullai. On the contrary the plough seems to have been in use.
The Mullai tinai or eco-zone represented the pastoral region with deep forestation. The
presiding deity was called Mayon, ‘the dark one’, and the shepherd god who in the Sanskritic
version is Gopala or Krishna, a manifestation of Vishnu. The Kudi inhabiting this region
54 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

were the Ayar, Kovalar, Idaiyar and Eiyanar. The feminine equivalents were Aaichchiyar,
Kovicchiyar and Idaichchiyar. The economy of the region was predominantly based on cattle
rearing and dairy farming. Women played a crucial role in the pastoral economy. Besides
dairy farming, various kinds of pulses and staple foods like rye were grown in the Mullai
tract. A poem from the Puram is descriptive of the economy of Mullai:

The reapers of pulses eat the food made by husking and cooking the ragi grains and also the sour
porridge cooked by the Iyaimagal; (shepherdess) by boiling in white curds the velai leaves which
grow in the evening by the street full of the droppings of cattle. (Puram: 215: 1–5 vide Srinivas
Iyengar: 1989: 269)

It has been argued that the institution of kingship may have originated in the Mullai region.
The joint family system arose because pasture lands, parcelled out into tiny bits, would
become too small to maintain a flock. The patriarchal head of a large family may have gradu-
ally assumed the status of a king. The support for such an argument is found in the Tamil
language where one of the early terms for king, ‘kon’, also means a herdsman and that for a
queen, Aachchi, means a shepherdess (Srinivasa Iyenagr: 1989: 10). Thurston in his report
on the south Indian castes and tribes tends to treat the Ayar as being synonymous with the
Idaiyar or the kon (the full name may be kolayar). Interestingly in common Tamil parlance
now-a-days these terms are treated as purely occupational categories rather than as caste or
tribal names. The pastoral groups who came to be known at some historical point of time
as Kurumbas, figure as scheduled tribes in the census reports (cr 1961: I: pt.V-A:XXII) and
in the Mandal Report (1991: 47). The references to Kurumbas in Sangam literature are in
the sense of petty cheiftains. For instance the poetess Auvaiyar praises Neduman Anji as
one who conquered the many forts of the Kurumbas (Puram: 97: 1–4). Another verse also
from the Puram describes the proclamation of war by a Kurumba cheiftain (293: 1–2). The
evidence indicates that as pastoralism lost its importance with the beginnings of feudalism
and large scale land ownership on Tamilaham, roughly from the seventh century (Pallava
period) onwards, the pastoral groups lost their social status. They failed to enter the caste
system even at the lower levels or perhaps opted to remain out of it. It is also likely that
some of them took to agriculture wholetime and become absorbed into the peasant society
of the agricultural tract.
Neydal: Neydal referred to the coastal region, the characteristic flower being possibly
a variety of the water lily and the presiding deity Varuna, the rain god. Fishing and manu-
facture of salt seem to have been the mainstay of the economy of the Neydal. The Kudi
who lived by fishing are referred to as Paradavar, Valaignar, Nulayar, Timilar and Panar.
The salt extractors were known as Umanar and the women as Umanatti. Paddy was also
cultivated in the Neydal region. In lines which accurately describe the economy of this tinai
the Puram says: The great Ulavar (farmers) who reap the paddy in the heat of the sun, jump
on to the waves of the clear sea; the Paradavar (fisherfolk) who own strongly built boats,
drink the hot liquor and dance the Kuravai dance with their womenfolk (Puram: 24: 1–16
vide Srinivasa Iyengar: 1989: 260).
The term Umanar as a social category is not to be found in any of the census reports.
The Paradavar or Paravar are however mentioned as a caste group who must have earlier
 Chapter 6  Tracking Economic Transitions 55

enjoyed a lot of power in society (Thurston: 1909: VI: 141). In a mythological work called
Valaiveesu Puranam, the Paravar claim to be connected to the royal line of the Kurus through
the legendary matasyagandhi, the mother of sage Vyasa and the queen of king Shantanu
with whom the Hindu epic Mahabharata begins. This is of source an obvious attempt at
Sanskritisation. Sangam evidence shows that the Paravas must have been independent rulers
who were conquered by the Cholas and Pandyas. The Sangam poet Unpoti Pasumkutayar
praises the Chola king called Ilanche Chenni as one who defeated the southern Paradavar
and Mankuti Marutanar, another Sangam poet, praises the Pandian King Nedunchelian
as ‘a lion in the battle against Paradavar’ (Puram: 378 and Maduraikkanchi: 96: 97 vide
Hanumanthan: 1979: 127). The Paravas do not seem to have reconciled themselves to their
inferior status within the Hindu caste framework because in the British colonial era a large
number of converts to Christianity came from the Parava or fishermen community (Oddie:
1991: tables on 248–50).
Marudam: The Marudam tinai was located in the river valleys and constituted the settled
agricultural tract. Marudam was typified by a red flower of the same name and overseen by
Vendan who as Indra emerged in the Sanskritic pantheon as the king of the gods. As with
the Mullai region, the Marudam must also have been open to the influences of an emer-
gent patriarchy. The concept of family with the man as the patriarch developed alongside
notions of land ownership. Sangam literature in dealing with the Marudam region (as also
to some extent the Mullai), deals with a proliferation of specialised occupational groups.
The development of economic and social stratification is most clearly to be perceived in the
Marudam. It is noteworthy that the king in ancient times was also called Vendan, the name
of the patron deity of the agricultural tract.
Despite the close relationship between peasant societies and patriarchy, it is not possible
to postulate a one-to-one equation between plough agriculture and patriarchy or between
swidden cultivation and matriarchy. South Indian evidence indicates that it was settled
agriculture which prevailed in Kurinji, Mullai and other tinais although it might have been
mostly in the nature of a one-crop cycle. Women in these regions were co-sharers with men
in the economic sphere. The situation in Marudam seems no different because women are
crucial to all agricultural activities. They may not have handled the plough although the
farmer’s wife is called Ulatti, literally ‘one who plough’. The sheer weight of the plough
may have made it difficult for the woman to handle it. Nevertheless planting seeds, guard-
ing crops, husking paddy and pounding grain have been exclusively women’s occupations
since Sangam times. Both genders were equal participant in irrigational activities and the
temmangu genre of Tamil folk songs appears to be centred around this joint economic activ-
ity. Harvesting was again a joint activity of men and women.
Ritually also women were crucial to all agricultural activities. Goddess Korravai who
was the deity of the Palai region was worshipped in all the five eco-zones. The reproductive
woman was both potentially auspicious and dangerous since she could create and destroy
human lives and it is in this sense that the worship of Korravai, both in the battlefield and
the cultivable field, should be seen. The origin of Korravai worship lay in the adoration of
the mother goddess as a symbol of fertility. In fact the ancient custom of plucking the heads
of corn and offering them to the mother goddess as a ritual sacrifice and then consuming
56 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

them, marks the beginning of his worship (Kailasapathy: 1966: 66–84). However, with
Sanskritisation and Brahmanisation, Korravai is transformed into Durga Paramesvari and
it is noteworthy that in south India worship of Durga in her ritual aspect of Sri Vidya is an
exclusively male domain and women are kept severely out. It is therefore possible to argue,
on the basis of the evidence of the Marudam region, that there is no logical nexus between
settled peasant agriculture and patriarchy. The fall in the social and ritual status of women in
stratified peasant societies is to be looked at in terms of the emergence of the Brahmadeyas
and the process of Sanskritisation.
The dominant Kudi in the Marudam region were obviously the agriculturists. The term
used for a farmer is ‘Ulavan’ literally ‘one who ploughs’ and ‘Ulatti’ is its feminine form.
(Tolkappiyam: Porul Adikaram: 20). The same text also states that plough cultivation
is the only means of livelihood for the ‘Velan madar’. The term Vellalar itself occurs in
the Sangam anthology called Paripadal, which falls under Ettutogai. However, it is very
important to note that Paripadal itself although it falls under Ettutogai is definitely a later
work (Hanumanthan: 1979: 123). So this term which denotes landownership (vel = soil
and alar = owner/controller) does not occur before the third century ce. The term used in
Paripadal for plough is er. There is an alternative explanation to the origin of the term
Vellalar. Srinivasa Iyengar says that the term was actually derived from ‘Vellam’ meaning
‘flood’ and the Vellalar specialised in channelising flood waters from irrigation (Srinivasa
Iyengar: 1989: 13). Another term for a farmer in the Sangam age is Karalar. Since kar in
Tamil means clouds, this term has been interpreted as ‘those who channelise rain water
for irrigation’ (Srinivasa Iyengar: 1989: 13). Sangam literature has quite a few reference
to sluices, wells and tanks, the most striking being a verse from the Puram which refers to
a Valai fish which gets caught in the swift current of water flowing from the tank into the
channel and sluices and finally ends up on the slushy cultivated field (Puram: 209: 1–12).
In the period after the seventh century, with the growing system of land grants under the
Pallavas and Cholas, the Vellalas emerged as the dominant caste in large parts of Tamilaham.
In conjunction with the Brahmins, they became the main upholders of patriarchy and a
stratified caste society. The term ‘Ulavar’ in course of time no longer denoted any specific
community but became a generic term for a farmer.
All the other Kudi mentioned in the Marudam region like the Kuyavan (potter), the
Kollan (blacksmith) and Vannan (washermen) constitute the lowest rungs of caste society.
Palai: The fifth division, Palai, had no land type of its own and hence it has been accepted
as a secondary division. It refers to the arid waste lands and the name is derived from the
prevalence of a tree called ‘Palai’ (most probably a variety of cactus), the tendrils and
branches of which do not fade through the summer or winter. The Maravas and the Eiynar
constitute the most important Kudi of this region. The Maravas whose name is derived
from the word ‘maram’ meaning heroism, are representative of the highly militant spirit
of the early Tamils whose Puram poetry is mostly preoccupied with wars and cattle raids.
The Maravas figure in Sangam literature as petty cheiftains. The Narrinai (33: 1–7) says
that the Maravas with the arrow fixed to their bow “watch intently the lonely and fearsome
road. “Thurston describing the Maravas as a tribe, says that along with the Kallar, they must
have constituted one of the earlist tribes in south India (Thurston: 1901: V: 22). Alongwith
 Chapter 6  Tracking Economic Transitions 57

the Maravar, the Mallar and the Mazhavar seem to have constituted the martial classes of
early Tamilaham. The Paditrupattu in the Ettutogai collection contains the comment that
the Maravas relished wars and wore anklets to the battlefield (Paditrapattu: 22: 20, 28:
3–4 vide Hanumanthan: 1979: 125). It also says of them that they never retreated from the
battlefield nor did they sleep in the military camps (Paditrupattu: 57: 1; 58: 4; Narrinai:
18; 5–6 vide Hanumanthan 1979: 9).
P.T. Srinivasa Iyengar opines that the Maravas had been matriarchal in early times (1989:
9). However Thurston, in describing the Maravas from various sources including an anthro-
pological field survey, clearly describes them as patriarchal (Thruston: 1909: V: 22–48).
Some sects of the Maravas practice non-Hindu customs like burial of the dead and also
re-marriage of widows (Thurston: 1909: V: 40–41). However the majority of the Maravas
have gone through a process of Brahmanical acculturation as a result of which they have
also taken to cremating the dead and follow the patriarchal pattern with respect to women.
The Maravas however found no acceptance in the hierarchical caste based societies and
consequently their frustrated militancy turned them into anti-social elements. The Maravas
and Kallar, who mainly inhabit the dry zones of Ramanathapuram and Pudukottai, acquired
ill repute as thieves and robbers perhaps from the early medieval times. Even today the term
‘Kallar’ is used in Tamil as a generic term for robbers. It seems most probable that with
the spread of stratified peasant society and Sankritisation, the Maravas and Kallar became
economically marginalised and had to use their proficiency in arms to take to robbery as
a means of livelihood. An administrative report from Tirunelveli (a major Marava region)
dated march 1899, estimates that the Maravas formed just 10 per cent of the population
but committed 70 per cent of the docoities in the district (Thurston: 1909: V: 28). Some
Maravas, however, continued to retain their status of petty chieftains right into the twentieth
century. The Sethupathis of Ramanathapuram, who offered such stiff resistance to British
colonial rule, were Maravas.

WOMEN IN THE ECONOMY OF TAMILAHAM

Early Sangam literature is, by and large, a description of the countryside and the rural
economy. Here women seem to have been co-sharers with men both in domestic and public
spheres. More than 60 per cent of the agricultural operations were in the hands of women.
However, with the growth of townships, women’s share in the economy went down since
women were peripheral in the context of both commerce and crafts. The late-Sangam and
post-Sangam literature has extensive descriptions of townships and ports. It is noteworthy that
it is also this phase of literature which describes a social structure that is both Brahmanical
and patriarchal. Texts like Maduraikkanchi and Silappadikaram seem to describe a tradi-
tional patriarchal situation.
The Sangam texts, despite their primary preoccupations with aham and puram, inciden-
tally throw light on the economy and participation of women in it.
The two primary concerns of the Neydal or coastal region were fishing and manufacture
of salt. Women played an important role in both activities. The salt producers were known
58 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

as Umanar and their wives as Umanatti. The Narrinai comments that the occupation of
the Umanar being in the nature of itinerant trade, they moved around a lot (138: 1–3). The
Aham Nanuru (henceforth Aham) says that from the movement of their vast caravans it
would appear as if an entire village is moving. Salt producers were known as Alavar and
the place of salt extraction as alam. The Peumpanartruppadai describes how the husband
and wife extracted salt and heaped it on the sea shore. It was loaded into a cart and hawked
from door to door and from village to village. The text describes that it was the woman
who drove the bullock cart loaded with salt. She had an additional pair of bullocks to be
harnessed in case the ones pulling the cart got tired. They hunted animals on the way and
ate this meat. Besides salt, the Umanar also appear to have sold pepper bags, which were
also loaded in the cart. Jars of pickles hung beneath the cart (Perumpanartuppadai: 50–65).
Young girls and women also carried headloads of salt and sold them from door to door. The
aham says that beautiful Neydal women used to exchange rock salt for paddy from peasant
women (Aham: 140: 3–8). The Umanar women are said to have walked with their bracelets
tinkling and loudly proclaimed that they would barter salt for grain (Aham: 390: 8–9). This
obviously means that they went into the agricultural tracts of Marudam, Kurinji and Mullai
to sell their salt (Kurunthogai: 269: 5).
In the same Neydal region while both women and men did the fishing, it was only the
women who sold the fish and bartered them for grain and pulses from the agricultural
region. Timilar, Panar, Valaignar and Paradavar were fisherfolk constituting the Kudi of
Neydal. A verse from the Aham says that the Timilar women sold fish which their menfolk
had caught (Aham: 320: 1–4) but there are also references to women themselves catching
fish. Another verse, also from the Aham, describes how a Panar woman would capture
the Varal fish (considered a delicacy) with the help of thin ropes bound to a stick (Aham:
216: 1–2 vide Sasivalli: 1989: 293). The Aham further describes how the Panamagal or
fisherwomen would sit in street corners and sell their fish (Aham: 126). Young fisher girls
watched over the fish drying in the sun and these were then preserved by the women who
cut them up and salted them (Narrinai: 63: 1–2; 45: 6–7). The fish was then bartered for
paddy. The Aingurunuru says that the Valaiyar sold the Varal fish and got year old white rice
in exchange (Aingurunuru: 46: 1–3 and 48. Also Puram: 343: 1). Apparently pearl diving
was also one of the occupations of the coastal region. The Aham refers to young fisher girl
(Panamagal) who refused to exchange her fish for paddy but instead chose to trade them
for big pearls (Aham: 126: 7–12). Apparently pearls were then not so expensive that they
would become a luxury item.
The manufacture and sale of toddy was predominantly in the hands of women and this
occupation was common to all the eco-zones. In fact the women of almost all communities
(with the exceptions of the Brahmins) were themselves hard drinkers. The coastal women
are also said to have processed and sold toddy made from palmyra juice or from rice. The
Valaiyar fisherfolk are said to have been highly skilled in preparing liquor, with equal
gender participation. The toddy prepared from the palmyra was known as pennai. The
Pattinappalai says that the Paradavar (fisherfolk) of the Neydal (coastal region) first offered
liquor to the gods and then drank it. Yet another reference in the Siruppanartruppadai from
the same region, refers to the Naulayarmagal (fisherwomen) using the logs of a special tree
called akil to prepare a sour liquor much relished by the paradavar (Siruppanartruppadai:
 Chapter 6  Tracking Economic Transitions 59

154–59 vide Saivalli: 1989: 299). Toddy was also prepared in the Kurinji region either
from honey called tekkal-teral or from rice called toppi. In fact in early Sangam literature
women are exclusively associated with the making of rice toddy (Perumpanartruppadai:
142 vide Ramaswamy: 1989: 91). The Perumpanartruppadai also describes the process
by which housewives made toddy at home. First a kind of rice starch was prepared which
was then allowed to ferment for the whole day. Finally impurities were drained from it
(Perumpanartruppadai: 275–81). This liquor is referred to as narumpili. Toddy was also
prepared from fruits, sugarcane and coconut. The Puram describes the Paradavar women
as hard drinkers who consumed a liquor made out of palm, sugarcane and coconut juice
(Puram 24: 1–16 vide Ramaswamy: 1989: 91) Sangam anthologies both from Ettutogai
and Pattupattu show that women of both lower and upper strata consumed liquor freely
(especially Pattinappalai: 108).
These texts also contain quite a few references to women hawkers selling toddy while the
texts do not appear to contain corresponding references to male hawkers. The Aham says
that the Ariyal girls sold toddy which they carried on their heads in pots (Aham: 157: 1–4).
The toddy was usually exchanged for rice (Perumpanartruppadai: 214: 15). Thus both the
manufacture and sale of liquor seem primarily to have been in the hands of women. It is
only with the progressive influence of Brahmanisation that restrictions begin to be placed on
women consuming liquor and they are also marginalised within the liquor making industry.
The extraction of fish oil in the Neydal region was again done primarily by women and
the Perumpanartruppadai (214, 215 vide Subrahmanian: 1966: 232) says that both toddy
and fish were exchanged for honey and edible roots (from the Kurinji region).
In the Mullai region, the economy was pastoral. Cattle breeding and grazing seem to
have been men’s occupations but dairy farming and the sale of dairy products was a sector
of the Mullai economy in which women played a leading, possibly even a dominant part.
The Perumpanartruppadai gives a detailed account of work of shepherdess. The shepherd-
esses of the ancient Tamilaham were known by such names as Aaichchiyar, Kovichchiyar,
Idaichchiayr, etc. In a somewhat clumsy simile the rhythmic churning of the curds by the
shepherdess is linkened to a tiger’s roar (Perumpanartruppadai vide Ramaswamy: 1989:85).
The process of setting curds by curdling the milk is itself used as a simile in the Puram which
says, ‘like the curd being squirted on to a pot of milk from the fingers of a tired shepherd-
ess’ (Puram: 276: 4–5). In the Puram it is stated that the curds were directly exchanged
with farmers for foodgrains (Puram: 33: 1–6). However, the Perumpanartruppadai which
is later text says that the shepherdess of the Mullai sells her buttermilk from door to door
in the Kurinji region and with the money she gets, she buys foodgrains for her household
(156-60 vide Ramaswamy: 1989:85). Although these two references constitute two bits of
evidence in isolation, they could perhaps be treated as indicators of two different economic
situations. The system of barter in the Puram is partially replaced by cash payment for prod-
ucts in the Perumpanartruppadai. Another reference from the text says that the shepherdess
prepared ghee (clarified butter) and hawked it. She would not accept the gold, which was
offered for it but gets a good milch buffalo, a good cow and another black cow in exchange
for her products. This judicious investment (mudal) enables her to expand her business
(Perumpanartruppadai: 164: 5 vide Ramaswamy 1989: 85). Perhaps these references in
the Perumpanartruppadai are indicative of an economy in transition.
60 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

Besides hawking dairy products, the women of the Mullai region also sold meat. In the
Pandya country the prosperous housewife exchanged paddy for the goat meat brought by
the shepherdess (Puram: 33). In front of the thatched huts of the Kovalar, hides of skinned
goats were spread on wooden cots to dry (Puram: 148: 154).
Women seem to have been seminal to the agrarian economy as well, whether the system
was one of shifting cultivation involving the use of the hoe or one of settled plough cultivation.
Weeding of plants and clearing the fields, seed planting, guarding of the crops, husking and
winnowing of the paddy and pounding of the grain were all economic activities done entirely
by women. Besides these tasks performed exclusively by women, they were co-sharers with
men in the tasks of both irrigation and harvesting. The Eyirriyar women smoothened and
weeded the fields with furrows, which had an iron tip, called Kozhu (Perumpanartruppadai:
90–97). The evidence of the Sangam literature regarding these specific agricultural func-
tions of women is borne out by the genre of the folk songs, linked to each of these activities
(Ramaswamy: 1993).
While mature women undertook the heavier tasks of weeding and planting, young unmar-
ried girls were sent to the fields to keep a watch over the paddy, millets and other crops.
This was also the time for romantic dalliance and courtship called kalavu. Kalavu was an
accepted aspect of social life and the notions of female sexuality as something dangerous that
had to be controlled by confining young girls to the home came in only with Brahmanism.
The husking and pounding of grain with a big pestle (ulakkai) by two women stand-
ing face to face is a recurrent theme in Sangam literature. The Malaipadukadam and the
Kurunthogai both refer to the women singing as they pound the grain. These are sometimes
referred to as Kuramagal and Kapilar’s Kurinjipattu (a part of Kalittigai) deals with these
grain-pounding songs. Alternatively these songs are also referred as vallaipattu, probably
the term used for them in the Marudam region.
The farmer was called Ulavan and his wife as Ulttti, literally ‘one who ploughs’. A poem
from the Nartrinai describes their work in the fields. They wake up at dawn and have a hearty
meal consisting of rice mixed with fish soup (the fish being got in barter from the Neydal).
Then they and their wives go to the fields where the women plant in the wet clay. ‘Thus the
ploughmen who have yoked the buffalo are ploughing the field, have built up many stacks
of paddy which looks like paddy hills’ (Nartrinai: 60: 1–8 vide Srinivasa Iyengar: 1989:
179). This verse shows clearly a gendered division of labour. There is also no evidence in
any Sangam text that women handled the plough. An explanation for this, perhaps somewhat
simplistic, could be that the women did not handle the plough because it was too heavy
and not because of any ritual taboo. It is not unlikely that the taboo on women touching the
plough was a superimposition by Brahmanical patriarchy. This argument appears logical
because the non-touching of the plough by women would otherwise have been reflected in
an association of women with pollution. Evidence of female pollution however starts figur-
ing in Sangam literature only at a later stage. The gender bias is also not visible although its
undertones may have existed. Nevertheless it was in agricultural tracts of the Marudam that
a combination of factors led to class differentiation, caste stratification and the emergence
of a patriarchal structure.
 Chapter 6  Tracking Economic Transitions 61

GENDER FROM TRIBE TO CASTE

The river valleys were the first to develop a certain degree of economic stratification based
on land ownership. The Tolkappiyam makes a striking distinction between those who sub-
sist by ploughing their own lands (uluthunbar) and those who subsist by getting their lands
ploughed by others (uluvithunbar). It is noteworthy that the sections of the Tolkappiyam
dealing specifically with the economy are dated to the fifth century or even later. This is also
roughly the period of the Paripadal where the term ‘Vellalar’ in the sense of a landowner
is used for the first time. In the Kurunthagai, the poet speaks of ‘oru eru Ulvan’, literally
‘a peasant with one ploughshare’ (vide Subrahmanian: 1966: 221). This comment is pos-
sible only in the context of a differentiated society where you can have a small farmer with
one plough and a big landowner using many ploughs. Within the Marudam region, over a
period of time, the Vellalas emerged as superior agricultural castes while the Pallar formed
into low-caste agriculturists or landless labourers. Probably the term in the Puram called
‘kadaisiyar’ literally ‘the last in society’ pertains to the Pallar and they are in fact returned
as a sub-caste of the Pallar in the 1901 census (Thurston: 1909: VII: 303–10). The Mandal
Report basing itself on the previous census returns (1961: vol. I, pt. V-A: XX) lists both the
Pallar and the Kadaiyar as scheduled castes (Mandal: 1991: 26).
Sangam society consisted of various types of craftsmen and social groups like the Pulaiya
who dealt with rituals concerning birth and death. There are scattered references in Sangam
literature to potters (Kuyavar), blacksmiths (Kollar) and carpenters (tachchar). Auvaiyar uses
the metaphor of a carpenter who could fashion eight chariots in a day! (Puram: 87). The
Pulaiyar, Panar, Velar and Totiyar attended on occasions of death and performed acts like
the lighting of the cremation fire and offering worship to the memorial stones in which the
spirit of the dead person was believed to reside. The Pulatti and the Panatti were as closely
associated with death. In fact by the medieval times, the Valaichiyar (fisherwomen) began
to act as professional mourners. (Inscription of the Pudukottai State: 601 vide Ramaswamy
1989: 95).
Clearly then, Sangam society was stratified in terms of occupational differences but
there were no caste hierarchies. The word ‘jati’ itself is absent in the Sangam literature
and it occurs only once in the sense of a bio-physical category and not in the sense of caste
(Tolkappiyam: Marabiyal: 42). The south Indian evidence strongly suggests that the varna
system and the hierarchical division of society into castes, were both superimposition of
Vedic Brahmanism on the south. Even though the Pulaiyar may have been regarded as low
born in the context of their association with death, neither the concept of pollution nor of
untouchability was attached to them during the Sangam age. There seems to have been free
inter-mixing and interdining among the various social groups called ‘Kudi’ and Auvaryar’s
celebrated poems testify to the fact that the Panar and their female counterparts the Viraliayar,
who were nomadic bards, freely shared liquor and meat with the Sangam cheiftains. Thus
there was economic differentiation in early Sangam society but not class differentiation.
These Panar along with other economically dependent groups would be termed ‘low caste’
within the Brahmanical discourse.
62 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

The gradual but powerful penetration of Vedic Brahmanism along with Buddhism and
Jainism, is clearly visible in the post Sangam era. Their influence gets reflected in the didactic
Kilkanakku literature. Naladiyar, a Jain text roughly datable to the fourth century ce or later,
refers to the Paratavar (fisherfolk of the Neydal or coastal region) as Kadaiyar. Naladiyar
being a Jain text must have considered the oil pressers as destroyers of thousands of oil
seeds and hence ‘impure’ and ‘low born’ (Hanumanthan: 1976:140). The word ‘jati’ in the
sense of caste also occurs in its present connotation in another Jain Kilkanakku text-Palamoli
Nanuru (four hundred proverbs), which like most of the other didactic texts, belongs to the
period from the fourth to the sixth centuries. The Achcharakkovai glorifies the value system
of the Vedic Brahmansim. The notions of purity and pollution-that the brahmin is pure and
the Pulaiya impure (and therefore untouchable) because of what they do, is also encountered
for the first time in the Achcharakkovai.
The seventh century in Tamilaham witnessed the beginning of the system of land grants
to Brahmins called Brahmadeya. Starting with the Pallavas of Kanchipuram, this system
spread fairly rapidly into the Chola and Pandya countries. The land grant system to Brahmins
gradually led to the formation of a quasi-fedual structure in Tamilaham. The Brahmadeyas
were linked to state formation in these regions. The Chola, Pandya and Pallava started a
new phase of massive temple building activity and the granting of fertile tracts to temples
as Devamanya and to Brahmins as Brahmadeya, both quite often tax free (irraiyili). The
Brahman grantees very often formed an alliance with the dominant agricultural group the
Vellalar, together controlling not only the agricultural surplus but also the products of crafts
labour and even merchandise in the form of commercial tolls.
The concepts of control and subordinates lie at the root of a system that has non-cultivating
proprietors like the Brahmins. Production in such a situation is possible only through force
and/or prescriptive codes like ‘service’ and ‘loyalty’, which the feudal landlords expected
in implicit measure from the peasants and their other dependants.
The male head of the household exemplified the same fedual system and became the
patriarch of the family. The peasant woman despite her position as co-sharer in agricultural
operations, became socially and ritually inferior and subordinate to the male. At the societal
level, the Kudi, engaged in essential but socially inferior occupations like the Pallar and
the Pulaiyar, became ritually and socially distanced from the Brahmins and the Vellalas.
These then formed the rung below even the Shudra varna and became untouchables. It is
only in the early medieval period that the terms like Paraiya and Chandala come to be used
for these social groups. In brief, in the course of the sixth-seventh centuries and continuing
well into the medieval period, women and lower social group who were seminal to produc-
tion became socially marginalised while the Brahmins who were peripheral to production
became the nucleus of the society.
The transformation of the Kudi of Kurinji and Neydal regions like the Kuravar or the
Maravar either into the socially outcast tribes or the lowest entrants into the Shudra category in
the caste hierarchy partly came about as a result of state formation in Tamilaham. The Chola
conquest over the Kuravs or the extension of the Panadya territory into the Ramanathapuram-
Pudukottai regions through the conquest and displacement of the Maravas, led to the loss of
independence and status for these groups. The Kuravas have, either deliberately or by the
 Chapter 6  Tracking Economic Transitions 63

force of circumstances, failed to integrate into the caste society at any level. The Maravas
are to this day widely feared as a thieving tribe and are an ostracised group in the Tirunelveli
region, what was perhaps the Palai tinai of the Sangam age. Interestingly although they
were themselves marginalised in the entire process of Brahmanisation, the Maravas have
adopted the patriarchal values of the Brahmans, and copied faithfully their marriage practices.

TAMIL WOMEN IN THE URBAN SETTING

Gender and caste differentiations are even more pronounced in the urban centres of early
Tamilaham. There is a plethora of town and city description in the epics—Silappadikaram
and the Manikekalai. Thus, even in terms of locale there is a vast difference between the
rural landscape which forms the setting for the early Sangam poetry and the urban landscape
which provides the backdrop of the epics and much of Kilkanakku literature.
The monsoon of the Arabian sea was discovered by Hippalos in the middle of the first
century ce providing impetus to the trade between India, the Mediterranean and West Asia.
At the same time, maritime movements from Kalinga along the Bay of Bengal led to the
entry of Buddhism and Jainism into south India. Beginning from Andhra, the hetrodox faiths
spread rapidly into the Tamil area. The Jains are even today, in the south India as well as
in north, predominantly traders. The Jain and Buddhist texts and epics of the period deal
with wealthy monasteries located in urban centre and trade entrepots. The entire story of
Silapppadikaram primarily moves between two cities-Kaveripumpattinam of the Cholas
and Mudurai of the Pandyas. However trade and craft activities in these towns were pre-
dominantly male occupations and women were peripheral to the urban economy. It was
inevitable that men who played a dominant role in the economy should establish their
dominance over women.
There was, at the same time, a search for patronage from the kings and merchants on the
part of the monasteries of the heterodox faiths. Combined with the anxiety not to lose their
social base to Vedic Brahmanism, the dependence on patronage came to carrode what had
been the most significant contribution of the heteodox faiths. Their egalitarian ideology and
rejection of ritual superiority had led to the entry of both low castes and women in large
numbers into Buddhism and Jainism. These faiths also managed to win the support of the
Kalabra tribal kings who dominated south Indian polity from the fourth to sixth centuries.
As nomadic rulers with no ritual authority the Kalabras patronised the hetrodox, anti-Hindu,
Anti-Brahmin faiths.
By the sixth to seventh centuries, Buddhism and Jainism had moved very close to Vedic
Brahmanism in their ideas of patriarchy and caste dominance. Both heterodox monasteries
and Hindu mutts were heavily funded by grants from kings, nobles, merchants and other
wealthy sections of society. Economic dependence on the dominant groups of a caste ridden
society led to acceptance and reinforcement of patriarchal values in religion and society.
It is therefore possible to conclude that due to a variety of internal and external fac-
tors, women’s role and status in economy and society fell sharply during the course of the
mainstream transformation of Tamil society from tribe to caste. Even where communities
64 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

such as Maravas retained their identity, they adopted the patriarchal framework. However,
in the peripheral eco-zones as in hilly tracts, in contrast to the core agricultural regions,
the establishment of a caste stratified society was much more inchoate. As a consequence,
gender differentiation among the groups or Kudi inhabiting these areas was also propor-
tionately less accented.

REFERENCES
Aham Nanuru (Aham), ed. Somasundaranar, P.V., Madras, 1974.
Aingurunuru, ed. Swaminathaiyyar, U.V. and Kalyana Sundarayyar, S., Madras, 1944.
Dikshitar, Ramachandra, V.R. Studies in Tamil Literature and History, Luzac and Co. London, 1930.
Hart, George L., ‘Ancient Tamil Literature: Its Scholarly Past and Future’ in Stein Burton Essays on South India,
Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1976.
Hanumanthan, K.R. Untouchability—a historical study, Koodal Publishers, Madurai, 1976.
Iyengar, Srinivasa, P.T., History of Tamils, Asian Educational Services, New Delhi, 1989 (Ist edition 1930).
Kailasapathy, K., Tamizhar Vazhvum Vazhipadum, Makkal Veliyeedu (Peoples’ Press), Madras, 1966.
Kurunthogai ed. Swaminathaiyyar, U.V., Madras, 1937.
Mandal Commission Report of the Backward Classes Commission, Reservations for Backward Classes, 1980,
Akalank Publications, 1991.
Narrinai, ed. Narayanaswami, A., Madras, 1952.
Oddie, Geoffrey, A., Hindu and Christian in South-East India, London Studies on South Asia, A., No. 6, University
of London, 1991.
Perumpanaruppadai, in Pattupattu, ed. Swaminathaiyyar, U.V., Madras, 1931.
Puram Nanuru (Puram), ed. Swaminathaiyyar, U.V., Madras, 1935.
A.S. Ramamurthy and C.T. Rajan, Thandan/Uraly, Scheduled Castes of Tamil Nadu, V.I.No.10, Monograph series,
Census of India, 1961.
Ramaswamy, Vijaya, ‘Aspects of Women and Work in Early South India’, Indian Economic and Social History
Review, Vol. XXVI, No. I, Jan–Mar, 1989.
Sasivalli, V.C., Pandai Tamizhar Tozhilgal, International Institute of Tamil Studies, Madras, 1989.
Subrahmanian, T.N., Sangam Polity, Asian Publishing House, Bombay, 1966.
Sundararjan, S, Ancient Tamil Country-Its Social and Economic Structure, Navrang, New Delhi, 1991.
Thaninayagam, X.S., Tamil Culture and Civilization, Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1970.
Thurston, Edgar, Castes and Tribes of South India, 7 vols., Reprint, Cosmos, New Delhi, 1975, (Ist edition, Government
Press, Madras, 1909).
Tolkappiyam (Poruladhikaram), Vol. I, Pt. I and Vol. II, Pt. II, ed. Varadaraja Iyer, E.S. Annamalai University, Tamil
Series, No. 9, Annamalai Nagar, 1948.
 Chapter 7 The Question of
Women’s ‘Agency’:
Women, Work and
Domesticity in Early
Textual Traditions
JAYA TYAGI

Women have never been a homogenous category. Different categories of women have dealt
with issues related to garnering of and management of resources for individual, familial, kin
and societal needs even while constantly dealing with sociopolitical systems and patriar-
chal mindsets in different ways. One cannot envisage any society where women may have
been passive participants in social processes. They have been engaged in myriad activities
relating to production and reproduction of economic, social, cultural, physical and human
resources while constantly negotiating for access to some of these resources and also for
decision making, for enhancing their role and stature in society. Women have always been
pushing at the boundaries of their existence, even while these boundaries are being constantly
redefined and demarcated by political and religious ideologues.
In ancient societies, we know that women’s contributions and their active engagement
in production and reproduction activities would have been there, yet they are not easy to
retrieve because of the nature of the sources which have been compiled and written for varied
purposes. When we refer to the agency of women,1 we need to re-examine the manner in
which we look at agency itself as women have different histories when compared to men,
their agency and the societal impact of that agency are also different. Patriarchal ideologies
are diverse and varied and just as there are multiple ideologies, there are varied negotiations
and resistances to them. Generally, we associate agency with resistance and ability to control
situations in a manner which will be conducive to improved conditions; however, in the
case of women (and other marginal categories) the question of agency is complicated as our
sources do not record women’s individual or collective responses, and we have to deduce

1
In feminist literature, agency has been variously described in different ways—the exercise of agency (Jolly 1998, 1),
‘free agency’ (Manderson 1990, 30), ‘an active agency’ (Haggis 1998, 85), ‘praxis and agency’ (Misciagno 1997, xxii),
instrumental agency (Molyneux 1998, 79 cited in Lynn Parker, The Agency of Women in Asia 3 [Singapore: Marshall
Cavendish International Private Ltd., 2005], 3). There is also ‘negative agency’ women struggle to find a voice, some-
times take drastic measures (Gayatri Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak? Revised edition’, in Can the Subaltern Speak?
Reflections on the History of an Idea, ed. Rosalind C. Morris [New York: Columbia University Press, 2010], 21–80).

65
66 JAYA TYAGI

how women would have participated, contested or complied within society. Sometimes
women participate willingly, at other times they resist in their own way, at still other times
they are not cognizant of the manner in which they are being deprived of decision making
and resource generation. Individual reactions of women to systems of control and domination
must have been there, yet they are rarely preserved in history, sometimes deliberately so. It
is powerful groups and their voices that have got recorded and been retained in patriarchal
traditions for social, political and ideological reasons. The penchant for focusing on larger
socio-political power structures by social historians is what makes the marginal groups
(including women) slip through the enormous gaps in historical studies—thus, the need for
historical ‘retrieval’ and to look at sources in a manner where we also explore what they
seek to hide and the agendas that they attempt to put forth and why they chose to do so.
We also have to acknowledge the fact that in constrained circumstances women may not
be able to exercise their agency in the manner that they want to, or articulate it. Compliance
with social norms as well as resistances to them is all part of the choices women have
to make constantly, sometimes in a conscious and deliberate manner and at other times
unconsciously. Resistances are also varied and can be radical but may also be nuanced and
subtle. Thus, when attempting to retrieve instances where women can be termed as ‘social
actors’, or as persons in their own right,2 we have to acknowledge the possibility of ‘negative
agency’ or ‘limited agency’ and realize that within the limits and constraints that women
face, they try to constantly negotiate and work towards contributing in different ways.3 An
aspect of agency that we need to focus on is that it is not only restricted to resistance, but
it also compels existing patriarchal ideologies to reformulate their strategies.4 Agency may
not always lead to empowerment or change in situation; sometimes it triggers off changes
in strategies of domination.
Ideology plays a crucial role in creating dominant power structures, and how women seek
to negotiate within these power structures is critical.5 Jonathan Freedman has shown how
dominance is a set of ideas or practices usually favourable to a particular minority within
a society who appear to hold sway over the whole of that society and who act to reproduce
this same condition. This section tends to be ‘hegemonic, pervasive, exclusionary and
conservative’.6 Thus, textual traditions tend to project male-centric notions and represent
women in a particular manner. However, these representations can be studied to retrieve

2
Strathern (1988, 70) cited in Parker (The Agency of Women in Asia).
3
Scholars have shown how women have to cope and strategize according to differing constraining patriarchal systems.
Some of these may be construed as ‘bargains with patriarchy’; others have shown how sometimes the ‘path of least
resistance’ may be deliberately taken by women as a basic survival strategy.
4
Foucault has shown how ‘where there is power, there is resistance’. He has also shown how ‘this resistance is never
in a position of exteriority in relation to power’.
5
Cultural hegemonies in society exist as co-opting groups participate in overall systems because of ideological
compulsions. Clifford Geertz has explained how ideologies map problematic social realities—they ‘render other-
wise incomprehensible social situations meaningful’, and are ‘matrices for the creation of a collective conscience’.
See Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books Inc, 1973).
6
Jonathan Freedman, ‘Culture, Identity and World Process’, in Domination and Resistance, ed. M. Rowlands,
C. Tilley and D. Miller (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 63.
 Chapter 7  The Question of Women’s ‘Agency’ 67

the manner in which women would have constantly negotiated with societal norms and
­traditions even while being an integral part of the society. We now understand that in order
to unravel the deeply embedded and intertwined networks of patriarchy in normative, reli-
gious i­deologies, we need to tackle our sources in a more comprehensive manner. There is a
need to review early traditions according to the 3R’s, emphasized upon by feminist scholars.
These are, ‘re-reading, re-conceiving and reconstructing’.7 In the early Indian context, there
are multiple overlapping spaces in the diverse sources and traditions, especially in relation
to their attitudes towards women.
When dealing with issues related to women, work and property, the question of agency
becomes even more contentious as domestic work has not been properly acknowledged
or quantified as contributing towards societal growth. Ancient textual traditions show a
remarkable predilection for overemphasizing women’s reproductive roles, usually at the
cost of their overall contributions in social and economic production. Even while dwell-
ing upon women’s bodies as reproductive vessels, textual traditions seek to ignore and not
give due cognisance to women in domestic or reproduction activities. In spite of all these
limitations, textual traditions can still be used as sources to derive information on women
and work, primarily through re-reading and ‘deconstructing’ them to read the text, context
as well as the subtext in these traditions. The anxieties of the texts, the silences and oblique
references give us information on the manner in which women would have made consider-
able contributions through their active engagement in society.
Representations of women usually do not reveal how women were actually living, nor do
they deal with issues related to their daily existence. But they do show us the perceptions
related to women and can help us trace the manner in which ideologies evolved. There is
need to have a more comprehensive view of how gendered attitudes are reflected in norma-
tive and theological traditions, giving them legitimacy and sacralising them, and how the
ideas then flow into social, political and cultural spaces. The representation of women that
we find in texts and women’s responses to these have also been subject to constant evolution
and change. It is from these representations that we can gauge the role that women have
played in the domestic sphere.

HOUSEHOLDS IN TEXTUAL TRADITIONS

The study of households is essential for understanding any society as personal and politi-
cal spaces are intertwined and reinforce each other. The role of all members of the family,
especially women and children, working in the interest of the family in pre-industrial soci-
eties has only now begun to get attention. Studies have revealed the economic and social
contribution of women and girls, which had earlier been ignored in historical analyses.
Studies have shown how the participation of women in the labour market was strongly
related to the traditional values of ‘family economy’ that included daughters. The task of

7
June O’Connor, ‘Rereading, Reconceiving and Reconstructing Tradition: Feminist Research in Religion’, Women’s
Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 17 (1989, June): 101–23.
68 JAYA TYAGI

how production is managed (and gendered) in the family has been taken up by Scoot and
Tilly who have brought attention to the role of women in the family economy in the context
of the nineteenth century Europe.8 Thus, the importance of the domestic organization of
production needs to be understood and questions need to be raised about how, as Scott and
Tilly say, ‘family organization and relationships are determined by a household’s labour
needs and subsistence requirements’. Tilly refers to the family as a ‘mediating unit’ between
the individual worker and the economic system and it is increasingly being realized that the
decision making power of the household brings traditions, values and interests of its own
that impact all of society.
In the context of ancient societies, Elise Boulding has shown how women have contributed
to household production in agricultural societies. She refers to the fact that ‘the household
unit in society through the First Millenium C.E. was responsible for about 90 percent of the
total production of city states and empires’. Household production, according to her, can
be defined as ‘what is produced inside and adjacent to the home, including courtyard and
kitchen garden, family workshop and farm fields’.9 Wilk and Rathje have shown how house-
holds are the level at which social groups articulate directly with economic and ecological
processes; therefore, they are at a level at which adaptation can be directly studied. ‘They
reflect changes taking place at the social and economic level. At different stages of cultural
evolution, in different kinds of environments and in different social strata, households per-
form different functions and therefore differ in size, organization and development cycle.’10
The study of domesticity and the representation of households in texts lead us towards
a greater understanding of how texts seek to represent the role of women in the domestic
space and whether these are accurate depictions. The projection of the household as an area
for production, consumption, distribution and ‘pooling’ of resources and the participation
of women in production and sharing experiences regarding food, cooking and eating can be
seen in varied texts like the Gṛhyasūtras (henceforth, GSs), the Maṇusmṛiti (MS) and the
Matsymahāpurāṇa (MMP). It is relevant to study these texts as they tell us about normative
ideology and the role that was envisaged for women in formulating decisions, negotiation
and co-ordinating the management of resources.
Women’s participation in domestic spaces requires a fairly complex treatment as they
have been presented in textual traditions in a considerably complex manner. The traditions
also tell us how women seek to use their domestic status to create sociopolitical spaces for
themselves. References to domestic observances and praxis can be used as sources which
lead us into the mind of those who formulate normative conceptualizations and reflect
socio-cultural attitudes and their anxieties towards women. In order to understand these
traditions, one has to not only trace how normative constructs have evolved but also the
way in which women have responded to them. In this quest, as we have seen, the role of
ideological conceptualizations in revealing some of the complexities relating to the house-

8
Jean W. Scott and Lousie A. Tilly, ‘Women’s Work and the Family in Nineteenth century Europe’, Comparative
Studies in History 17 (1975): 36–64.
9
Elise Boulding, The Underside of History (California: West View Press, 1976), 9.
10
R. R. Wilk and W. L. Rathje, ed., ‘Archaeology of the Household’, Americal Behavioural Scientist 25, no. 6
(July–August 1982), 611–725.
 Chapter 7  The Question of Women’s ‘Agency’ 69

hold is considerable. Women are represented as domesticated, devout wives, prostitutes or

as goddesses. However, in each of these ‘categories’ of representation we get a glimmer of
the potential or real agency of women. We also see how ideologically, each of these catego-
ries have to be placed or ‘evaluated’ on the value-laden scale of propriety, auspiciousness
and progenitiveness. Women have to constantly ‘prove their worth’ on all these levels to
justify their existence. One of the main reasons for this approach towards women, the need
to clearly define (and regulate) their ritual, social and cultural roles is the anxiety related to
women’s bodies and the need to control their reproductivity. The representation of women,
mainly in relation to fertility, seems to have been a conscious and deliberate one and also
discriminatory as both men and women are involved in reproduction.
When retrieving material on how the household was envisaged in early Indian traditions,
we have to first explore the instances when the household, familial issues and social rela-
tionships are discussed and what is the intention and purpose behind the authors discussing
the household at that particular juncture. Early texts are not exactly devoted towards an
explanation of the structure and nature of productive and social relationships. Analysis of
the context in which the households are discussed tells us about how conceptualization of
what the household should be like and how it should exist was crucial and always in the
minds of the different authors of different textual genres in ancient India.
The need to define the household and relations within it was determined by the need
to organize labour towards household work and it was also related to property concerns.
Perceptions on the organization of labour have a direct bearing on our understanding of the
role of the household. In the modern context, Leela Dube has shown how the question of
women’s labour has been ignored and, if tackled, taken to ‘the arena of the family, myths of
motherhood and the devaluation of housework’.11 Susan Viswanathan has shown how ‘the
housewife is the transformation of the creative energies of the women in to one systematic
type of labourer’—one who is primarily concerned with reproduction, the birth of new
members of the labour force and their sustenance.12
If we try to analyse early households and work-related and property issues within them
historically, then we see that in the Rigveda (RV), although the texts reveal a patriarchal
society and there is an attempt to delineate different categories of work reflecting a tripartite
society divided into brahmanas, rājanya and vaiśya, the division is a male-centric one. Men
are differentiated on the basis of occupations and status-based hierarchies, while women’s
identities and work-related activities are juxtaposed with men; they are not mentioned
separately as it is understood that they will support the males in whatever activities they
perform. Jana, viś, kula, grāma and gṛha are terms which are used in a generic manner. The
reference to daṁpati, the dual conjugal unit, seems to imply that they were an economic and
social unit performing production as well as reproduction activities. There is no real under-
standing of individual property as such and that is why both individual men and women are
not associated with it. The RV reflects a social order in which production was limited and

11
Leela Dube, ‘Gender Biases and Social Sciences’, in Women in Indian History: Social, Economic, Political and
Cultural Perspectives, ed. Kiran Pawar (Patiala: Vision and Venture, 1996), 5.
12
Susan Viswanathan, ‘From Housewifization to Androgyny’, India International Quarterly (Winter, 1996): 177.
70 JAYA TYAGI

although there are terms used for wealth, this related to cattle, gold, chariots and dāsas, not
landed wealth or property. There is not much reference to the use of paid workers or slaves
in agriculture or craft production, which shows that household production was the norm.
In the later Vedic texts, the Brahmana texts and other texts, the overwhelming association
of women with reproductive activities was because of the key role they played in production
as well as in producing potential producers. Claude Meillasoux has shown that agricultural
societies function on the basis of group cohesiveness and continuity; they evolve households
which secure food and seed from previous production cycles. In these societies older men
gain control over food, knowledge and women. Women and children become valuable
sources of labour and hence the control of reproduction predates property.13
Absence of private ownership of landed property meant that the question of inheritance
could not have signified much for men and women. Scholars have shown how in the RV,
the term putrikā meant a child of the family and not a brotherless daughter, the legal heir to
her father’s property, as it came to mean in later texts. Thus, one sees that social segregation
was not deep rooted in RV. Status categories did exist but not class or varna categories and
although gender categories existed, the differentiation was not so deep-rooted as they were
not associated with proprietary, status and varna differentiation.14 Vārya and bhāga in RV
are terms for division, but not of land as it was not a form of property, and agriculture was
practised along with animal husbandry. Land was subject to joint or corporate holding, so
there was no question of individual ownership of land. Individual possession is referred
to in later parts of RV; even women seem to be entitled to have a share of cattle wealth as
a marriage gift, as is suggested in the ‘wedding hymn’ RV X.85.13–38. Sāyaṇa explains
the term vahatu as ‘cow and other gifts given for pleasing the girl’. Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa
IV.4.2.3 states, ‘women own neither themselves nor an inheritancer’. Yāska in his Nirukta
II.4 says that women are not entitled to partition and inheritance. But because of parallel
traditions, women’s proprietary rights could not be totally ignored; pāriṇāhya used in the
Taittiriya Saṁhitā VI.2.1.1 indicates the authority of the wife on family resources.15 Yāska
also states ‘some hold that daughters do not inherit’.16 Brahmanical theorists, while denying
women’s right to inherit their father’s or husband’s property, could not ignore women totally
as their contributions with regard to labour and reproductivity was considerable; thus, some
notions of wealth are associated with women. Baudhayana DS, II.2.3.46 does concede the
right to movable property in the form of strīdhana.
The emergence of private property as a category of wealth and the gendering of property
rights are not isolated; they are related to social divisions. The laying down of norms related
to conjugality, marriage, inheritance was an attempt to regulate production, reproduction
and social order. One needs to interrogate why normative texts such as the GSs, the MS and
the MMP feel the need to demarcate the role of the household and its members so categori-
cally. It is because they understand the significance of the social and economic role of the

13
Meillasoux, cited in Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 36–61.
14
Vijay Nath, ‘Women as Property and their Right to Inherit Property’, Indian Historical Review 20 nos 1–2 (1993): 2.
15
The term recurs in Jaimini’s Pūrvamīmāmsāsūtra VI.10.10, and Manu IX.11.
16
Yāska’s Nirukta, 53; Nath (‘Women as Property’, 9).
 Chapter 7  The Question of Women’s ‘Agency’ 71

household in production and reproduction activities. The intervention of ideologues into the
domestic space is so that they can control it, ideologically mould it and tap it as a potential
source of revenue and wealth. Within these texts too there are enormous variations—while
the early GSs are still chiselling out and laying down the structure of the household and the
role of the householder as the grhapati, the MS is more concerned with the individual duties,
the status and property rights of different categories of household members and the MMP
with the propriety related to household members. Let us turn to these texts to see what they
reveal about the household as a centre for work and production activities.

HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION IN THE EARLY

GṚHYASŪTRAS (800 TO 400 bce)17
Studies on gender in ancient India reveal that by the sixth century bce a framework is deeply
entrenched which shows the need for regulating work and production activities through
maintenance of varna and gender hierarchies. The fact that texts like the GSs contain rituals
highlighting the role of the grhapati is significant. The son and wife are crucial members, the
son more than the wife; thus, defining and identifying the role of the household vis-à-vis the
kin. The emphasis on the son and wife shows the anxiety related to production, property and
labour but also reveals the need for keeping the demarcations between proprietorial rights
and labour activities separated. Thus, while the GS rituals emphasize the presence of the
wife, which shows that she is integral for the household to function as a working unit, her
role as the producer of progeny is emphasized more than the work she performs. While the
grhapati was projected as the sacral head of the family, the roles of these individual members
were not so chiselled out, as the grhapati was projected as the controller of resources and
manager of labour; clearly, the grha could not exist without him.
We are able to recognize the critical role of the wife in the anxiety with which texts men-
tion how the choice of the wife as an accomplished one, one who is sarvalakṣanasampanna,
is critical for the household. While the household is treated as a sacral space, the grhapati
being attributed with a divine and cosmic role with his ritual activities, it is clear from the
rituals related to production and reproduction activities that it is these two functions that
were the primary functions of the household. While having progeny, especially sons, is
stressed upon as a sacral activity of the household, there is a growing understanding that
the household is to be projected as a viable producing unit, to be tapped for its resource and
labour potential and in ways in which women would be contributing significantly.
The manner in which the GSs refer to the grha, it seems that a preliminary requirement
for setting up the household is marriage; the householder is usually mentioned along with
his wife—gṛhapatīh patnī ca.18 The references to the rituals of the household as pākayajña,
which some interpret as ‘to cook, bake’ and some as ‘small, uncomplicated, feeble, weak’,

17
For details on the household and rituals of the households in the GSs, see Jaya Tyagi, Engendering the Early
Household: Brahmanical Precepts in the Early Grhyasutras (New Delhi: Orient Longman Publishers, 2008).
18
Pāraskara GS II.9.14.
72 JAYA TYAGI

seem to show an attempt amongst the authors of the GS to delineate the domestic space as
separate from the public space. The rituals associated with the householder show that there
is an attempt to keep him ritually connected in all the seasons, throughout the year, from
morning to evening. This shows that the household was a centre of activities, which were
critical to the sustenance of society. Thus, morning and evening oblations, the agnihotra
were conducted along with appeasement of the visvedevas, the ancestors, through rites like
the aṣṭakās, the full moon sacrifice, darśapūrṇamāsa; the seasonal rites—the winter solstice
rite, pratyavarohaṇa; the seasonal ones like the mārgaśīrṣa, śrāvaṇa, and solar ones like
the agrahāyaṇa (ascent of sun). The rites were all associated with offering of food items.
The Pāraskara GS III.3.1–2 refers to how integral the offering of food is to rites like the
aṣṭakās. It included offering of food items, such as rice, boiled rice, sesamum seeds, rice-
milk, cakes, and animal sacrifice accompanied with the feeding of brahmanas.
That the household members were jointly responsible for the various activities of the
household can be seen from the manner in which the Āśvslāyana GS refers to how the
household fire should be maintained by the householder or his wife, son, daughter or pupil.19
The mention of the daughter along with the wife and other male members of the family
shows that they contributed towards the household activities. The Gobhila GS states that
the householder should perform all the balis himself, but then goes on to state that the wife
should perform the evening balis and he must offer the morning ones.20 There were special
occasions when the wife could perform the bali rites. Pāraskara GS states that she performs
it outside the house for appeasing malevolent deities who harm offspring, and then feed the
brahmanas.21 The Gobhila GS also mentions that in the absence of the householder, the wife
should perform the darśapūrṇamāsa rite while also stating that if they like, his wife may
offer the morning and evening oblations over the domestic fire, for his wife is his house,
gṛhāh patnau, and that fire is the domestic fire.22 However, there are conflicting statements,
for example, the Āpastamba GS III.8.3 states that a sacrifice performed by a wife of one
who has not received the upanayana initiation is rejected.23 This shows that there was an
ideological pressure on women too to marry those who had undergone initiation rites. Here,
we see how although the wife would have been integral to the production and reproduction
activities of the household, her sacral role was strictly restricted because of her gender and
rites like the upanayana demarcated gender distinctions within the household as young boys
would be initiated but not young girls.
That the wife was involved in household work like cooking can be seen from references
in the Gobhila GS to the fact that once the wife has made the morning and evening meal,
the gṛhapati makes her announce that the food is ready.24 It seems that the GSs make an
attempt to delineate work and performance of labour (of women and other male members)
from the management of food and household resources, which was to be controlled by the

19
Aśvalāyana GS 1.9.1–7.
20
Gobhila GS I.4.15.
21
Pāraskara GS I.12.4, 5.
22
Gobhila GS I.4.17–19; I.3.15
23
Āpastamba GS III.8.3.
24
Gobhila GS I.3.16.
 Chapter 7  The Question of Women’s ‘Agency’ 73

householder. That food items were an essential aspect of the household’s resources can be
seen in the concern with relation to food and its availability. The ritual of annaprāśana men-
tioned in Āśvslāyana Gṛhyasūtra (AGS) I.16.1, Śaṇkhāyana Gṛhyasūtra (SGS) I.27.1, and
Pāraskara Gṛhyasūtra (PGS) I.19.1 refers to all types of food items including goat’s flesh,
partridge flesh, fish, boiled rice with ghee, curds and honey. Verses invoking Annapati, the
lord of food, to ‘give food without pain to the body’ and to give strength, śuṣmiṇa, energy,
ūrjā. Further, the child’s leftovers were supposed to be finished off by the mother at this
rite, showing the significance of the mother’s role in child rearing. The significance of the
mother in child rearing is reiterated in the caula rite, the first time when the child’s hair
is cut. After cutting, according to the Gobhila Gṛhyasūtra (GGS) II.9.17, the hair with its
ends turned eastward is to be given to the mother with śamī leaves; the mother is supposed
to bury it in cow dung. The proper disposal of the hair is significant; it should not fall in
hands of someone who can harm the child and the mother is the most reliable choice and
the dung would shield the hair as well as enhance the strength and virility of the child. The
texts recommend that all these rites are to be conducted for girls too, but without the chant-
ing of mantras. This shows that there was segregation in the household on the basis of who
had access to Vedic learning, and women of the household, even though contributing in a
significant way, were kept apart from Vedic chants.
In spite of attempts in the texts to underline the gṛhapati’s control over household
resources, that the wife is critical in the dispensation of food and other resources can be
seen in the references to rituals like the upanayana, wherein once a boy is initiated as a
brahmacārin, he is expected to lead a life of frugal discipline, living off begging of alms
and the first alms that he begs for are from his mother. However, even though we get ample
evidence that women were performing actively in household work, their role is sought to
be marginalized through rituals like the upanayana. The fact that the rite of passage was to
be conducted on male children meant that boys were expected to undertake formal training
for their future contributions as active producers after the upanayana, under a guru or a
trainer. The segregation of children on the basis of gender in the household shows that the
texts seek to ignore the value of the labour of young girls and women while trying to tap
the labour potential of young boys. The implication is that the girls were expected to learn
informally from other women in the household; the value of such informal networks of
transferring knowledge and skills is barely recognized, except in a revealing statement in
the Āpastamba GS where it is clearly stated that ‘one should learn from women (strī) what
ceremonies (are required by custom)’.25 The symbolic imagery of the upanayana—when
a person becomes dvija, literally twice born—seems to imply that this second ritual birth
was more important than the impure earlier one from his mother’s womb and, thus, this
second birth under the aegis of the brahmana was essential. The issue of re-birth and womb
imagery in initiation rites has been studied by Kaelber, while vivid womb imagery were
represented in the Atharvaveda (AV) and the Brahmanas; this is not so in the GSs, where
the womb imagery changes to one of ‘difficult passage’. According to Kaelber, in the GSs
there is an ‘anti womb’ imagery. Kaelber does not link this to changing perceptions with

25
Āpastamba GS I.2.15.
74 JAYA TYAGI

regard to women; it seems that the contributions of women in terms of productivity and
regenrativeness were being appropriated by brahmana priests.26
Women were actively engaged in cooking, maintenance of the household and contributing
towards the household resources as it is clear that the household was being projected in the
GSs as a centre for production, distribution and consumption of resources. Even reproduction
was critical for societal production and this is represented as a sacral activity in these texts.
The elaborate manner in which production activities like agriculture and cattle rearing are
mentioned in the GSs, the references to the household as a centre for the distribution and
transmission of resources, management of food and also dispensation of resources within
the community show that these texts attempt to project the role of the household as a viable
unit for production. Women were an integral part of the household, although from the GSs
it seems that while they were contributing actively with relation to providing labour for
the production activities, decision making and proprietary roles were ideally to be carried
out by the males. However, in reality, in an individual day-to-day capacity, women must
have been actively involved in decision making, in adding to the income and value of the
household as there are various references that can be made relating to the manner in which
women contributed to the household. Thus, the texts seem to seek to control and limit the
role of women and this could be because of the anxiety related to women’s potential agency.
There are ample references to the varied activities that the household carried out; these
include production, distribution and transmission of resources. Distribution can be further
divided into pooling and distribution within the households and exchange among house-
holds. The texts refer to how rites that ensure that resources are channelized in a way that
is beneficial for the grha are undertaken through various channels, dāna and dakṣina to
brahmanas, alms to brahmacārins, hospitality rites and through rituals which involve par-
ticipation of the community.
The role of the household in providing benefaction is constantly maintained in the
GSs—the Śaṇkhāyana GS recommends giving of food to a śrotiya and a brahmacārin.27
Food is also to be offered to a woman under the household protection, sauvāsinī, to preg-
nant women, garbhiṇī, to boys, kumāra, and to old people, sthāvira. Food is to be thrown
for dogs and for various animals. The mention of such a list shows that there was need to
ideologically motivate the household members to part with food, both cooked and uncooked,
for the purpose of providing sustenance to members who were not involved directly in the
household work. The Śaṇkhāyana GS explains the procedures for extending hospitality to
guests.28 The need to perform seasonal sacrifices shows that attempts were made to ensure
that different tasks related to agricultural activities such as food production, cattle rearing
and associated tasks were in tandem with the changing seasons through carefully conducted
rituals in which the householder and his wife participated.

26
W. O. Kaelber, ‘The Dramatic Element in Brahmanic Initiation: Symbols of Death, Danger and Difficult Passage’,
History of Religions 18 (1978): 54.
27
Śaṇkhāyana GS II.14.19–22.
28
Śaṇkhāyana GS II.17.4.
 Chapter 7  The Question of Women’s ‘Agency’ 75

The rituals of the household in the GSs revolve around everyday events. Hunger is
a state that has to be averted; thus, the Gobhila GS states that one who performs a rite
without fasting becomes powerless, hunger attacks him, he does not gain favour amongst
the people and his offspring will be perverse.29 The Āśvslāyana GS refers to the manner
in which agricultural activities were performed, in which women participated actively.30
Growing of cereals was one of the primary activities of the GSs household and, thus, the
Āśvslāyana GS claims that one can move into a new house only when it is provided with
seed for growing of crops. The Pāraskara GS refers to the need for ploughing a field,
kṣetra, properly.31 The other term used is urvarā. The text mentions the need for a clean
spot that has been ploughed with the phāla, under an auspicious nakṣatra.32 The Pāraskara
GS states that oblations of curds, rice grains, perfumes and fried grains are to be made to
Indra, Parjanya, Udālākaśyapa, Svātikārī, Sītā and Anumati and then the bullocks are to
be offered honey and ghee.33 Brahmanas are to be fed during this occasion. Most gṛhya
rites involve elaborate food preparation and cooking. The Gobhila GS IV.4.27 refers to the
halābhiyoga, the setting into motion of the plough where the sacrifice is to be conducted
according to the sthālipāka ritual.34 The term means literally ‘cooking in the pot’ and is
one of the pākayajña rites. Pākayajña means ‘sacrifice with cooked offerings’ and denotes
domestic rites as compared to the haviryajña that denotes the formal śrauta rites. Sitāyajña
was a rite conducted for protecting the crops. The reference to different types of soil for
tilling and those involved in tilling shows the significance of such agricultural activities.
Kṛṣīvala was the tiller of soil, kṣetra, the field.
References to the different techniques employed in cooking and the different kinds of
foods available show how the domestic space was envisaged as one which produced enough,
not only to sustain the needs of the members of the household but also of other categories.
Terms for food and cereals like akṣata dhāna, which was used for roasted cereal, usually
barley, show how production of cereals was an important aspect of the household. The above-
mentioned annaprāśana rite for celebrating the first feeding of cereals to a child was done
by the father. Sattū, flour of cereal, which was roasted and ground, was used. Different types
of cooked food were offered to the brahmanas—apūp, rice cakes; caru was rice boiled with
barley; odana, boiled rice; payasa, boiled rice with milk. Dairy products were mixed with
ghee—pṛṣātaka was a mixture of curds and ghee, sarpi was some form of clarified butter,
dahi, curds, were also offered. Vegetables, śāka, were part of the diet. Madhu, honey, was
used as a sweetener and madhuparka was a mixture of honey, curds and milk, offered to
special guests. Mudga were a kind of beans. Terms that were used for cooking utensils used
in rituals included: darvī, a spoon; juhū, a ladle; śruva was another kind of sacrificial ladle.
The use of the winnowing basket, śūrpa, and grind stones, dṛṣad, ullūkhanna, mortar and
pestle in rituals shows elaborate food preparation procedures involving chaffing, winnowing,

29
Gobhila GS I.6.2, 3.
30
Āśvslāyana GS II.10.2.
31
Pāraskara GS II.17.6.
32
For further details, see Tyagi (Engendering the Early Household, 259–63).
33
Pāraskara GS II.13.1–8.
34
Gobhila GS IV.4.27.
76 JAYA TYAGI

grinding and pounding of grain. The upkeep of animals as a household activity is indicated
in the myriad references to animals—dharuṇam mātre referred to a calf and the mother
cow, aja was the goat and ajinam, the skin of the goat was used in households; aśva (the
horse) is referred to frequently and these animals seem to have been looked after with care.

DOMESTICITY IN THE MS
In later texts like the epics and the MS, there is recognition of the need for households to
consolidate their acquisitions and channelize their wealth towards clearly defined and worthy
causes—for the authors there is need for capturing this wealth. The texts hint at competing
claims for the household’s resources. The MS, Buddhist and Jaina texts and also literary
works seem to have tried to capture the patronage of wealthy and elite households by refer-
ring to them, laying out the manner in which inheritance and property is to be drawn out
and, thus, redefining notions of household linkages, kinship and domesticity. There is also
careful delineation of property as the basic function of the household is projected as one
of maintaining its proprietary interests. Is it a wonder that the grhapati of Buddhist texts is
a synonym for one who has extensive proprietary interests, one who employs karmakāras
and gives patronage to the sangha and also the king?
Marriage-augmented resources as well as kin gained from marriage became critical
in allowing households to become custodians of wealth. The competition for power and
resources meant that your own brothers and cousins were competitors and to garner support
against them, affinal ties had to be made strategically and significantly. Thus, marriage and
ties emerging from marriage were crucial and in the epics it is not surprising that princesses
of strong kingdoms are passionately coveted. These princesses were critical in fulfilling the
grand designs of their kinsmen for power and domination.
The household is crucial in the MS; the need to clearly regulate the dharma of the
householder and his wife is underlined. The male protagonist is prioritized but also reined
in and controlled through an elaborate discussion of patidharma. It is interesting that the
duties and role of the householder are defined; there seems to be a conscious effort towards
a moral and ethical code for men in the domestic space too, albeit not as stringent as the
one for women. And of course, patidharma was only part of the many roles that a man
could aspire to—rājyadharma and other ways of dealing with his intellect and power are
also defined, whereas for women, her only dharma according to the MS was patnidharma.
Patnidharma is reinforced over and above the reproductive role of the wife (which has
already been established in texts like the GSs). The MS is essentially prescriptive, meant
for the brahmana, and makes a tremendous effort to maintain exclusivity for them. The
prescribed norms are aimed at a small, exclusive audience, with the expectation of trans-
mission of these values through brahmanas and kṣatriyas who would serve as role models.
The text aims at indirect percolation of values and norms and is also highly elitist and keeps
the privileges of the elite strictly defined, making little attempt to include other categories.
In fact, there is a conscious attempt to emphasize on maintenance of the varna order and
prohibit intermingling, varṇasaṁkara.
 Chapter 7  The Question of Women’s ‘Agency’ 77

The MS not only shows the chain of command in the domestic sphere but also clearly
defines women’s role in the domestic space; somehow the onus of maintaining harmony
within the household is on the women. The MS extends its area of intervention in the domes-
tic space by not only focussing on her domestic duties but also elaborating on the expected
congenial behaviour from women. Thus, MS 5.150 states—‘She should be always cheerful,
clever at housework, careful in keeping the utensils clean, and frugal in her expenditures’.35
The husband is expected to use her services optimally. Thus, MS 9.11 states—‘He should
employ her in the collection and disbursement of his wealth, in cleaning, in meritorious
activity, in cooking food, and in looking after the household goods’.36 In an attempt to
build upon the work ethos the MS 10.13 refers to the things that corrupt women. Drinking,
associating with bad people, living away from the husband, travel, sleep and staying in the
house of others are the six things that corrupt women.37
One of the reasons why familial relationships get attention in early texts is because of
the need to define property rights. In fact, one of the main roles of the elite households of
textual traditions seems to be proprietary, the need to protect and care for property and clearly
delineate the channel of succession for coveted property. This is one of the areas in which
the household and its members are mentioned, because of the need to limit or to clearly
define household member’s stake in property. As individual property becomes important,
the right of inheritance of progeny was underlined. In fact, it is proprietary interests which
make the texts emphasize on progeny rather than kinsmen or brothers. This is carried forward
in the Purāṇas when we see lineages being drawn out on the basis of progeny and brothers’
lineages being split as separate, parallel, disconnected ones.
The need for managing and controlling household work and labour meant that women and
other household members were treated as property, and this is underlined in the exclusive
proprietary rites of the householder and the husband over the other members of the fami-
ly.38 The treatment of women and children and even brothers as property, be it in the Vedic
texts, Brāhmaṇas or the epics, has been explored by scholars. Even in the Mahabharata,
closest kin such as wife and son were treated as alienable property. This gets replaced
in later society; according to Vijay Nath and in Northern Black Polished Ware (NBPW)
society and the Iron Age, the patriarch was no longer empowered to gift, pledge or sell
any member of the family, be it the son or wife as per texts such as the Āpastamba DS and
the Yājñavalkyasmṛti.39 This may mean that elite households would be using the labour of
categories other than immediate kinspersons, both men and women; dāsas and karmakāras
would have contributed towards household production. The numerous references to the

35
sadā prahriṣṭayā bhāvyam grihakārye ca dakśayā/ susanskriopaskarayā vyaye cāmuktahastyā. Patrick Olivelle,
Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition of the Mānava Dharmaśāstra (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006; The
University of Texas Centre for Asian Studies, 2005), 146, 588.
36
arthasya sangrahe chainām vyaye chaiv niyojayet/ śauche dharme~nnapaktyām cha pāriņāhyasya chekśaņe
37
pānam durjansamsargah patyā ca viraho~Tanam/ svapno~nyagehavāsaśrcha nārīsadūṣņāni ṣaṭ
38
Vijay Nath refers to how two facts are emphasized in any assessment on property related to women of the house-
hold, one that they were regarded as chattel and the second, their limited competence to own property. See Nath
(‘Women as Property’, 1).
39
Āpastamba DS II.6.13.1, 1 Yājñavālkya smṛti II.125.
78 JAYA TYAGI

substitute of ‘stand in’ dāsīs in the epics shows how women were used for menial labour
as well as sexual activities, their reproductivity tapped for progeny. Property and wealth, at
least theoretically, remained with the head of the household who had claim to the wealth of
all the individual members of the household.40
This is complex as we see that the position of household members was not static, and
there were significant variations in their status. In brahmanical tradition, household relation-
ships and some cognisance to women’s property begins to be discussed with regard to right
to inheritance in an effort to keep property within the family and keep it from falling in the
hands of ‘others’. This becomes a much debated issue in śāstric traditions and one can try
to understand the dichotomy between the contentious position of women in the household
and their seemingly continually expanding proprietary rights as women of the household, as
some scholars have pointed out. It seems that women were being acknowledged as having
the potential to own and manage landed properties, as there was a need to emphasize that
they could do so only in the absence of male heirs. The anxiety related to hierarchically
differentiating wives on the basis of varṇa and sons on the basis of their mothers in the
MS seems to indicate the volatility in polygynous households, the potential agency of the
co-wives, the competing claims for resources and decision making in the same and hence,
the need to keep the women in control.
The control over household members is conceded by Manu who not only wants control
of the husband over wife but also maintains that a wife cannot be released from her husband
either by sale or by repudiation;41 and that a wife cannot be treated like a chattel as she is
obtained from the gods, she is not received like cattle and gold in the market. Yet, the MS
also makes contradictory statements, saying they were part of the war booty.42 When the
ownership of progeny is discussed, women are equated to the field or livestock; ownership of
the field determines ownership of the harvest, irrespective of who ‘plants the seed’. There are
many sections in the MS which show the manner in which women were treated as property,
to be owned, alienated, bought, sold and even mortgaged. Vijay Nath also shows that the
husband’s proprietary right over wife becomes crucial, seen in the status of the kṣetraja son;
thus, the MS regards a wife as husband’s property in which if a stranger sows in another’s
field, the fruit belongs to the owner of the land.43

40
Nath (‘Women as Property’, 7) shows that women are bracketed with property on two occasions—when the need
to protect property is emphasized, and where property is described as yielding prestige and status, as R. S. Sharma
also states. He points out that the institutions of private property and family centring around the wife were the chief
reasons for the origin of the state and the main motive for social action. Women along with property became the
chief source of conflict in society (R. S. Sharma, Perspectives in Social and Economic History of Early India [Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1983], 39–44).
41
MS VIII.416.
42
MS 7.96 states that, ‘Whatever a man wins—chariot, horse, elephant, parasol, money, grain, livestock, women, all
goods and base metal—all that belongs to him’. Similarly, in a section on false testimony related to land, women are
equated with land; thus, MS 8.90 states that, ‘False testimony concerning water, they say, is similar to that concern-
ing land; the same is true of false testimony concerning the sexual enjoyment of women and concerning all gems,
whether they are aquatic or lapidary’ (Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law, 172).
43
Nath (‘Women as Property’, 6).
 Chapter 7  The Question of Women’s ‘Agency’ 79

The obsession of the texts with women indicates that women’s significance emerged from
the key role they played in production and producing producers. N. N. Bhattacharya shows
how Dharmasūtras are openly in favour of patrilineal inheritance and proclaims that property
should rather go to near or remote agnates, sapiṇḍa and sakulya relations, of the property
holder rather than to daughters.44 Āpastamba, Baudhāyana, Vasiṣṭha say that ornaments
and wealth bestowed on her by her relations, both agnate and cognate, should be absolutely
owned by her.45 N. N. Bhattacharya also states that the smṛtis have distinct codification of
the rules relating to ownership, inheritance and partition. Manu gives the first elaborate
and ‘systematic exposition’ on these, and his approach seems to have been followed, ‘with
certain conservative and liberal reservations’, by later law givers, Yājñavalkya, Nārada and
Bṛhaspati in the Gupta period and Kātyāyana, Vyāsa and Parāśara in the post-Gupta period.46
Manu’s work has contradictory principles when it comes to women and property; on
the one hand, it allows women to become exclusive owners of such wealth that is gifted to
them by the relations, strīdhana.47 On the other hand, he emphasizes that property should be
transmitted only through the male line and women have no right to inherit paternal property.
The stress on patrilineal inheritance apart, Manu does attempt to take into account different
laws that refer to women’s right to inherit property. Ultimately, he works out a compromise;
he does not mention that sisters have equal entitlement to patrimony as brothers but says
that for marriage of sisters brothers should forego one-fourth of their own share in favour of
sisters.48 This means that Manu did not project daughters as the natural heirs of their fathers,
but the father was at liberty to give wealth to daughter as gift—pitṛdatta and anvādheya
categories of strīdhana. The preoccupation with property shows that the MS was referring
to elite households. The anxiety with relation to women who were economically sound to
be able to exercise agency can be seen.
Hierarchies were drawn out on the basis of who had access to property. Property was to
divided amongst the sons on the basis of the seniority of birth and if the wives were from
different varṇas, then on the seniority of the wives. MS 9.122–25 refer to the fact that if
the first born is from a junior wife, he would be treated as the eldest and senior-most and
then others would be ranked on the basis of the seniority of their mothers. However, if the
wives were of the same rank, then they would be ranked according to their birth. This would
put pressure on women to conceive and also points at acknowledgement of prevalence of
polygamy.
Manu also refers to the putrikā or daughter’s son functioning as an heir for a sonless
father.49 The mother’s wealth would pass to the daughters, according to the MS. While

44
N. N. Bhattacharya, ‘Proprietary Rights of Women in Ancient India’, in Women in Early Indian Societies, ed.
Kumkum Roy (Delhi: Manohar, 2001), 118.
45
Āpastamba II.6.14.19, Baudhāyana II.2.49, Vasiṣṭha XVII.48–9.
46
Thus, Manu had a tremendous impact on later law givers, including Sankara who unconditionally says that in
social matters Manu is final.
47
MS IX.194.
48
MS IX.118.
49
MS IX.127. Nath (‘Women as Property’, 11) refers to the different occasions in the MS when gifts can be given to
the daughter, over which she has right: Adhyāgni—before the nuptial fire; Adhyāvahanika—in the bridal procession;
80 JAYA TYAGI

earlier dharmaśāstras such as Baudhāyana, Āpastamba and Gautama mentioned only male
sapiṇḍa as fit for inheriting, Manu referred to the right of the appointed daughter, putrikā.
However, Manu uses the issue of property to further regulate women’s behaviour. In one
section, the MS refuses the right to property to one who marries on her own but also refers
to the protection of women as a duty of the state and since this is mentioned along with
property issues, it seems that the state was being enjoined to protect the proprietary rights
of women who did not have kinsmen to protect them. Thus, the text states that a girl who
chooses her husband on her own must not take with her any ornament coming from her
father or mother or given by her brothers; if she takes them, it is theft.50 The same protec-
tion (as that to a child who inherits an estate) must be extended to ‘barren’ women, women
without sons or bereft of family, women devoted to their husbands, widows and women in
distress. If their in-laws usurp their property while they are alive, a righteous king should
discipline them with the punishment laid down for thieves.51 The text seems to show that
the mother also has a stake in property as long as she is alive—after the father and mother
have passed on, the brothers should gather together and partition the paternal inheritance
evenly, for they are incompetent while those two are alive.52 The use of the dual, jīvatoh,
shows that as long as either of the two is alive, they have a say in the property. It shows
that both husband and wife were involved in the management of their property. This also
shows that it is the brothers who gather; sisters do not have a role to play in the division.
The fact that women were contributing through their work is clear from the limits placed
on the acquisition of wealth by a girl which include wealth acquired through work done by
her which belonged to husband, according to Manu.
As long as there were sons to inherit, property could be safely disposed of. The problem
arose in the absence of a male heir. In the absence of the male heir, Manu deviates from the
earlier dharma writers by stating clearly that the daughter is equal to the son and ‘someone
else’ (anyo) cannot grab (haret) the property if she is there.53 Further reinforcing a woman’s
access to some forms of property, unmarried daughters are given the mother’s property and
the status of the daughter’s son is reinforced, not only as the heir to property, but also as one
who has the ritual responsibility of performing the rites of oblation after death. The daughter’s
son is equated to the son’s son as both daughter and son have come from the father’s body.
The stress on being directly related made the daughter’s son’s role significant and this was
at the cost of other male relatives. However, if a son was born after the daughter’s son was

Prītidatta—out of love; Bhṛātṛmātṛpitṛprāptam—received from brother, mother and father. These seem to include
several occasions when gifts were given to the bride but these exclude gifts from others, except from close kinspersons.
50
alankāram nādadīta pitryam kanyā svayamvarā/ mātrikam bhrātridattam vā steyam syāddydi tam haret MS
VIII.27–28/MS IX.92.
51
vaśāputrāsu chaivam syātrakṣaņam niṣkulāsu cha/ pativratāsu cha strīṣu vidhavāsvāturāsu cha// jīvantīnām tu
tāsām ye tatdhreyuh svabāndhavāh/tā~chiṣyāchchauradaņđen dhārmikah prithvīpatih (Olivelle, Manu’s Code of
Law, 168, 663).
52
ūdhrvam pituśrcha matuśrcha sametya bhrātarah samam/ bhajeranpaitrikam rikthamanīshāste hi jīvatoh MS 9.104.
53
MS 9.127–30 deals with a man without a male issue in the following way. A man without a son should make his
daughter a ‘putrikā’ in the following manner: ‘The child this girl bears will be the one who performs my ancestral
rites’ (aputro~nena vidhinā sutām kurvīta putrikām/ yadpatyam bhavedasyām tanmama syātsvadhākaram).
 Chapter 7  The Question of Women’s ‘Agency’ 81

appointed as the heir, then the property was to be divided amongst them equally, as the law
of primogeniture did not apply (jyeṣṭa) to the daughter’s son.54 Further reducing the rights
of other male relatives, the MS appoints the husband of the putrikā in the absence of a son
from the daughter. MS 9.135, 136: If a putrikā somehow dies childless, the husband of the
putrikā shall indeed take the property without hesitation.55 When a daughter, whether she is
appointed or not, bears a son by a man of equal status, by that son his maternal grandfather
becomes a man who has a son’s son, and the latter shall offer him the rice ball and inherit
his property.56
Chapter 9 in the MS deals with the manner in which a woman’s property is to be dis-
posed of on her death which shows that there were instances when women had control over
property—and in the maternal estate, the brothers and sisters seem to have equal rights. This
estate, mātrikam, seems to be different from the strīdhana over which only daughters had
rights. That mothers were managing their properties seems to be implied. However, when
the MS elaborates subsequently on the gifts, they seem to be the same and, thus, there seems
to be a confusion over this. Moreover, the last verse shows that women were not supposed
to alienate paternal property and they had to consult their husbands on any issue related to
property.57 The MS states that, ‘When their mother dies, all the uterine brothers and sisters
would divide the maternal estate equally among themselves.’58 If those sisters have any
daughters, one should joyfully give them also, as is proper, something from their maternal
grandmother’s property.59 Similarly, in a section on miscellaneous rules on inheritance,
the text states that, ‘The mother shall receive the inheritance of a childless son; and if the
mother is also dead, the father’s mother shall inherit that property.’60 There also seems to

54
Thus, MS 9.131–34 states that: Anything that is part of a mother’s separate property becomes the share of her
unmarried daughters; and the daughter’s son shall take the entire property of a man without a son (mātustu yautakam
yatsyayāt kumārībhāga eva sah/ dauhitra eva cha haredaputrasyākhilam dhanam).
55
aputrāyām mritāyām tu putrikāyām kathamchana/ dhanam tatputrkābhrtā haretaivāvichārayan
56
akritā vā kritā vāpi yam vindetsadriśātsutam/ pautrī mātāmahastena daddyātpiņđam hareddhanam
57
Tradition presents six types of women’s property: what a woman receives at the nuptial fire, what she receives when
she is taken away, what she is given as a token of love, and what she receives from her brothers, mother and father
(adhyagnayadhyāvāhanikam dattam cha prītikarmaņi/ bhrātṛmātṛpitṛprāptam şadivadham strīdhanam smritam).
What she receives subsequent to the marriage and what her husband gives her out of affection—upon her death that
property goes to her children even if her husband is alive (anyāvadheyam cha yaddattam patyā prīten jchaiva yat/
patyau jīvati vritāyāh prajāyāstaddhanam bhavet). In a brāhma, Divine, Seer’s, Gāndharva or Prājāpatya marriage,
the property of a woman is awarded to her husband alone, if she dies childless (brāhmadaivārşagāndharvaprājāpat
yeşu yaddhanam/ atītāyāmprajasi bhartureva tadişyate). In a demonic or subsequent form of marriage on the other
hand, any property given to a woman is awarded to her mother and father, if she dies childless (yatvasyāh sthāddhanam
dattam vivāheşvāsurādişu/atītāyāmaprajasi mātāpitrostadişyate). Any property given somehow won to a woman
by her father goes to the unmarried brahman daughter, or that daughter’s offspring (striyāstu yadbhvedvitam pitrā
dattam kathamchana/ brāhmaņī taddhretkanyā tadpatyasya vā bhavet). Women must never alienate common property
of the family, or even her own private property, without the consent of her husband (na nirhāram striyah kuryuh
kaţumbādvahumadhyagāt/ svakādapi cha vitāddhi svasya bharturnājñayā) (Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law, 200, 783).
58
MS 9.192–200.
59
jananyām samsthithāyām tu samam sarve sahodarāh/ bhajeranmātrikam ṛktham bhaginyaśrcha sanābhayah
yāstāsām sayurduhitarastāsāmapi yathāhartah/ mātāmahyā dhanātkinchit pradeyam prītipūryakam
60
MS 9.217: anapatyasya putrasya mātā dāyamavāpruyāt/ mātaryapi cha vritāyām piturmātā hareddhanam
82 JAYA TYAGI

be some attempt to protect the rights of a widow and to protect her from property grabbers,
‘Any ornaments worn by a woman while her husband was alive shall not be partitioned by
his heirs; if they do, they fall from their caste.’61
These developments can be related to developments in the institution of private property
and the patriarchal family. The extension of agriculture in the NBPW phase increased the
significance of landed property and accentuated joint hold of the family in land holdings.
Trade, profit making and craft specialization provided wider avenues for individual enter-
prise. Money economy led to new forms of property, rendering the accumulation of wealth
easier. Forms of property came to include land along with cattle, slaves, goods and objects
and metal currency. There were two contradictory developments in this phase. Landed
estates controlled jointly by family were treated strictly as part of patrilineal inheritance,
in which an individual’s right to ownership and alienation was generally disregarded, or
circumscribed. Secondly, growth of individual enterprise and metal currency led to greater
right and complete ownership over movable items of property which led to recognition of
women’s rights to some limited categories of property known as strīdhana. The meaning
and scope of strīdhana expanded continually during the period of the dharmashastric
traditions.
We find that different sources refer to the circumstances in which women may own prop-
erty. Thus, Pali sources and votive inscriptions testify to women as religious beneficiaries
on large scale; however, the urban base of this group is conspicuous according to feminist
historians. There are earlier examples of women like Ambapali and Sama who had access
to different types of wealth.62 The role of women monastics in channelizing resources and
patronage, working towards propagation and spread of cults like Buddhism, has not been
given even prominence when we discuss women and work in Ancient India. These bhikkunīs,
once they had entered the monastic establishments, seemed to have contributed to the spread
and dispersal of the religious causes they espoused, channelizing both funds and followers
for their cause, an aspect of Buddhism that is rarely given importance, even though there
are many inscriptions that show women as patron. Dhammapāla’s Paramatthadīpāni (fifth
to sixth centuries ce) categorically refers to the role that bhikkunīs played in the spread of
Buddhism. Women workers in the monasteries played an important role as conduits for tap-
ping the resources of the households and directing them towards the sangha. In an earlier
article on the Patimokkha rules of the Vinaya Pitaka, I have shown how the text refers to
monastic dependency on women of the household for alms and food.63 Lay women, from
households, and the monastic women must have created networks that buttressed the spread
of Buddhism.

61
patyau jīvati yah strībhiralankāro dhrito bhavet/ na tam bhajerandāyādā bhajamānāh patanti te
62
Nath (‘Women as Property’, 11).
63
Vijay Tyagi, ‘Organized Household Production and the Emergence of the Sangha’, Studies in History XXIII, no. 2
(2007): 271–87.
 Chapter 7  The Question of Women’s ‘Agency’ 83

WOMEN AS PATRONS IN THE PURĀṆAS

By the time of the Purāṇas, the urgency to include women and tap their potential, both as
patrons and ‘devout’ propagators, seems to have been understood and indicates the potential
agency of women as managers and dispensers of resources. Women were seeking spiritual
salvation actively, performing ritual observances and giving patronage to sects and even
though these were well within the confines of patriarchy, they seem to have negotiated for an
enhanced social role by underlining and overemphasizing their religiosity. In negotiating for
their roles, all categories of women tried to gain legitimacy for themselves by turning to ritual
observances to show that they had a sacral role to play. They attempted to compete with each
other in piety and performance of religious observances and devotion to the family and in
the textual traditions the pativratā dharma was espoused by women with apparent fervour.64
The Purāṇas attempt to do this well within the confines of the ‘domestic’ realm and seek
to merge the pious nun of the Buddhist traditions with the pativratā wife to come up with the
ideal of the suvratā-pativratā devout wife. The standards of social, moral and ethical propriety
are also reconstructed in these texts with women being projected as agents of change. Highly
motivated, exemplary standards of religious observances are expected to be maintained by
wives who are projected as the vanguard of sobriety and propriety, through vratas and ritual
observances. The household, from being a sacral and divine centre for reproduction, produc-
tion, socialization, also becomes a vehicle through which moral propriety and ideological
propagation of particular value systems (in this case Puranic) are carried forward.
In the context of the Purāṇas it seems that the effort is to impinge on the consciousness
of the audience who must have listened to reciters. The sumangalā, pativratā and suvratā
wife is constantly projected in Puranic traditions so that the notion becomes impinged in
the consciousness of the audience of the Purāṇas, a clear effort to promote and propagate
this ideological role model.
The association of women and goddesses with wealth and fecundity in these traditions
shows an understanding of their contribution to the economy. Julia Leslie has shown how
Śrī is regarded as venerable; even the MS sees no difference between virtuous child bearing
wives, strīyāh and goddesses of fortune, Śrīyah. The fact that the devout wife assumes the
stature of a Goddess can be seen in the Mahābhārata wherein Śrī herself declares that she
resides in women who are devoted to truth, attend to their housework, obey their husbands
and behave with the appropriate decorum.65 The relationship between land, women and god-
desses, which is consistently drawn out in textual conceptualizations, shows the connections
that were made between femininity and productivity. As land began to become scarce and
venerated, representations of feminine form as fecund, associating it with productivity of
land and also material wealth, became more common. Land was the source of wealth, but
because of its value it could be alienated, sold, bought and mortgaged. Ownership of land

64
For a detailed analysis of the role of women as patrons, see Jaya Tyagi, Contestation and Compliance: Retrieving
Women’s Agency from Puranic Traditions (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014).
65
Mahabharata.13.11.10 ff. (Julia Leslie, Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women [New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,
1992], 107–27).
84 JAYA TYAGI

becomes crucial and we have seen how in this scenario, proprietary rights evolve which allow
women to inherit in the absence of immediate male heirs. Thus, instead of allowing coveted
land to lapse to the state or to other male kinsmen, it was preferred that in the absence of
the son, the daughter’s son, the putrikā would get property. Along with the value of land,
the growing demand for material goods, something that is elaborated in the references to
dāna, show the value placed on such commodities.
An elaborate iconography develops around Goddess Lakṣmī, the source of all wealth;
the references to gold, silver and other precious metals associated with her show this. In the
Matsyamahāpurāṇa (MMP), the goddess is conceptualized as capital, a resource that has
to be tapped, and this shows changing notions of wealth and how the cult of Lakṣmī gets
promoted. Association of the feminine with wealth, prosperity and the need to control these
for the use of men is indicated in rituals like the Guḍadhenudānavidhi66 which involves the
image of a cow and a calf to be made with raw sugar.
Women were playing an active role in the activities but they were clearly competing
amongst themselves for resources. One of the reasons women may have felt the need to
underline their piety while performing domestic roles is to deal with the advantages that
elite men have in societies which encourage polygynous social practices for the upper
echelons (the presence of which is amply reflected in the sources). Rich and powerful men
took multiple wives and had many children while women would be constantly negotiating
for status, space and resources in households with other women and children. The wives
performed vratas to further highlight their agency in keeping the household prosperous
and thriving, granting long lives to the men and keeping rival women at abeyance (which
also draws attention to their lack of ability to use agency in any other way). Thus, women
used ritual observances to underline their sacral status in the household, so that they could
maintain their tenuous hold over the household in whatever way the men in the household
allowed them to.
The circumstances of these early households were constrained and there was intense
competition for attention, control over resources and even conjugal rights; women would
compete amongst themselves for the control over the household and for capturing resources
for their progeny. This reflects on the manner in which patriarchal societies operated: men
(some, not all) had the power and resources to command different services from women—
physical, laborious, emotional, spiritual and sexual. Women had to compete, not with men,
as there was hardly any scope for that, but with other women for limited decision making
roles, confined domestic spaces and for resources. In negotiating for their roles, all categories
of women tried to gain legitimacy for themselves by turning to ritual observances to show
that they had a sacral role to play, attempting to outdo each other in piety and performance
of religious observances and devotion to the family.
It was not only the wives who underlined their steadfast pativrata qualities, temple
women too were piously devoted to their ritual roles in the temple and the courtesan also
had sacral rites seeking to legitimize her existence. One of the recurring motifs in the
Puranic myths is that of devout, divine and sacred women who performed austerities and

66
MMPL XXXII.
 Chapter 7  The Question of Women’s ‘Agency’ 85

these women were from both deva and daitya categories. The device of ritual in myths
is used for projecting the agency of women in various ways; by suggesting that divine
women undertook them, the texts aim at a percolative effect, so that performance of aus-
terities (accompanied with the mandatory dāna) becomes popular amongst the elite and
propertied. One can say that the incorporation of women protagonists wielding power
and influencing decision making, even if it is directed towards the advancement of their
individual families, is historically significant. It seems that the author/s of the MMP were
trying to project their anxieties by discussing these women who were able to wield power.
The fact that they attribute it to the austerities they perform is a brahmanical device used
in a retrospective manner to explain any power that does not emanate directly from them
(it is not surprising that kings, powerful men, all gain power only through the conduct of
rituals). In the texts, there are spaces where women are envisaged to have some degree of
agency and this seems to hint at social acquaintance with women who could wield power
and control. This is obviously in response to the society around them where the author/s
were probably dealing with powerful women who were taking charge of social domains
like the household and the community, if not public arenas like the state.
Another interesting aspect of these myths being represented in the MMP is the relative
assertiveness of the daitya, asura women. Can one suggest that these women seem to have
had a less controlled upbringing and could make more choices? In the conceptualizations of
the authors then, were assertive women representing ‘other’ cultures where women had more
say, had more access to resources and were (relatively) less under the control of patriarchal
norms? Are these texts then trying to reach out towards such cultures, by including the con-
cept of the austere daitya women who brought wondrous changes in their clans through their
devout austerities? Are some of the images of these daitya women based on actual women,
from disparate cultures, tribal (and migrant) populations and also from within the brahmani-
cal communities who may have taken to alternative religious discourses like Buddhism,
Jainism and other sects? It is tempting to imagine that the image of the powerful, devout
and austere daitya women which the Purāṇas project is partly inspired from these women.67
Women’s vratas in Puranic traditions include vratas meant for veśyās, prostitutes, which
again shows how assimilative these vratas attempt to be. They also give some indication of the
resources that veśyās had access to. The puṇyastrīṇāmsadācāravrata is one such reference.68
The vrata shows how brāhmaṇas were not averse to tapping the resources of the prostitutes
for themselves and encouraging them donate freely to brāhmaṇas while performing vratas
for their salvation. The vrata involves giving not only material things to brāhmaṇas but also
satisfying the sexual demands of the ‘worthy brāhmaṇa’ and also if he should so wish it,

67
Marglin refers to the association of daityas with tribals in the specific context of Orissa. Connecting the myths
that link tribals and the king in kinship relationship, she shows how in the origin of King Pṛthu, the birth of Pṛthu
is accompanied with the birth of Niṣādas, and as O’Flaherty shows, the myth which explains the origin of kingship
shows that Pṛthu was churned out of the body of the King Vena who was killed by the sages and while he was born
out of his hands, the Niṣādas were born from his thighs ([O’Flaherty 1976, 321] cited in Fredrique Apffel Marglin,
Wives of the God King: The Rituals of the Devadāsis of Puri [Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985]). The myth is
also included in the MMP and has been discussed in the ‘Introduction’ of this work.
68
MMP LXX. For details regarding the vrata see Appendix XI.10.
86 JAYA TYAGI

then the demands of some other man whom he may recommend. These are the instructions
to the veśyās: ‘You should give away cows, land, grain and gold, according to your means
in charity on the sacred day of worshipping the Devas or the ancestors…. You should act
as per what the brāhmaṇas say.’
There are other legends connected to veśyās’ magnanimity. The text refers to a legend
relating to a veśyā named Līlāvatī who was devoted to Śiva and gave a mound of salt to
her preceptor, along with trees of gold. It seems that salt was as valuable as gold. The gold
trees were made by

a skilled śūdra named Śaunḍa, a gold smith by profession who lived in her house and made beautiful
gold trees and images of Devas with faith and skill and did not charge anything for his labour as
he thought that these were meant for dharma kārya—acts of religiosity. The wife of the goldsmith
fixed those trees on the mount in an aesthetic manner.69

Līlāvatī, by virtue of her charity and her devotion to her guru, was liberated from her sins
and went to the realm of Śiva, while the śūdra goldsmith and his wife were reborn as a king
and queen.
The story reveals how women were conceptualized as patrons and employers. It also
gives us a quaint tableau of the manner in which households functioned—the husband and
wife as a production unit, being employed by the courtesan. The assimilative nature of the
text can be seen from the manner in which all categories of people—śūdra, courtesans,
the devout wife—are encouraged to work together towards performing religious acts. The
benefits, as elaborated, include health, wealth and kingdom, lokeṣvaparājitatvamārogya
saubhāgyayutā ca lakṣmī. The pressure to make donations to brāhmaṇas is sought to be
sustained by mentioning that the benefits are cumulative and can allow a śūdra to be reborn
as a king and also allow a veśyā to attain liberation.
The Vibhūtidvādaśīvrata70 is another vrata in which the vrata mahātmya (efficacy, the
benefits accruing from its performance) involves the legend of the largesse of a courtesan This
also shows how women from different walks of life were conceptualized as patrons and how
the benefits of their good deeds were supposed to lead to their own mokṣa as well as better
lives in future births for others too. The agency of women, albeit through the performance
of such rites, seems to be clearly indicated.71 In this legend a famous courtesan Anamgavatī
donates mounds of salt, a bedstead and other objects including the golden kalpa tree to her
guru. The courtesan also offers 300 gold coins to the couple who were observing the vrata
which they did not accept, being charged with sattvaguṇa. The courtesan, further pleased,
ordered four kinds of delicious food to be brought for them to eat. They declined to eat and
expressed delight in meeting her and wanted to keep the fast themselves. They were kept
awake all night and in the morning the courtesan gave away mounds of salt and beddings
and villages, garments, kamaṇḍalu and cows. She fed her friends, poor men, blind men,
misers, kinsmen and also both of them. Owing to this devotion to Viṣṇu, the same couples

69
MMP LXX.
70
MMP XCIX, C.
71
MMP C.
 Chapter 7  The Question of Women’s ‘Agency’ 87

were born as the king and his wife while the courtesan became the rival of Ratī, the wife
of Kāmadeva, called Prīti.
This shows the manner in which the texts seek to tap the resources that courtesans seem
to have had access to in the ancient traditions. These included villages, cows, gold, garments
and food. The texts contain exaggeration but still reveal the expectations of the brahmanas
with respect to the courtesans and how some of them may have amassed wealth.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. Buhler, ed., Āpastambiya Dharmasūtram (Bombay: Bombay Sanskrit Series, 1932).
Chandrakanta. Gobhilagṛhyasūtra (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1908).
F. Knauer, Mānava Gṛhyasūtra (Batavia: M. J. Dresden, 1897).
S. R. Sehgal, Śaṇkhāyana Gṛhyasūtra (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1960).
R. Shama Sastri, Baudhāyana Gṛhyasūtra (Mysore: Mysore Sanskrit Series, nos 32/55, 1920).
N. N. Sharma, ed., Āśvalāyana Gṛhyasūtra (Delhi: Eastern Book Linkers, 1976).
Adolf Friedrich Stenzler. Pāraskara Gṛhyasūtra (Leipzig: Kashi Sanskrit Series, 1876).
H. H. Wilson, ed. and trans., Matsyamahāpurāṇam (Delhi: Nag Publishers, 1983).
Women and Work in Early
Textual Traditions

Section II
 Chapter 8 The Woman Worker*

I. B. HORNER

Among the better classes in Buddhist Indian society, the great majority of women were
supported by children, husband, or father. They did not do much, if any, work beyond their
household tasks as mother, wife, or daughter. But among the poorer people the case was
different, and there are various records which refer to self-supporting women who were
engaged in a trade or a profession.
It is said, for example, that a certain woman was the keeper of a paddy-field; and she
gathered and parched the heads of rice, doing the work herself.1 Another is described as
watching the cotton-fields,2 where she used sometimes to spin fine thread from the clean
cotton3 in order to while away the time.
Women also appear to have been capable of functioning as keepers of the burning-grounds.
Two references are made to the same woman, Kāḷī, who was engaged in this occupation,4
although no mention is made of any wage she might have received. She evidently had at
heart the welfare of those who came to meditate in the charnel-field, for she provided them
with objects suitable for the contemplation of Impermanence.
A spirited description of a woman acrobat occurs in the Dhammapada Commentary.5
Although it is the only reference to a woman who earned her livelihood by such arts, it is
illuminating. For it is probable that some of the five hundred tumblers with whom she was,
were also women. They used annually or twice a year to ‘visit Rājagaha, and give perfor-
mances for seven days before the King…. One day a certain female tumbler climbed a pole,

* Previously published in I. B. Horner’s Woman Under Primtive Buddhism, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.
New Delhi (1989), pp. 83–94.
1
Dhp. Cmy. on verse 118.
2
Jātaka, 546.
3
Ibid.
4
Theragāthā Cmy. on cxxxvi.; Dhp. Cmy. on verses 7–8. This Kālī is not to be confused with the slave-woman of
the same name mentioned below.
5
Dhp. Cmy. on verse 348.

91
92 I. B. HORNER

turned somersaults thereon, and balancing herself on the tip of the pole, danced and sang
as she trod the air’. A son of a great merchant fell in love with her, but her father would not
give his daughter for money, and suggested that the youth should travel about with them.
The people delighted in these acrobatic performances, and ‘stood on beds piled on beds’ in
order to obtain a good view. They tossed up gifts to the tumblers, who also earned ‘much
gold and money’.
Such were, perhaps, the more unusual ways in which women supported themselves. Far
more numerous were domestic female slaves, born to this status of other domestic slaves,
like Puṇṇā, in the household of Anāthapiṇḍika.6 They formed part of the property of most
wealthy householders. ‘Wives and children, bondwomen and bondmen, goats and sheep,
fowl and swine, elephants, cattle, horses and mares, together with gold and coins of silver’:7
all these ties the houseman is said to pursue with blind and avid appetite. But knowing that
they are fetters and encumbrances, even the unconverted man, when speaking in praise of
Gotama, might say: ‘He refrains from accepting slave-women or slave-men’.8 All these
are thought to be subject to the round of rebirth, to decay and impurity, and also, with the
exceptions of the inanimate gold and coins of silver, to disease, death and sorrow.
There is only one reference in canonical literature to a slave-woman who was ­maltreated.9
She had tried her mistress’s patience past bearing. Her name was Kāḷī, and she had endeav-
oured to find out whether the reputation her mistress, Videhikā, had for gentleness and
mildness was true. She therefore got up later and later three mornings running. At first̑ her
mistress merely questioned her and frowned; the next morning she complained; and the third
morning she struck Kāḷī on the head with a lynch-pin, and drew blood.
It nowhere appears that slave-women were over-worked. There were multitudes of them
in the royal establishments, some of whom waited upon the queens, and performed such
duties as daily buying flowers for them,10 and looking after the jewels of the ladies in the
royal harem.11 In other households they pounded rice,12 an arduous task, and helped with
the cooking.
Three slave-women called Puṇṇā are mentioned: the one referred to above; one of whom
it is said that the brahmin Pokkharasāti’s heart and mind does not read the heart and mind
of his domestic slave, Puṇṇikā,13 meaning that not even a brahmin has omniscient powers;
and another who is mentioned in the Milindapañha as one of the seven people who did ‘acts
of devotion which bare fruit even in this life’.14 But she is the only one to be omitted from

6
Therīgāthā Cmy. on lxv.
7
Majjhima, i., 162.
8
Dialogues, i., p. 5.
9
Majjhima, i., 125–126.
10
Dhp. Cmy. on verses 21–23.
11
Jātaka, 92.
12
Ibid., 45.
13
Majjhima, ii., 201.
14
Milindapañha, iv., I, 37.
 Chapter 8  The Woman Worker 93

the more detailed descriptions given later15 of the merit-working acts done by these people.
Doubtless she attained some blissful state, but was she freed from bondage in this life?
Slave-women could be emancipated, but only with the consent of their master. It is sig-
nificant that in all recorded cases where such a step was taken, it was in order to enable the
freed-woman to enter the Order,16 for slaves were ineligible for ordination.17
Khujjuttarā,18 a slave-woman of Queen Sāmāvatī, did not apparently become emancipated
on her conversion to Buddhism. She reformed her conduct in so far as after the first time
that she had heard Gotama preach she spent the whole of the eight pieces of money that
the queen had given her for buying flowers, instead of spending only four and keeping the
other four for herself. Being asked by the queen why she had brought back so many flowers
on this particular day, she said that she had heard the discourse given by the Exalted One,
and had acquired understanding of the Dhamma. She then preached it to the queen, who
became a believer, and to all her women-attendants. They begged Khujjuttarā to be to them
as a mother and a teacher, and to go to hear every discourse given by the Teacher, and then
return and teach it to them. In this way she came to know the Tipiṭika by heart, and it is
said that the Master assigned her pre-eminence among his female lay disciples, who were
learned in the Scriptures and able to expound the Dhamma.
Besides slave-women some of the more prosperous householders had also in their retinues
vast troupes of female musicians. Gotama himself, before he entered on the homeless way, is
said to have been ‘ministered to by bands of women musicians’,19 and it is recorded of Yasa
the noble youth that ‘in the palace for the rainy season, he lived during the four months (of
that season), surrounded with female musicians, among whom no man was’.20 The instru-
ments played by such women included the flute, lute, tabor and drum.21 In a passage in the
Milindapañha the drum (bheri) is described as making a sound ‘by the action or effort of a
woman or a man’.22 Seven kinds of musical instruments are alluded to in the Dialogues,23
but they are not specified. Cymbals24 were in vogue.
An almost necessary concomitant of music was dancing. Although the true ascetic should
abstain from being a spectator at shows or fairs with nautch-dances (nacca), singing (gīta),
and instrumental music (vādita),25 this prohibition did not apply to the laity. Sound prompted
sight to aid in dispelling the tedium of the days of torrential rains, and dancing-girls abetted

15
Ibid., iv., 8, 25.
16
Therīgāthā Cmy. on lxv.; Dhp. Cmy. on 314.
17
See below, p. 146.
18
Dhp. Cmy. on verses 21–23.
19
Majjhima, i., 504.
20
MV, i., 7, 1, 2; cf. Dialogues, ii., 170.
21
Ibid.
22
Milindapañha, iv., 6, 58.
23
Dialogues, ii., 183.
24
Samma and tāḷa, perhaps a gong, Dialogues, ii., 170.
25
Dialogues, i., 5, 7.
94 I. B. HORNER

in this work, performing as was their wont upon large woollen carpets,26 sometimes singing
themselves27 and making music also.28
In order to show the highest honour to King Mahā-janaka, his subjects prepared a great
festival, and when they were presenting their offerings ‘a crowd of King’s ministers sat on
one side, on another a host of brahmins, on another the wealthy merchants and the like, and
on another the most beautiful dancing-girls’.29
But they were not employed solely for entertainment: they were sometimes put to other
uses. Queen Sīlavatī, the consort of Okkāka, had no child.30 The people complained that
the realm would perish, and counselled the king to send out a band of dancing-women of
low degree into the streets. If no one of these, however, gave birth to a child he should then
send a company of women of good standing, and finally a band of the highest rank. The
expeditions were to receive religious sanction, but this was not so much to regularise the
status of the nautch-girl, for she was already accepted as a necessity to the wealthy, as to
insure a successful result. But when the king and the people knew that they were doomed
to disappointment, the failure of the women to give birth to a child was attributed to their
lack of merit and to their immorality: a Hindu rather than a Buddhist interpretation.
Thus women professional workers consisted largely of domestic-slaves, nautch-girls
and women musicians. In addition to these, a large part of the female population who did
not otherwise gain their livelihood, or who were not otherwise supported, were courtesans.
They also were sometimes well versed in dancing, singing and lute-playing.31 Although the
extent of prostitution in ancient India is disputed, it had existed before the Buddhist days,32
despite the importance given to marriage in the Vedic Age: but for some girls who were
without protestors,33 a life of prostitution was an obvious course to pursue. Their conduct
was regretted by some members of the population. ‘Aśvapati, the prince, boasts that his
kingdom has no thief, churl or drunkard, none who neglect the sacrifice or the sacred lore,
no adulterer or courtesan’.34 In the Laws of Manu courtesans are portrayed as ceremonially
unclean, and brahmins are enjoined never to eat food which has been offered by harlots,35 for
it is said to exclude from the (higher) worlds.36 Further a king should know clever harlots to
be a thorn in the side of his people,37 should instigate them to commit offences, then bring
them into his power38 and punish them.39

26
MV., v., 10, 3.
27
Jātaka, 529.
28
Ibid., 132, 313.
29
Ibid., 539.
30
Ibid., 531.
31
MV., viii., 1, 3.
32
C.H.I., vol. i., p. 97; Macdonell and Keith, loc. cit., vol. i., p. 395; cf. vol. i., pp. 30, 147, 481; vol. ii., p. 496.
33
C.H.I., vol. i., pp. 88–89.
34
Keith, Religion and Philosophy of the Vedas and Upanishads, p. 585.
35
Manu, iv., 209.
36
Ibid., 219.
37
Ibid., ix., 259, 260.
38
Ibid., ix., 261.
39
Ibid., ix., 262.
 Chapter 8  The Woman Worker 95

In spite of adverse public opinion and in spite of punishments, courtesans persisted into
the Buddhist days, when they formed a far from negligible portion of the community, as
is shown by the very ease with which they are used in similes.40 Some, like Vimalā41 and
Sirimā,42 appear to have been prostitutes because their mothers were. Yet among this class
of women the birth-rate must have been somewhat low. Hence comparatively few girl-
children would be born to enjoy their mother’s favour,43 for courtesans were fully aware,
as Sālavatī phrased it, that ‘men do not like a pregnant woman. If anyone should find out
regarding me that the courtesan Sālavatī is pregnant, my whole position would be lost.’44
There is no record that female infanticide was ever committed by a courtesan; but if sons
were born to them they ran a certain risk of being murdered.45 Sālavatī and the courtesan
of Kosambi46 and the courtesan of Rājagaha47 all gave orders that their sons should be put
into an old winnowing basket and cast̑ away on the dust̑ -heap. Sālavatī’s was saved by the
prince, Abhaya, and lived to become a famous physician. On the other hand, both Ambapālī
and Abhaya’s mother each had an almsman son.
Four courtesans, Vimalā, Abhaya’s mother, called Padumavatī, Aḍḍhakāsī and Ambapālī,
having been converted to Buddhism, entered the Order and attained to arahanship. To each of
these, too, verses are attributed in the Therīgāthā. Of Vimalā48 little other mention is made,49
and none of Abhaya’s mother:50 she was the town-belle of Ujjenī, and her boy, Abhaya, was
King Bimbisāra’s son. On the other hand, Aḍḍhakāsī51 is important, as in order to circumvent
the difficulties of her ordination a relaxation in the discipline was granted.52 And Ambapālī53
became and remained famous as one of the most̑ loyal and generous supporters of the Order.
This beautiful woman is said to have come into being spontaneously in the king’s gardens
at Vesālī at the foot of a mango tree; but really she was half-sister to Vāsiṭṭhī,54 their mother
coming of a clansman’s family at Vesālī.55 By her beauty, talents and desirability Ambapālī
made this town ever more and more flourishing.56 But as she grew older she seems to have
come under the influence of her son, the Elder Vimala-Kondañña, and ‘later on, out of faith

40
Theragāthā, verse 939, gaṇikā va vibhūsāyaṃ, ‘like courtesans do they parade their gear.’
41
Therīgāthā, xxxix.
42
Sutta Nipāta, Cmy., i., 144.
43
See above, p. 20.
44
MV., viii., I, 2–4.
45
The putting away of an illegitimate child is referred to in the Rig-Veda. Macdonell and Keith, loc. cit., vol. i., p. 395.
46
Dhp. Cmy. on verses 21–23.
47
MV., viii., 1, 4.
48
Therīgāthā, xxxix., cf. below, p. I84.
49
She occurs again Theragāthā, verses 1150–1157, again being rebuked by Mahā-Moggāllana.
50
Therīgāthā Cmy. on xxvi., see below, p. 185.
51
Ibid., on xxii., see below, pp. 143, 184.
52
See below, p. 143.
53
Therīgāthā Cmy. on lxvi., see below, p. 185.
54
Therīgāthā Cmy. on li.
55
Mrs. Rhys Davids, Gotama the Man, Londan, 1928, p. 149.
56
MV., viii., 1, 1.
96 I. B. HORNER

in the Master, she built a vihāra in her own gardens’,57 for she had become exceedingly rich.
One day, having heard that Gotama was at Koṭigāma, she ordered a number of magnificent
vehicles to be made ready,58 and drove up to the place where he was preaching, finishing
the journey on foot, owing to the impassability of the roads.59 After he had taught and
gladdened her with a religious discourse, she asked him and the fraternity of almsmen to
take their meal at her house on the next day. He accepted, and although shortly afterwards
he received an invitation for the same day from the princely family of the Licchavis, he
refused them and kept his promise to Ambapālī; not so much because she was rich, for the
Licchavis were rich also, but for the sake of keeping troth; or because, although there is no
trace in the records that she was repenting or that he was blaming her, he may have felt that
she was needing his advice at a crisis in her life more than they. Her disdain of the Licchavi
men, her clients, as they drove up in their gorgeous chariots, also pointed to the change of
heart which she was experiencing.
Soon after, when Gotama was at Ñālika, she offered her mango-grove ‘to the fraternity
of almsmen with the Buddha at its head’. He welcomed this donation graciously. It would
be of great use to the Order and he could not have wished to rebuff one on the path of
regeneration. She finally attained arahanship.6
Besides Ambapālī, other courtesans appear to have benefited the Order in various ways.
It is said that at the assemblies of Sulasā the courtesan and of Sirimā the courtesan, eighty-
four thousand people penetrated to a knowledge of the Dhamma.60 Nothing is said to show
why Sirimā was endowed with virtue. She appears to have been a malicious woman, who
was asked by Uttarā, a female lay-disciple to act as concubine to her husband for a fortnight
while she herself went away to hear the preaching. Sirimā became angry with Uttarā, and
injured her. But Uttarā made her ask pardon from Gotama, and she confessed the evil she
had done to Uttarā.61 Sulasā’s story appears in a Jātaka.62 She lived in Benares and had
heaps or courtesans in her train. One day, as she was watching from her window, she saw
a robber who had been captured, and who was being led to the place of execution by royal
command. She fell in love with him, and thought that if she could free him she would give
up her bad life and live respectably with him. She managed to gain his freedom by sending
a thousand pieces to the chief constable and then lived with him in delight and harmony.
Later he wanted to rob her, but she threw him over a precipice.63
Further, a group of courtesans saved the life of a lay-disciple,64 who was returning from
listening to a discourse on the Dhamma. But for their intervention he would have been killed
in mistake for the real thieves who had fled. Yet, having saved him, they neither mocked
at him nor tried to seduce him.

57
Therīgāthā Cmy. on lxvi.
58
MV., vi., 30; Mhp., ii., §17.
59
Therīgāthā Cmy. on lxvi.
60
Milindapañha, vi., 4.
61
Dhp. Cmy. on verse 223.
62
Jātaka, 419.
63
Cf. the story of Bhaddā Kuṇḍalakesā, Therīgāthā Cmy. on xlvi.
64
Dhp. Cmy. on verse 165.
 Chapter 8  The Woman Worker 97

A courtesan who seems to have come under the spell of the Dhamma was Bindumatī.65 In
the time of Asoka, it is said that by an Act of Truth, that is by calling ‘to mind the attributes
of the Buddhas who almspeople, courtesans are never openly condemned in the literature,
being regarded as more piteous and low than blameworthy. Hence, although they come
towards the end of a long list of trades and professions given in the Milindapañha,66 even
so they were said to be capable, with brahmins and nobles, not merely of knowing that a
certain new city was regular, faultless, perfect and pleasant, but also that ‘Able indeed must
that architect have been by whom this city was built’.
According to the outlook of their own times, it would be thought that a woman was a
prostitute on account of the working out of her karma. It was partly because of the notion
of karma that the profession was frankly permitted by the social code of the day, and was
more openly recognised then than now. Prostitution was regarded as a condition to which
a person was reborn as a desert for some offence which, as it was thought, had overtaken
her in a previous existence. But she need not remain in this condition. By willing to change,
by willing to strive against the stream, and to cultivate the upward mounting way67 and to
live well, a woman could become different, could grow,68 and escape from the prison of
sense-desires

REFERENCES
Dhp.cmy Dhammadpada Commentary of Buddhaghosha ed. Eugene Watson Burlingame in the Proceedings of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 45, No. 20 (Jun., 1910), pp. 467–550.
Jataka, The Stories from the Life of Buddha’s Former Births, ed. E.B.Cowell and W.H.D.Rouse, 1895 and 1907,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Therigatha Translated by Mrs. Rhys Davids as Therigatha: Psalms of the Sisters, published in 1909 (publishers not
given).
Dialogues of the Buddha, Digha Nikaya, edited and translated from Pali by T.William Rhys Davids, Oxford University
Press, H. Frowde, London, 1899.
Majjhima Nikaya Translated by Lord Chalmers, London, 1926.
Milinda Panha Questions of King Milinda translated by T.William Rhys Davids in 1890 (publisher not known but
republished by Dover Publications, London in 1963.
Mahavagga of Vijaya Pitaka translated by T.William Rhys Davids and Oldenburg in Published in the Sacred Books
of the East, volumes XIII and XVII in 1881 and 1882.
Mrs. Rhys Davids, Gotama the Man, London, 1928.
Samyutta Nikaya The Book of the Kindred Sayings, tr C. A. F. Rhys Davids & F. L. Woodward, 1917–30, 5 volumes,
Pali Text Society, Bristol, UK.

65
Milindapañha, iv., I, 47.
66
Milindapañha, v., 4.
67
Therīgāthā, verse 99.
68
Saṃy. Nik., XXXVII., iii., 3, § 34.
 Chapter 9 Of Dasas and
Karmakaras: Servile
Labour in Ancient India*

UMA CHAKRAVARTI

WOMEN IN SERVITUDE AND BONDAGE: THE AGRIHINIS

OF ANCIENT INDIA1
The earliest accessible literary references point to an extremely significant but relatively
unrecognised fact: the capture of large numbers of women slaves by the Aryans from the
subjugated dasa people. These references are doubly significant because men slaves are rare
in the Rgveda.1 Further, women slaves are frequently spoken of in the context of wealth, and
are listed along with gold, cattle and other assets in the Later Vedic literature.2 It appears
reasonably certain from these references that there were more women slaves than men slaves
in Vedic society, and that they were also considered more valuable. The Aitareya Brahmana
states that 10,000 women slaves were gifted by the king of Anga to his chief priest along with
cattle, wealth and gold.3 One of the Rgvedic hymns mentions a gift of 50 dasis to a priest.4
Another reference mentions ten chariots carrying abducted dasis, said to constitute a part
of dakshina.5 The Chandogya Upanishad lists female slaves along with cattle, horses, gold,
fields and houses, to demonstrate the grandeur of their owners.6 Particularly significant is
the fact that in the early Vedic literature cattle and women slaves constitute the only forms
of movable property, and are transferable, unlike land.7
The predominance of women slaves over men slaves and the value attached to them
requires some explanation both from the point of view of the history of slavery and the study
of women in history. Sharma has suggested that women were an important object for whom
the wars between the Aryans and the dasas were fought.8 He argues that women are highly
valued in a tribal context since they are ‘the producers of producers’.9 It is possible that the

* Reproduced with permission from the author and the publisher, from Everyday Lives, Everyday Histories: Beyond
the Kings and Brahmanas of ‘Ancient’ India. Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2006, pp. 86–100.

98
 Chapter 9  Of Dasas and Karmakaras 99

Aryans, whose numbers decreased during their long trek to India, required to replenish their
stock, for which women would have been needed urgently. I suggest that women slaves,
at least in the early stages of Indian history, not merely provided a source of cheap labour
but also doubled up as reproducers and replenishers of a declining stock, and this explains
their numerical preponderance over male slaves in the Vedic literature. The value attached
to women slaves can be explained at least in part by their sexual and biological attributes,
which added to their value as sources of labour, a characteristic they shared with men.
A significant point to note here is the association of brahmana priests with the possession
of a large number of dasis.10 The dasis are frequently stated to be objects of either dana or
dakshina, and are handed to the chief priests by the king.11 It is possible that the king repre-
sents the conqueror who has captured the dasis from the subjugated dasa people. The fact
that the dasis are handed over to the Brahmana priests in such large numbers (running into
thousands in one reference)12 may signify a more fundamental process than would appear
at first glance. If the dasis were functioning even partially as replenishers of the declining
stock of the Aryans, then it would be necessary for them to go through a process of accul-
turation or aryanisation themselves: and the agency for this diffusion is likely to have been
the priest. The association of Brahmanas with a large number of women survived into later
times. The post-Vedic Buddhist literature frequently alludes to the association negatively
when Brahmanas are attacked for leading a degenerate existence.13
Apart from their biological function, dasis are also likely to have contributed to domes-
tic production centring round cattle in the predominantly pastoral Early Vedic society.
Subsequently, when agriculture began to replace pastoralism, there are occasional references
to dasis in the context of agriculture. The Atharvaveda refers to dasis being engaged in
subsidiary agricultural operations.14 However, the earlier predominance of dasis over dasas
gradually began to give way with the emergence of a full-scale agricultural economy. Both
dasis and dasas are now mentioned together, working within the household of the master as
well as outside it. References to dasas and dasis working the land are usually of a general
kind, and may represent family units that jointly worked the land in much the same way as
teams of family labour in contemporary times. Occasionally dasis alone are mentioned, as
for example the dasi who watched over her master’s field in one of the Jataka stories,15 but
on the whole the dasis now begin to be closely associated with domestic labour. In fact all
specific references to dasis in the Buddhist narrative literature are in the context of domestic
service. Also, dasis predominate over dasas in domestic service and it is clear that the real
burden of domestic labour fell upon them.
A pertinent reference in Buddhist literature distinguishes between the work of the dasis
and the work of the wives within the household. Buddhaghosha describes the work of the
slave girl (dasi bhoga) as working in the fields, removing filth, fetching water, and doing
other menial and drudge jobs. Dasi bhoga is opposed to sunisa bhoga, which designates the
work of the daughter-in-law.16 It was this distinction in domestic service between dasis and
the womenfolk of the family (which obviously had its own gradation, with the daughter-in-
law only one step above the slave girls) that was invoked by one spirited daughter-in-law
who refused to be cowed down by her father-in-law’s authority, and protested to him that
she was not a kumbhadasi (a slave girl who carried water).17 The heavy burden of domestic
labour was strongly resented by some women who then shifted the burden on to their slave
100 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

women. This is clear from the example of a young wife of an old Brahmana in Vessantara
Jataka who repeatedly pesters her husband to get her at least one dasi to take over the
domestic chores.18
Among the most strenuous and burdensome tasks of domestic labour performed by the
dasis was the drawing and fetching of water. The kumbhadasi is described as having to
get up early in the morning in order to fetch water, which had often to be carried over vast
distances.19 It was considered particularly arduous because of the perennial nature of the
task. Further, the sheer quantity of water required in a hot country such as India must have
placed a heavy burden on the kumbhadasis. Husking rice was also considered to be a heavy
task. One dasi is depicted as continuing to pound the rice till well after sunset. She collapses
with exhaustion and attempts to revive herself by seeking a breath of fresh air.20 The work
of a dasi included cooking, making the beds, lighting the lamps, milking the cows and so
on—in short, all the drudgery of domestic labour.21 Even the Brahmana gurus made use
of slave women to labour for them. One reference describes the young (and able-bodied)
disciples of a Brahmana guru waking up the dasi early in the morning and asking her to
prepare food for them.22
Some references in ancient literature suggest other functions for dasis apart from domestic
service: as guards,23 in the retinue of their well-to-do masters, as errand girls.24 Sometimes
hundreds of slave girls accompanied rich brides to their new homes as part of their dowry.25
As early as the Atharvaveda, we get a reference to a dasi who accompanied her newly married
mistress to her new home in order to entertain her there.26 A special category of dasis were
dhatis, or wet nurses. Chanana is not quite certain whether the dhatis were slave women, but
from their general description it does not appear that they had much freedom.27 The dhati
dasis accompanied their mistresses to their new homes after marriage and lived with them
for the rest of their lives.28 Kautilya also refers to dasis among nurses and prescribes special
rules for them.29Although the relationship between the nurse-mothers and their mistresses
was often characterised by great intimacy, the work of the dhatis was regarded as unclean
since their garments were invariably soiled with various kinds of unpleasant discharges.30
Considerably higher in terms of prestige were the nataka itthis, who were women in
the harems of princes and monarchs. Although they did not have the status of wives, since
they could be disposed of to others or even inherited,31 they had a few years of comparative
comfort. The dasis in the royal entourage did not have to labour physically, having merely
to entertain their masters and generally please them. Although they were more privileged
than other dasis because of their physical appeal, they were totally dependent upon their
looks, which were necessarily of a temporary nature. The literature gives evidence of their
later years when the distinction between them and other dasis virtually disappeared. Some
of them became nursemaids and stayed on royal service. The ever-pragmatic Arthashastra,
with its comprehensive rules concerning all available sources of labour, suggests that old
devadasis and old dasis of the king should be employed usefully to cut wool, fibre, cotton
and flax.32 Since weaving was under state supervision, a large number of women were
employed in state workshops: hence harem inmates who retired could simply be transferred
to the state workshop. The work of carrying raw material of and from other women, who
would not venture out of their houses themselves and who worked at home, also fell upon
the ex-dasi inmates of the royal harem.33 According to the Arthashastra, a prostitute slave
 Chapter 9  Of Dasas and Karmakaras 101

(brothels were run by the state), once past the enjoyment stage, could be put to work in the
store or the kitchen.34 Some were employed in drinking houses as serving girls.35 Others
less fortunate might end up as wandering spies who pick up information and pass it on to
the institute of espionage.36 In their mature years, therefore, the women in the king’s service
lost some of their comforts and were reduced to the level of the rest of the labouring dasis.
It is fairly evident from numerous references in the Jatakas that the dasis were often
subjected to threats and abuses from their masters. The slave girl Punika, for example, was
required to fetch water all day long, from dawn right into the night.37 This was an arduous job,
especially in winter, but Punika had no respite because of the threats and abuses showered
upon her. The fact that her master was a devoted Buddhist did not in any way alleviate her
suffering. The threat of physical violence probably reduced the slave girls to a situation in
which they were completely under the control of their masters. Buddhist literature frequently
uses the expression ‘meek as a hundred-piece slave girl’,38 which makes it evident that the
dasis had been so completely suppressed that they became synonymous with meekness.
Meekness alone, however, was no guarantee against violence. We have the example of a
dasi who was beaten by her master for not handing over the wages she had earned by work-
ing for someone else.39 This would suggest a practice similar to the one in Greece where
slave owners, when not using the labour of their slaves themselves, would hire them out to
others and collect the wages. Another heart-rending account is of a dasi called Rajjumala
who had been badly abused from childhood. The mistress often catches hold of her hair,
and slaps and kicks her. To escape this torture, the girl has her head shaved by the barber,
but her mistress then ties her head with rope and beats her. Unable to bear the torture any
further, Rajjumala escapes to the forest and attempts to commit suicide.40
Notwithstanding all the instances of physical violence against dasis that we have cited,
by far the most vulnerable area of a slave girl’s existence was the sexual abuse and sexual
violence she could be subjected to. This was a special burden that slave women had to
bear—not only did they labour like the dasas, but they were also exposed to sexual exploi-
tation. The Buddhist literature gives an example of a slave girl who is forced to sleep with
her master. When the mistress finds out about the incident, she cuts off the girl’s nose in
a fit of jealous rage.41 The action is directed against the victim and not the violator, as is
usual even today. There is evidence to suggest that sexual exploitation of a dasi did not
constitute infringement of the law and that a master could act as he pleased in relation to a
female slave. It was for the master to decide in what way he used or abused her servitude.
The fact that sexual exploitation of dasis was common is taken note of in the Arthashawstra,
which attempts to contain the practice to a section of dasis. Kautilya ruled that no master
should have pledged dasis (ahitaka) attending on him while he bathed.42 The violation of
a pledged dasi would cause the master to forfeit the value of the pledged amount.43 Sexual
violence against a pledged dasi who was a nursemaid or a cook in domestic service resulted
in freeing her. The master was also liable to receive punishment.44 If a master raped a dasi
who was pledged to him and was under his protection, or helped another to do so, he was
not only to forfeit the purchase value but also compensate her with money.45 Similarly, the
daughter of a pledged dasa or dasi who was violated by the master was to be compensated
with jewellery and money as contribution towards her sulka, or nuptial fee.46 Apart from
this, he had to pay a fine to the ever-vigilant state. If the master produced children through
102 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

his dasi, the dasi and the offspring would be freed.47 The Arthashastra also provided for the
protection and maintenance of the dasi during pregnancy.48
It is difficult to estimate the effect that Kautilya’s injunctions may have had in reducing
the sexual exploitation of dasi women, especially since their vulnerability was an outcome
of their position: as women who were partially or completely under the control of their
masters. Most significant is the distinction that Kautilya makes between the ordinary dasi
and the ahitaka dasi, since almost all his injunctions apply to the latter—the bondswomen
over whom the master had only partial control. This category, as we have earlier pointed
out, was just beginning to emerge. The protective rules for ahitaka dasis were in keeping
with the protection to the ahitakad asas in terms of the kind of work that could be allotted
to them. They enjoyed immunity from impure work and from physical violence. For the
older categories of dasis, over whom the master had absolute control and who could not
look forward to possible redemption, there was no such protective legislation; it is reason-
ably clear that other categories of dasis continued to be sexually exploited, even legally.
All that the Arthashastra seems to have succeeded in doing was to establish the superior
control of the state over the masters. Since many of the offences were made punishable by
imposing fines instead of imprisonment, the prevalence of sexual exploitation was utilised
by the state to its advantage.
I will end this discussion on female slave labour in ancient India by pointing to another
significant reference. According to Chinese accounts, in the sixth and seventh centuries there
were no female slaves in India.49 It is important to note that this implies that there were a
few male slaves and that the situation was exactly the reverse of the position that we began
this discussion with. At the beginning of the period, female slaves outnumbered male slaves.
At the end of the period, there was a decline in the institution of slavery generally and the
virtual disappearance of dasis in particular. What meaning can one derive from this? Is it
possible that women slaves were now hardly required for their labour and that they were
unnecessary for purposes of mass reproduction? The society and, in particular, the economy
were relatively more stable in the sixth and seventh centuries than they had been in Early
Vedic times, which may account for the comparative absence of dasis during this period.
It is also possible that female slave labour was being replaced by visti, or forced labour,
rendered by women in rural India. The Kāmasutra, for example, has an interesting reference
which indicates that visti was imposed on the womenfolk by the headman of the village.50
According to Vatsyayana, unpaid work of various kinds, such as filling up the headman’s
granaries, working on his fields, taking things to his house, cleaning or decorating his resi-
dence, and spinning the yarn of cotton, flax and hemp for his clothes, was rendered by the
womenfolk of the village.51 I have earlier argued that the burden of visti was usually shifted
on to the poorest sections of the village, and there is no reason to think that it was otherwise
for women. Further, while Vatsyayana’s statement might suggest the reduced need for slave
labour in early medieval times, the vulnerability of women to sexual exploitation survived
even in visti. Vatsyayana concludes his statement on the performance of visti by women by
pointing out that these are occasions when sexual intercourse may be had with such women.
A striking example of the exploitation of women in debt bondage is the statement made
by Narada and Vishnu that women, like cattle, could be lent out to others.52 Featuring in a
list of items along with gold and grain, but especially associated with cattle, are women (men
 Chapter 9  Of Dasas and Karmakaras 103

are missing from the list) who may not only be lent out but upon whom it is normal to levy
interest. For both women and cattle the interest that is prescribed is the same: one issue.53
This means that when a woman was borrowed and subsequently returned to the original
owner, she would have to be returned along with one of the issues that she would have pro-
duced during the period of loan. If she has had more than one issue, the borrower would be
entitled to keep the others. Even as a theoretical proposition this smacks of crass materialism
and a peculiarly insensitive form of exploitation. Quite obviously, bondswomen were mere
objects, and the notion of a family unit did not exist for them. Whatever was the form of
extraction of labour from these women, the exploitation they suffered was unique to them.

PERCEPTIONS OF EXPLOITATION
Interesting facts about slavery and labour in ancient India can be gleaned from the existing
literature, especially from the rich Buddhist narrative literature. The sources include material
that, when pieced together, provides a perspective on exploitation—both of the exploiters
and the exploited. The Digha Nikaya highlights the tremendous social distance that existed
between one human being and, another with the king and the dasas representing the two
extremes. What is more significant is that the dasa is depicted as being aware of his low
status in relation to the king, even though both share the basic characteristics of being men.
The dasa says to himself:

Here is Ajatasattu, the King of Magadha. He is a man and so am I. But the king lives in full enjoy-
ment of the five pleasures of the senses—a very god methinks—and here am I a slave, working
for him, rising before him and retiring later to rest, keen to carry out his pleasure, anxious to make
myself agreeable in deed and word, watching his very looks.54

The dasa clearly recognises the wide and unbridgeable gap between the king and the slave,
representing as they do opposite ends of the social and political hierarchy.
The Buddhist texts also refer to an interesting case of a dasi’s awareness of her skill,
labour and meekness not only being taken for granted, but also leading to the mistaken notion
that her mistress is a gentle-tempered woman. The dasi thinks to herself, ‘Now, does my
mistress have an inward ill temper that she does not show because I do my work so care-
fully?’ She proceeds to test and expose the real temperament of the mistress by getting up
late three mornings in succession. The mistress’s temper begins to crack under the strain of
her dasi’s self-indulgent and unslave-like behaviour, and she begins to abuse and threaten
her. On the third morning, when the dasi shows no signs of mending her. ways, the mistress
says, ‘Well now, Kali, why did you get up late today?’ ‘That’s nothing, mistress’, replies
the dasi. Infuriated by this reply the mistress shouts, ‘That’s nothing indeed, bad slave’, and,
grabbing the bolt of a door, she physically assaults the dasi by giving her a vicious blow on
the head. Kali, the slave woman, then shows her blood-spattered head to the neighbours55
and effectively puts an end to the myth of the ‘gentle temper’ of her mistress.
The consciousness of exploitation and the consequent tension arising from it is apparent
in another statement in the Majjhima Nikaya, where the master of some dasas complains
104 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

to the Buddha that the dasas do one thing with their bodies, say another with their speech,
but have something else in their minds.56 Apparently, the masters are not unaware of the
undercurrent of resentment that the dasas harbour because of their low position. One of them
implicitly recognises57 that the surplus controlled by him is produced through the labour of
his dasa-karmakaras. Pali texts also indicate that the dasa-karmakaras often carried out orders
under duress and fear of punishment.58 The atmosphere of coercion and physical violence
is graphically summed up in the Mahabharata: ‘Men acquire [other] men as slaves, and by
beating and otherwise subjugating them, make them work day and night. These people are
not ignorant of the pain that is caused by beating and chains’.59 The same passage has also
been rendered as follows:

Human beings, enslaved by human beings, are exploited by them;

Tortured, shackled and incarcerated are forced to work day and night;
Though they (who do this) themselves know the agony evoked by torture and chains.60

The perception of exploitation appears to have crystallised into an act of retaliation at

least in one instance, described in the Pali sources. According to the Vinaya Pitaka, the
dasa-karmakaras of the Sakyans violated the Sakyan womenfolk to wreak vengeance on
them.61 The significant aspect of this reference is that it was the dasa-karmakaras of one of
the gana-sanghas who were responsible for this instance of retaliatory action. It has been
argued elsewhere that this collective action was possible because of certain characteristics
of the social organisation of gana-sanghas. Since the dasa-karmakaras worked on the land
for joint masters and were themselves a group in relation to their masters, it was easier for
them to take collective action against their masters. Group consciousness among the dasa-
karmakaras was possible not only because they shared the same material interests, but also
because they could translate this into a feeling of solidarity in opposition to their masters.
Given the evidence for the perception of exploitation, it would not be out of place to
analyse the attitudes of the philosophers of ancient India towards the contemporary eco-
nomic situation, especially towards servitude and exploitation. It has been suggested that
some of the ‘heterodox’ (nonconformist) philosophers, particularly Gotama Buddha, were
actually social philosophers,62 and that they represented a more humanitarian and egalitarian
approach to the lower sections of society.63 The sixth century bc witnessed one of the major
efforts by philosophers towards an understanding of human existence. I have earlier argued
that the period was characterised by sharp economic and social inequalities, accompanied
by a breakdown of familiar traditional institutions. Basham has pointed to a relationship
between the breakdown of tribal units and the rise of the ‘heterodox’ philosophies;64 but it
should be emphasised that the breakdown of tribal units was also related to the emerging
economic and social differentiation. It is against this background that the large-scale spread
of philosophical speculation must be viewed.
Chattopadhyaya argues that the central concept of dukkha or sorrow in the teachings of the
Buddha was a result of the transformation of concrete material suffering into a metaphysi-
cal principle of eternal suffering. He suggests that through this transformation the Buddha
gave a completely subjective turn to the most oppressive problems of his age.65 However,
the Buddha also responded more directly to the changing environment by postulating a
 Chapter 9  Of Dasas and Karmakaras 105

dialectical relationship with the new society. On the one hand, he rejected the emerging
inegalitarian structure of society and created the institution of the sangha, where all men
were equal regardless of their origin. The sangha, created as a parallel society, did not
encourage private property and was based on the vanishing pre-class tribal societies of the
past.66 But, at the same time, the Buddha conceded the existence of both social and economic
disparities in the world outside the sangha. The Buddhist attitude to economic disparity,
and especially to poverty, is certainly more humane than that of the Brahmanical tradition.
The ideal society envisaged by the Buddha was one in which the king had the responsibil-
ity for abolishing destitution. The ideal king was expected to ensure full employment for
all sections of people in his kingdom. He was also advised to establish a perpetual grant to
provide food for the hungry and money for the needy.67 The Buddhist utopia clearly had no
place for poverty and exploitation, but, unfortunately, the ideal society was a distant concept
in the face of the existing reality.
The Buddha, therefore, had to come to grips with this harsh reality, which he attempted
to temper with moderation. He banned, for example, his lay followers from living on an
income derived from the slave trade.68 The Buddha’s awareness of the suffering inherent in
servitude is evident in his statement that servitude (dasyam), debt, imprisonment, illness and
a journey through the wilderness were the most painful miseries one could experience.69 He
exhorted his lay followers to treat their dasa-karmakaras with consideration—by assigning
them work according to their capacity, by supplying them with food and wages, by tending
them in sickness, by granting them leave occasionally, and by sharing delicacies with them.
He concluded that if the masters followed this code, they would be rewarded with loyal
workers who would rise before their masters, go to bed after them and serve them dutifully.70
The Buddha’s exhortation to his lay followers regarding the ideal treatment to be meted
out to the dasa-karmakaras also indicates the parameters within which he viewed the problem
of exploitation, which could at best be tempered but not eradicated. More significant, the
Buddha expressed his disapproval of dasa-karmakaras who were envious of their master’s
wealth.71 Similarly, even though entry to the sangha was technically open to all, a later
ruling closed its doors to debtors and runaway slaves. Further, slavery itself was rationalised
to some extent by suggesting that a person was born a slave because of the paapam (bad
deeds) committed in a previous birth.72 This is not very different from Narada’s belief that
a person is born as a dasa in the creditor’s house if he defaults on the repayment of a debt.73
A survey of the ideas of all the major thinkers of ancient India clearly reveals that not
one of them recommended abolition of slavery. Even a humanitarian king like Ashoka did
not use his power to legislate against slavery, though he expressed repentance for the suf-
ferings of the Kalinga war and the capture of thousands of Kalingans. Both Ashoka and the
Buddha did, however, exhort that the dasas and karmakaras be treated with moderation.
This may be interpreted as an instinctive application of management techniques. Their
exhortations appear to be directed more towards social harmony while ensuring maximum
output of labour from the dasa-karmakaras. The thinkers of ancient India accepted hierar-
chical relations and the appropriation of surplus. The only differences among them related
to the method of appropriation: the more humane suggested less cruel but more efficient
techniques of appropriation which would not generate hostility and conflict. Simultaneously,
the ‘heterodox’ philosophers offered relief from existing miseries in a future existence.
106 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

The Buddhists and the Jainas also offered immediate relief—in their sanghas, their parallel
societies—although even this relief was denied to the debtor and the dasa.
A more direct relationship between slavery and philosophical thought has been suggested
by D.P. Chattopadhyaya, who bases his argument on the life and teaching of Makkhali
Gosala.74 Makkhali Gosala, a contemporary of the Buddha and Mahavira, was one of six
‘heterodox’ philosophers of the sixth century bc. The central tenet of his Ajivika doctrine,
which is also apparent in the ideas of at least two of the five other thinkers of that period,
is belief in the principle of niyati (fate), and may be summed up in the slogan n’atthi puri-
sakare, meaning ‘human effort is ineffectual’.75 The dominant theme of this philosophy is
that of human ineffectuality in controlling or shaping one’s destiny. It is important to relate
these ideas to the significant episodes in Makkhali Gosala’s life.
According to a Jaina source, Makkhali Gosala was born in the cowshed of a wealthy
cattle owner while his parents were travelling and were unable to find accommodation
in the main village. He was named after his birthplace—gosala or cattle shed.76 A later
Buddhist source corroborates the account of his birth in a cowshed, but it also states that
Gosala was a slave. According to the Buddhist account, once Gosala the slave was car-
rying a pot of oil over a muddy patch, and he stumbled while walking and spilt the oil.
Fearing the wrath of the master who was accompanying him, he attempted to flee but was
caught by the master who grabbed the edge of his robe. Leaving his robe behind, Gosala
escaped in a state of nudity and became a naked mendicant.77 Thus Gosala was a runaway
slave. An even more significant, though sketchy, reference to Makkhali Gosala is made
in the Mahabharata. Manki (who is identified with Makkhali Gosala) purchases a couple
of young bulls with the last of his resources after a series of failures in all his ventures.
One day the bulls break loose and are accidentally killed. Manki thereupon utters a long
chant on the power of destiny, and the advisability of desirelessness and inactivity. Basham
associates the story with the leader of the Ajivika sect, and links his chant with the typical
cry of the peasant impoverished by the failure of his crops or herds.78 The common feature
in all these stories is the uncertainty of material conditions and the feeling of inadequacy
in being able to cope with them.
Additional information on Makkhali Gosala suggests that he spent some years as an asso-
ciate of Mahavira but subsequently split with him, and that he died after a bout of illness.79
This may be interpreted as a breakdown following a sense of complete disillusionment.
Significantly, Purana Kassapa, whose teachings are similar to those of Makkhali Gosala
and who is another contemporary of the Buddha, is also described as a runaway slave. His
teaching career ended in humiliation, whereupon he committed suicide.80 Purana Kassapa’s
teachings make no distinction between good and evil, or between murderers, plunderers and
torturers, and others who give alms and perform ‘meritorious’ actions.81 Taken together, the
views of Purana Kassapa and Makkhali Gosala are characterised by a deep sense of futility,
moral collapse and the powerlessness of human effort. These were probably an outcome
of their own experiences and their perceptions of the world around them. The views are
similar to the images used by bonded labourers of Bihar, who may be far removed in time
but not in sentiment when they describe their situation as one in which they are surrounded
by a limitless expanse of water with no sight of land anywhere.82 The same is echoed in the
song of the hali,83 the bonded labourer of Gujarat, even today:
 Chapter 9  Of Dasas and Karmakaras 107

I go in darkness
I return in darkness
My whole life is full of darkness
There is no ray of light.

NOTES
1. Sharma, ‘Conflict, Distribution and Differentiation’, p. 3.
2.  Chandogya Upanishad, XXIV.2.
3.  Aitareya Brahmana, VIII.22.
4. Rgveda, VIII.56.3.
5. Ibid., X.86.5.
6. Chandogya Upanishad, XXIV.2
7. Rgveda, X.62, 10; Sharma, ‘Conflict, Distribution and Differentiation’, pp. 10–11.
8. Sharma, ‘Conflict, Distribution and Differentiation’, p. 3.
9. Ibid.
10. Aitareya Brahmana,VIII.22; Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, translated by Madhavanand, VI.2.7; Mahabharata,
II.33.52; Rgveda, 1.158.5, 6.
11. Ibid.; Chanana, Slavery in Ancient India, p. 21.
12. Aitareya Brahmana, VIII.22.
13. Sutta Nipata, translated by Fausboll, p. 49.
14. Atharvaveda, XII.4.9.
15. Jataka, edited by Fausboll, I, p. 163.
16. Vinaya Pitaka,Vol. III, p. 135.
17. Dhammapada Atthakatha, Vol. I, p. 400; Chanana, Slavery in Ancient India, p. 160, note 108.
18. Jataka, edited by Fausboll, Vol. VI, p. 523.
19. Dhammapada Atthakatha, III, p. 157.
20. Ibid., p. 321.
21. Majjhima Nikaya, edited by Kashyap, Vol. I, p. 167.
22. Jataka, edited by Fausboll, p. 318.
23. Ibid., p. 290.
24. Ibid., p. 211.
25. Burlingame, Buddhist Legends, Vol. 29, Part II, p. 2.
26. Atharvaveda, VII.90.1.
27. Chanana, Slavery in Ancient India, p. 48.
28. Ibid.
29. Arthashastra, 3.13.11.
30. Jataka, edited by Fausboll, III, p. 309.
31. Dhammapada Atthakatha, III, p. 166; Jataka, edited by Fausboll, V, p. 278; Jataka, edited by Fausboll, V, p. 259.
32. Arthashastra, 2.23.2.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 2.27.8.
35. Ibid., 2.25.15.
36. Ibid., 1.12.13.
37. Jataka, edited by Fausboll, III, p. 167.
38. Ibid., I, p. 299.
39. Ibid., I, p. 402.
40. Malalasekhara, Dictionary of Pali Proper Names, Vol. II, p. 706.
108 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

41. Burlingame, Buddhist Legends, Vol. 30, Part III, p. 194.

42. Arthashastra, 3.13.9.
43. Ibid., 3.13.11.
44. Ibid., 3.13.12.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., 4.12.26.
47. Ibid., 3.13.23.
48. Ibid., 3.13.20.
49. Jan Yun Hua, ‘Hui Chao’s Record on Kashmir’, pp. 119–20.
50. Kamasutra, V.5.5.
51. Ibid.
52. Vishnu, VI.11–15; Narada, 1.106–07.
53. Ibid.
54. Dialogues of the Buddha, translated by Davids, Vol. I, p. 163.
55. Majjhima Nikaya, p. 163.
56. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 5.
57. Samyutta Nikaya, p. 91.
58. Majjhima Nikaya, Middle Length Sayings, Vol. II, p. 9.
59. Mahabharata, XII, 262.38.
60. Patil, Dasa-Sudra Slavery, p. 2.
61. Vinaya Pitaka, Vol. I, p. 241.
62. Ling, The Buddha, p. 142.
63. Ambedkar, Buddha and His Dhamma; Dialogues of the Buddha, Vol. I, pp. 96, 103.
64. Basham, History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas, p. 285.
65. Chattopadhyaya, Lokayata, pp. 500–02.
66. Ibid., p. 503.
67. Digha Nikaya, edited by Kashyap, Vol. II, pp. 56–57; Dialogues of the Buddha, Vol. I, pp. 115–16.
68. Anguttara Nikaya, edited by Morris and Hardy, Vol. II, p. 208.
69. Dialogues of the Buddha, Vol. I, p. 83.
70. Digha Nikaya, edited by Kashyap, Vol. II, p. 182.
71. Anguttara Nikaya, Book of Gradual Sayings, Vol. V, p. 27.
72. Jataka, edited by Fausboll, Vol. VI, p. 235.
73. Dharmakosa, Vol. I, Part 2, p. 695; Sharma, ‘Usury in Medieval India’, p. 74.
74. Chattopadhyaya, Lokayata, pp. 514–24.
75. Basham, History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas, p. 9.
76. Bhagvati Sutra, V; Basham, History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas, p. 35.
77. Basham, History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas, p. 37.
78. Ibid., p. 9.
79. Ibid., pp. 58–62.
80. Chattopadhyaya, Lokayata, pp. 513–14.
81. Dialogues of the Buddha, Vol. I, p. 70.
82. Personal communication from Dr A. Chakravarti based on fieldwork in Bihar.
83. Song of hali, bonded labourer of Gujarat, Point of View, Vol. VI, No. 52 (1978), p. 32.
 Chapter 9  Of Dasas and Karmakaras 109

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 Chapter 10 Women and Work
in Kautilīya’s
Arthaśāstra

UPASANA DHANKHAR

INTRODUCTION
Society and state for the purposes of establishing and propagating themselves may assign
different status and roles to women. Though the human existence has variations but a few
patterns are idealized, propagated and suggested through different mechanisms to reproduce
the socio-economic and political order. Though the socio-economic and political structures
generally replicate each other, yet the requirements of each one can give rise to variations
that may affect each other. For example, a study of the dharmasastric literature shows that
a brahmanic-patriarchal society confines women to the households and defines them with
reference to men. On the other hand, the Arthaśāstra tradition concerned primarily with
governance and economics, looks upon women as an economic resource and mentions about
women engaged in various kind of economic activities as well as state services.
The Arthaśāstra claims to be a codification of the ‘many treatises on the science of poli-
tics as have been composed by ancient teachers for the acquisition and protection of earth’
(KA, I.1.10. Evidently, the treatise is concerned with gaining and maintaining the territorial
authority. However, maintenance of this authority is referred to in terms of pālana, that is,
sustenance and management. For the said purposes, the Arthaśāstra gives not only a detailed
administrative structure but also elaborate instructions for formulation of various policies
and utilization of various resources. Everyone and everything that falls within the domain
of the ruler is looked upon as a resource for the cause of the state.
Women in this text are no different from other animate or inanimate resources that can
be utilized for the purposes of the state. They are yet another asset that can help in mainte-
nance of the state authority and ensuring its smooth functioning. They have both productive
and reproductive potential which can be subordinated to the interests of the state. Since the
political power is the overriding motive, the Arthaśāstra often overlooks the questions of
morality in the face of material interests. ‘Material wellbeing alone is supreme,’ says Kauṭilya
(KA I.7.6). Further, it insists that ‘spiritual good and sensual pleasures depend on material
well-being’ (KA I.7.7). Thus, it is important to remember that the roles assigned to women

120
 Chapter 10  Women and Work in Kautilīya’s Arthaśāstra 121

in this text were those which the state wanted them to play for its very own needs. How far
these roles were taken up, under what conditions and with how much willingness are matters
of conjecture. Following study is an attempt to draw some tenable inferences in this regard.
Since the provisions of the Arthaśāstra are largely concerned with the structure and func-
tions of the state, it is perhaps important to have a look at the nature of state this text seeks
to establish. It is important to note that the state besides being a power structure is also a
facilitator of the activities. Its authority can help promote or demote various possible activi-
ties. Evidently, just the way a society determines the features of the polity, the influence of
the state can have determining impact on various social actors and institutions.

ARTHAŚĀSTRA AS THE SOURCE

Before we make a survey of the women as mentioned in the Arthaśāstra, it is advisable to
mark a few overriding concerns of the text that can shed light on the nature of state and society
envisaged in the text, for these concerns have a bearing upon the depiction of women as well.
Firstly, as stated earlier the motive of the Arthaśāstra is to channelize all resources towards
the ends of the state. Maximum utilization of the resources for the said purpose, being the
primary objective of the text, necessitates the various kinds of penalties, guarantees and
promises which can help in attaining this objective. Unmistakably, the roles and functions
mentioned for women in the text were those that were regulated in the interest of the state,
and in order to make these so-called jobs for women more acceptable, the state proclaims
that it would ensure that these roles were given sanction as well as a sense of security. Thus,
the mentioned provisions cannot be taken at face value. The gap between the theory and the
practice needs to be carefully examined by corroboration of provisions of the text with other
sources. The state here is a powerful entity and its influence seems to reach the individual
members of the family as well.
Secondly, it is important to remember that the text is meant for the knowledge of a ­limited
few. The princes, their advisors and a few other people of importance were possibly the people
who had access to this knowledge apart from the teachers/political scientists. The motive
of all these people was to safeguard the state and their own interests therein. The functions
they envisaged for women were meant to fulfil the interests of the ruling class; therefore, the
protective provisions or privileges (if any) given to women need to be interpreted in the light
of these concerns. The roles assigned to them must have been extremely well deliberated in
this long tradition and there is a need to understand the different aspects with due caution.
All the same the male domination is conspicuous, so much so that ‘unruly’ women were
punished by the state and had to pay fines, the money for which was earned by ­working for
the state enterprises.
Thirdly, though the text deals largely with political and economic matters, it is by no means
silent on the domestic life and social order. The negotiation between polity and society, for
the purposes of maintenance of politico-economic order and protection of vested interests,
needs to be carefully scrutinized. How different layers of social structure were sought to
be adjusted for the benefit of the privileged classes in particular and men in general is a
122 UPASANA DHANKHAR

testimony to the attempts at curtailment of liberties of women as well as an acknowledge-

ment of the voices of dissent.
It is important to note that both the dharmasastras and the Arthaśāstra primarily voice the
concerns and opinions of the men in power and authority. This power and authority might
have been derived from political, economic, social or ritual status. There is little hope of
tracing the ideas and opinions of women in these texts. Thus, wherever possible we need to
discover their voices through astute observation of commissioning of some activities and
omission of the others.
Assessing the economic roles of women in the Arthaśāstra requires a thorough study of
the various roles in which women are mentioned in the text, as well as the roles and matters
on which the text is silent. Further, individual mentions need to be grouped and regrouped
to understand the economic role and position of women in general. Enlisting the references
to various activities, they are mentioned in provisions relating to them is only half the work
done, for we need to understand the deliberations behind all that has been allowed to find
space in the provisions of this text.
Women are by no means a homogeneous class/category. The Arthaśāstra gives us
information on women who were engaged in economic activities of various kinds. They
formed a part of both the skilled and the unskilled workforce. They were into profes-
sional as well as non-professional employment. Some of their vocations were related
to their gender, while the others were not. There were female state employees as well
as independently working women. Similarly, some of them were engaged in activities
which though not dependent on their biological constitution are nonetheless categorized
as women’s domain, for example, domestic chores. Some of them were actual state
employees, while some others were in contractual relations with the state. This group-
ing and regrouping of activities mentioned shall help us to understand their place in the
economic sphere as a whole.

REPRESENTATIONS OF WOMEN AND WORK

IN THE ARTHAŚĀSTRA
We can perhaps begin by mentioning a few roles that women performed and thereafter start
putting them into various categories to understand the implications. However, it is important
to remember beforehand that even within these categories there were variations, many of
which are mentioned within the text under perusal. Various terms mentioned for women
in the Arthaśāstra give us the idea of their possible economic roles and status; some of the
important mentions are silpavati, aniskasini, dasi, vidhava, kanyaka, nyangah, prositas,
vrddha-rajadasibhi, devadasi, matrka, rupajiva, ardhasitikas, ganika, pratiganika, pums-
cali, bandhaki, vesya, svairini, pravarjita, dandapratikarini, dhatri, paricarika, upacarika,
etc. Some of the women are not mentioned in direct terms and are rather stated as wives of
men engaged in particular vocations, for example, wives of caranas, talavacaras, matsya,
lubdhakas, gopalakas, prasrsta, natas, nartakas, gayana-vadaka, vakjivana, kustlavas,
plavaka, saubhikta, etc.
 Chapter 10  Women and Work in Kautilīya’s Arthaśāstra 123

A survey of the aspects like what categories of women were engaged in different kind
of economic activities can be helpful in understanding their economic status. Interestingly,
we find that it is the women with little or no hopes of a regular married or domestic life that
are engaged in various kinds of state employments and activities, though this is not to sug-
gest that there were no working householders. Herein, we can take a look at three important
state employments, namely courtesans, spies and women employed in weaving industry.
Courtesans/Ganikas by very nature of their profession cannot be expected to be in an
idealised marital or family relationship as has been canonized by the brahmanical codes. The
provisions concerned with their sons, daughters and mothers show that their family system
was not the one that was prevalent in the society at large (KA II.27.2, 29). Further, they
were deployed as spies as well. The idealized chaste wife participating in ritual activities
and looking after the household is so far away from this category that the two roles cannot
even be expected to converge.
Women spies were of varied kinds and it is tough to infer anything with respect to their
personal life. Some of them might have had to live in households of internal or external
enemies for years on end, keeping their real identities under cover. Some of them were
expected to enter into carnal relationships with strangers, enemies or suspects for the pur-
poses of digging out information. The morality prescribed by the brahmanical codes did
not work for them. Some of the spies were expected to work as murderers as well. How the
professional life of these women affected their personal life is tough to judge, but we sure
can expect something different from the ordinary.
Looking at the women employed in the weaving industry we find that there were dif-
ferent kinds of employment which this industry offered. Interestingly, different categories
of destitute women seem to have benefited from employment in this sector. The examples
mentioned in the text include ‘crippled women and maidens, women who have left their
home, women who are paying their fine through personal labor, through mothers of cour-
tesans, through old female slaves of the king and through female slaves of temples whose
service of the gods has ceased’ (KA II.23.2, 11).
These destitute women were given extraordinary protection from the possible prying eyes
of men. Perhaps these were the women whose honourable existence was a separate impera-
tive for the state irrespective of their economic conditions. These could have been women of
the higher varna, and also women whose existence was required for the smooth functioning
of the state like the women who were employed as palace servants, spies, female attendants
and the guards. The political and social hierarchies were interlinked and they re-enforced
each other. It is perhaps for this reason that we find special employment provisions for these
women. The list does not seem to contain any category that could be into family life as these
are mostly socially or economically marginalized groups, and even here the very fact they
had to earn a living for themselves in old age hints at their economic plight. Old female
servants and young maidens would not have to earn a living in the patriarchal set up unless
they were left with no other option. The very fact that these women were left to fend for
themselves in a patriarchal society, wherein women are generally economically dependent
on men in family, shows that their family life was either long over or was not possible at all.
Other important sectors of state employment for women were the roles of female atten-
dants, palace servants and ‘female guards bearing bows’ (KA I.21.1). Amongst these the
124 UPASANA DHANKHAR

first two can be expected to lead a family life, but no certain statements can be made as
regards female guards. This mention of female guards is perhaps the only one that we find
with regard to early Indian history. Jaiswal suggests that these women perhaps came from
Bhila or Kirata tribe.1 What were the possible reasons for these women to join in the service
of the king and what impact it had on their domestic and social life need to be explored in
greater detail.
Courtesans (Ganikas) figure as an important category of state employees. The provisions
relating to their training in skills (KA II.27.28–30), management of their establishment,
safeguards provided to them (KA II.27.11–18) and the duties entrusted to them show that
they were not merely prostitutes to satisfy carnal desires of men (KA II.27). We find that
they were highly paid, particularly if we notice that the perks their work got them were
also considerably high (KA II.27.1, 28). Their beauty and youth was a valued asset which
was both an object of display and valuable commodity. This is evident from the fact that
most beautiful and ornamented courtesans were to get maximum turns for attendance with
various status symbols such as parasol, water jug and fan (KA II.27.4). Their ransom price
was also very high (KA II.27.6). Furthermore, the state earned revenue through them as it
is stipulated that ‘actors and prostitutes shall pay half their wage’ (KA 5.2.23).
However, it may be noted that despite all the protective provisions, courtesans had little
say in choosing their clients. It is expressly laid down that ‘a courtesan, not approaching
a man at the command of the king, shall receive one thousand strokes with the whip, or a
fine of five thousand panas’ (KA II.27.19). They were, therefore, ‘employees’ bound by
the orders rather than free enterprisers.
A perusal of the employment provided by the state can help us understand two very
important aspects of women and work. Firstly, this exercise helps us to locate the ways in
which state made use of the productive potential of women. Secondly, it helps in under-
standing the negotiation between the state and the society vis-à-vis regulating the roles of
women in a patriarchal society.
According to Kautilīya,

[T]hose women who do not stir out, those living separately, widows, crippled women or maidens,
who wish to earn their living, should be given work by sending his own female slaves to them
with (a view to) support (them). Or, if they come themselves to the yarn-house he should cause an
interchange of goods and wages to be made early at dawn. The lamp (should be there) only for the
inspection of the yarn. For looking at the face of the woman or conversing with her on another matter,
the lowest fine for violence (shall be imposed), for delay in the payment of wages, the middle fine,
also for payment of wages for work not done. (KA II.23.11–14)

We need to identify all these women.

‘Those who did not stir out’ of their home must have been those who were bound to their
homes and hearth. The cue to their identity lies in the social system which can be gathered
from the dharmaśāstras and relevant provisions of the Arthaśāstra. Jaiswal’s suggestion

1
Suvira Jaiswal, ‘Female Images in the Arthaśāstra of Kautilīya’, Social Scientist 29, no. 3/4 (March–April 2001):
55–56.
 Chapter 10  Women and Work in Kautilīya’s Arthaśāstra 125

that these women (aniskasini) belonged to upper castes2 is fairly tenable in the light of the
various textual sources as well commonly held view that once a women steps into her marital
home, she does not step out but for cremation. However, the term caste needs to be used with
qualification. Also, possibly women married in pratiloma marriages can be enlisted here.
‘Those living separately’ (prositas) is an interesting category to look at especially
because it has direct nexus with the possibilities that women had for moving out of marital
homes and matrimonial alliances. Marriage in the Arthaśāstra echoes the dharamsastric
views and mentions the same eight form of marriages as described in the dharmaśāstras
(KA III.2.2–11). It is interesting to note that the Arthaśāstra states that ‘maintenance and
ornaments constitute woman’s property’ (KA.III.2.14). The inclusion of maintenance in
the women’s property is an important aspect. In a way it accords economic value to their
role and gives them economic security. This is further evidenced by the fact that Kauṭilya
fixes the upper limit to this value when he stipulates that ‘maintenance is an endowment
of a maximum of two thousand (panas); as to ornaments, there is no limit’ (KA.III.2.15).
The inclusion of maintenance provisions for women in monetary terms is an express
acknowledgement of their contribution to the household as well as the state economy.
However, justifiability of the quantum of the amount can be explored further as and when
historical enquiries can be made. The crucial question is whether this maintenance was
paid (or was meant to be paid) to the wife living within the marital home or to wife who
had separated and shifted out? According to the Arthaśāstra, women’s property could be
used for maintenance of sons and daughters-in-law (KA.III.2.16). Why would a women
living in a marital home need to maintain such dependents? Or were there women who
were the breadwinners? If yes, did these women belong to particular social categories?
It is difficult to find the complete answers to these questions, but we do find a cue in the
provisions mentioned in the text itself. It is stated,

[I]f it (woman’s property) has been used for three years, the (wife) shall not question, in the case
of a pious marriages. If used in the Gandharava and Asura marriages, the (husband) shall be made
to return both with interest, if used in the Raksasa and Paisaca marriages, he shall pay (the penalty
for) theft (KA.III.2.17–18)].

Thus, we see that use of a woman’s property is linked with the kind of matrimonial relation-
ship she entered into, which in turn is related to her varna status.
The relative importance assigned to the father and mother in case of approval for different
forms of marriages needs to be mentioned here. Mothers have a voice in the unapproved
form of marriages (KA III.2.11–12). Since these marriages could be practiced only by the
lower varnas, it can be said that women of lower varnas could have been living separately
and bringing up their families. This can be substantiated by the fact that barring ‘pious mar-
riages’ (KA III.2.18), Kauṭilya permits divorce by mutual consent to disaffected husband
and wife (KA III.3.16).
Jaiswal’s suggestion that ‘prositas were apparently not divorced but deserted or disaf-
fected wives of upper caste men living on their own’ seems to overlook the above-mentioned
independent women who might have worked and raised not only their little children but

2
Ibid., 51.
126 UPASANA DHANKHAR

also married sons and their spouses. Jaiswal’s suggestion as regards the deserted or disaf-
fected wives is also corroded by the fact that such wives were not only to get maintenance
but also compensation. According to the Arthaśāstra the husband was required to wait for
eight years if the wife did not bear children or did not bear a son or was barren, for 10 if she
gave birth to dead progeny, for 12 years if only daughters were born to her (KA III.2.38).
Thereafter, he could marry a second wife with the object of getting a son (KA III.2.39). In
case of transgression of these rules, the husband was to hand over the dowry, the woman’s
property and half that as compensation for supersession, and pay a fine of 24 panas maximum
(KA III.2.40). With these many protective provisions for disaffected and deserted wives, it
is difficult to agree that they were left destitute and had to live on their own. The sanction
against renunciation and leaving family without making necessary economic provisions for
wife (KA II.1.29–31) also suggests that maintenance of wife was a responsibility to be duly
carried out even in case of desertion.
Further, it should be noticed that besides the provision for divorce, Kauṭilya provided
that ‘a husband, who has become degraded or gone to a foreign land or has committed an
offence against the king or is dangerous to her life or has become an outcast or even an
impotent one may be abandoned’ (KA III.2.48). The women married to such men can also
be categorized as prositas.
Besides aniskasini and prositas, widows formed the next important category employed
or supported by the weaving industry. A study of rich widows in this context can shed more
light on the issues of working women. The rules regarding the remarriage of widows and
the devolution of their women’s property in such circumstances shed light on the nexus
between control of productive and reproductive capabilities of the women.
According to the Arthaśāstra, ‘when the husband is dead, the (widow), if desirous of lead-
ing a life of piety, shall forthwith receive the endowment and ornaments and the remainder
of the dowry’ (KA III.2.19). But ‘if, after receiving (these), she marries again, she shall be
made to return both with interest’ (KA III.2.20). Thus, we see that largely, if a widow was
to remarry, she could do so only if she was ready to part with her property/assets and also to
pay interest as penalty. Given the bias against women in general and widows in particular,
the matrimonial alliance at the risk of economic security was hardly an option. However,
under such conditions reproductive resources of a woman would have been wasted. The
provisions that Kauṭilya provides to resolve this predicament is yet another clear example of
the negotiated position between the state and the society. Accordingly, if the widow wished
to have a family, she was to receive at the time of her remarriage ‘what was given to her by
her father-in-law and her (late) husband’ (KA III.2.21). However, if she remarried against
the wishes of her father in law, she was required to forfeit what was given to her by her
father-in-law and her (late) husband (KA III.2.23).
In this way, the productive and reproductive resources of the widows were subordinated
to a patriarchal state and society and she was disabled from keeping both the choices with
her. ‘The Arthaśāstra state is of course concerned to control family and sexual relations
but it does so in the interest of the state for maximizing population and production.’3 The

3
Gail Omvedt, ‘God as Political Philosopher: Buddhism’s Challenge to Brahmanism’, Economic and Political Weekly
36, no. 21 (May 26–June 1, 2001): 88.
 Chapter 10  Women and Work in Kautilīya’s Arthaśāstra 127

importance that these provisions carried can be gathered from the fact that these are repeated
and reasserted. For example, it is stated that ‘a (widow remarrying) shall forfeit what was
given by her (late) husband’ (KA III.2.26). Similarly, ‘if a widow who had sons were to
marry again, she was required to forfeit her woman’s property’ (KA III.2.29). The comforts
of a material life could only be kept if she forfeited her right to find companionship.
Other women employed in the weaving industry were crippled women, maidens, women
who are paying their fine through personal labour, mothers of courtesans, old female slaves
of the king and female slaves of temples whose service of the gods has ceased (KA II.23.2).
Even these women had little scope of being accepted in the larger social milieu that was
biased against the women in general. A huge bias is evident against the crippled people in
the ancient texts, for example, the characters like Manthara in the Rāmayana and Shakuni
in the Mahābhārata are presented in bad light. In the dharamśāstra literature, we come
across graphic descriptions of women who were eligible brides, and with all the demands
regarding the physical beauty and health, crippled women had little scope of getting mar-
ried in such a social order.
Mothers of courtesans were generally entrusted with the duty of looking after their
establishments and their household cannot be expected to have supported usual patriar-
chal family set up. The mention of the ‘female slaves of the temple/devadasis’ has rightly
been described as ‘euphemism for temple prostitution’4 by Jaiswal. The way this institu-
tion developed and spread in later times makes it obvious that devadasis were denied a
marital life.
‘Women who are paying their fine through personal labor’ present an interesting category.
Firstly, it shows that these women were not convicted for grave offences, for in that case
they would have been awarded more than monetary punishment. Women committing grave
offences might have been kept in jail for the Arthaśāstra mentions separate apartments for
women in prison houses (KA II.5.5). Secondly, it shows that these women perhaps had
little other economic resources and were obliged to work for state in case they committed
some offence.
Interestingly, the offences for which women were required to pay fine under the provi-
sions of the Arthaśāstra were largely those activities wherein they chose to move out of the
restrictions imposed on their movements outside home. For example, it was provided that
‘on occasion of her enjoying herself outside the home out of jealously, the penalty shall be
laid down’ (KA III.3.11). Similarly, for a woman who left the house of her husband, the fine
was six panas, except in case of ill-treatment (KA III.4.1). In case a wife left the house of
her husband and went to another village she was to pay a fine of 12 panas (KA III.4.16). In
case she went in the company of a man with whom sexual-intercourse was permissible, the
fine was 24 panas and the loss of all rights, except the giving of maintenance and approach-
ing during the period (KA III.4.17). Thus, we see that state not only controlled the women
as the chief patriarch but also regulated the productive energies of the women who tried to
move out of the authority of the patriarchal set up.

4
Jaiswal, ‘Female Images in the Arthaśāstra’, 55.
128 UPASANA DHANKHAR

It is important to note that the Arthaśāstra explicitly states that these women were to be
given work with a view to support them (KA II.23.11). Thus, only needy women could find
employment in such work. In order to make sure that these women did not fell prey to any
men, strict rules were provided as regards the dealings with them. The state officials were
not only to mind their behaviour with these ladies, but also were warned by various penal
provisions of various kinds that were supposed to guard the economic and social interest of
these women. However, it is important to note that while state was required to take care of
these women, it was equally strict with these women and severe punishment were spelled out
for misappropriation, stealing or breach of contract by these women workers (KA II.23.15).
This limited sate protection was available to ‘needy’ women but only when all norms of
patriarchal set up stringently followed.
Women spies were an important tool available for guarding and furthering the interests
of the state. They could be deployed for keeping a watch over both internal and external
enemies, as well as for the purposes of checking the integrity of the ministers, etc. The
Arthaśāstra mentions a number of conspiracies that could be hatched with female spies being
instrumental in achieving the goal. They were instrumental in collection of information and
were integral part of communication networks of spies. It is stipulated that amongst others
‘women should by own end ascertain the indoor activity’ and ‘nuns should communicate
that information to the spy establishments’ (KA I.12.9). Only ‘in case of prohibition of entry
into the house for nuns, secret agents appearing at the door one after another or appear-
ing as the mother or father of servants in the house, or posing as female artists, singers or
female slaves’ were entrusted with the task of gathering information that was spied out and
conveyed outside by means of songs, recitations, writings concealed in musical instruments
or signs (KA I.12.13).
Women worked both as stationed agents as well as roving spies (KA I.10.4, 5, 7). A woman
could be a wandering nun who has won the confidence of the ministers (KA I.10.7), the
begging nun (KA I.11.1), a wandering nun seeking a secure livelihood (KA I.12.4–5), etc.
Prostitutes could also be employed as spies and the Arthaśāstra envisages their deployment
for the purposes of foreign policy. For example, it is provided that ‘keepers of prostitutes
should make the enemy’s army chiefs infatuated with women possessed of great beauty
and youth. When many or two of the chiefs feel passion for one woman, assassins should
create quarrels among them’ (KA XII.2.11–12).
At times the stratagems required male and female spies to work in sync, for example,
an agent appearing as an astrologer was required to declare to a high officer, whose confi-
dence had been gradually won, that he is possessed of the marks of a king. In turn, a female
mendicant was to declare to his wife that she would be the wife of a king or the mother of
a king (KA XII.2.18–19). Female spies were employed for the purposes like ascertainment
of the integrity or the absence of integrity of ministers by means of secret test as mentioned
in Book I Chapter 10 Section 6, or for drawing out the enemy by means of stratagems as
mentioned in Book XI, XII and XIII.
Female spies were not only to gather information and relay it to proper channel, but also
to carry out assassinations. This must have required proper training for them. However, a
closer look at the text shows that there were different classes of female spies engaged for
different purposes. Amongst others ‘women skilled in arts were to be employed as spies
 Chapter 10  Women and Work in Kautilīya’s Arthaśāstra 129

living inside their houses’ (KA I.12.21). Others were required to work as assassins (KA
V.1.19, XII.5.48). Some were to the play the roles of young and beautiful widows to tempt
the lust of greedy enemy (KA XIII.2.42).
Some were to win confidence of the target and then to test their integrity and character.
For example, the Arthaśāstra provides that a wandering nun, who had won the confidence
of the ministers and was treated with honour in the palace, was to secretly suggest to each
minister individually that the chief queen being in love with him has made arrangements for
a meeting and there were possibilities of gaining wealth through such a liaison. This was the
test of lust (KA I.10.7). Apart from professional spies, prostitutes and other women could
be employed for the purposes of ploy. For example, a woman of bad character, appearing
as the queen, was to be caught in the quarters of the enemy at night and so on (KA V.1.28).
Similarly, courtesans and other women appearing as wives find mention as an important
part of the espionage system (KA.VII.17.38).
Prostitutes and women of acrobats, actors, dancers or showmen employed as agents could
be used for various conspiracies. These women were used to infatuate chiefs of the ruling
council. Since it is opined that these could be ‘infatuated with women possessed of great
beauty and youth’ (KA XI.1.34). ‘When passion was roused in them, they were to start
quarrels by creating belief about their love in one and by going to another, or by staging a
forcible abduction by the other’ (KA XI.1.35). During these quarrels, the assassins were
to do their work (KA XI.1.35). Similar other conspiracies are mentioned in the text of the
Arthaśāstra in chapters dealing with measures of foreign policy.
Besides, the female spies in the service of state (whether professionally employed or hired
for particular projects), other women were also expected to work as informers. For example,
traders of spirituous liquors were to employ female slaves of beautiful appearance to find out
the intentions of strangers and natives (KA II.25.15). Similarly, prostitutes were directed to
give lodging only to one thoroughly known to them and they were required to report about
the men who spent lavishly and those who did rash deeds (KA II.36.8–9).
While courtesans, prostitutes, ‘women of bad character’, ‘women of actors, acrobats,
etc.’, Aditikausika women, dancers, and songstresses (KA XI.1.42) are expressly mentioned
as a part of the espionage system, it is difficult to judge whether all spies came from these
categories. Suvira Jaiswal’s suggests that women from the lower sections of society could
be easily pressed into these services for state5 and possibly these women along with female
slaves formed the largest part of the espionage system, but we cannot discount the possibil-
ity of women from higher varnas being actively engaged in the intelligence services. Also,
it remains to be established that any of these was ‘pressed’ to take up the role, since it is
pretty much possible for any of them to be interested in extra income. Also, the state would
have been anxious to have reliable spies.
While enlisting the roving spies the Arthaśāstra mentions ‘a wandering nun, seeking a
secure livelihood, poor, widowed, bold, Brahmin (by caste) and treated with honor in the
palace’ (KA I.12.4), and further states that ‘by her office are explained similar offices for
the shaven nuns of heretical sects’ (KA I.12.4–5). These provisions might refer to the spies

5
Ibid., 52.
130 UPASANA DHANKHAR

playing these roles, but there is nothing that debars the possibility of Brahmin women or
the Buddhist or Jaina nuns being employed in the intelligence department.
Female slaves formed an important part of the workforce both in the royal establish-
ment and in the common households. In the royal establishment, ‘female slaves of proved
integrity’ were to do the work of bath-attendants, shampooers, bed-preparers, laundresses
and garland-makers; otherwise, they were required to supervise the artists doing these jobs
(KA I.21.13). Further they were to offer garments, flowers and other cosmetics after first
putting them on their own eyes, bosoms and arms (KA XXI.14–15). Thus, they were not
only personal attendants but also a security check.
The Arthaśāstra has many important provisions on law-concerning slaves and labourers
in Book III Chapter 13 Section 65. Interestingly, while many protective and emancipating
provisions were spelled out for the female slaves in the common households, there was
nothing that guarded the interests of the slaves in royal service. It is provided that,

[M]aking a women (pledged) give bath to a naked person, giving corporal punishment to them and
dishonoring them shall result in the loss of the capital, and shall result in freedom for a nurse, a
female attendant, a woman tenant tilling for half the produce and a maid.

But it is difficult to imagine a king being subjected to any of these provisions.

Safeguards provided to female slaves are important for understanding the general condi-
tions of women. These women represent the lowest rung in terms of economic and social
status. The Arthaśāstra contains various provisions which make it clear that female slaves
might have been sexually exploited. This practice was however sought to be contained and
various protective and emancipating provisions were spelled out. For one approaching a
pledged unwilling nurse, the punishment was the lowest fine for violence if she was under
his control, and the middle if she was under the control of another (KA III.13.11). If one,
himself or through another, defiled a maiden who was pledged, he was liable to lose the
capital, and was required to pay her dowry in addition to a fine double the amount of dowry
(KA III.13.12). In case the master was to beget a child on his own female slave, both the
mother and the child were to gain independent status (KA III.13.23). If the mother was
attached to the house and looked after the affairs of the family, her siblings were also given
freedom (KA III.13.24). The Arthaśāstra required the master to provide nourishment for
the foetus of an expecting female slave (KA III.13.20). This is perhaps the earliest reference
to maternity care provisions for a female employee.
Amongst the employments mentioned for women in the non-state sector, we find little
mention of professionals. Mention can be made of midwives, prostitutes, women of people
who lived on secret means of earning, ‘women who tilled for half the produce’ and ‘female
slaves of temple’ and other female slaves. Unfortunately, apart from prostitutes and women
of certain specified occupational groups, these women are mentioned only once in the text.
This leaves us with a sketchy picture, which can be supplemented with information about
the economy and society in general.
An important indicator of economic status of women is the juristic personality accorded to
them. Juristic personality refers to the capacity of suing and being sued. In other words, it can
be defined as the liability a person incurs that can be enforced through judicial mechanisms,
 Chapter 10  Women and Work in Kautilīya’s Arthaśāstra 131

or simply the acts and omissions for which a person can be held liable. A liability is always
coupled with a capacity. Thus, if a woman is held responsible for economic transactions, it
is evident that she has a right or capacity to indulge in these transactions.
The Arthaśāstra provides that transactions concluded by a woman dependent on her hus-
band or son were not to succeed, excepting the women to whom authority for transaction is
given (KA III.1.12). This provision makes it clear that dependent women by themselves had
no capacity to enter into a contract of any kind. We find similar references in the brahmanical
codes as well. However, they could be vested with this capacity by getting authorization of
the men in family. The women got this capacity not only by express permission but also by
omissions of their husbands for Kauṭilya provides stipulates that the husband was liable for
the debt incurred by the wife if he went abroad without providing for her (KA III.11.24).
Thus, possibly women, unless dependent economically on male relatives, could indulge
in economic transactions and seem to have enjoyed capacity to contract on their own as
well as on behalf of men when authorized to do so. It is interesting to note that dependent
women at least have been recognized as bearing the capacity even if it is to be exercised
only on authorization.
It seems that, women in the family had a subordinate economic status and their dependence
on men was related to the lack of social independence. As we have noticed earlier, most
of the working women seem to be those who were either destitute or were not into regular
matrimonial or family system. Thus, we can hardly be surprised that transactions concluded
by the women who did not stir out of their homes were held enforceable (KA III.1.7). Since
these women are fending for themselves it can be inferred that they are not dependent on
men. Similarly, we find an exception stating that ‘the wife shall not be held liable for the
debt incurred by her husband, if she has not assented to it, except in the case of cowherds
and farmers tilling for half the produce’ (KA III.11.23). Perhaps equal participation in work
towards earning livelihood in these categories accorded these women the capacity as well as
the liability of economic nature. Women of these occupational/social groups were engaged
in economically productive activities and hence cannot be regarded as dependent on their
husbands. Similarly, we find that courtesans as well women indulging in prostitution of
different kinds had greater authority over the disposal of their property, which is related to
their capacity to contract.
While most of the mentioned occupations lacked longevity and would leave the women
jobless in the later years of their life, the other involved are regular work that could be car-
ried on till the age/health permits. For example, courtesans were to be young and beautiful,
while an opportunity in weaving sector was available to the old palace servants. The elabo-
rate instructions for employing destitute women in the weaving industry show that indeed
there were a large number of women who fell on hard days. On the other hand, men in the
Arthaśāstra are engaged into professional work and we find mentions of washermen (KA
IV.1.14–23), tailors (KA IV.1.25), goldsmiths (KA IV.1.26–43), physicians (KA IV.1.56)
and others (KA IV.1.65, IV.4.3).
The differences in opportunities available to men and women are evident from these
options. The statements concerning the women of certain occupational/social groups bring
out the basic texture of society. Almost everywhere we find a presumption that the women
of dancers, wandering minstrels, fishermen, fowlers, cowherds, vintners and others who give
132 UPASANA DHANKHAR

freedom to their women, etc., are engaged in prostitution. This might have been true, but this
provision also points to an important aspect of women and work, which is the fact that the
predominant asset these women were thought to have had was their sexuality. The prolific
mention of different kinds of prostitutes and women of men engaged in various low status
works, who were thought to earn by accompanying strangers, shows that women in economic
sphere were generally sex workers, exceptions being those specifically mentioned. As we
have already noted, those specifically mentioned are either those who are being deployed
by state for its own purposes or those rural women who were engaged in the agricultural
sector. Both these categories were economically and politically essential for state.
The detailed survey of the women and work as found in the Arthaśāstra will remain
incomplete without the very important category that has not found mention as yet, namely
the queens. Their importance in economic and political set up is hinted at by the mention
that ‘the king’s mother and the crowned queen should receive forty-eight thousand (panas)’
(KA 5.3.3). Considering the anxious effort at maximum utilization of resources, we can be
sure that such a huge amount would not have been allocated without reason. The concern
for their security re-emphasizes their importance. It is provided that ‘under no circumstances
must the king make himself or the queen the target for the sake of ascertaining the probity of
ministers’ (KA 1.10.17). Their functions are not elaborated upon but the mentions of the ways
in which a number of conspiracies could be hatched successfully with someone impersonating
the queen shows that they must have been very active and involved in important matters. It
will take a separate analysis to determine whether the emolument for the queen was just an
honorarium to match their status or a compensation for the responsibilities they shouldered.

CONCLUSION
Any study of the Arthaśāstra brings out the prime concern for the security and maintenance
of the state. The elaborate layout of socio-political structures and economic organization is
directed towards furthering the vested interests of social and political elites wherein every-
thing and everyone within the territory of the state is a resource to gain the politico-economic
power and to maintain the same. Women accordingly figure in the Arthaśāstra primarily as
objects and instruments for furthering the ends of the state.
Though the political and legal structure (both social norms and administrative apparatus)
reinforce each other, yet the economic necessities and social dynamics made the state over-
look or ignore the social norms. The state can be seen to propagate and protect the women
in roles condemned by the dharma texts. Arthaśāstra gives us a better idea of the visibility
of the women in the public spheres and economic roles as compared to the dharmasastric
literature, and reveals a hierarchy therein. For example, the difference in the position of
the royal ladies and the women belonging to certain working/professional classes is made
conspicuous by provisions relating to them.
The most important point to be noted is the presence of women in productive activities in
almost all the classes. On the one hand, we have mention of queens with a salary of 48,000
panas and on the other we have poor women employed in the weaving industry. Women
did not only earn for themselves and family but also contributed a good share in the state
 Chapter 10  Women and Work in Kautilīya’s Arthaśāstra 133

revenue and constituted significant part of the workforce. The social status of the women
was linked with their economic status and opportunities in a twisted way. The higher social
status made women economically dependent on men while the comparatively poor agrar-
ian women were seen as equal participants in the household. The former category could
enter into contracts independently while the latter could be made liable even for the debts
incurred without their prior approval! The exception in favour of women of higher varna
from legal responsibility is a poor substitute for the restriction imposed on their economic
freedom. This smacks of the reinforcement of varna and gender hierarchy envisaged in the
brahmanical law codes. As has been pointed out by Gail Omvedt, ‘Marriage and the family
are very much concerns of the state, but the state is more interested in seeing that young
women marry and produce children than that they be testaments to their family’s purity.’6
Such provisions highlight the concern of the state for managing the reproductive potential
of the women for the stability of the socio-political order.
A few important remarks can be made as regards the composition of working women.
Firstly, they came from all rungs of the society and their occupations differed in the early
phase of life. The spectrum ranges from certain poorer classes whose sexuality was looked
upon as the economic asset, while in cases of upper varna, concerns of chastity made it
imperative to stick to the heavily regularized weaving industry. However, old age and lack
of options got women across social categories into the same fold of working for the weaving
industry in the hard days. Secondly, a vast number of women worked only when they fell on
hard times or had no economic support, for example, the weaving industry largely seems to
be supporting destitute women. There is hardly any mention of women professionals outside
the folds of prostitution and espionage. But it still does not preclude independently working
women who supported not just the grown up sons but also their wives. Thirdly, courtesans
and spies had access to both men with power and rich property but the varied disguises
that were taken by the women spies hint at the mobility of women. Possibly, a study can be
taken up to find economic functions of the seemingly non-economic categories of women,
and also deeper research into how the maintenance was fixed for disaffected women and
what the quantum of 2000 panas meant in economic terms.
Fourthly, it is interesting to note that women protects the women who choose to maintain
themselves through hard work and lets the men to have responsible indulgence with vari-
ous categories of sexual service providers. Last but not the least, provisions regarding the
protection of women’s property on a careful analysis suggest that certain women enjoyed
economic independence and supported their families. The mobility of the women also seems
to suggest their vibrant social life. The provisions regarding wives, whether in conjugal hap-
piness or disaffected on some account, seem to put matrimony on a very high pedestal with
due acknowledgement of their economic worth. Nonetheless, lack of professional roles and
education points towards the murky world where women’s worth was associated with her
body rather than the mind. All the accomplishments that women were to make were basi-
cally to enhance their appeal to men rather than to carve an identity of their own. A specific
study into agrarian economy of this period can, however, enhance our understanding of the
socio-economic dynamics of the majority population.

6
Omvedt, ‘God as Political Philosopher’, 188.
134 UPASANA DHANKHAR

BIBLIOGRAPHY
K. P. Kangle, The Kautilīya’s Arthaśāstra, 3 Vols (Bombay: University of Bombay, 1965–1972).
Patrick Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Sukumari Bhattacharji, ‘Prostitution in Ancient India’, Social Scientist 15, no. 2 (1987, February), 32–61.
Uma Chakravarti, ‘Beyond the Altekarian Paradigm: Towards a New Understanding of Gender Relations in Early
Indian History’, Social Scientist 16, no. 8. (1988, August), 44–52.
Uma Chakravarti, ‘Conceptualising Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class and the State’,
Economic and Political Weekly 27, no. 14 (1993, 3 April): 579.
D. D. Kosambi, ‘The Text of the Arthaśāstra’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 78, no. 3 (1958, July–
September), 169–73.
I. W. Mabbett, ‘The Date of the Arthaśāstra’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 84, no. 2 (1964, April–June),
162–69.
Narasingha Prosad Sil, ‘Kautilya’s Arthaśāstra: A Comparative Study’, Journal of the American Oriental Society
107, no. 4 (1987, October–December), 838–39.
Ludwik Sternbach, Juridical Studies in Ancient Indian Law, Parts I and II (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965).
Thomas R. Trautmann, ‘A Metrical Origin for the Kauṭilya Arthaśāstra’, Journal of the American Oriental Society
88, no. 2 (1968, April–June), 347–49.
Women and Economic
Resources: Women’s Property
Rights

Section III
 Chapter 11 Proprietary Rights
during Coverture*

ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

The study of the evolution of the proprietary rights of women is a very fascinating subject.
It has a vital importance to the historian of the woman, for economic independence and
prosperity have usually an important bearing on the well-being of a class. The reader is
already aware how the general position of women went on deteriorating after the beginning
of the Christian era. He will now be surprised to learn that, in spite of this general setback,
their proprietary rights were gradually becoming more and more extensive in course of time.
In early times, proprietary rights of women were recognised very tardily in almost all
civilisations. This was the case specially in patriarchal societies. For a long time there was
no question of the woman holding any property; she herself was an item in the movable
property of the husband or the patriarch. This was the case among the Teutons. The Frisians
used to give their women and children in payment of their taxes to Rome, when they had no
other means to discharge their liabilities. At Rome the husband could sell his wife in early
times, the right being taken away only at the beginning of the Christian era. For a long time
the wife was under the tutelage of her husband and could possess no separate property at all,
if she was married according to the orthodox religious rites. Even after the husband’s death
she did not become a sui jure, but passed under the tutelage of other male relatives. During
the feudal age in Europe, women could no doubt inherit and hold even landed property.
This was, however, a nominal right. Women were really pawns in the hands of kings.
Land was for military service, which women were incapable of rendering. So the emperor
would take immediate steps to marry the daughters or widows of his barons or knights to
whomsoever he liked.
When in his Spanish campaigns a number of his noblemen died, Charlmaigne immedi-
ately married their widows to the barons of his own choice. He was anxious that land should
not be under the ownership of those who could not fight in his wars. Whether the widows

* Previously published in Anant Sadashiv Altekar’s Position of Women in Hindu Civilization: From Pre-Historical
Times to the Present Day, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Varanasi and Delhi (1959), pp. 212–33.

137
138 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

concerned wanted to marry, and if so, whether they had approved of the proposed new
husbands, was a matter which he did not stop to enquire. Women were a sort of vitalised
deed of conveyance. They were hardly as important as horses, which were so useful in war,
save as living titles to landed property.1
In India too in very eariy times women were regarded as chattel. They were given away
as gifts in the Vedic age, as would appear from several hymns, which glorify the gifts of
generous donors.2 In the Mahābhārata we find Dhṛitarāshṭra proposing to give hundred
female slaves of Kṛishṛa as atoken of his regard for him.3 The husband was deemed to have
a natural proprietary right in the wife. It is on this undisputed assumption that Hariśchandra
proceeds to sell his wife to the Domb at the Banaras Ghat and Dharma proceeds to stake
Draupadi in the gambling hall. It may be further pointed out that even this proud and haughty
queen does not think of disputing this right of her husband, when she is dragged to the court
of Dhṛitarāshtra. She does not at all maintain that she has not lost her freedom because the
husband has no right to sell or stake away his wife. She only wants to know whether her
husband was a free man, when he had staked her.4
In the Ṛigveda also in the famous gambling hymn, we find the wife being staked away
by the husband (X, 34).
The Mahābhārata, however, states that the assembly began to hiss loudly when Dharma
proceeded to stake his wife.5 It would therefore appear that though the husband’s proprietary
right in the wife was theoretically recognised, its actual exercise met with a stern social
disapprobation. It was felt that only intoxicated or inhuman persons could think of exercis-
ing it.6 In the Vedic age also, it was only a confirmed gambler who would sometimes stake
his wife. In cultured circles the wife was regarded as the co-owner of the family property
along with her husband, as the term dampatī would show.
Apart from the rather exceptional cases, referred to above, which really reflect the state
of society in prehistoric times, there is no evidence of women being regarded as chattel in
ancient India. The Dharmaśāstra writers of the first and the second centuries ad, leave no
scope for an enterprising husband to utilise the results of his research in prehistoric social
customs and institutions to the disadvantage of his consort; they have definitely declared
that women and children cannot be objects of gift or sale under any circumstances.7
Let us now consider the proprietary rights of the wife, vis-à-vis her husband. The theory
approved by the Hindu culture as early as the Vedic age was that the husband and the wife
should be the joint owners of the household and its property. The husband was required to

1
The reader will get more information on the points discussed in this para from George, Story of woman and Müller
Lyer, Family.
2
mi ek‘;kok Lou;su nRrk o/weUrks n’k jkFklks¿L;q%A I, 126, 3.
3
nklhukeiztkrkuka 'kqHkkuka #DeopZlke~A
'kreLeSS iznkL;kfe nklkukefi rkorke~AA V. 86, 8.
4
fdarq iwoZ ijktS"khjkRekueFkok uq eke~A II, 89, 19.
5
,oeqDrs Drs rq opus /eZjktsu /herkA
f/f./fxR;so o`}kuka lH;kuka ful`rk fxj%AA II, 86, 40.
6
dks fg nhO;kn~Hkk;Z;k jktiq=kks ew<ks jktk nwrensu eRr%A II, 89, 17.
7
Loa dqVqackojks"ksu ns;a nkjlqrknqrsA raj., II, 175.
 Chapter 11  Proprietary Rights during Coverture 139

take a solemn vow at the marriage that he would never transgress the rights and interests
of his wife in economic matters.
The theory of the joint ownership of the couple should have led to a number of important
corollaries, and fortified the position of the wife against an unreasonable or vicious husband.
This, however, does not seem to have taken place. One Dharmasūtra writer concludes
from the joint ownership theory that the wife is entitled to incur normal expenditure on the
household during her husband’s absence.8 Another concedes to her a third share of the hus-
band’s property, in case she was superseded unjustly.9 But no further deductions were drawn.
The theory of joint ownership helped the wife only in securing a number of minor rights
and privileges. It invested her with an absolute right of maintenance against the husband. A
verse attributed to Manu, but not to be found in the present Manusmṛiti, goes to the extent of
declaring that the husband ought to maintain the wife, even if there were no family property.
He may have recourse even to questionable means, if there was no other alternative.10 The
husband could not proceed on a journey without making proper provision fop her mainte-
nance and the household expenditure. If he married a second time, the first wife had to be
properly provided for. If the wife had the misfortune of being assaulted, the liability of the
husband to maintain her did not come to an end.11 Early jurists no doubt held it improper
for a wife to vindicate her claims against the husband in a court of law; later jurists like
Vijñāneśvara, however, differed from this view and maintained that if a husband abandons
a virtuous wife, or wilfully misappropriates her property and refuses to restore it, she can
move a court of law to get her grievances redressed.12
The theory of the joint ownership of the couple secured only the above minor advantages to
the wife.lt was not pressed to its logical conclusion in order to secure her an absolute equality
with the husband in the ownership of the family property. Hindu jurists were not prepared to
entertain such a claim on behalf of the wife. Only one amongst them, Yājñavalkya, permits
her to claim a one third share, if she is unjustly superseded.13 But this claim does not appear
to have been either actually conceded in practice by society, or sanctioned by other jurists.
The wife had no right to incur any substantial expenditure during her coverture without her
husband’s permission. Even the Mitāksharā expressly declares that she can spend out of

8
ikf.kxzg.kRokf¼ lgROak deZl...äO;ifjxzgs"kq Pk A u fg HkrqZfoaçlokls uSfefrds nkus Lr;eqifn'kafr
A. D. S., II, 6,14,16–20.
9
vkKklaikfnuha n{kak ohjlw fç;okfnuhe~A
R;tUnkI;Lr~rh;ka'keäO;ks Hkj.ak Lf=k;k%AA
Yāj. II, 76.
10
o`¼kS Pk ekrkfirjkSlk?oh Hkk;kZ lqr% f'k'kq%A
vI;dk;Z'kra d`Rok HkrZO;k euqjlohr~ AA
11
Lo;a foçfri=kk ok ;fn ok foçokflrk A
cykRdkjksiHkqDrk ok pksjgLrxrkfi ok AA
u R;kT;k nwf"kr ukjh ukL;kkLR;kxks fo/h;rs AA
V. D. S., 28. 2, ff.
12
Rrq xqjks% f'k";s firq% iq=ks naiR;ks% LokfeHk`R;;ks%A fojks/s rqfe;Lrs"kka O;ogkjks u fl?;fr rnfi vR;arO;ogkjfu"ks/ija ua Hkofr A ;fn nqfHk{kkfnO;frjsds.k
L=kh/Uak O;;hd`R; fof/eku/uksbfi ;kP;ekuks u nnkfr rnk niR;ksfj";r ,o O;ogkj% A
Mit. on Yaj., II, 32.
13
See ante, p. 215 n. 2.
140 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

the family property only with the concurrence of the husband.14 Hindu jurists have further
failed to protect the wife’s right to a maintenance or a share; they do not invalidate a sale or
a mortagage of the family property by the husband, if it was prejudicial even to her right of
maintenance. They would have regarded such a procedure as immoral and reprehensible;
they have however failed to make it invalid ab initio.
General circumstances in society were very unfavourable to the theory of the joint own-
ership being utilised to invest the wife with the above powers and rights. Landed property
was for a long time being owned either by village communities or by large joint families.
Individual ownership was but slow in coming into general recognition even in the case of
males. By the time individual coparceners could assert their individual rights in the estate
of the family, the husband had come to be deified; so it became very difficult for jurists to
invest the wife with any susbstantial rights as against the husband. The joint ownership of
the husband and the wife thus practically remained a legal fiction. In effect the husband was
the sole owner of the family property and the wife had no legal remedy, if he proceeded to
squander it and defeat her right to a maintenance or a share. The modern law courts also have
not come forward to afford any protection to the wife in such cases. It is only in Portugese
India, where the Code Napoleon prevails, that the consent of the wife is a condition prec-
edent to any valid disposal of the family property by the husband. It is now high time that
the Indian Legislature should proceed to amend the Hindu Law, and invest the wife with
full powers over her own share of the family estate, rendering its sale without her express
consent illegal. The old Vedic theory of the joint ownership of the husband and the wife
will fully justify such a legislation.
It was only with reference to immovable property that Hindu society was for a long time
unwilling to invest the wife with full or exclusive ownership. The reasons for this have
been already indicated. As far as movable property like ornaments, jewelry, costly apparel,
etc. was concerned, women’s right to own it was recognised at a very early date. All this
property went under the category of Strīdhana or Women’s Special Property. The story of
its development is a very interesting chapter in the history of Hindu law.
It is very difficult to define Strīdhana precisely; Hindu jurists only proceed to describe
its different varieties. Sufficient to state that the term is used to denote property over which
women are allowed to have their own more or less absolute sway in normal times.
In its origin, Strīdhana was vitally connected with the custom of the bride price (śulka).
We have already shown (ante, pp. 39–41) that this custom is of hoary antiquity, and that it
continued to persist for a long time in spite of its vehement denunciation: The custom was
up doubt a bad one, but it had one relieving feature.
It helped the development of Strīdhana. Owing to the affection, which parents naturally
felt for their daughters, they used to return usually a part, and sometimes even the whole of
the bride price to the bride, to be enjoyed by her as her separate estate during her own life. If
she died leaving some children behind, her father would not object to the property devolving
upon them, as they were also his own grand-children. If, however, the daughter left no issue

14
rLeknHkr~ZfjPN;k Hkk;kZ;k vfi äO;foHkkxks HkoR;so u LosN;k AA
Ibid., on Yaj., II, 52.
 Chapter 11  Proprietary Rights during Coverture 141

behind, her father would claim the property back from the son-in-law, who was expected to
contract a fresh marriage in due course. Smṛiti writers expressly declare that the Strīdhana
of a woman, married according to the Āsura form of marriage, where bride price has to be
paid by the husband, would revert to her parents or brothers, if she left behind no issues.15
This rule makes it quite clear that one of the ingredients of Strīdhana was a portion of the
bride price, returned to the bride by her father. The husband therefore had to recognise his
bride’s ownership in it. The bride used to spend this gift usually in the purchase of orna-
ments for herself and utensils and furniture for her new household.16
Even when no bride price was paid, the bride used to receive some wedding gifts in the
Vedic age. Pāriṇṇhya was the term used to denote them, and Vedic texts declare that the
wife was to be their owner.17 Gifts given on such occasions usually consisted of ornaments
and clothes that could be worn by women alone. Men could have utilised them only by
sale. In Hindu society there is, however, a deep prejudice against this procedure in con-
nection with ornaments and clothes worn on auspicious occasions. Women therefore were
naturally allowed to own these gifts. Whether the Vedic age allowed them to dispose of
these articles without their husbands’ consent, we do not know. Probably such a procedure
was not permitted.
In course of time the scope of Strīdhana was enlarged. Gifts given by the husband even
subsequent to the marriage were included in it. These were often extensive and would
sometimes include even the whole of the husband’s property. Women came to be gradu-
ally invested with full powers over the property thus conveyed to them. At, the time of his
impending retirement Yājñavalkya proceeds to divide his whole property equally between
his two wives. Under similar circumstances Dharmadinnā was informed by her husband that
she could take away as much of his property as she liked, and retire to her parent’s house
(Thg., 12). In both these cases the clear intention was to convey full rights of ownership to
the wife over the whole of the family property.
That women could exercise absolute control over such gifts which constituted their
Strīdhana, was a principle that came to be recognised fairly early in Hindu society There
were no doubt archaic texts which declared that wives, like sons and slaves, could own no
property; whatever they acquired would be the property of their husbands.18 Commentators,
however, boldly declared that these texts had no application to the present. age. It is inter-
esting to note that even writers like Baudhāyana, who refuse to recognise the wife’s right

15
vçtL=kk/u HkrqczkZg ekfn"kq Pkrq"oZfi
Anqfgr`.kak izlwrk psPNs"ks'kq fir`xkfe rr~ AA
Yāj., II, 145.
16
The Gerade of the Saxons, which corresponded to Strīdhana, also usually consisted of women’s dress, ornaments
and household furniture.
17
iRuh] oS ikjh.kkgpL; bZ'ks A
T. S., VI, 2, I, I.
18
HAk;kZ iq=k'p nkl'p =k;,ok/uk% Le`rk%A
Rrs lef/xPNfUr;L; rS rL; r¼ue~ AA
Manu, VIII, 416.
142 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

of inheritance, freely concede her title to Strīdhana19. Manu also does the same, though he
does not recognise the widow as an heir to her husband. It is needless to add that writers like
Vishṇu and Yājñavalkya, who recognise the widow as an heir, naturally concede proprietary
rights to women over Strīdhana. All later writers do. the same.
The Vedic literature is silent about the precise scope of Strīdhana. We get an idea of
its scope only from the Dharmaśāstra works. Manu is the earliest writer to give a compre-
hensive description of Strīdhana. According to him it consists of six varieties; (1–3) gifts
given by the father, the mother and the brother at any time; (4) gifts of affection given by
the husband subsequent to the marriage and (5 and 6) presents given by anybody either at
the time of the marriage, or at the time when the bride is taken to her new home.20 Gifts
under most of these categories would consist usually of ornaments and costly apparel, and
Manu is very vehement in denouncing those who would deprive women of these presents
after their husbands’ death.21 Vishṇu (XVII, 18) adds three more categories to Strīdhana,
(a) gifts given by the son, (b) or any other relation (c) and the compensation given to the
wife at the time of her supersession on the occasion of her husband’s second marriage. The
above distinction in the different varieties of Strīdhana are not of great importance; suffice
it to say that it mainly consisted of gifts given by relations, either at the time of the marriage
or subsequent to it.
It is interesting to note that gifts given by non-relatives subsequent to the marriage, and
the wages earned by the wife for her work are not included in Strīdhana. The exclusion
of these two items is not difficult to understand. It was not advisable to encourage women
to elicit presents from outsiders, for it would have led to serious complications in families
presided over by jealous husbands. Inclusion of wages in Strīdhana would also have been
unfair. They were usually earned only by the women of the working classes, whose budgets
can never be balanced even today without including the earnings of women and children.
Under these circumstances it would have been manifestly unfair to credit the wife’s wages
to her Strīdhana and call upon the husband to shoulder the entire burden of the family.
Hindu jurists felt that the earnings of both the husband and the wife should be dedicated to
the needs of the family. They have, however, failed to provide relief to the wife in case her
husband were to squander his own earnings and compel the wife to support the family by
her own wages. The law is still defective on this point and requires to be amended.

19
ekrqjYkdkj nqfgrj% lkaçnkf;da HktsjUuU;}k AA
B. D. S., II, 2, 44.
20
v?;XU;è;kogfuoaQ nUra p çhfrdeZf.kA
Hkzkr`ekr`fir`çkIra "kM~fo?ka L=kh/ua Le`are~AA
IX, 194.
21
L=kh/ukfu rq ;s eksgknqithofUr ekuok%A
ukjh;kukfu oL=ka ok rs ikik ;kUR;/ksxfre~ AA
III, 52.
iR;kS thofr ;% L=khfHkjyadkjks /ॄrks Hkosr~ A
u ra HktsjUnk;knk Hktekuk% irafr rsAA
IX, 200.
 Chapter 11  Proprietary Rights during Coverture 143

From about the seventh century ad, we find a general tendency to enlarge the scope
of Strīdhana. Devala is seen including maintenance and accidental gains under it.22 But
it was left to Vijñāneśvara to propose most extensive additions to the scope of Strīdhana.
Taking advantage of the word ādyam ‘etcetera’ which Yājñavalkya has used at the end of
the enumeration of the usual six varieties of Stridhana, this commentator declares that the
expression in question is used in order to include the property acquired by inheritance, pur-
chase, partition, chance, and adverse possession.23 This amplified definition of Strīdhan is
so comprehensive that it will include every type of property in the possession of a woman,
howsoever it may have been acquired by her.
There can be no doubt that the original verses in yājnavalkya smṛiti, which are quoted in
the foot note below,24 did not contemplate the inclusion of any of the categories mentioned
by Vijñāneśvara within the scope of Strīdhana. It is even doubtful whether the crucial term
ādyam, which is Vijñāneśvara’s sole justification for the amplification of the definition of
Strīdhana, really occurred in the original verse of Yājñavalkya. Jīmūtavāhana contends
that the correct reading is ‘Ādhivedanikaṁ chaiva’ and not Ādhivedanikādyam cha’ The
word ‘ādyam’ is generally used in Sanskrit at the end of an enumeration, so it should have
come not after ‘ādhivedanika’ in v. 143, but after, ‘anvādheyakam’ in v. 144, which is the
last specific category of Strīdhana mentioned by Yājñavalkya. Aparārka, who is one of the
earliest commentators of Yājñavalkya, also reads chaiva, which seems to be the genuine
reading of the verse.
But even supposing that the reading of Vijñaśvara is the genuine one, we have to con-
cede that Yājñavalkya could hardly have intended to include items like inheritance and
share at partition under the term ‘etcetera’. These were very important items, which not
only increased extensively the woman’s rights, but circumscribed those of the coparceners.
Yājñavalkya would surely have specifically and prominently mentioned them in his descrip-
tion of Strīdhana, instead of smuggling them surreptitiously under the term ‘etcetera’. The
word etcetera, if at all used by him, must have been obviously intended to include items
like bride price, gifts from grandfather and other relation, and presents received after the
marriage, which are mentioned in the immediately following line.
The above discussion will show that Vijñāneśvara has used one of the usual devices of
Sanskrit commentators in order to enlarge the scope of Strīdhana. The credit of liberalising
the law of Strīdhana therefore belongs to him and not to Yājñavalkya.
Hindu jurists of medieval times are divided as to the acceptability of the extended defini-
tion of Stridhana, as propounded by Vijñāneśvara. Majority of them, however, concur with
him; Aparārka, Nanda Pandita Mitramiśra and Kāmalākara are prominent among them.
Some, however, have refused to recognise his interpretation; Viśvarūpa, Devaṇabhaṭṭa and
Jimūtavāhana are the chief among them.

22
o`fRrjkHkj.ka 'kqYoaQ YkkHk'p L=kh/ua Hkosr~ 11
23
vkn~;'kCnsu fjDFkd;lafoHkkxifjxzgkf/xeçkIrsesrRL=kh/ua eUokfn&fHk#Dre~AA
On Yaj., II, 143.
24
fir`ekr`ifrHkzkr`nRreè;XU;qikxre~A
vkf/osnfudk?kn;a p L=kh/ua ifjdhfrZre~AA
cU/qnRra rFkk 'kqYdeUok/s;deso pAA
144 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

This cleavage in the opinions of the jurists shows that society was following no uniform
practice in the matter of recognizing the scope of Strīdhana. There are, however, no actual
recorded cases to show how far the items mentioned by Vijñāneśvara were actually included
within the scope of Strīdhana in medieval, times. The fact, however, that a large number of
his successors uphold his opinion, would show that society was to a great extent following
his lead.
Let us now consider the extent of the power which women possessed over their Strīdhana.
We have no discussion about this point in early works. Vedic literature, for instance, is
silent as to whether the wife could dispose of her property (Pāriṇāhaya) without her hus-
band’s permission. As secular law and its literature developed in course of time, the ques-
tion began to be discussed by jurists. Early Smṛiti writers were not prepared to invest the
woman with full powers over her Strīdhana. Manu for instance, declares that a wife ought
not to alienate even her own property without her husband’s sanction.25 In course of time
it was felt that this prohibition was not equitable. With a view to be fair to all the parties,
later jurists divided Strīdhana into two categories, saudāyika and asaudāyika. Free gifts of
affection given by relations like the father, the mother, or the husband were included in the
first category26 and were declared to be under the complete control of women.27 The rest
of the Strīdhana was asaudāyika Stridhana; women could not alienate it, but only enjoy its
usufruct during their life time.
Originally Strīdhana consisted usually of ornaments and costly clothes. In course of time
landed property also began to be conveyed to women as Strīdhana property. Jurists of the
7th and the 8th centuries discuss the question as to whether women possess full powers
of ownership over the immovable property so acquired. As may be expected, opinion was
divided on the point. Kātyāyana holds that women possess the power of sale and mortgage
even over the immovable property included in their Strīdhana.28 Nārada differs from him
and declares that women can dispose of only the movables in their Strīdhana.29 Medieval
writers generally concur with this view.30
The reason why women were not granted full rights over the landed property included in
their Strīdhana are not difficult to understand. ln the vast majority of cases, it used to be a
gift from the husband, and so it originally belonged to the property of the joint family. It was
not in the interest of the latter to allow a coparcener to fritter away its resources by allow-

25
u fugkZja fL=k;% dq;q% dqVqEck}gqeè;xkr~A
Lodknfi fg forkf} LoL; HkRrajek'k;kAA
IX, 299.
26
mQ<;k dU;;k okfi iR;q% fir`x`gs¿FkokA
Hkzkrq% ldk'kkfRi=kksokZ yC/a lkSnkf;da Le`re~AA Kātyāyana in Dāyabhāga.
27
lkSnkf;da /ua izkI; L=kh.kka Lokra=;fe";rsA
;Lekrnku`'kaL;kFkZa rSnZRra rRiz;kstueAA Kātyāyana in Dāyabhāga.
28
lkSnkf;ds lnk L=kh.kka Lokra=;a ifjdhfrZre~A
fod;s pSo nkus p ;FksPNa LFkkojs"ofiAA Kātyāyana in Dāyabhāga.
29
HkRrkZ izhrsu ;n~nRra fL=k;S rfLeUe`rs¿fi rr~A
lk ;Fkkdke~e'uh;kn~;|k}k LFkkojkn`rsAA Queted in Vyavahāramayūkha, p. 97.
30
,oa p lkSnkf;ds LFkkojsrjizhfrnrs p L=kh.kka Lokra=;eU;=k rq L=kh/us¿fi vLokra=;fefr eUrO;e~AA S. C. V., p. 650.
 Chapter 11  Proprietary Rights during Coverture 145

ing him to make an unconditional gift to his wife from the family property. The gifts were
regarded as valid only during the life of the donees. The latter were not allowed to alienate
them to any of their cognatic relations. Similar considerations operated when the property
in question was received by the woman from her father. The latter’s agnatic relations were
not prepared to tolerate his conduct, if he proceeded to permanently alienate a portion of
the immovable property of the family. Patriarchal joint families in ancient times were too
much attached to their ancestral possessions to allow their transfer to a cognatic relation.
The question of the power of alienation of the Strīdhana property was approached by the
Bengal school of the medieval times on different lines. Its famous exponent Jīmūtavāhana felt
that it was illogical to increase the scope of Strīdhana, and then to curtail women’s powers
of disposal over it. He argued that it would be proper to describe only that much property
as Strīdhana, which women are allowed to dispose of according to their own free will. He
therefore limited the scope of Strīdhana by refusing to recognise its amplified definition,
as given in the Mitāksharā school, but conceded to women full proprietary rights over its
time-honoured six varieties.
Did Vijñāneśvara intend to invest women with full proprietary rights over the whole of
his amplified Strīdhana? It is a great pity that he should not have specifically discussed this
important question. We are therefore driven to mere inferences. It is possible to argue that
there is nothing improbable in Vijñāneśvara having intended to give full rights to women
even over the landed property acquired by inheritance or partition, and included in their
Strīdhana. Women will get property by inheritance, usually when their husbands had sepa-
rated from the joint family and died without leaving any male issues. The husband’s action
in effecting a separation from the joint family had put an end to its interest in his separated
the family was in great distress, the husband could utilise his wife’s Strīdhana to tide over
the difficulty. No other member of the family, however, could do so. Jurists differ as to
whether the Strīdhana utilised by the husband to meet abnormal times was to be returned
back to the wife. Yājñavalkya thinks that it need not repaid.31 Kātyāyana holds that if the
husband had promised to return it, he ought to keep his word. 32 An agreement by husband
to give some property as Strīdhana was binding on his estate; if he died without complet-
ing it, his next heirs were required to carry it out.33 Adverse possession could not deprive a
woman of her title to Strīdhana.34

31
nqfHkZ{ks /eZdk;sZ p O;k/kS lEçfrjks/ds A
x`ghra L=kh/ua HkRrkZ u fL=k;S nkrqegZfr AA
Yāj., II, 147.
The Mitāksharā explains:
HkrZq O;frjsds.k thoUR;k /ua u dsukfi nk;knsu
xzghrO;e~A
32
O;kf/ra O;luLFka p /fudSSoksZiihfMre~A
KkRok ful`"Va ;RçhR;k n?kkokResPN;k rq l% AA
Quoted in S. C. V., p. 659.
33
Hk=kkZ çfrJqra ns;eॄ.koRL=kh/ua lqrS: A
Kātyāyana in scv., pp. 658 9.
34
L=kh/ua p ujsUnzk.kka u dFkapu th;ZrsA Nārada, III. 83.
vukxea HkqT;ekua oRljk.kka ‘krSjfi A
146 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

It is only rarely that we come across a discussion of the effects of unchas1tity on the right
to Strīdhana. Devala has discussed this topic and declared that an unchaste woman forfeits
her title to Strīdhana.35 This seems to have been the general view. British courts, however,
refused to follow it and recognised women’s title to Strīdhana in spite of her unchastity.
The scheme of the inheritance of Strīdhana is a very complicated one and it has many pro-
vincial variations. We need not discuss the details of the problem here, as they would interest
only the professional lawyer; it is sufficient for our purpose to refer to general principles. If
a woman dies without leaving any issues, and if her marriage had taken place by any of the
unapproved forms of marriage like the Āsura, Rākshasa, etc., her Strīdhana reverts to her
parents or brothers.36 The reason for this rule is the general presumption that the Strīdhana
in such cases must have mainly consisted of the bride price, which was voluntarily returned
by the father to his daughter for her use during coverture. If she dies leaving some issues
behind, her Strīdhana would devolve upon them. Her father or brother would not naturally
mind allowing the property to be inherited by them; but if she died issueless, the Strīdhana
or the bride price was demanded back. The law at present presumes that all marriages take
place by the approved forms, and so this rule of inheritance of Strīdhana is only of historical
interest. Strīdhana now reverts to the husband, if the wife dies without issues.
A vast majority of jurists from, early times lay down that Strīdhana should devolve upon
daughters. It usually consisted of ornaments and clothes, which could be used by women
alone; so it was deemed to be in the fitness of things that they should be inherited by daugh-
ters. It is true that if they had devolved upon sons, their wives could very well have utilised
the articles concerned. But women feel a greater affection for their daughters than for their
daughters-in-law, and this circumstance determined the line of the succession. Among
daughters, unmarried ones were to be preferred to married ones, and among the latter, the
first claim was of those who were not well-to-do.37 This devolution is governed just by those
principles, which would appeal to an impartial and affectionate mother. In some schools,
if there were no daughters living, the Strīdhana devolved upon daughter’s daughters. Such
cases, however, were few in practice.
ln patriarchal societies there is a general prejudice against property passing to female
heirs; so this principle of allowing Strīdhana to devolve on daughters did not appeal to a
large section of Hindu community. As long as Strīdhana consisted of a few gifts given at
the time of the marriage, its devolution upon daughters did not meet with much opposition.
In course of time, however, gifts given by the husband during the married life came to be
included in Strīdhana. The motive of the husband was no doubt to provide. the wife against

35
vidkjfd;k;qDrk fueZ;kZnkFkZukff'kdk A
O;fHkpkjjrk;k p L=kh/uं u p lkgZfr A
Quoted in VMV., p. 98.
36
vçtL=kh/ua HkrqZj~ckãkfn"kq prq"oZfiA
nqfgr`.kka çlwrk psPNs'ks"kq fir`xkfe rr~AA
Yāj., II, 145.
37
r=k pks<kuw<kleok;s vuw<So x`gÞ.kkfr A rnHkkos ifj.khrk A r=kkfi çfrf"Brkçfrf"Brkleok;sçfrf"Brk
x`g~ .kkfr A rnHkkos çfrf"Brk A
Mitāksharā on Yāj., II, 145.
 Chapter 11  Proprietary Rights during Coverture 147

a rainy day, but he rarely intended to do so at the cost of his sons. His usual expectation was
that the property should pass on to his sons after the death of his wife. Some jurists therefore
felt that the most equitable course was to allow both the sons and the daughters to inherit the
Strīdhana of their mother. This course is recommended by Manu;38 we may well presume
that he is very probably referring to the Strīdhana property given by the husband, though
he does not say so in so many words. The Bengal, Mithilā, Madras and Gujarat schools
of the Hindu Law rely upon the above view of Manu, when they lay down that Strīdhana
consisting of gifts received from the husband subsequent to the marriage should devolve
equally upon daughters and sons.39
There are many other minor details about the inheritance of Strīdhana. As they do not
throw any light on the position of women, they are of interest only to the practising lawyer.
We therefore need not discuss them here.
The above survey of the history of Strīdhana shows that it was recognised very early in
the history of Hindu civilisation. Maxims of prehistoric times declaring that women can hold
no property independently of their husbands were no doubt included in law books down
to the fifth century ad; but they were not allowed to affect the development of Strīdhana.
Its scope went on gradually increasing, till eventually, in some schools at least, it came
to include all the varieties of property that a woman may happen to own. It is probable
that the jurists, who included in Strīdhana even the property acquired by inheritance and
partition, did not intend to invest women with the right of its alienation. Nevertheless it is
indisputable that the allowed them at least a life estate in it; this concession was indeed a
remarkable one for the age. Over Strīdhana in its narrower sense women possessed absolute
ownership; they could dispose of it at their own will, and their husbands had no right over
it. It is true that in times of exceptional difficulties Strīdhana could be used for the general
needs of the family, but that was a liability that could not be equitably avoided It is worth
noting that some jurists have laid down that Strīdhana spent even on such occasions ought
to be refunded to women on the return of prosperity to the family.
The survey of the scope and the development of Strīdhana discloses that a considerable
regard was shown to the economic needs of the weaker sex. The law, as it was developed
by Vijñāneśvara, was no doubt remarkably liberal for his age, for it included all property,
howsoever acquired, under the category of Strīdhana. It is true that Vijñāneśvara prob-
ably did not intend to give women the full right of disposal over the immovable property,
acquired through inheritance or partition. Women, however, had no right to complain in
the matter, for male coparceners also had no such unrestricted right even over their own
self acquired property.
This history of Strīdhana is undoubtedly a proud and glorious chapter in the story of Hindu
civilisation. It discloses a constant and continuous tendency in Hindu society to increase the
scope of Strīdhana, usually at the expense of men’s rights.

38
tuU;ka lafLFkrk;ka rq lea losZ lgksnjk% A
HktsjRekr`oaQ fjDFk tuU;'p lukHk;% AA
39
IX, 192.
2. Dāyabhāga, IV, 9–12, Mayūkha, IX; SCV., p. 656.
148 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

Women were also invested with the right of its independent disposal; even the husband
could not touch it save under exceptional circumstances. This state of affairs compares very
favourably with that in England, where down to 1870 ad, marriage suspended the very legal
existence of the wife, whose entire property, whether inherited or self-acquired, automati-
cally passed under the husband’s control at the very moment of her marriage, unless secured
by a previous settlement.
Only a few words are necessary in connection with the future development of the Strīdhana
law. All the categories included in Strīdhana by Hindu jurists have been recognised by modern
courts. They however hold that the property, which the widow inherits from her husband, is
not Strīdhana in the technical sense, and that she cannot therefore dispose of it at her own
free will. How far the law should be changed in this respect will be considered in the next
chapter, where the widow’s right of inheritance will be discussed in detail.
Smṛitis have laid down that any income, which a wife will acquire by her own exertions,
will not be her Strīdhana, but will be merged in the general income of the family. We have
already shown above (ante, pp. 220–21) how this apparently unreasonable rule came to be
laid dawn. Circumstances have, however, changed now. It is but fair to admit that what an
educated wife earns as a teacher, or a professor, or a doctor, or an uneducated wife as a field
labourer or a factory worker, should be primarily regarded as her own property. The husband
should have no right over it. It should be left entirely to the wife, as to what portion of her
earnings she would devote to the general family expenditure. In. actual practice it would
be found that a woman factory worker, for instance, will spend a lesser amount on herself
than her husband would do, out of the wages they receive from their employer. The modern
woman has developed her own individuality and would not like to surrender the ownership
over her own earnings even to her husband. Married women, who earn a livelihood, are
however few. Gifts received at the time of marriage are not many or valuable in the pres-
ent age and they are not useful for daily expenditure. Strīdhana obtained as an heir to the
husband after his death becomes available during widowhood when a woman has hardly
any enthusiasm to utilise it. Instead of enlarging the scope of the old items in Strīdhana, the
modern woman would desire the recognition of a new item, viz., a share in the monthly or
annual income of her husband.
In spite of the spacious theory of the joint ownership the husband is usually the de facto
controller of the family purse. The present age is an individualistic one and the modern wife,
whether educated or uneducated, often feels that it should not be necessary for her to get
the sanction of her husband for every little expenditure that she may have to incur on her
behalf. In order to get over the embarrassing situations often arising on such occasions, she
often feels that it would have been much better if she had a share in her father’s property,
the income of which she could have spent at her own free will. There are, however, several
serious difficulties in the way of giving the daughter a share in the patrimony, as will be
shown in the next chapter (Section I). It has, however, to be admitted that owing to inherited
traditions, the husband is often inclined to assume a patronising air when sanctioning any
expenditure for the wife which is not relished by him. It has further to be recognised that
whether in the west or in the east, there is not yet a proper appreciation of the unpaid work
for the household, which the wife ungrudgingly does for the common welfare of the family.
 Chapter 11  Proprietary Rights during Coverture 149

Gifts from the husband form an important item in the Strīdhan as envisaged by Hindu jurists,
and its scope went on gradually increasing in course of time. The difficulties of the modern
sensitive wife, above referred to, will disappear if the law enjoined that a small percentage of
the monthly income of the husband shall be given to the wife as her Strīdhana, to be spent by
her at her own sweet will, either for her own sake of for the sake of the family. An orienta-
tion in the development of Strīdhana on this line is necessary in the modern individualistic
age. It will immensely help in increasing the happiness of many a family.
 Chapter 12 Proprietary Rights:
Inheritance and
Partition*

ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

We shall continue here our story of the development of the proprietary rights of women.
We surveyed in the last chapter the position of the wife, vis-à-vis her husband, regarding
the ownership of the family property, and discussed the evolution of Strīdhana. It was all
along a story of gradual but continuous progress. In this chapter we shall discuss the rights of
inheritance and partition, which are undoubtedly more important than the right to Strīdhana.
As already shown in previous chapters, the angle of vision with which the daughter, the wife
and the widow were looked upon varied in different ages. Naturally, therefore, the develop-
ment of their rights of inheritance and partition proceeded on different lines. It would be
therefore convenient to discuss it separately. The present chapter is therefore divided into
four sections; the first three deal with the rights of inheritance of the daughter, the widow
and other female relations respectively, and the last one with the rights at partition.

SECTION I: DAUGHTER’S RIGHT OF INHERITANCE

A reference has been already made to an old saying that a son, a wife and a slave can own
no property independently of the father, the husband and the master (ante, p. 219, n. 1). The
daughter is obviously intended to be included here under the son. In more than one place in
the later Vedic literature we come across the view that women have no right of inheritance.1
There is no doubt that in very early times there was a general prejudice against property
devolving upon female heirs by inheritance. The daughter formed no exception. She was
often expected to increase the assets of her father’s family by bringing a bride price. That she

* Previously published in Anant Sadashiv Altekar’s Position of Women in Hindu Civilization: From Pre-Historical
Times to the Present Day, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Varanasi and Delhi (1959), pp. 234–78.
1
rLekfRL=k;ks fufjfUæ;k vnk;knh% A
T. S. VI, 5, 8 2.
rk (fL=k;)ukReu'pS'kr u nk;L; pS'kr A S. Br., IV, 4, 2, 13.

150
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 151

should get a share in and decrease the corpus of her father’s property would have appeared
as very preposterous to men at the down of civilisation. The very conception of Strīdhana
shows that women could normally get property only by way of gifts from their relations at
or subsequent to their marriage. There was no possibility of their acquiring any estate either
by inheritance or by partition.
Among the female heirs the brotherless daughter was the first to succeed in establish-
ing her right of inheritance. Circumstances were more favourable for the recognition of
her right than that of the wife or the widow. As shown in the last chapter in the patriarchal
atmosphere the wife could advance no claim in competition with her husband. The widow
often used to marry or get a son by Niyoga; so the problem of her inheritance did not arise
in society in anyacute form. We have already shown (ante, pp. 10–11) how the daughter in
the Vedic age was well educated and possessed full religious privileges. Probably she could
not herself offer funeral oblations to the manes, but she could get this done by her son. For
all religious purposes the Vedic father could thus regard a daughter to be as good as a son.2
He had a strong prejudice against adopting a son.3 He therefore preferred property passing to
his own daughter in preference to a stranger, who by a religious fiction, was to be regarded
as an adoptive son. He could also usually arrange for the perpetuation of his own family by
making an agreement with the son-in-law that he should send backhis first son to continue
his maternal grandfather’s family.
Amongst women, a brotherless daughter was thus the first to get her right of inheritance
recognised. This happened as early as the time of the Ṛigveda, for there is no doubt that one
of its early hymns refers to a brotherless daughter getting her share of patrimony.4 This right
of inheritance, however, was not an unmixed blessing. The Vedic age put a high premium
on the son, and sons-in-law were unwilling to allow their first-born son to revert back to
the families of their maternal grandfathers. In the present age there is a keen competition
for the hand of a maiden, who is her father’s heir; in the Vedic age she found it not always
easy to marry and had often to remain a spinster.5 Even when the father of a brotherless
daughter gave an assurance that he did not regard her as a Putrikā and would not claim her

2
It is true that in Dharmaśāstra literature, generally the son of a Putrikā is classed as a substitute for a real son; in
early times, however, in some localities the daughter herself and not her son was regarded as the substitute. Thus
V.D.S. XVII, 15 states r`rh;k iqf=kdk and not iqf=kdkiq=k. A similar conclusion can be drawn from Manu IX, 134. From
the Rājataraṅgiṇī we find that Queen Kalyāṇadevi, wife of King Jayāpiḍa, was herself regarded as a Putrikā by her
father. A nineteenth century Pandit of Kashmir had done the same at the same time of Dr. Būhler’s visit to that state.
3
u fg çHkk;kj.k% l'ksoks¿U;ksn;ksZ eulk eUrok m A
R.V., VII, 4, 8.
4
vHkzkrso iqal ,fr çrhph xrkZ:fxo lu;s /ukuke~
R.V., I, 124, 7.
5
vew;kZ% lfUr tke;% lokZ yksfgrokll% A
vHkzkrj bo ;ks=kkfLr"OBUrq groReZu% AA
A.V., I, 17, I.
;kLd comments: vHkzkr`dk;k vfuokZg vkSifed%A
III, 5.
152 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

son, prospective bridegrooms feared that there might be a mental reservation behind the
promise.6 They would usually refuse to accept the daughter and her estate.
There is evidence to show that the right of a brotherless daughter to inherit her father’s
estate continued to be recognised down to c. 400 bc. In the Therīgāthā we come across an
interesting incident. We find a mother trying to dissuade her daughter Sundarī from enter-
ing the nunnery by pointing out that she had become a full heir to her father’s extensive
estate as the latter had become a monk; she should therefore think of marriage and pleasure,
and not of nunnery and penance.7 It is clear from this story that a brotherless daughter was
recognised as an heir in north-eastern India during the fifth century bc.
By about 200 bc girls ceased to be educated and began to be married at an early age.
There was a general deterioration in the status of women, who were gradually losing their
religious privileges. All this tended to adversely affect the proprietary rights of the daughter.
A school came into existence which opposed her right of inheritance, even when she had no
brothers. Āpastamba reluctantly allows daughter to inherit, but only if there is no sapiṇda
or teacher or pupil to claim the property. This was a very remote possibility, for agnates
include relations up to the seventh degree. He would rather prefer the property to be given
to a public cause than to a daughter.8 Vasishṭha (XV, 7) and Gautama (XXVIII, 21) do not
mention the daughter in the list of their heirs. The same is the case with Manu.9
The majority of jurists, however, wanted to continue the old tradition, and allow the
daughter to inherit her patrimony, if there were no son.
The Mahābhārata in one place maintains that it would be manifestly unfair and inequitable
to allow a subsidiary son to get an inheritance, when there was a daughter to claim it.10 She
must at least get half the property, if not the whole.11 Kauṭilya is also inclined to recognise
the daughter as an heir, though perhaps to a smaller share (III, 5).
Yājñāvalkya, as may be expected, warmly champions the cause of the daughter and lays
down that she should be the next heir after the son and the widow (II, 135). Bṛihaspati tries
to disarm the opposition by sweet reasonableness. He points out that the daughter springs
from one’s own body just like the son; how then can anyone inherit the property, when she

6
vfHklaf/ek=kkR;qf=kdsR;sdे
G.D.S. XXIX, 17; see also V.D.S., XV, 5.
7
firk iCcfTkrks rqEga Hkqat Hkksxkfu lqUnfj Roa nk;kfndk dqYksA
Thg. no. 327.
8
iq=kkHkkos ;% çR;kLk=k% lfi.M% A rnHkkos vkpk;Z%A vkpk;kZ&Hkkos vUrsoklh gRok /eZd`R;s"kq ;kst;sr~ A nqfgrk ok A
II, 14, 234.
9
u Hkzkrjks u firj% iq=kk fjDFkgjk% firq% A
firk gjsniq=kL; fjDFka Hkzkrj ,o p AA
Kullūka takes the expression iRuhnqfgr`jfgrL; as understood in the second line in order to support his view that Manu
admits the daughter as an heir to her father. There is nothing in the text or context to support this assumption.
10
;FkSokRek rFkk iq=k% iq=ks.k nqfgrk lek A
rL;kekRefu fr"BUR;ks dFkeU;ka /ua gjsr A
XIII, 80, II.
nqfgrkU;=k tkrkfn iq=kknfi fof'k";rs A
11
vHkzkr`dk lexzkgkZ pk/kZgsZR;ijs fcnq% A
XIII, 88, 22.
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 153

is still alive (XXV, 55)? Nārada advances a similar argument. Is not the daughter as much
the child of her parents as the son12? How then can her right of inheritance be defeated in
the absence of the latter?
There was a school of jurists which suggested that a brotherless daughter should be
regarded as an heir only till she was married and well settled in life. Kātyāyana was its
chief exponent.13 Hindu society, however, refused to accept this opinion, and the school
of Yājñavalkya, Nārada and Bṛihaspati eventually carried the day. From c. 500 ad nobody
has called into question a daughter’s right to inherit her father’s property in the absence of
a brother. The right has been recognised also by the modern courts.
The estate which a daughter inherits is usually a limited one. It is an absolute one only
in the Bombay State. Everywhere else she acquires only a life estate. The Bombay custom
of allowing the daughter to become an absolute owner of her patrimony is at least as old as
the thirteenth century.
An inscription of this period, discovered in Kolhapur, refers to the sale of a piece of land
by a woman, who had inherited it from her father.14 The Bombay law on this point has been
working smoothly and has caused no havoc in the joint family. It is now high time that it
should be extended to other states as well.

DAUGHTERS WITH BROTHERS

Let us now consider the rights of inheritance of a daughter who has brothers. Patriarchal
traditions were reigning supreme at the dawn of the Aryan history, and they were not favour-
able for the recognition of a daughter’s right of inheritance in competition with a brother.
From c. 300 bc marriage became obligatory for girls, and society felt that they should get
proprietary rights in the families of their husbands and not in those of their fathers.
In the earlier period, however, girls were fairly well educated, and very often they would
remain unmarried either by choice or by the force of circumstances. In such cases it was
recognised that they ought to be allowed to have a share in their fathers’ property. A Vedic
stanza expressly refers to an old maiden claiming her share in her patrimony.15 Usually,
however, daughters married, and then they did not get any share in their patrimony. A Vedic

12
iq=kkHkkos rq nqfgrk rqY;larkudkj.kkr~A
XIII, 50.
13
iRuh iR;q/Zugjh ;k L;knO;fHkpkfj.kh A
rnHkkos rqnqfgrk ;/uw<k HkosRrnk AA
Quoted in the Mitāksharā on rāj. II, 135–36. See also SCV., p. 687.
14
lkses'ojHkV~VL; nqfgrq% ldk'kkn~x`ghRok iwoksZDrczkgk.ksH;ks nRroku A
E.I., Vol. III, p. 215.
15
vektwfjo fi=kks% lpk lrh lekunk lnlLr~okfe;s Hkxe~A
d`f/ çdsreqi ekL;k Hkj nf¼ Hkkxa rUok ;su ekeg% AA
R.V., II, 17, 7.
154 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

poet expressly informs the brother that he should not give any share to his sister; she is after
all to migrate to a different family.16
It has been argued that there was a school of jurists, no doubt representing a small minor-
ity, which favoured the recognition of the right of inheritance of the daughter along with
the son as early as c. 500 bc. The only evidence for this view is a passage in the Nirukta.
where arguments are undoubtedly advanced to support the daughter’s claim. The passage in
question is, however, a clear interpolation. We may nevertheless examine here the arguments
advanced in it. We find that the champions of the daughter’s claim were mainly relying on
the authority of two old verses. The first of these occurs in the Ṛigveda.17 Unfortunately it is
a very obscure stanza difficult to interpret with certainty. It appears to refer to an agreement
by the father of an only daughter with his son-in-law to the effect that his first son will revert
to the maternal grandfather to continue his family. At any rate it does not refer to any right
of inheritance of a daughter, who had brothers as well. The second authority relied upon by
this school is a stanza, which it attributes to Manu.18 This verse does not, however, occur
in the present Manusmṛiti and it contradicts its views on this point enunciated elsewhere in
the book. Further, it has to be pointed out that it does not at all support a daughter’s right to
inherit along with sons. To argue that the term mithunānām in this verse governs the word
putrāṇām, the joint expression mithanānām putrāṇām meaning children of both the sexes,
is a procedure that can hardly be justified. The expression mithunānām refers to parents, and
the author of the verse opines that parents should divide their estate equally among their sons,
without assigning a special share to the first-born, as recommended by some early jurists.
It therefore appears that if there was really a school of jurists in the sixth century bc,
which wanted to champion the cause of daughters’ inheritance, even when they had broth-
ers, it could adduce no really authoritative texts in its support. The passage in the Nirukta,
where this discussion occurs, is very probably a later interpolation. It is therefore extremely
doubtful whether any such school at all existed in early times.
The general opinion of Hindu society was that sisters should get no share in the patrimony,
if they had brothers. This is the opinion of the Dharmaśāstra literature, and Kauṭilya concurs
with it.19 There is only one writer, who assigns a small share to the daughter along with sons.
It is Śukra. Śukrāchārya, the famous teacher of the Asuras, loved his daughter Devayānī

16
utke;s rkUoks fjÝek'ekjSdz pdkj xHkZ lfuarqfuZ/kuEk
R.V., III, 31, 2.
17
'kkl}g~ funqZfgrquZIR;a CrL; nhf/fr- li;Zu~ A
firk ;=k nqfgrq% lsde`TtUk~ la'kXE;sUk eUklk lan/u~ oS AA
III, 31, I.
18
vfo'ks"ks.k iq=k.kka nk;ks Hkofr /eZr%
feFkqukuka fulxkZnkS euq% Lok;ं HkoL=krhRAA Lok;aHkoL=krhRk A
Nirukta, III, 4.
19
v;knk nqfgrk A
III, 6.
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 155

dearer than his own life. It is therefore in the fitness of things that he should have been the
only Smriti writer to assign a small share to the daughter, even when she had brothers.20
Śukra lays down that if a person divides his property in his own life time, he should
assign one share each to his wife and sons, half a share to his daughters, and one fourth
a share to his daughters’s sons. If the division took place after his death, the sister was to
get one eighth the share of the brother.21 In actual practice the division of property usually
takes place after the death of the father; so even under Śukra’s dispensation, the daughter
got only a very small share in the patrimony.
Śukra seems to be the only jurist, who has championed the cause of a daughter’s share
in her patrimony, even if she were not brotherless.
Vishṇu22 and Nārada23 also apparently seem to have recommended the same course; but
their intention does not appear to have been to allow the daughter to take away her share
after the marriage. Nārada expressly declares that the daughter’s share in the patrimony was
intended only for her maintenance till her marriage.24
Though Śukra was in a hopeless minority, his scheme of inheritance appealed to some
sections of the community. There is evidence to show that some fathers used to follow
the principle recommended by Śukra and divide their property both among their sons and
daughters. This was probably the case when the property was self-acquired. We actually
come across such a case in a Mysore epigraph. An inscription, dated 1188 ad, refers to a
gentleman named Māchi, partitioning his landed property both among his sons and daugh-
ters. The sons of the latter encroached upon the lands of the sons of the former; the epigraph
refers to the settlement of the dispute.25
Smṛitis and inscriptions, which attest to a daughter being assigned a share in the ­patrimony,
are exceptions and not the rule. The general opinion of society was that women should
get shares, directly or indirectly, in the property of their husbands and not in that of their
fathers. Marriages had become obligatory for girls by c. 300 bc, and so the cases of spinsters
­remaining unprovided did not at all arise in society in the subsequent period.

20
Sukraniti as a whole is as late as about 1300 ad, and it is not impossible that its scheme of inheritance, which assigns
the daughter a share equal to half that of the son, may be due to the influence of the Muslim law.
21
lekuHkkxk oS dk;kZ% iq=kk% LoL; p oS fL=k;% A
LoHkkxk/Zgjk dU;k nkSfg=kkLrq rn/Zukd~ AA
e`rkf/is rq iq=kk|k mÙkQHkkxgjkः Le`rk% A
ek=ksn/kPPrqFkkZ’a HkfxU;ै HkfxU; ekrqjf/de~ AA
IV, 5, 299–300.
22
ekrj% iq=kHkkxuqlkjs.k Hkkxgkfj.;% A vuw<k nqfgrj'Pk A
XVIII, 34.
23
T;s"Bk;ka'kks~f/dks ns;% dfu"Bk;koj% Le`r% A
leka'kHkkt% 'ks"kk% L;qjçRrk Hkfxuh rFkk A
XIII, 13.
24
;k rL; nqfgrk rL;k% fiT;ksR;ks Hkj.ks er%A
vklaLdkja HktsjLrka% ijrks foHk`;kRifr%AA
XIII, 27.
25
E.C.,VI Mudgere No. 24.
156 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

Since marriages had become obligatory for girls, it was naturally laid down that rea-
sonable expenses in connection with them should be a charge on the family property. If a
father died before his daughters had been wedded, the sons were bound to spend reasonable
amounts for their suitable marriages out of the family estate. What precise amount a brother
ought to spend for his sister’s marriage could not obviously be laid down in the law books;
it used to vary with the status and circumstances of each family. A general rule, however,
has been laid down that a brother should spend for his sister’s marriage an amount equal to
a one fourth share.26 The language used in this connection is rather vague, and is capable of
the following three divergent interpretations. (a) Each brother should forswear one fourth
the share he has received, and the amounts so pooled together should be equally divided
among the sisters and spent for their marriages. In practice this principle was likely to lead
to anomalies, if the sons and daughters in a family were not equal in number. Thus if there
was only one sister and she had four or more brothers, her marriage portion was bound to
be greater than the individual share of her brothers. If the above ratio of the brothers and
sisters were reversed, the marriage share of a sister would have been very inadequate; it
would have been one sixteenth the share of the brother or even less. (b) A second interpreta-
tion of the rule suggested that the property should be divided into as many shares as there
are children, and daughters should be given one fourth of the share thus ascertained, This
arrangement also is likely to produce anomalies similar to those mentioned in connection
with the first interpretation. (c) A third school therefore has pointed out that the real inten-
tion of the jurists in laying down this rule is that the patrimony should be so divided that
ultimately the resulting marriage share of each sister should be equal to one fourth the share
of each brother. This interpretation is probably the one intended by our jurists.27
Hindu jurists, however, declare that their intention is not so much to assign a one fourth
share to the daughter, as to make adequate provision for her marriage.28 To get his sister
married was the sacred duty of the brother, and if her one fourth share was insufficient for the
purpose, the brother was required to spend an amount even equal to his own share.29 Some
jurists go to the extent of laying down that even if there were no family estate the brother
ought to meet the marriage expenses of his sister from his self-acquired property.30 If, on
the other hand, the family property was extensive and the reasonable expenses of a suitable
marriage did not amount to the legal one fourth share, the sister was not to take away with

26
vlLd`rkLrq laLdk;kZ Hkzkr`fHk% iwoZlaLd`rs% A
HkfxUU;'p futkna'kkNRok'ka rq rqjh;de~AA
rāj., II, 124.
See also Manu, IX, 118.
27
See SCV, pp. 625 ff; VMV., pp. 58I ff.
28
dU;kH;'p fir`äO;s ns;a oSokfgoaQ olq A
Devala in SCV., p. 625.
29
;fn laLdkji;kZIRkefi fir`/ua ukfLr rnk iq=kleHkkfxrSo nqfgr`.kke~ A
VMV., p. 582.
30
vfo?kekus fi=k;Zs LokaHkkknq¼`R; ok iqu%A
vo';dk;kZ% laLdkjk Hkzkr`fHk% iwoZLkaLd`rS%AA
Nārada, XIII, 34.
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 157

her the balance unspent.31 It will be thus seen that while anxious to make adequate provision
for the marriage of a sister, Hindu jurists have disapproved of the principle that she should
inherit a share along with her brothers, and carry it away with her after the marriage.
The reasons for this attitude are not difficult to understand. Marriage had become abso-
lutely necessary for daughters. So there was no possibility of spinsters remaining unprovided.
There was a general prejudice against the introduction of an outsider among the landhold-
ers of a village since early times. This, however, was inevitable if the daughter, who was
usually married to some outsider either in a near or a distant village, was allowed to claim
a share. We must further remember that down to the middle of the nineteenth century, com-
munications were difficult and expensive, and it was not easy for a daughter or her husband
to manage her landed property situated in a distant village. To give a share to the daughter
in immovable property was thus not a feasible proposition. As far as the movables were
concerned, she used to get a fair share in them as presents at the time of her marriage, or
as an heir to Strīdhana estate. Hindu society therefore felt that the best way to provide for
women was to invest them with proprietary rights in their husbands’ estates, and not in
their fathers’ property.
Circumstances have however now changed, and the law of inheritance requires some
alterations with regard to the daughter.
Marriage is no longer a necessary event in the life of every woman. A class of edu-
cated women is coming into existence who, either owing to the desire for social service
or through the force of circumstances, do not get married. These ladies cannot obviously
get any proprietary rights through the husband. The law, as it stands today, does not allow
them any share in their fathers’ property as well. So they remain altogether unprovided for.
As we have shown above (ante, p. 239), such women used to get a share in their patrimony
in Vedic times. We should revive this right today. As these women lead a single life, their
family responsibilities would be naturally less than those of their married brothers; their
share in the patrimony should be smaller than that of a married brother, who will have a
family to provide for. It is therefore reasonable to suggest that the share of the unmarried
sister should be half that of her married brother.
Should a daughter, who gets married, also receive a share in her patrimony even when
she has a brother? In 1936 a bill was introduced in the Imperial Legislative Assembly,
which inter alia sought to give the daughter the same share in the patrimony as the son. This
clause, however, had to be withdrawn, as the public opinion was not in its favour. Later on
a draft by the B. N. Rao Committee proposed, as suggested in the 1st edition of this work,
that an unmarried daughter should get half a share; but this measure also could not pass.
The same was the fate of a third bill (1952) which sought to give to the daughter half a
share unconditionally. The Hindu Code Bill, now before the Parliament (Feb. 1956) seeks
to give even to the married daughter a share in the patrimony equal to that of the brother.

31
rLekRlaLdkjksi;qDräO;L;So nkuek=ka foof{kre~ 1
VMV., p. 582.
vuw<k bfr fo'ks"kksiknkukPp fookgkFksZ iq=kkHkkxkuqlkfjHkkxgj.kं
u iquHkzkZr`.kkfeo nqfgr.kka nk;foHkkxFkZfefr xE;rsA
SCV., p. 625.
158 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

Opinion in society and the Parliament is sharply divided on this point and it is difficult to
state whether the Bill will pass, if free voting is allowed.
A careful analysis of the whole situation will show that on the whole it will not be in
the interest of society to grant this right to the daughter. In the first place she will find it
difficult to exercise it. Division of the family property usually takes place after the death of
the father. A daughter, who has been married, say ten years before this event, will not be
having a precise idea of the movable property of her paternal family, as she will be spending
most of this time in her new home. It may be that during this period her father’s family may
have sold part of its ornaments to tide over some difficulties. If, as a consequence of these
transactions, which are usually kept secret, the movable property brought forward at the time
of the partition is less than what it was at the time of her marriage, the daughter would feel
that her brothers have conspired to cheat her of her legitimate share. On the other hand, it is
very easy to conceal cash, jewellery and ornaments, and crafty brothers can easily defeat their
sisters’ rights by producing only a part of them. There are very few families that keep their
movable property in the form of cash balances in banks. Misunderstanding and heartburn-
ing will therefore be difficult to avoid between brothers and sisters at the time of partition.
The allotment of a share in the immovable property is also fraught with difficulties.
Holdings of land in India are already very small and uneconomic; their size will be reduced
to half, if the daughter receives a share in the patrimony equal to that of the son. This will
be a national calamity. It may be argued that the rights of the weaker sex should not be
sacrificed even for avoiding a national economic calamity. There is a force in this argument
But we would point out that there are further difficulties in the way. The daughter after her
marriage will usually go away to a different village or town to live with her husband. She
will therefore be an absentee landlord. The absentee landlord is already being expropriated
in Bombay, and other States will soon adopt the same course. The daughter will thus not
materially benefit by a share in the lands of her father.
It has further to be admitted that soon after her marriage, the centre of interest and affec-
tion of the daughter naturally shifts to her new home. She becomes more and more immersed
in her own family and children, and has no opportunities as before of noticing the financial
transactions of her father’s family. It would be unfair to saddle her with any liabilities which
her parents’ family may have incurred as a consequence of certain steps taken after her
marriage and without her knowledge. To suggest that the consent of the daughter should
be previously obtained on such occasions is impracticable. For usually the members of a
family do not like its transactions like sale or mortgage of family property to be discussed
by or communicated to even their near relations.
The present situation, however, is very unfair to the woman. She has no share in her
patrimony and her condition becomes pitiable, if her husband abandons her and contracts
a second marriage or takes to a vicious life. He can even escape his liability to give her a
maintenance on the plea that she refuses to live with him. And what woman of self-respect
will welcome her husband’s home, if she is to be treated there merely as an unpaid and
unwanted maid-servant? The best way, however, to meet the situation is not to assign a share
to the woman in her patrimony, but to improve and enlarge her economic rights in her new
family, of which she becomes an important member, and with the interests of which she
becomes absolutely identified. It should no longer become possible for a husband to institute
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 159

a suit for the restitution of conjugal rights, and escape his liability to maintain his wife on the
plea that she refuses to obey the decree of the court to live with him. If it is proved that the
wife has to stay away from the husband for no fault of her own, she should become entitled
to get not merely a maintenance, but also a share equal to that of a son. It may be recalled
that Yājñavalkya allows the wife a one third share in the husband’s property under such
circumstances.32 As marriages usually take place between families of approximately equal
financial status, the share which the wife will receive in her husband’s property is not likely
to be smaller than the one which she would have obtained as a daughter from her patrimony.
If the present law is amended on the above lines, it will not become necessary to complicate
matters by giving the daughter a right to a share in her patrimony, which may be of doubt-
ful benefit to her in actual practice, and which may also sometimes land her into financial
liabilities. If her father dies after contracting debts subsequent to her marriage, she will be
called upon to pay its share. Her liability will of course be limited by her share, but she will
have to face a litigation. Serious difficulties may arise in the marriages of girls from poorer
families. Would be bridegrooms accepting daughters from poor families now know that they
will receive few or no presents at the marriage; they are sure that there is no liability. When
the daughter gets a share, they must be prepared to face the music of a civil litigation after
the death of their fathers-in-law. All would-be sons-in-law may not welcome this eventuality.
Normally speaking, more than 90 per cent couples can pull on well with each other, and
there would be no necessity in such cases for the wife to demand a separate share from her hus-
band. Unnecessary fragmentations of holdings, which would become necessary if all daughters
are given a right of inheritance in their patrimony, will thus be avoided. In the few abnormal
cases above referred to, where the condition of women at present becomes pitiable on account
of their having no share in the patrimony, they would obtain the necessary relief by getting
definite rights in their new families available even against the husband during the coverture.
For several centuries the Hindu wife has been occupying a position of subordination to
her husband on account of her illiteracy and want of general knowledge and experience.
There is an unconscious tendency in the average husband, both in the east and in the west,
to assume a slightly condescending air when any money is to be sanctioned for the normal
or special needs of the wife. Educated wives naturally resent this tendency and feel that they
should have an income of their own, which they should be able to spend at their own free
will. The best way to avoid this difficulty and consequent unpleasantness is not to grant a
share in the patrimony, but to create a new variety of Strīdhana from the husband’s income,
which the wife should be at liberty to spend without his sanction. As a natural corollary
of the principle that the husband and the wife are the joint owners of the family property,
and as a recognition of the valuable unpaid work which the wife ungrudgingly does for the
household, she should be entitled to receive a small percentage, say 5 per cent, of the income
of the family as her own Strīdhana, to be spent by her at her own sweet will, either for her
own sake or for the sake of the family. An orientation in the development of Strīdhana on this
line will remove the difficulties of the modern sensitive wife. It will also render unnecessary

32
vkKklEikfnuh n{kka ohjlw fç;okfnuhe~ A
R;tUnkI;Lr`rh;f'keæO;ks Hkj.ka fL=k;k% A
I, 76.
160 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

the creation of the new right to a share in patrimony, which in practice will be difficult to
exercise, and will lead to unnecessary and harmful fragmentations of landholdings.
To conclude, the following changes are desirable in the law of inheritance, as far as the
daughter is concerned:

1. The daughter should have the right to demand that the same amount from patrimony
should be spent on her education as is spent in her brother’s case.
2. Education expenses apart, the daughter should have the right to a share equal to half
that of her brother, if she remains unmarried. The usual presumption should be that
the normal expenses of a daughter’s proper marriage are equal to half the share of
her brother in the patrimony. So a daughter who marries after the partition will not
have to pay anything back after her marriage. This will avoid any devesting of the
property subsequent to the marriage of the daughter.

SECTION II: WIDOW’S RIGHT OF INHERITANCE

The proprietary rights of the wife during the coverture have been already considered in the
last chapter. We shall discuss now her rights during widowhood. Let us first take up the
question of her right to inherit her husband’s property.
We have already seen that there was a general prejudice in early times against allowing
women to hold property. Even the wife, who was regarded as the husband’s joint owner in
the family property, had only very limited rights as against her consort. It is then no wonder
that for a long time widow’s right to inherit her husband’s property should have remained
unrecognised. Vedic texts, which declare women to be incapable of inheriting any property,33
are particularly aimed against the widow. Joint family of the patriarchal type was the order of
the day; males alone could be coparceners in it, women being allowed only a maintenance.
In early times the custom of Niyoga was very common; so widows without sons were very
few. A vast majority of widows therefore used to get their husband’s shares, if not directly
as their heirs, at least indirectly as the guardians of their minor sons. Very often they used
to marry, and so the question of giving them a share in their dead husbands’ property would
not arise at all. The refusal to recognise the widow as an heir to her husband was thus caus-
ing not much actual hardship in society.
We therefore find that down to c. 300 bc, the right of the widow to inherit her husband’s
property was not recognised by any jurist. Vedic texts were definitely opposed to this right.
Most of the Dharmasūtra writers adopt the same attitude. Baudhāyana expressly rejects the
widow’s claim on the authority of the Vedic texts referred to in the last para. Āpastamba

33
rLekfRL=k;ks fufjfUå;k vnk;knk% A
T.S., VI, 5, 8, 2.
rk% (fL=k;%) ukaReu'puS'kr u nk;L; puS’kr AA
S.Br., #IV, #4, #2, #13.
rLekR;qeku~ nk;kn% L=kh vnk;knh A
M.S., IV., 6, #4.
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 161

lays down that in the absence of the son the property should devolve, not upon the widow,
but upon the nearest male sapiṇḍa. If none such within seven degrees is in existence to
claim the property, it should devolve upon the preceptor. If he also is dead, then it should be
taken over by a disciple of the deceased to be spent for charitable purposes.34 This detailed
scheme of Āpastamba about the devolution of property nowhere mentions or provides for
the widow. The same is the case with Manu. He lays down that the property of a sonless
person will first devolve upon his father, then upon his brother, and finally upon a sapiṇḍa
and a sakulya in accordance to his propinquity. When none of these is forthcoming, first a
preceptor, then a disciple, and finally the king should take it away.35 Elsewhere he recognises
the mother also as an heir;36 the widow is, however, nowhere mentioned as possessing any
rights of inheritance. It is true that Kullūka, a fifteenth century commentator no doubt con-
tends that in Manu smṛiti IX, 185, though not expressly mentioned, the widow is intended
to be understood as an heir after the son;37 he is however obviously reading later ideas in the
earlier text. There can be no doubt that Medhātithi, the ninth century commentator of Manu,
is correct when he maintains that Manu has not recognised the widow as an heir at all.38
At about the beginning of the Christian era, both the Niyoga and the widow remarriage
fell into disrepute as shown in Chapter V (ante, p. 146; p. 153). It was deemed to be more
honourable for a widow to spend her remaining life in penances of religion than in pleasures
of the family life. Leaders of society began to feel that if the widow was not to marry or
get a son by Niyoga, she ought to be assigned a definite share in the family property. Early
Dharmasūtra writers, however, were inclined to assign only a maintenance to the widow.
This is the case with Kauṭilya also, who makes the widow’s maintenance a charge upon the
husband’s estate, when it was resumed by the state.39

34
iq=kkHkkos ;% çR;kl=k% lfi.M%A rnHkkos vkpk;Z%A vkpk;kZ&Hkko~sUrsoklh gRok /eZd`R;s"kq ;kst;sr~ A nqfgrk ok A
II, 14, 2–4.
35
firk gjsniq=kL; fjD;a Hkzkrj ,o p AA
vuUrj% lfi.Mk?kLrL; rL; gjs¼ue~ A
vr% mÛ?oZ ldqY;% L;knkpk;Z% f'k"; ,o ok A
X, 185, 187.
36
vuiR;L; iq=kL; ekrk nk;eokIuq;kr~A
IX, 217.
37
u Hkzkrjks u firj% iq=kk fjDFkgjk% firq%A
firk gjsniq=kL; fjDFka Hkzkrj ,o p AA
While commenting upon this verse Kullūka says:
vfo?kekueq[;iq=kL; iRuhnqfgr`jfgrL; p firk /ua x`g~.kh;kr~A
It will be noticed that there is nothing in the verse to justify the words
iRuhnqfgr`jfgrL;
38
Medhātithi’s commentary on this important verse is lost; we know of his views only from Kullūka’s reference to
them; cf:
vrks ;UesokfrfFkuk iRuhukea'kHkkfxRoa fuf"k¼eqÙkQa rnlac¼Ek~ A&HkkfxRoa c`gLiR;kfnlaere~ A esokfrfFkfuZjkdqoZ=k
çh.kkfr lrka eu% AA
on Manu, IX, 187.
39
vnk;knda jktk gjsRL=kho`fRrçsrdn;ZotZe~ A
III, 5.
162 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

It was, however, being felt that this was not a satisfactory arrangement. Jurists gradually
began to come forward to plead for a better recognition of the widow’s claim. Gautama
puts forth a modest proposal that the widow should be regarded at least as a coheir with
other sapiṇḍas.40 In course of time the opinion in favour of the recognition of the widow’s
right began to grow stronger. Why should she get only a portion of the husband’s estate,
and not the whole of it? It was felt that she ought to be the sole heir and not a co-heir. This
view has been for the first time advocated by Vishnu at about the beginning of the Christian
era. He definitely lays down that the widow shall inherit the whole estate on the failure of
sons.41 About a couple of centuries later Yājñavalkya joined Vishnu in championing the
widows’ right; it is his verses which were mainly relied upon by British courts, when they
recognised the right of inheritance of the widow on the failure of sons.42 It may be pointed
out that the Upanishadic sage Yājñāvalkya had divided all his property between his two
wives, when he had renounced the world. It would therefore appear that the Yājñavalkya
school was since early days more favourably inclined to recognise women’s rights than was
the case with other jurists.
The proposal of Vishṇu and Yājñavalkya to recognise the widow as an heir was a sen-
sational one. It affected the vested interests of male coparceners and therefore immediately
provoked considerable and determined opposition. During the period 400–1000 ad jurists
were divided into two schools, the orthodox one, which was not prepared to recognise the
widow as an heir and the reformist one, which was bent upon agitating for the popularisa-
tion of its new reform.
Nārada, Kātyāyana and king Bhoja of Mālwā (c. 1015 to c. 1055 ad) were the chief
advocates of the orthodox view. Nārada lays down that if a man dies without any issue or
heir, his property should ultimately escheat to the king, who was to provide only a mainte-
nance to the widow.43 It is clear that Nārada did not mind property escheating to the crown;
he would not, however, allow it to be inherited by the widow; Kātyāyana apparently held
an identical view.44 Bhoja would allow the widow to be an heir only if she submitted to

40
fi.Mxks=kf"kZlEcU/k fjDra HktsjUL=kh pkuiR;L; A If we read here L=kh okuiR;L; (instead of L=kh pkuiR;L;) as is done in the Ānandāsrama
edition of the work, the widow will be an alternative heir, and not a coheir.
41
viq=kL; /au iRU;fHkxkfe A rnHkkos nqfg r`xkfe AA
XVII, 43.
In the Pürva-Mīmansā, VII, 6, 14, Jaimini recognises the right of the wife to hold property. He is, however, prob-
ably referring to wives With husbands living, who alone were eligible to perform sacrifices according to him. It does
not seem that Jaimini was inclined to recognise the widow as an heir to her husband. Vishnusmṛiti would therefore
be the first work to recognise this right, as stated in the text above.
42
iRuh nqfgrj'pSo firjkS HkkrjLrFkkA
rRlqrk xks=kTkk caa/qf'k";Lkczgzkpkjf.k% AA
,"kkeHkkos iwoZL; /UkHkkxqRrjksrj% AA
Lo;kZrL; gpiq=kL; loso.ksZ"o;a fof/% AA
II, I35–36.
43
vU;=k czkgk.kkfRdUrq jktk /eZijka;.k% A
rRL=kh.kka thoua n?kkns"k /eZ% lukru% A
XIII, 52.
44
vankf;da jktxke ;ksf"kn~Hk`R;kS?oZnsfgde~ A
vikL; Jksf=k;æO;a Jksf=k;sH;LrniZ;sr~AA
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 163

Niyoga. This virtually amounted to denying her the right of inheritance, for Niyoga had
become very obnoxious since 500 ad, and no woman would have agreed to be a party to it.
And even if she had consented, her ownership would have been a short-lived one; it would
have terminated with the birth of the expected son.
There were several thinkers who recognised this state of affairs as unsatisfactory, but
had not the necessary courage to recommend that the widow should be recognised as a full
heir. They proposed half way measures. Some of them recommended that the wife should
be allowed to inherit property worth about 2,000 or 3,000, in addition to any Strīdhana that
may have been given to her by her husband.45 Others thought that she should be permitted
to inherit the movables only.46 A third view was that the widow may be a deferred heir; she
should be allowed to inherit on the failure of brothers-in-law, if her parents-in-law had no
objection to the property devolving on her.47
The school of reformers, however, was not prepared to accept any such compromises.
It insisted that the widows’s right to inherit the full share should be recognised. It based
its case on logic and reason. Bṛihaspat pointed out that the Vedas, the Smṛitis and sages of
antiquity have unanimously declared that the husband and the wife are the joint owners of
family property and together constitute one legal personality. A man therefore cannot be
said to be completely dead as long as his wife is alive. How then can property pass on to
another in the life time of the widow?48 Vṛiddhamanu points out that the widow can offer

Quoted by Vijn̄ āneśvara on rāj., II, 136.

Kātyāyana and Brihaspati exist only in quotations and we often come across verses attributing contradictory
views to them. Thus Vijn̄ āneśvara at the above place also attributes the following verse to Kātyāyana, which clearly
supports the widow’s right: —
iRuh iR;q/Zugjh ;k L;knO;fHkpkfj.kh A
rnHkkos rq nqfgrk ;?kuw<k HkosRrnk AA
Similarly Devaṇabhaṭṭa ascribes a verse to Bṛihaspati, which concedes only a partial right of inheritance to the
widow. See below p. 255 n. 2. It would appear that these books were not very carefully preserved and interpolations
were often made in them by interested parties to support their own views.
45
fålkgL=k% ijks nk;% fL=k; n;ks /uL; osA
Hk=kkZ ;Pp /ua nRr lk ;FkkdkYkekIuq;kr~ AA
Vyāsa in Aparārka, p. 752.
Silver Pana, roughly equal to a six Anna piece, is the coin referred to in the verse. Its purchasing power at that time
was equal to that of Rs. 2 today. Property worth 2,000 would be thus equal to property worth about Rs. 10,000 today.
Mahābhārata, XIII, 82, 24 puts the limit at 3,000.
46
;fåHkDrs /ua fdafpnk?;kfn fofo/a Le`re~ A
rTtk;k LFkkoja eqDRok YkHksr e`rHkr`Zdk AA
o`RrLFkkfi d`rsI;a'ks Uk L=kh LFkkojegZfr A
Brishaspati in SCV., p. 007.
This text of Bṛihaspati is opposed to a number of other verses attributed to him, and may be of doubtful authority.
47
Lo;kZrL; gkiq=kL; Hkzkr`xkfe äO;e~A rnHkkos firjkS gjs;krke~ T;s"Bsk ok iRuh A
Śaṅkha in Mit. on raj. II, 136.
48
vkEuk;s Le`frrU=ks p iwokZpk;sZ'p lwfjfHk% A
'kjhjk?kZ Le`rk Hkk;kZ iq.;kiq";IkQYks lek AA
;L; uksijrk Hkk;kZ nsgk/Z rL; thofr A
thoR;/Z'kjhjs rq dFkeU;% LoekIuq;kr~AA
164 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

funeral oblations to her husband, and so she should be allowed to inherit his property.49 To
remove any doubt in the matter, Prajāpati lays down that the widow has a natural right to
inherit all her husband’s property, including movables, immovables, bullion, ornaments,
stores, etc. Her right is not in the least affected even if her elderly relations, male or female,
are alive. She will of course show them proper reverence, but hold the property in her own
possession. If any male relation obstructs her peaceful enjoyment of the estate, it is the
bounden duty of the king to punish him as a thief.50
It is perhaps Jīmūtavāhana, who argues the widow’s case in the most masterly fashion.
‘There is no authority to hold that the ownership in the husband’s property, which the wife
acquires at the marriage, terminates with the husband’s death. How then can it be argued
that the wife’s right is destroyed the moment she is widowed? Nor can it be maintained that
she is to utilise just as much of the income as may be necessary for her bare maintenance.
Vishṇu says that the property of a person dying without sons will first devolve upon the
widow, and then upon the daughter, parents, etc. Now it is admitted that in the above text
the term property denotes the whole income of the estate, when construed with all other
heirs like the daughter, the brother, parents, etc. How then can it have a restricted meaning
when it is construed with the widow alone?51
We have seen already how there were early texts, which did not recognise the widow
as an heir and allowed her only a maintenance. The new school cleverly explained them
away as referring to concubines or unchaste wives. The chaste widow, it was argued, could
never be deprived of her inherent right to inherit the entire property of the husband.52 Now
there can be no doubt that this interpretation, though ingenious, is altogether unjustifiable;
earlier writers did undoubtedly intend to exclude from inheritance not only concubines and
unchaste wives, but also chaste widows. Later champions of women’s rights could not follow
the straight forward course of refusing to accept the opinions of their predecessors; they had

Quoted in Dāyabhāga, Section XI,

49
viq=kk 'k;ua HkrqZ% iky;Urh ifrozrk A
iRU;sos n?kkRrfRi.Ma d`RLuea'ka gjsr p AA
Quoted in Mit, on Yaj, II, I35–36.
50
LFkkoja taxea gse dqI;a /kU;jlkacje~ A
vknk; nki;sPNk¼ ekllaoRljkfnde~ AA
fir`O;xq#nkSfg=kkUHkr`Z LoL=kh;ekrqYkku~ A
iwt;sRdO;iwrkZH;ka o`¼ukFkkfrFkksaLrFkk AA
rRlfi.Mk czkgk.kk ok ;s rL;k% ifjiafFku%A
fgaL;q/Zukfu rku~ jktk phjn.Msu 'kkLk;sr~AA
Quoted in Parāśaramādhava, Vol. III, p, 536.
These verses have been attributed to Bṛihaspati in the Dāyabhaga, Section XI.
51
ifj.k;uksRi=ka Hkr`/Z us iRU;k% LokfeRoa HkrqeZ j.kkUu';rhR;=k p çek.kkHkkokr~ lfr iq=ks rnf/dkj'kkL=kknso iRuhLoRouk'kksoxE;rs ।…...। u Pk orZuksi;qDr/uek=kkf/dkjkFkZ
iRuhopufefr okP;Ek~A *viq=kL; /ua iRU;fHkxkfe rnHkkos nqfgr`xkfe rnHkkos fir`xkfe Z*bR;=k ld`PNqrL; /uinL; iRU;is{ked`LuijRoa d`RLuijRoap Hkkz=kk|is{kfefr
rkRi;ZHksnL;k&U;kÕ;Rokr~A
Dāyabhāga, Section XI.
52
;nqDra ^L=kh.kk rq thoua n|kn~ bfr lao/Zuek=kopua rN''kh Ykk?kkfeZdlfodjk;kSouLFkiRuhfo"k;e~ A
Kullūka on Manu, IX, 186.
;nfi ukjn% rRL=kh.kka thoua n|kr~ bfr rno#¼kL=kh ija iRuhinkJo.kr~ A
VMV…. sanraihandadanai
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 165

to devise some means, whereby they could explain away the earlier contrary texts without
showing any disrespect to their writers. Reform in Hindu social customs and institutions has
usually taken this peculiar course owing to the great conservatism of the race.
Let us resume our subject. The new school maintained that the widow’s right of inheri-
tance was an inherent one. The only circumstance that could defeat it was unchastity. When
we note the ideas current on the subject at that time, this condition would not appear to be
an unexpected one. The modern law on this point is very peculiar. It allow an inheritance
to devolve upon a widow, only if she is chaste at the time of its opening. Her subsequent
unchastity, however, does not devest the estate.
In spite of the able advocacy of the cause of the widow by the reform school, it took
several centuries for her right to be recognised throughout India. The Deccan was more
advanced in this respect than northern India. A writer of the sixth century bc observes that
it is customer for the southerners to recognise the proprietary rights of women.53 Among
the champions of widows’ rights the provenance of BṛihasPati, Vyāsa and Prajāpati is not
known, but Yājñāvalkya was a southerner, and his commentator Vijñāneśvara hailed from
the Deccan, as he was the Chief Justice of the Chālukya emperor Vikramādiya VII. That the
widow’s right of inheritance, so enthusiastically advocated in the Mitāksharā, was actually
recognised in contemporary Deccan can be proved from epigraphical evidence. A twelfth
century inscription from Karnataka, while describing the scheme of devolution of property
current in a certain village, mentions the widow as the heir immediately after the son (E. I.,
V, p. 28). An inscription from Tanjore district, belonging to the same century, declares that
a lawfully wedded wife inherits the whole property of the husband,including land, cattle,
slaves, jewels and other valuables (S. I. E. R., for 1919, pp. 79–88).
The causes for this earlier recognition of the widow’s right of inheritance in the Deccan
can only be inferred. As shown before in Chap. VI, Women were taking an active part in
the administration in the Deccan even as governors of districts and towns. It is quite likely
that many of the princesses, who were acting in these capacities, were themselves widows.
If society had no objection to widows being governors and collectors, it could also recon-
cile itself to the recognition of the widow’s right of inheritance as well. The existence of
matriarchy in some communities may also have helped to liberalise the views of the Deccan
society in this respect.
The widow’s right of inheritance came into recognition in northern India somewhat later.
In the days of Kālidāsa (c. 400 ad), if a person died without leaving a son, his property used
to escheat to the king, who had to provide merely a maintenance to the widow. This is quite
clear from the Śākuntala episode of the merchant dying in the shipwreck, whose property was
proposed to be immediately resumed by the zealous ministers of king Dushyanta. In Gujarat
the widow’s right of inheritance was not recognised down to c. 1200 ad King Kumārapāla
of that province (1144–73) admits frankly that his subjects were justified in their impression
that their king always desired his rich subjects to die issueless, so that he may resume their

53
xrkZjksfg.kho /uykHkk; nf{k.kkthA Nirukta III, 5.
166 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

property.54 A poet of his court tells us that it was this king who showed a magnanimity of
mind, shown not even by kings born in the golden age like Raghu and Nahusha, and vol-
untarily forswore his right to the property of the ‘weeping widow.55 It would be thus seen
that this reform met with considerable opposition from the governments of the day, because
it adversely affected their revenues. As a partial compensation, some of them introduced
a death duty on the property of persons dying without sons (Graham, Kolhapoor, p. 333).
Most of the digest writers, who wrote subsequent to c. 1200 ad, have recognised the
widow’s right of inheritance. We may therefore conclude that by c. 1300 ad, the right had
come to be sanctioned throughout the whole country.
The Mitāksharā school recognised the widow’s right of inheritance, only if her husband
had separated from the joint family before his death.56 An examination of the context of the
verse in which Yājñavalkya mentions widow as the next heir, makes it clear that he intended
to recognise her right, only if her husband was not a member of the joint family at the time
of his death. This conclusion becomes further irresistible from v. 138, where Yājñavalkya
lays down that when members of a family have reunited after separation, the surviving male
coparceners will succeed the deceased, and not his wife.57 Vijñānesvara. is therefore correct
in holding that according to Yājñavalkya only the widow of a separated coparcener can
become an heir to her husband. Of course he could have liberalised the law still further by
drawing further deductions from the text of Bṛihaspati, which declares that none can touch
the property of a person as long as his wife is alive. He could have argued that whether the
deceased was a member of the joint family or not, was an immaterial question. As long as
the wife was alive, the husband ought to be too regarded as living; the inheritance will not
open at all till the death of the wife. She must be therefore allowed to enjoy the property
of her husband irrespective of the consideration, whether he had separated from the family
or not before his death.
Vijñāneśvara, however, was not prepared to take this step. He had included inherited
property under Strīdhana, and he was probably reluctant to sanction a scheme of succes-
sion, where under extensive property would have automatically and very frequently passed
out of the family to female Strīdhana heirs. He probably felt that if a coparcener effected a
separation from the joint family, its members should have no grievance if his separated share
passed as Strīdhana to his daughter. If, however, no separation had been effected, and the
share of an undivided coparcener were still allowed to devolve on his wife, it would have
passed out of the family with an alarming frequency, since unlike the Dāyabhāga school, the
Mitāksharā school had declared this share as the Strīdhana of the wife. Most of the medieval
jurists agree with the Mitāksharā and recognise the widow’s right of inheritance only when
her husband was not a member of the joint family at the time of his death.

54
fu"iq=ka fez;ek.kek<~;enuhikyks ggk ok=NfrA
Mohaparājya, Act III.
55
u eqDra ;RiwoZa j?kqugq"kukHkkxHkjrizHk`R;qohZukFkS% d`r;qxd`rksRifRrfHkjfrA foeqU=;lUrks"kkRrfng :nfrfoRre"kquk dekjDekiky Roefl egrka eLrd&ef.k%AA
Kumārapālapratibodha, p. 43.
56
rLekniq=kL; Lo;kZrL; foHkDrL; vlal`f"Vuks /ua ifj.khrk L=kh la;rk ldyeso x`g.kkfr bfr fLFkre~A On Yaj., II, 136.  On raj., II, 136.
57
lalqf"VuLrq ll`"Vks lksnjL; rq lksnj%AA
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 167

To Jīmūtavāhana, the founder of the Dāyabhāga school, belongs the credit of liberalis-
ing the law still further in favour of the widow. We have seen above (ante, p. 225) that he
would not include inherited property under Strīdhana. This was so, because he wanted to
disarm society’s opposition to his revolutionary proposal to make the widow an heir to her
husband, even when the latter was a member of the joint family at the time of his death. While
anxious that every widow should inherit her husband’s share in the joint family property,
he wanted to prevent it from going outside the family to Strīdhana heirs; He therefore did
not include it under her Strīdhana.
The Dāyabhāga law undoubtedly marks a further step in the expansion of the widow’s
rights. It lays down that the widow can get her husband’s share in the family property, even
if he happened to be a member of the joint family at the time of his death. Jīmūtavāhana
relies upon a text of Bṛihaspati, which is silent about separation and declares that the prop-
erty of a person can devolve upon his brother, only when he dies without leaving a son
or a widow behind.58 He further points out that even when brothers are living as members
of a joint family, according to his conception of this institution, each one has got his own
share clearly determined, though not specifically separated by metes and bounds; it is then
but fair that it should be earmarked for his wife.59 There is further nothing to prove that the
wife’s co-ownership in the husband’s property, that arises at the marriage, automatically
terminates at his death, if it happens while the family is still joint.60 It is therefore but fair
that she should be allowed to inherit her husband’s share irrespective of the consideration
as to whether he had separated from the joint family or not.
If the texts, on which Jīmūtavāhana had relied, had been utilised to their fullest capacity,
they would have easily enabled him to declare that the estate which the widow inherits is an
absolute and not a limited one. The widow is the living half of the husband, savs Bṛihaspati;
and therefore no one can get the right to inherit the deceased’s property as long as she is
alive. Now Jīmūtavāhana could have easily argued that the powers of the surviving half
(the widow) cannot be less than those of the expired half (the husband), and so the widow’s
estate would be as absolute as that of her husband, she having the power of sale, mortgage
or gift. He however did not take this step, but maintained that the widow had only a life
estate in her inheritance. She could utilise its full income in any way she liked, but she could
not touch its corpus.
To understand Jīmūtavāhana reluctance to grant to the widow a full estate in inheri-
tance, we shall have to discuss the history of the question. The early jurists like Vishṇu and
Yājñāvalkya, who have recognised the widow as an heir, have nowhere used any expres-
sions to show that they regarded her as a limited heir. It is therefore possible to argue that
they intended to invest her with the same full powers which they granted to other heirs like

58
;nk df'pRizeh;sr izots}k dFkapu A
u yqI;rs rL; Hkkx% lksnjL; fo/h;rsA
vuiR;L; /ehZ¿;eHkk;kZfir`dL; pA
Quoted in Section XI.
59
u fg lal`"Vros¿fi ;nsoSdL; rnsokijL;kfi fdUrq vfoKkrSdns'ka rn~};ks% u rq leizesoA
Dāyabhāga, XI
60
See ante, p. 237 n. 1
168 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

the son, the father or the brother whom they, have mentioned along with her. In the long
discussion of the subject in the Mitāksharā, Vijñāneśvara also nowhere states or hints that
the widow was a limited heir, having no right to dispose of the corpus of the property. In the
concluding sentence of his discussion he states, ‘Therefore the chaste and regularly married
wife of a person, who has died without leaving behind any sons, and who had separated from
the joint family and not reunited with it, inherits his entire property.61 He has introduced
here several qualifying adjectives, very carefully chosen; but among them there is none to
suggest that he regarded the widow’s estate as a limited one.
A number of other jurists, however, declare definitely that the widow is a limited heir.
An authority quoted by the Mahābhārata states that the widow can only utilise the income
of the property she has inherited; she can under no circumstances dispose of it.62 Kātyāyana
states that the inheritance will revert to reversioners after the death of the widow, she having
no power to dispose of it.63 Bṛihaspati, we have seen, was a fervent champion of the widow’s
rights, but even he expressly declare that her powers over her inheritance are limited; she
cannot sell, mortgage or gift it away. He, however, permits a gift for religious purposes,
which presumably was to be of a small portion only.64 Nārada declines to concede full powers
to the wife even over her Strīdhana, if it comprised of any immovable property. The wise
have declared, says this sage, that transaction of landed property like sale, mortgage or gift,
if made by women, are, automatically invalid.65
To conclude, we find that even some of the warmest champions of the widow’s right
of inheritance like Bṛihaspati definitely declare her to be a limited heir, while others like
Yājñavalkya and Vishṇu are merely silent on the point. No one specifically invests her
with the power to dispose of the immovable property in her inheritance, gifts for religious
purposes being the only exception. It is therefore clear that down to the twelfth century, the
widow was intended to be given only a limited power over her inheritance. Society was,
as shown already, very reluctant to recognise the widow as even a limited heir; it would
have summarily rejected the case of her champions, if they had suggested that she should
be invested with absolute powers over her inheritance.
Late medieval period, c. 1200–1800 ad, was the most conservative one in the history of
Hindu customs and institutions. It, however, can claim the credit of attempting to extend
the widow’s powers over her estate in one direction. We have seen above how down to

61
rLekniq=kL; Lo;kZrL; foHkDrL;klal`f"Vuks /ua ifj.khrk L=kh ldyeso x`g~.kkfrA On Yāj., II, 136.
62
L=kh.kka Loifrnk;kn miHkksxiQy% le`r%A
ukigkja fL=k;% dq;qZ% ifrforkRdFkapuAA XIIII, 82, 25.
63
viq=kk 'k;ua HkrqZ% iky;Urh ifrozrkA
yHksrkej.kkR{kkUrk nk;knk Å/kZoZekIuq;q%AA Quoted in SCV., p. 677.
64
e`rs HkrZfj Hk=kZ'ka yHksr dqyikfydkA
;koTthoa ghuLokE;a nkuk/eufodz;sAA ozrksioklfujrk czãp;sZ O;ofLFkrkA
/keZnkujrk fuR;eiq=kfi fn;a oztsRAA
Quoted at Ibid.
65
Hk=kkZ çhrsu ;íra fj=kiZ rkZLeEewrsaMfi rr~ A
lk ;ekdkeecuh;kR|k}k LFkk[;ko`rs AA
LohÑrkU;çek.kkfu dk;kZO;kgqeZuhf"k.kZ% A
fo'ks"kr;k uanqg{ks=knkuk/HkufcØçk% AA
I] 26&27-
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 169

c. 1200 ad, jurists were unwilling to concede to the widow the right to alienate her estate.
Writers of legal digests after that date are seen to encourage the tendency to recognise this
right under certain circumstances. There was a text of Bṛihaspati which, as pointed out
already, permitted the widow to gift away a portion of her property for religious and spiri-
tual purposes.66 Medieval writers like Devaṇabhaṭṭa and Nīlakaṇṭha particularly emphasise
on this right. The former states that when sale or mortgage of the immovable property was
prohibited to the widow, what was meant was that she should not gift it away in one form
or another to persons of questionable character like singers, dancers and actors67. The latter
maintains that women have inherent powers to make gifts for spiritual purposes68. Neither
Devaṇabhaṭṭanor Nīlakaṇṭha however states whether the consent of the next reversioners
was necessary for validating such a transaction. The language which they have used would
suggest that if the gift was a bonafide one for religious purposes, the widow could give it
herself without the consent of the reversioners. The actual practice seems to have varied
considerably. We haveno recorded cases for northern India, but south. Indian inscriptions
of the medieval period show that the silence of the authorities was interpreted differently
by different persons and localities.
There was one view that the express permission of the reversioners was an essential pre-
requisite for such a transaction. It would be therefore better if the gift was formally made
jointly by the widow and the reversioners. Some inscriptions from South India show that this
opinion was acted upon in practice on several occasions. Thus a tenth century epigraph from
Mysore records a gift of land given by a widow and her brother-in-law (E. C., IX, Holkere
No. 33). The brother-in-law is obviously introduced here to show that the transaction had
the full consent of the next reversioner. The widow alone could not have sold the property.
A twelfth century inscription from the same state records the donation given by a widow to
a temple along with her brother-in-law and Śrīvaishṇavas. Here it is clear that the consent
of not only the next reversioner but of the whole caste was deemed necessary to validate
the transaction (Ibid., X, No. 100 A). A thirteenth century inscription from Madura district
narrates how two childless widows wanted to give a garden to a temple, how their relations
would not sanction the transaction, and how eventually they could achieve their object
only by securing the permission of some other reversioners (S. I. E. R., 1916, No. 401). It
is quite clear from the above cases that the widow’s estate was regarded as a limited one.
The permission of the next reversioner, if not of the whole caste, was necessary to enable
her to gift it even for a religious purpose.
There are, however, other records equally numerous and hailing from the same part of the
country, which record sales or gifts of landed property by widows made for religious purposes,
but which are silent about any permission of the reversioners. A twelfth century inscription

66
See ante, p. 263 n. 3.
67
e`rs HkrZjhRFk'kn`"Vckuçfrjks;% A vn`"VkFkZn'okufoFkkukÙkfnrjn`
baVkFkZurZdkchuka nkuknkS vLokrU;çfrikoukFkZfHkfr eUrO;e` A ,oa p /enku
LokraR;el;so A viq=kk 'kÝrekfndkR;k;uksÙkQefoHknrn'kkfo"k, A
S. C. V. pp. 667–7
68
vn`"VkFkZnkukcfy;k/eukfn HkoR;so A
Vvavahāramayūkha p. 86.
170 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

from Trichiniopoly district records the gift of a piece of land by a Brahmana widow made
in favour of a temple; a thirteenth century inscription from Kolar district refers to a sale by
a widow of her own share in her landed property69; a fifteenth century record mentions a
Brahmana widow building a temple and giving to it a gift of land for the spiritual benefit of
herself and her husband; a seventeenth century inscription describes how a Brahamana lady
gifted away a whole village to a temple. In none of these records it is anywhere mentioned or
suggested that any of the widows had obtained the consent or permission of any reversioner
for disposing her landed property. Had any such permission been received, it would have
been surely mentioned, as was done by the persons who drew up the documents referred to
in the last para. It is to be noted that these epigraphs were lithic deeds of title, intended to last
for centuries; it is natural to presume that they would have carefully mentioned all relevant
circumstances that would have been necessary to prove that the transactions recorded were
valid ones, and the donees had acquired full and unquestioned titles.
The epigraphic evidence then shows that the custom differed with different castes
and different localities in south India. Some sections of society felt that the permission
of the reversioners was necessary to validate even a religious gift; others thought that it
might be dispensed with. When we note that our jurists all belonged to the priestly class,
it need not be wondered that their general tendency should have been to give the widow
an unrestricted power in the matter.
While pleading for an unrestricted power to the widow to make gifts for religious
purposes, Mitramiśra, a seventeenth century jurist of Uttara Pradesh, uses some expres-
sions, suggesting that he was half inclined to sanction bonafide sales or gifts made even
for non-religious purposes. ‘To those who contend’ says he, that women have no right to
sell or gift away their husband’s inheritance, we ask; do you mean to maintain that even
if the gift or sale in question has already become an accomplished fact, it could become
invalid merely because it was made by a woman? This is unfair…70 Texts prohibiting sales
etc. refer to the disposal of landed property made to vicious persons with the malicious
purpose of defeating the rights of coparceners. They do not invalidate gifts etc. properly
made. ‘Ownership gives the right of disposal as much over the immovables as over the
movables, and an accomplished transaction cannot be unsettled even by a hundred sacred
texts’. This principle would have undoubtedly invested the widow with full rights of dis-
posal even over immovable property. But Mitramiśra not only does not draw its natural
corollary, but proceeds immediately to circumscribe its application. For he concludes his
discussion with the observation, ‘It therefore follows that a widow can dispose of her

69
I. M. P. III, p. 1544; E. C., X, Kolar No. 103; I. M. P., I. p. 56; E. C., XI, Holkere No. 80.
70
lai`•eS; ;uuk;ZeXnX; ukLrjsao fLr;k HkísfjM+FkZ okufoØ;Cc&
vf/dkj bR;kgq% A roSna oæT;u~ A fda rL; r;k ÑrSMfi nLuknkS rrp:iÑ&
n~xu"ifÙkjsaczk eU;kf'puS% ldRHkr`f/uxzg.kZ rL;k mozrZ lfr rL;k vLo&
ra=kLoR;s okaukfnLo[;kfu";ÙkZokZ'ohiSrR;kr~------A cku1fVçfr"kZ/opukfu
nqeq¡ra iq#oa çfr dqVqEcnq'ockukFkZeZùo nLofØ;kfnçi`fÙknZus"kZ/dkn~xu u
ckukfnLo[;kfu"ifnÙkQçfyikniQxaus A ------';;Z"VfofulksCoæig¡Roy{k.kLoRoL;
æU;kUrj bo fV;sajÅn`;n~xo#jsa"kkn`ozu'krZun~Hkn~xi- oLrqukSU;Fkkdj.kCo##DV;Do rVkfr&
ikoukuqi;fjfr fu#firu~ %
VMS., p.628–9
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 171

immovable property either for making a religious gift or for maintaining herself or for
other proved necessities:71 he does not add “or for any other purpose she may like”’. In
spite of his liberal principles Mitramiśra was thus prepared to invest the widow just with
those powers, which have been recognised in modern courts. It is clear that society was
not yet prepared to grant the widow an unrestricted power over her immovable inheritance.
Should we now change the law and invest the widow with full powers over the ­immovable
property inherited by her? This is a question on which opinion is divided at present.
Dr. Deshmukh’s bill, introduced in 1936 in the Imperial Assembly sought to invest the widow
with this power, but the effort failed. The educated woman naturally feels it an insult that
she should not have a power over her inheritance, which is conceded to the most illiterate
and inexperienced villager. We must, however, note that even at present the widow can sell
or mortgage her property for genuine necessities. The disability is that her powers in this
connection are not unrestricted. This is of course a disability from one point of view, but
also a protection from another. In the Punjab and Palestine, for instance, male peasants had
unrestricted powers of alienation; the result was that many of them sold away their valuable
lands and eventually became paupers, as they could not properly utilise or invest the sale
proceeds. Eventually the governments of these provinces had to restrict these powers in
the interests of the peasants. themselves. We should not forget that 95 per cent widows are
still uneducated, inexperienced and altogether innocent of the provisions of law. If they are
given the right to dispose of the landed property, many of them will be induced by interested
parties to enter into unwise transactions. The money realised from sale will not last long,
and the majority of widows disposing of their property will eventually find that they have
lost both the lands and their sale proceeds. Their condition will then become very pitiable.
In the present circumstances, therefore, it is not in the interests of the widows as a class that
they should have unrestricted power of alienation. A beginning, however, should be made
by giving it to those widows, who possess certain minimum educational qualifications. This
of course will often adversely affect the prospective rights of reversioners, but they have
been already annihilated by the ruling of the Privy Council, which has given the widow
in many parts of the country an unrestricted power of adoption. If coparceners cultivate
friendly and cordial relations with the widow, there is no reason why she should wantonly
defeat their expectations. She would then take as much interest in her husband’s family as
her coparceners, and would not normally stand in the way of its continued prosperity after
her death by selling or willing away her share.
Till 1937 it was only in Bengal where the Dāyabhāga law prevailed, that the widow
could inherit her husband’s property, even if he had died as a member of the joint family.
Outside Bengal, she was recognised as an heir, only if her husband had effected a separa-
tion from the joint family before his death. This was the law as it was laid down in the
Mitāksharā and enforced in modern courts. The latter, however, were anxious to help the
widow as much as they could, and sought to facilitate matters in her favour by decreeing
that a person should be regarded as being separated from the joint family, not only when

71
rLek<+n`"Vk;sa nkus n`"Vn"Vkok;dk;kZoZekrh foØiS pk#R;so ic%
ldyHkr` /ufo"k;sa'oZ;f/'kkj% A fu;eLrq uehrZdkfockukukok;dkf/fofØ;&
fuo`ÙoFkZfefr flène` A
VMS.] p. 630
172 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

he had actually severed his connection, but also when he had merely communicated his
intention of doing so to his other coparceners. This used to enable many persons, who did
not share the traditional regard for the sanctity of the joint family, to secure the devolution
of their shares upon their wives. Those wives, however, who did not advise their husbands
to take this rather unpleasant step, got as a reward for their regard for the joint family, the
misfortune of losing their right of inheritance to their husbands. This was un doubtedly
an undesirable and anomalous state of affairs. The Hindu Women’s Right to Property Act
of 1937 extends the Dāyabhāga principle to the whole of British India, and invests the
widow with the right to inherit her husband’s share in the family property, irrespective of
the consideration as to whether he had effected a separation from the joint family or not.
This is a step in the right direction and widows all over the country now possess this right.

SECTION III: OTHER FEMALE HEIRS

We have considered so far the right of inheritance of the daughter, the wife and the widow.
The cases of remaining female heirs need not be considered in detail in the present work.
Only some words will be necessary about a few of them.
The right of the mother to inherit the property of her son was recognised fairly early. Manu,
who does not recognise the widow as an heir, concedes to the mother the right to inherit the
property of a son dying without any issues (IX, 217). All the jurists concur with Manu in this
matter. Some of them do not even allow sons to partition family property as long as the mother
is alive. In practice the widowed mother was regarded as the sole controller of the estate, though
the sons were its legal heirs and owners. Hindu culture held the mother in very high reverence;
so her right of inheritance came to be recognised much earlier than that of the wife or the widow.
In every day life, however, occasions were very few when property passed to a mother as the
next heir of an issueless son. The recognition of this right did not therefore give rise to many
exceptions to the general view of early times that women should not be recognised as heirs.
The grandmother’s claim to inherit her grandsons’ property was also recognised very early for
reasons similar to those which operated in favour of the mother. In actual practice, however,
not even one grandmother in a million could have got an opportunity of being benefited by this
concession. For she was a fairly distant heir and came only after the parents and brothers of
the deceased. The recognition of the widow, on the other hand, as the next heir to an issueless
husband was a revolutionary step, as it was sure to give rise to a large number of female heirs
in actual practice. A long time therefore had to elapse before it could be taken.
We have seen above that the Deccan was the pioneer in recognising women’s rights
of inheritance. She continues her lead even today, for the Bombay school recognises a
larger number of female heirs than any other school of Hindu Law. It is the only school
which gives the right of inheritance to the widows of the agnates (Gotraja Sapiṇḍas). It is
interesting to note that even the Mitāksharā does not support their claim to inheritance.72 In
Bombay Presidency, however, the right of the widows of agnates was recognised, mainly
because local enquiry showed that it was actually conceded in practice. The courts were

72
The Mitāksharā does not at all mention the paternal uncle’s wife or her daughter-in-law as an heir. Neither
Devaṇabhaṭṭa nor Mitramiśra recognises Gotraja Sapinda widows as heirs. SCV., p. 694; VMV., p. 671.
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 173

also influenced to some extent by a wrong translation of a passage in Manusmṛiti by Sir

William Jones. He had translated the line in question as ‘To the nearest Sapinda, male or
female, the inheritance next belongs’. The italicised words are not in the original text at all;73
Sir William Jones had added them on the authority of Kullūka, who has explained the term
Sapiṇḍa as pumān strīvā’,74 ‘either male or female’. It will be seen from this incidence how
adventitious circumstances connected with early translations have in some cases consider-
ably affected the development of Hindu Law in modern times.
The sister has been placed much higher in the line of succession in the Bombay school
than anywhere else. She comes immediately after the grandmother, mainly on account of
an ingenious argument advanced in the Mayūkha.75 It is clear that Nīlakaṇṭha is here trying
to justify a known usage with the help of some spacious arguments.
Among the heirs of the descending order, Hindu jurists have been the hardest on the wid-
owed daughter-in-law. Only one among them, Nanda Pṇḍdita (c. 1575 ad), recognises her as
an heir.76 The rest found it difficult to grant her any relief. The reasons are easy to understand.
The Mitāksharā recognised the widow as an heir only when her husband had already separated
from the joint family. It was regarded as highly indecorous for a son to separate from his father
or grandfather; so there were hardly any widowed daughters-in-law in society who could claim
a share under the Mitāksharā scheme of succession. Under the Dayābhāga law, the separation
of her husband from the family was no doubt not necessary for a widow to get a share; there
was, however, another fatal difficulty in the way of the widow of the predeceased son. Under
the Dayābhāga scheme, the son could get no right in the family property till after the death of
the father; the widowed daughter-in-law could claim no share in the family property, because
her husband himself was entitled to none at the time of his death. Thus both the Mitāksharā
and the Dayābhāga schools could extend no relief to the widow of a predeceased son. The
British courts followed faithfully the medieval authorities on this point, and were therefore
unable to liberalise the law in her favour. The situation has changed in 1937 with the passing
of Hindu Women’s Right to Property Act; now the widow of a predeceased son can get a life
estate in the share to which her husband would have been entitled.
It is not necessary to consider the rights of inheritance of any more female heirs for the pur-
pose of our present work. We therefore now pass on to consider women’s rights at partition.

SECTION IV: PARTITION

The theory of joint ownership should have invested the wife with the right to demand a
partition against her husband in case it became impossible for her to live with him. No such
right was however recognised. Yājñavalkya lays down that a wife should get a third share

73
Cf: vuUrja lfi.Mk|LrL; rL; gj}ue~A IX, 187.
74
7 Indian Appeals. pp. 212–39.
75
rL;k vfi HkkrxkÂsmRiÂRosu xksÂTkROkkfo'k"kkPoA
76
'oJwej.ks 'oJwLuq"k;ks% LoRolkE;su 'oJwej.ks Luq"kk;k ,o #lk/kj.klkE;kRkA
Nanda Paṇḍita bases his case for the widowed daughter-in-law on Bṛihaspati’s dictum,
thoR;/Z'kjhjs rq dFkEkU;% LoekIuq;kr~A
Kane. History of Dharmaśāstra Literature, I, p. 212.
174 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

in her husband’s property, if she is unjustly superseded.77 He is, however, the only jurist to
recognise such a right, and it is quite possible that in actual practice, husbands may have
managed to escape this liability under the plea that the wives superseded were disobedient
ones. It may be, however, pointed out that to demand a partition was regarded as a very
unbecoming procedure; even a grown up son could not ask for it, if his father were living
jointly with his grandfather or other elderly collaterals. The wife thus suffered from the same
disabilities as against her husband, as the son suffered as against the father. It is however high
time to invest the wife with an incontestible right to demand her full share in the property,
if she is compelled to live separately owing to her husband’s misdemeanour. In such cases,
she ought to get a share equal to that of a son.
Let us now consider normal cases of partition and women’s rights on such occasions.
The Vedic literature occasionally refers to a partition made by the father during his life
time;78 there is, however, nothing to indicate whether the wife used to receive a share on
such occasions. Very probably, in spite of the general prejudice against allowing a share to
women in inheritance, the father must have assigned an adequate share to his wife, if she
were living at the time. In actual practice, the assigning of a share to the wife must have
merely amounted to the patriarch reserving two shares for himself as against one assigned
to each son. The wife probably got no independent control over it.
While describing partition, many of the Dharmaśāstra writers expressly include the
mother, the wife and the daughter among the parties entitled to a moity. Among these the
case of the daughter has been already considered (ante, pp. 239 ff.). As far as the wife is
concerned, both Yājñavalkya and Kātyāyana allow her a share. If the partition had taken
place during the husband’s life time, very probably the wife must be allowing her husband
to be in possession of her share; it must have therefore merely increased her husband’s
moity. It is interesting to note that Nārada allows two shares to the husband at partition79;
the second one was probably intended for his wife.
Yājñavalkya allows the widowed mother a share equal to that of her son.80 Śukra allows
her only a one fourth share (IV, 5, 297), but his view is not shared by the vast majority of
jurists, who insist that the mother should receive one full share. Some writers attempted to
curtail the full share allowed to the mother by suggesting that the expression ‘equal share’
is not to be interpreted literally; it is really intended to mean just as much money as may
be necessary for her maintenance. The Mitāksharā, however, rightly points out the utter
unreasonableness of this interpretation and maintains that the widowed mother must get a
full share81. Most of the jurists have accepted this view, as also the modern law courts. The

77
vkKkLkaikfnuha n{kka Okhjlw fç;okfnuhe~A
R;tUnkI;fL=krh;ka'keäO;kS Hkj.ka fL=k;%AA I, 76.
78
fiRkquZ ftOkzsfOk Oksnks HkjURkA
R. V., I, 70, 5; see also T. S., III, 1,9,4–5.
79
}kca'kkS izfRki|sRk fOkHktÂkREku% fiRkkA XIII, 12.
80
;fn dqÕkkZRlekua'kkUiY;% dk;kZ% Lkekaf'kdk%A
u nRRka LÂh/ua ;klka HkÂkZ Okk 'Ok'kqjs.k OkkAA I, 115.
firq:?oZa foHktrka ekrkI;a'ka lea gjsr~A II, 123
81
vFk ^iRU;% dk;kZ% lekaf'kdk*bR;=k ^ekrkI;a'ka lea gjsr~* bR;=k p thouksi;qDreso /ua L=kh gjrhfr era rnlr~A va'k'kCnL; le'kCnL;p vkuFkZD;izlaxkr~A
On Yāj., II, 136.
 Chapter 12  Proprietary Rights 175

latter, however, had given the ruling that the widow could get this share only if her sons
sued for a partition; she could not herself bring the suit. This was clearly against the Spirit
of the Hindu law. Manu and Kauṭilya do not even permit brothers to effect a partition during
the mother’s lifetime;82 they would have been shocked to be told that the mother could get
her share only if her sons chose to effect a partition. The law therefore needed a change in
the direction of allowing the mother to sue for her share, in case she could not pull on well
with her sons. This desideratum was achieved by the Hindu Women’s Right to Property
Act passed in 1937 by the Indian Legislature.
We have now finished the history of the proprietary rights of women. It has no doubt
detained us rather long, but it has made many interesting disclosures. We found that it did
not take long for Hindu society to set aside primitive theories about women being mere
chattel. It recognised their right to Strīdhana fairly early and went on expanding its scope;
till eventually by the twelfth century ad, all varieties of property were included in it all
over India, except in Bengal. In normal times the husband was not allowed to touch this
property of his wife. The only development necessary in modern times in this connection is
the recognition of the right of the wife to a small percentage in the husband’s income as her
bhaṛtridatta strīdhana, in recognition of the joint ownership of the family property and her
valuable service in the household management. This would remove the difficulties of the
modern sensitive wife, who does not like that for every little expenditure which she may have
to incur, she should have to secure expressly or impliedly the permission of her husband.
The position of the wife vis-à-vis the husband was not satisfactory. She could not enforce
a partition against him, if he persistently misbehaves or embarked upon a second marriage.
Yājñavalkya, no doubt, allowed the wife a one third share in the family property, if she
was unjustly superseded. He was, however, in a hopeless minority. We must, however,
now follow his lead and allow the wife to claim a share at least equal to that of a son, if
she is forced to live separately for no fault of her own. This would remove the proprietary
disabilities from which such wives suffer at present on account of their having no share in
the patrimony. We must further render it impossible for the husband to mortgage or sell his
wife’s share in the family property without her express consent.
Hindu jurists held marriage to be indispensable for the daughter, and therefore felt that
they should merely provide for it. They went to the extent of laying down that a brother
should provide for his sister’s marriage even if there were no ancestral assets for the purpose.
They were, however, opposed to give her a right of inheritance in the patrimony along with
her brothers. The religious theory was that the marriage completely transfers the bride to the
new family, and the jurists therefore felt that she should be provided for from its assets. We
have shown above (ante, pp. 245–48) how on the whole this is a reasonable and satisfactory
arrangement. There are many difficulties to encounter and few benefits to accrue from giving
a daughter the right of inheritance along with her brothers. The present law gives rise to
certain anomalies in some abnormal cases, but the correct remedy is to enlarge the wife’s
rights as against the husband on the lines indicated above. Of course, as far as daughters

See also V. D. S., XVIII, 34, Kātyāyana-matasaṁgraha, v, 693.

82
Manu, IX, 104; Arthāsāstra, III, 5.
176 ANANT SADASHIV ALTEKAR

who remain unmarried are concerned, they should be given a share in patrimony equal to
half that of their brothers. The Hindu Code Bill is however seeking now (Feb. 1956) to give
them a full share, and a section of the Hindu community is in favour of this innovation.
The brotherless daughter has been regarded as an heir since very early times. In Bombay
presidency she takes the property as an absolute heir. This law should now be extended to
the whole of the country.
For a long time the widow was not recognised as an heir, dian for whom she could hold
her husband’s share in the family property. When the custom of Niyoga disappeared and
the childless widow came on the scene, Hindu society soon became alive to the necessity
of recognising her as an heir. The fervour and zeal with which the battle of her right of
inheritance was fought, are creditable for Hindu culture. The widow was no doubt regarded
as a limited heir. She could, however, utilise the full income of the property, howsoever
large it may be; only she could not alienate it without sufficient cause. When we consider
how the vast majority of Hindu widows were illiterate at this time, the limitation must be
pronounced to have been more a protection than a disability. The time has not yet come
when we can effect a wholesale change in the law on the point. A beginning should, how-
ever, be made by allowing women the right of alienation, if they possess certain minimum
educational qualifications.
The Bengal school was most liberal to the widow; it allowed her to become an heir, even
if her husband had not separated from the joint family. This principle has been extended to
the whole country since 1937; so a legitimate grievance, from which the widows under the
Mitāksharā law were suffering, has been now removed.
It will be thus seen from the above survey that the proprietary rights of women have been
developing fairly satisfactorily. As circumstances changed, they were being enlarged by
Hindu jurists without any agitation whatever on the part of women. Society was actuated by
a genuine desire to improve their economic lot, and did not hesitate to adopt measures that
considerably curtailed the time-honoured rights of male coparceners. The courage that was
shown in investing the widow with the right of inheritance, even when her elderly relations
like brothers-in-law were alive, was really of a high order, when we consider the prevail-
ing patriarchal atmosphere in society. The progress made cannot be of course regarded as
adequate by the modern woman, but we must recognise that each age has its own limitations
and cannot easily rise above them. Modern Hindu society has been showing a keen desire
to enlarge the proprietary rights of women; the legislatures in India both Provincial and
Central, began to champion measures to liberalise the law since 1936. The States of Baroda
and Mysore led the way in the matter under the inspiration of their enlightened rulers. And
now (February 1956) we have a measure before the Indian Parliament, sponsored by the
Government, which seeks to give the married daughter a share in patrimony equal to that
of the brother. What will be the fate of this measure cannot be anticipated; but it seems to
be reasonably certain that at least the unmarried daughter will get a share in the patrimony
equal to half that of her brother.
 Chapter 13 The Legal Status of
Women: Their Right of
Inheritance*

M. A. INDRA

In the following two chapters we propose, very briefly indeed, to discuss the legal position
occupied by women in ancient India. It appears that at an early stage of social evolution
women were treated as chattels. They had no rights of their own. They were generally thought
to be inherently incapable of holding any property. The Hindu women lived as slaves in
their husband’s household. In later times they could be bought and sold1 and conceivably
let out for enjoyment.2 The position of women is summed up in the two texts, one from
Baudhayana and another from Katyayana, which are cited by all later commentators as the
last word on woman’s capacity and her legal rights. The first authority lays down that ‘the
Veda declares therefore, that women are devoid of the senses and incompetent to inherit’.3
Katyayana observes, ‘Let the childless widow preserving unsullied the bed of her lord and
abiding with her venerable protector, enjoy with moderation the property until her death.
After her death, let the heirs take it. But she has no property therein to the extent of gift or
sale’.4 Narada, another lawgiver pronounces almost the same verdict.
Says he, ‘women’s business transactions are null and void, except in case of distress.
Women are not entitled to make gift or sale. A woman can take only a life-interest whilst
she is living together with the rest of the family’.5

* Previously published in M.A. Indra’s The Status of Women in Ancient India: A Vivid and Graphic Survey of Women’s
Position, Social, Religious, Political, and Legal, in India. Motilal Banarasidass Publishers (1955).
1
Narada, XII—19.
2
Vishnu, VI—5.
3
Baudhyana, II—2—3—46. Also Taittariya Samhita VI—5—82. Tasmat Sriya Nirindriya adayadah.
4
Katyayana cited in Dayabhaga, X—1—56.
5
Yaska, III—I. In this connection Yaska the most ancient and authoritative exegetist on the Vedas, recorded views
of different schools of thought who agree on the point that woman is incompetent to inherit and it is for the same
reason that she is gifted away by her father, whereas a son is not. But brotherless women appear to be fully entitled
to the right of succession.

177
178 M. A. INDRA

The recognition of woman’s right of inheritance is comparatively of recent origin. In the

old ages it is manifest, women had no such right. The Rig Veda in a clear passage denies that
the widow has any right to succeed to her husband. It gives, however, a widow the right to
inherit as the daughter of her parents.6 But in this case, the daughter was generally made to
beget a son by Niyoga.7 The later lawgivers such as Gautama,8 Vasishtha,9 Baudhayana10 and
Manu,11 all give her the option of Niyoga and recognise the daughter’s right of inheritance.
Vishvarupa, the commentator of Yajnavalkya, who preceded the author of Mitakshara
denies that the widow, unless pregnant had any right to succeed to her husband and that the
daughter other than the appointed daughter, could succeed to her father. About Yajnavalkya
and Mitakshara we shall presently show that they have not been so illiberal in granting
women their due legal rights.
The practice of Niyoga limited the widow, to obtain a son by her husband’s younger
brother and failing him by the nearest agnate. For, the rule was that on the husband’s dying
issueless the wife had merely the usufruct of her husband’s property till she could beget a
son. If she did, the son became the heir. If she could not, the estate passed to the husband’s
younger brother and failing him his nearest sapinda, who was her guardian. The female
sapindas were excluded from inheritance, as they were not to remain in the family in which
they were born. They were not gotrajas in as much as their gotra changed after marriage.12
Manu also subscribes to the same view that women have no proprietary rights of their
own. According to one of his clear injunctions, a wife, a son and a slave—these three are
declared to have no property; the wealth which they earn is acquired for him to whom they
belong.13 This idea of Manu has been copied by the later authority, that is, Shukra, even to
the letter.14
Thus according to the ancient Hindu law, woman was hardly considered to be a legal
person and was thus almost incapable of possessing any right. She was treated as a perpetual
minor, one over whom man was always entitled to exercise control. The result is that up to
the present day the Hindu law recognises limited proprietary rights of a woman.
Now we proceed to elucidate, at some length, the law of inheritance as it affected woman
in the capacity of a daughter, a wife, a mother and a widow. From the code of Manu it
appears that unmarried daughters in ancient India were entitled to one-fourth of the shares
of patrimony received by brothers.15 That is, if there were many brothers and sisters, then

6
Rigveda, II—2—7.
7
Rigveda, III—31—1.
8
Gautama, XXVIII—18.
9
Vasishtha, XVIII—15.
10
Baudhyana, II—2—3—45
11
Manu, IX—127.
12
In general Gotrajas only are considered as entitled to inheritance. The Smriti Chandrika included both male and
female in the word ‘Gotraja’.
13
Manu VIII—416.
14
Shukra, IV—5—295.
15
Manu, IX–118. See also Kautilya (BK III—5), ‘Unmarried daughters shall be paid adequate dowry, payable to
them on the occasion of their marriage’.
 Chapter 13  The Legal Status of Women 179

the brothers were severally to give portions to their sisters, each out of his share one-fourth
part. Medhatihi censures those commentators who think that one-fourth share need not be
given actually but only as much as will suffice to defray the marriage expenses.16
In the Vedic ages also, it appears that the unmarried daughter, who lived all her life in her
parents’ house called Amuja, generally demanded and got a share of the ancestral property
for inheritance.17 But ordinarily she could not claim any share with her brothers for it is
clearly laid down in the Rigveda that ‘a son born As regards the maternal estate, it is said
by Manu, that when the mother dies, all the uterine sisters (who according to Kulluka are
unmarried) equally of the body, does not transfer wealth to sister’.18
As regards the maternal estate, it is said by Manu, that when the mother dies all the
uterine sister (who according to Kulluka are unmarried) equally divide the mother’s estate
with uterine brothers.19 According to Brihaspati, married daughters receive only a ‘token of
respect’. But Narada says that issueless daughters do receive some portion of the deceased
mothers’ share. Manu allows even daughters of daughters to get something out of the estate
of their maternal grandmother on the score of affection. According to the interpretation of
Kulluka these granddaughters should be unmarried.20 To the separate property of a mother,
known technically as Stridhana, the detailed consideration of which we postpone to the next
chapter, only unmarried daughters (Kumaris) are heirs.21 But Narada observes that Kumari
in reality means a daughter who has no sons. Hence such daughters also receive Stridhana.
The rule of Gautama,22 so often quoted in the Mitakshara also lays down almost the same
injunction. According to it, if the competition be between the unprovided and the enriched
daughter, then the unprovided one inherits, but on the failure of such the enriched one suc-
ceeds. Thus it is clear that the unmarried daughter excludes the married daughter, whether
she is rich or poor. In default of unmarried daughters, the married daughters succeed and
among them the poor excludes the rich.
The position of Yajnavalkya who is still the most respected legal authority, may also
be stated in a few words, as regards the daughter’s right of inheritance. According to him
unmarried sisters must be provided by their married brothers with expenses of marriage by
giving one fourth part of their shares of patrimony.23 The Mitakshara commenting on the
above says, ‘It is thus clear that daughters too after the death of their fathers have the right
of succession’.24 It also emphatically declares that this is not a provision for marriage, but
a right to share in the heritage. About the mother’s estate Yajnavalkya observes that all the
property of a mother except her debts belong to her daughter.25 The Mitakshara’s reason for

16
Medhatithi, on the above verse.
17
Rigveda, II—17—7.
18
Rigveda, III—31—2.
19
Manu, IX—192.
20
Kulluka on Manu, IX—193.
21
Manu, IX—131.
22
Gautama, Stridhanam Duhitrinam Aprattanam Apratish thitanam.
23
Yajnavalkya, II—124.
24
Mitakshara on the above.
25
Yajnavalkya, II—117.
180 M. A. INDRA

the mother’s property going to daughters is that whereas daughters are born with greater
portions of the blood of their mothers than with those of their fathers, therefore daughters
must be the recipients of their mothers’ Stridhana.26
Discussing the order of succession in case of a man dying without a son, the Mitakshara
declares That the patrimony passes to the wife but in her absence to daughters, preferably
the unmarried ones.27 This rule has been supported by Brihaspati as well as Manu who says
that the wife is the pronounced successor to the wealth of her husband and in her default
the daughters. As a son so does the daughter of a man proceed from his several limbs. How
then when one’s self is alive in the form of one’s daughter should any other person take
her father’s estate? Katyayana another lawgiver also holds the same view that the widow
should succeed to her husband’s wealth, provided she is chaste and in default of her, let
the daughters inherit, if unmarried. The married daughters also got the right to inherit the
paternal share. According to the Smritichan drika’s interpretation of a Yajnavalkya text, the
share was to be handed over to the husband.28 But the author of the Viramitrodaya29 refutes
this view and declares that shares of the married daughters should be regarded as their
Stridhana. Both the Madhviya and the Vivadatandava later legal digests also are opposed
to the view of the Smritichandrika.
The doctrine of the Dayabhaga school in this matter also is worth being recorded. It
says that a daughter who is mother of a male issue or who is likely to become so is only
competent to inherit and not one who is a widow or is barren or fails in bringing none but
daughters. The school argues that in reality daughters confer no benefit but they succeed
because their sons do. It is the daughter’s son who is the giver of a funeral oblation, not his
son, nor the daughter’s daughters, for the funeral oblation ceases with him. But it must be
remembered that every daughter is presumed to be likely to get male children. If therefore
she was married and was not past the child-bearing age, she would succeed to her father. It
is then immaterial that she becomes a widow or is barren since an estate once vested cannot
be devested by subsequent, disability.
There was in ancient India a peculiar class, known as appointed daughters. He who had
no son might make his daughter in the following manner an appointed daughter. Addressing
his son-in-law he might say, ‘The male child born of her shall perform my funeral rites’30
Between a son’s son and son of an appointed daughter, there was regarded no difference,
neither with respect to worldly matters, nor to sacred duties, for their father and mother both
sprang from the body of the same man. The fundamental concept of inheritance was. ‘Let
one offer Pindas and take the wealth’ (Manu).31

26
Mitakshara on the above.
27
Yajnavalkya, II—135–36. Also Manu (IX—130) ‘Just as a person is born through a son, so is he through a daughter;
the daughter and son are therefore equal. If the daughter is alive, how can anyone else take away the estate of the father?’
28
Smritichandrika, II—115.
29
Viramitrodaya—59, 60.
30
Manu, IX—127. Baudhāyana also disqualifies a daughter from inheritance, even where she is the only child of the
family. It is her son who can inherit the property who was called putrika-putra (II—2—3—15). He was entitled to offer
funeral cakes to his grandfather. Also see Apastamba. II—6—14—2, 3, 4. Vasishtha XVIII—21 and XVII—12, 15.
31
Manu, IX—133.
 Chapter 13  The Legal Status of Women 181

The interpretation by Vasishtha of an appointed daughter (Putrika-putra) is quite differ-

ent. He declares on the authority of the Vedas that the only daughter belongs to her father’s
family and becomes the son of her parents. Such a Putrika-Putra (daughter, considered
as a putra) is charged by her father to perform the customary obsequies to him after his
death and consequently to become his heir herself. She comes to be counted as a son, her
place among the twelve sons being second only to the son of the body (aurasa). Professor
Jolly in his book The Hindu Law of Adoption, Partition and Inheritance (p. 149) refers to
the prevalence of this custom in Kashmir, even in very recent times. He gives a passage
of the Rajatarangini which mentions cases where the only daughter was installed as a son,
where even her name was changed into that of a boy in order to obtain through her the same
religious advantages as if she had been a son. Thus the name of Kalyandevi—a princess
was converted by her royal father into the masculine form Kalyanmalla and all rites to be
performed by a Putra were performed by her.
The son of an appointed daughter received the full estate of his grandfather who left no
other son. On him was enjoined the duty of offering two funeral cakes to his own father and
his maternal grandfather. But if after a daughter has been appointed a son be born to her
father, the division was to be equal, for there was no right of primogeniture for a woman.32 If
an appointed daughter by accident died without leaving a son, the husband of the appointed
daughter could without hesitation take that estate.33
Thus from the foregoing paragraph it is clear that daughters whether married, unmarried or
appointed had some rights of succession in ancient India. They were not altogether excluded
from inheritance, as their sisters certainly were in the later ages. The repeated argument in
favour of the daughter’s claim was that she too like the son was born of the limbs of her
father. How hould any other, person inherit her father’s property while she lived.34
Now, our next consideration is the legal status of woman as a wife and a widow. From
the perusal of Dharma Shastras it appears that wives were generally thought to be without
property. Manu35 and later Shukra36 agree on this matter. Their distinct verdict is that women
as wives have no right on any estate except Stridhana, which generally goes to daughters.
The logic of the above proposition is as follows. Upon her marriage the wife not only leaves
her parental home, but severs her connection with it as completely as if she had never been
born therein. She abandons the gotra of her parents and passes into and assumes that of her
husband into whose family she is received as a daughter. But in it she has no individuality
apart from that of her husband. She therefore, is entitled to no separate ownership. Over
the property of her husband also she has no right during his lifetime beyond the right of
maintenance and residence. This right to maintenance arises out of the jural relationship
between the husband and wife created by marriage which is indissoluble. Besides it is based
on humanitarian grounds as well. With regard to forsaken wives Yajnavalkya observes that
‘he who forsakes a wife though obedient to his commands, diligent in household ­management,

32
Manu, IX—134.
33
Ibid., XI—135.
34
Ibid., IX—30.
35
Manu, VIII—416.
36
Shukra, IV—5—295.
182 M. A. INDRA

mother of an excellent son and speaking kindly shall be compelled to pay the third part of
his wealth, or if poor to provide a maintenance for that wife’.37 In the matter of partition
however, the Mitakshara law allows a wife to get an equal share with her own son or sons
when the division is made in the lifetime of her husband. In case she has Stridhana from
her father-in-law, then she is entitled to half the share.
The aphorisms of Jaimini have been, however, not so half-hearted in granting to women
their dues. They clearly pronounce that the one effect of marriage is to give each of the
parties thereto, control over the other’s wealth. On the seventeenth aphorism, Shabara the
commentator observes as follows; ‘The wife is entitled to wealth earned by the husband
and vice versa. Hence sacrifice must be performed by both jointly, because if one of them
is unwilling to perform it, the gift cannot be valid. Therefore, gift or money, even earned
by the husband, is invalid if the wife’s consent is not obtained’.
This quotation shows that both Jaimini and Shabara entertained more liberal views with
regard to the right of the wife than the Smritikaras of the later ages.38
Now women as widows had ample rights to inherit their husbands’ property. After the
husband’s death the first successor was the widow. Yajnavalkya,39 Vishun,40 Brihaspati,41
Briddha Manu42—all are of the opinion that it is the wife who preeminently deserves to suc-
ceed to the estate of her deceased husband. One of the above-mentioned lawgivers argues
that when the wife is half of the husband, then after husband that half is perfectly entitled
to the property of the deceased half. Kautilya also supports widow’s right of inheritance by
saying, ‘A barren widow who is faithful to the bed of her husband, may under the protection
of her teacher enjoy his property as long as she lives, for it is to ward off calamities that
women are endowed with property. On her death her property shall pass into the hands of
her kinsmen’ (BK III—2).
Medhatithi is against the widow’s right of inheritance but his views are disputed by all
and held as unreasonable. Katyayana believes that the widow’s right of succession is incon-
testable.43 So does Harita emphatically declare in an unmistakable passage.44 The truth is
that the widow’s rights are very deep-rooted in the Aryan society. They go back even to the
Vedic ages when even a childless widow was entitled to succession to her husband’s estate.45
In case she had sons, she was to divide the property of her husband with sons equally.46
Brihaspati’s assertion in this respect, however, is very explicit. Says he, ‘In Vedas, Smritis

37
Yajnavalkya, I—76.
38
Gautama, XXVIII—21
In the absence of any issue or even an appointed daughter, the wife could inherit the property of her deceased hus-
band. Gautama gives to the wife the right of inheritance and names her as one of the successors to the property of
the deceased.
39
Yajnavalkya, II—135, 36.
40
Vishnu, in Mitakshara.
41
Brihaspati, Ibid.
42
Bridha Manu, Ibid.
43
Katyayana in Mitakshara.
44
Harita, Ibid.
45
Rigveda, IX—102—11.
46
Yajnavalkya, II—123.
 Chapter 13  The Legal Status of Women 183

and practice of people, a wife is considered by wise men as half the body of her husband,
sharing equally the fruits of his good deeds and misdeeds. Half body of his, which is not
dead, lives. How then can anyone else obtain his wealth, when half of his body survives?’
Manu47 and Narada, however, appear to hold the opinion that brothers should have the
property of a deceased brother and not his wife, who is to get only maintenance. But the
widow who was given to a sinful life was not to be given any maintenance at all. In fact,
unchastity in any female heir be she a daughter, a wife a widow or a mother, disqualified
her for inheritance. Whosoever was in keeping of a man when the succession opened
was excluded from inheritance, even though she might have married him afterwards. The
Mitakshara,48 the Dayabhaga,49 and in fact all the legal authorities agree on this point.
Otherwise, the maintenance of a widow who, not suspected of any misconduct, was com-
monly a charge on her husband’s estate. The widow as of a right was entitled to reside in
the family-dwelling house. This is clear from Katyayana’s passage in which he says that the
family-house cannot be sold. The widow’s right of a residence could not be defeated even
by offering her a separate house to live in, on the ground of her quarrelsomeness.
The Mitakshara commentary has with regard to the right of a widow’s inheritance, raised
a very interesting legal controversy. The contention of Shankha, Narada and Katyayana
appears to be that brothers of a deceased person, have as compared to his widowed wife,
a preferential right of succession to his property. But Briddha Manu and Vishnu hold a
contrary opinion. A reconciliation between the conflicting views is brought about by the
Mitakshara, by interpreting the former law as applicable to co-parcenary brothers, whereas
the latter holds good, in the case of separation.
Again the widow’s rights are assailed by Gautama and Vasishtha, who opine that only
those widows are entitled to the right of inheritance, who make it definitely known that in
order to have progeny they will resort to the practice of Niyoga. But the Mitakshara treats
such line of thinking as inconsistent and ridiculous. In the explicit case of sonlessness only
Yajnavalkya has conferred the right of succession on widows. The law, as expounded by
him, is obviously dealing with widows who could not have any Kshetriya male offspring
during the lifetime of their husband.
Still another objection as regards widow’s competence to inherit is made by saying that
whereas they are disqualified by all to Shastras to attend sacrifices or Yajnas and whereas all
wealth has performance of religious rites as its objective, therefore, they are to be interdicted
from inheritance of all property. This queer argument is disposed of by the Mitakshara with
a word that gaining of virtue is the end of all human activities and not of mere performance
of sacrifice.50
In the end, a word may be said about woman’s rights as a mother. Obviously they were
very limited, for a mother invariably was a wife. In the presence of her husband, she had

47
Manu, IX—185.
48
Mitakshara, II—3.
49
Dayabhaga, XI—1—47, 48.
50
Mitakshara, II—135, 36.
184 M. A. INDRA

no separate property except her stridhana. However, a widowed mother had ample rights
which can easily be understood.
In both the cases a mother obtained the inheritance of a son, if he died without leaving an
issue.51 She also inherited a daughter’s property, if the daughter was married in the Asura
form and died without an issue.52 The mother’s claim has been much strongly supported by
the Dayabhaga school. According to it, if the father be not living the succession devolves
on the mother. Vishnu’s text also declares that if the father be dead, succession appertains
to the mother.53 It is argued that a mother’s claim precedes that of brothers and the rest,
since it is necessary to make a grateful return to her for benefits which she has personally
conferred by rearing the child in her womb and nurturing him during his infancy and also
because she confers benefits on him by the birth of other sons, who may offer funeral obla-
tions in which he will participate.
Thus we may conclude that the legal position of women as daughters, wives, widows and
mothers was by no means, one of complete disability, but one dictated by justice and fairness,
as far as the circumstances of the ancient ages allowed. This much at least is certain that
taking into view the contemporaneous conditions of other countries in this respect, ancient
India had no reason to be less satisfied with the legal status, which she allotted to her women.

51
Manu, IX—217.
52
Ibid., IX—197.
53
Vishnu cited in Dayabhaga, XI—IV—1, 2. Smritichandrika (II—38, 39) a later commentary on Yajnavalkya,
however, asserts the view on the strength of a Vedic text, that a mother has the right to maintenance only and not
to any succession.
 Chapter 14 Property Rights of
Women in Ancient
India*

N. N. BHATTACHARYYA

There has been no dearth of work on Strīdhana or ‘woman’s property’ in India, written
from a purely legalistic point of view, since the establishment of the East India Company’s
rule in India. William Hicky who came to Calcutta as a legal practitioner during the time
of Warren Hastings observed that the Indians were impressed by the British system of the
administration of justice and that the ever-increasing lawsuits offered a wide scope of earning
to the European legal practitioners who came to seek their fortune in this country. It was for
their convenience that need was felt to compose treatises on Hindu and Muslim laws. The
first work of this kind was A Code of the Gentoo Law, which was an English rendering of
Vivādārṇavasetu, compiled under the direction of Warren Hastings, by a team of Brāhmaṇa
legal experts, done by N. B. Halhed and published in the year 1776. The first authorita-
tive work on Hindu law was H. T. Colebrooke’s A Digest of Hindu Law on Contracts and
Succession, with a commentary by Jagannath Tarkapa Panchanan, which was published in
four volumes from Calcutta in 1797–98. This work contains, with other aspects of Hindu
law, sections on Strīdhana. Colebrooke also edited and translated two Smṛtis and wrote few
papers on legal topics. It should also be noted that in the list of the earlier publications in the
Bibliotheca Indica series, ancient legal texts occupied a leading position. It was probably due
to the fact that the European legal practitioners, as well as their Indian counterparts, were
required to know the basic contents of the Dharmaśāstras and their commentaries, frankly
for their professional interest.
Among the nineteenth century major publications of legal treatises, dealing with Strīdhana
as well, mention may be made of Thomas Strenge’s Hindu Law which was published as
early as in 1830. The Digest of Hindu Law, written by West and Buehler and published in
1867–69, was also a landmark in modern legal literature of India. But the most authorita-
tive work, which suits the purpose of the present paper, was Sir Gooroo Das Bannerjee’s

* The reference list of this chapter has been prepared by Dr Ranjeeta Datta, Associate Professor, Centre for Historical
Studies, JNU, in the absence of detailed references and bibliography in the original text.

185
186 N. N. BHATTACHARYYA

Hindu Law of Marriage and Strīdhana, which was originally published in 1878 and had
undergone numerous editions as had been in the case of J. D. Mayne’s A Treatise on Hindu
Law and Usage, another important legal publication of the nineteenth century. Rao Saheb
V. N. Mandlik’s Hindu Law which was published in 1880 had also been a standard work
for many years. The Tagore Law Lectures, instituted by the University of Calcutta, were
instrumental in bringing out a good number of legal publications. Among these the lectures
on the Outlines of the History of Hindu Law of Partition, Inheritance and Adoption as
Gontained in Original Sanskrit Treatises, which were delivered in 1885 by J. Jolly, came
out in a book form in 1888. Next to the work of Sir Gooroo Das Bannerjee it has been the
most useful work on Strīdhana. Another work of Jolly is also important for our purpose. It
was written in German and published in 1896 from Strassburg under the title Recht und Sitte
which was subsequently rendered into English by B. K. Ghosh and published from Calcutta
in 1928 under the title Hindu Law and Custom. Another important work, having bearing
on our subject, was G. C. Sarkar’s Hindu Law of Adoption, which was published in 1891.
In the present century there has been a multifarious increase in the publication of legal
literature in most of which the question of Strīdhana has been seriously dealt with. Among
such publications mention should be made of Priyanath Sen’s General Principles of Hindu
Jurisprudence (1918), K. P. Jayaswal’s Manu and Yājn̄avalkya: A Comparison and a
Contrast (1930), Radha Binod Pal’s History of Hindu Law (1938), P. V. Kane’s History of
Dharmaśāstra, Vol. II (1941) and Vol. III (1946), N. C. Sengupta’s Evolution of Ancient
Indian Law (1953), L. Sternbach’s Judicial Studies in Ancient Indian Law (1965–67), D. M.
Derret’s Religion, Law and State in India (1968) etc. This abundance of modern studies on the
ancient legal tradition of India amply testifies that Strīdhana or Women’s property was never
a neglected subject. It should also be remembered in this connection that a considerable bulk
of the civil suits has always been concerned with women’s property and as such the concept
of Strīdhana has been the subject of wide discussion and controversy. So goes a proverb
in India that the lawyers fill their coffers with women’s money, and this is not without any
significance. In fact, all the studies on Strīdhana have been from a legalistic and professional
point of view. The only exception is the work of P. V. Kane, in which there has been an
attempt to view the whole thing in an historical perspective. Without much exaggeration it
may be said that most of the well-known modern treatises on Hindu law purport in a subtle
way to devise endless ways and means to deprive the women, especially the widows, of their
property right, and these cunning devices have been given the status of law in the name of
the interpretation of the ancient texts rather than what the texts suggest by themselves. As
Kane has rightly said: ‘It is also to be regarded that owing to the ignorance of Sanskrit on
the part of the most judges that had to decide cases of Hindu Law, the opinions of individual
learned authors…were followed without personal examination by judges on the authorities
on which the opinions of authors were based’ (Kane, III, 757 n.). The best way to deprive a
woman of her property right is to make the scope of Strīdhana as narrow as possible so that
it might comprise no more than a few clothes and ornaments. Thus, while according to the
Mitākṣarā, the property inherited by a woman or obtained at a partition should fall definitely
within the category of Strīdhana and pass automatically to her own relations after her death,
the modern jurists have taken just a different stand saying that the property inherited by a
 Chapter 14  Property Rights of Women in Ancient India 187

woman from her parents or parents-in-law or husband or anyone should not fall within the
category of Strīdhana and that it should pass after her death not to her own relations or natural
heirs but to the next heir of the person from whom she inherited it.
While dealing with the property rights of ancient India, one should not forget that it took
a long time for the primitive customs and conventions, by which the ancient societies were
governed, to get streamlined into a widely acceptable legal system, that quite for a long
time the whole matter of inheritance was not regulated by any general state power and that
different regions of the country had and still have different legal traditions. Even in a single
region laws and customs vary from caste to caste, community to community. Everywhere
in India, there is a wide gulf of difference between the codified and customary laws. The
former consists of the laws and customs as codified in the Dharmaśāstras or Smṛtis and is
followed mostly by the dominant section comprising about 20 per cent of the total population
of India. Others follow various customary laws and traditions for the study of which we are to
depend on the vast mass of anthropological literature including correspondences, notes and
queries, gazetteers, memoirs, journals, census reports, surveys and individual monographs
on tribes and castes. Specially important in this connection are the regional studies on tribes
and castes made by L. K. Ananthakrishna Iyer, William Crooke, R. E. Enthoven, D. C. J.
Ibbetson, H. H. Risley, H. A. Rose, H. V. Nanjundayya, R. V. Russell, Rai Bahadur Hira
Lal, E. Thurston, K. Rangachari, etc., which contain details about the laws and customs of
the simpler peoples not belonging to the culture of dominant section. Apart from these, in
the works of E. Steele, G. K. Raychaudhuri, G. Oppert, J. E. Padfield, S. C. Bose and a few
others, the laws and customs of the popular traditions make frequent appearance.
Matrilineal inheritance which is prevalent among various tribes and castes of India is a
typical example of customary laws. P. R. T. Gurdon and A. Playfair have given details of
this form of inheritance in their works entitled The Khasis and The Garos of Meghalaya
which were published respectively in 1907 and 1909. Among these tribes the entire property
belongs to the mothers and it is transmitted in the female line from mother to daughters, the
youngest one having the largest share. Such form of inheritance has been noticed among
various tribes and castes of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala, details of which are
found in such works as The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India (1916)
by R. V. Russell and Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, The Mysore Tribes and Castes (1928–35) by
H. V. Nanjundayya and L. K. Ananthakrishna Iyer, The Castes and Tribes of Southern India
(1909) by E. Thurston and K. Rangachari and The Cochin Tribes and Castes (1909) by
L. K. Ananthakrishna Iyer. In Kerala, the Nayar joint family or tarwad consists of a woman,
her daughters and grandchildren in the female line, and when it grows unusually big it often
splits into smaller family units called tavazis. A thorough study of the rules of matrilineal
inheritance was made by Baron Omar Rolf Ehrenfels in his Mother-right in India, which was
published in 1941. The custom of matrilineal inheritance has also been extensively dealt with
in Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya’s Lokāyata (1959), K. M. Kapadia’s Marriage and Family in
India (1966) and the present writer’s Indian Mother Goddess (1970, 1977). In certain cases
again, we come across a transitory phase between matrilineal and patrilineal forms of inheri-
tance in which the sister’s son gets the property of his mother’s brother. Reference to such a
typical system is found in the Mahābhārata (VIII. 45.13) in which it is stated that this form
188 N. N. BHATTACHARYYA

of inheritance was in vogue among the Āraṭṭas and Bāhīkas. In southern India this system
was known as alia-santāna which was followed even by the kings of Travancore. What we
want to suggest is that, so far as the question of inheritance and ownership of property was
concerned, the doctrine of patria potestus so intensely crystallised in the Smṛtis was never
a universal phenomenon in India.
From the internal evidence of the Ṛgveda it appears that the concept of individual owner-
ship was not prevalent in the early Vedic age. References to ‘common wealth’ or ‘collective
ownership’ are found abundantly in the Ṛgveda (cf. I. 141.1; III. 2.12; VI. 26.1; VII. 76.5;
VIII. 99.8, etc.). Tribal bond of kinship was an essential feature of the early Vedic society
and as such tribal wealth was divided among the constituent clans and subclans. This is
attested by the passages referring to vārya and bhāga which were the Ṛgvedic terms of
division. Land was not any form of property in the early Vedic age, because agriculture was
then hardly known. Even when agriculture was introduced in the later Vedic age land was
subject to joint or corporate holding, so the question of individual ownership and inheri-
tance of land could not arise at all. The Vedic tribes were mostly pastoral warriors and they
counted wealth in terms of cattle. The pastoral societies have, however, greater scope to
develop the sense of property and individual ownership since cattle could be preserved and
multiplied, used as the best medium of exchange, increased by wars and raids, and divided
among clans, families, even individuals. Evidence of some kind of individual possession is
found in the later books of the Ṛgveda. That in the later period of the Ṛgveda even women
were entitled to have some share of cattle wealth as marriage gift is suggested in the ‘wed-
ding hymn’ (X.85.13–38). The term mentioned there is vahatu which has been explained
by Sāyaṇa as ‘cow and other gifts given for pleasing the girl’.
Needless to say that the Vedic society, owing to its pastoral background, was essentially
patriarchal which is attested by the abundance of misogynistic passages in the Vedic texts.
For example, in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa (IV.4.2.3) it is stated that ‘women own neither
themselves nor an inheritance’. Yāska in his Nirukta (III.4) says that women are not entitled
to partition and inheritance. But whatever was the attitude towards women, it was not
possible in practice to suppress all their property rights, especially owing to the fact that
there were parallel traditions everywhere in which women were treated differently and the
influence of which could not be ignored by the Vedic lawgivers. The term pāriṇāhya has
been used in the Taittirīya Saṁhitā (VI.2.1.1) indicating the authority of the wife on family
resources. This recurs in the Pūrvamīmāṁsāsūtras (VI.10.10) of Jaimini which has been
explained by Śabara in terms of possessing certain forms of property by the wife, and almost
in the same sense the term has been used by Manu (IX.11). It should, however, be stressed
that although the concepts of property and division are found in the Vedic texts, especially
the later ones, in that formative period of economic life there was a natural contradiction
between the social and individual ownership. The Dharmasūtras are openly in favour of an
extremely patrilineal form of inheritance in which in the absence of sons the property will
rather go to the near and remote agnates (sapiṇḍa and sakulya relations) of the property
holder than to the daughters of his own seed. The Dharmasūtras of Āpastamba (II.6.14.19),
Baudhāyana (II.2.49) and Vasiṣṭha (XVII.48–49), however, say that the ornaments and
such wealth as bestowed upon her by her relations, both agnate and cognate, should be
absolutely owned by her.
 Chapter 14  Property Rights of Women in Ancient India 189

It is in the Dharmaśāstras or Smṛtis that we come across a distinct codification of the

rules relating to ownership, inheritance and partition. The codes of Manu are the first sys-
tematic expositions of all these, and his basic approaches to these questions were followed
in principle, with certain conservative or liberal reservations, by the later lawgivers. The
Manusmṛti must have been composed before the beginning of the Christian era, while the
Smṛtis of Yājn̄avalkya, Nārada and Bṛhaspati were composed within the limit of the Gupta
age, and those of Kātyāyana, Vyāsa and Pārāśara in the post-Gupta period. Manu made
the Dharmasūtra traditions up to date. But while dealing with the Dharmasūtra injunctions
regarding the property rights of women he faced two apparently contradictory principles.
The first is that Dharmasūtras allow women to become exclusive owners of such wealth
as is obtained by them as gifts from their relations. This formed the basis of his famous
formulation of the six-fold concept of Strīdhana (IX.194). The second principle of the
Dharmasūtras was rather difficult for him to accept. The Dharmasūtras categorically say that
property should be transmitted only through the male line and that women have no right to
inherit their paternal property by themselves. Manu was no less patriarchal than the authors
of the Dharmasūtras, but as the first universal lawgiver he had to take into consideration the
existing laws belonging to other popular traditions, apart from the Vedic sources, which
speak of women’s right to inherit their ancestral property. So he had to make a compromise.
Thus, on the one hand, nowhere in his codes he says that sisters are equally entitled to the
patrimony as their brothers but, on the other, he says that for the purpose of the marriage
of their sisters the brothers should forego one-fourth of their own shares in favour of the
sisters (IX.118). Obviously, this does not mean that the daughters are the natural heirs of
their father. The father is, however, at liberty to give any amount of wealth as gift to his
daughter and such gifts are regarded as belonging to the pitṛdatta and anvādheya categories
of Strīdhana. Apart from this, if a man is sonless, he can regard his daughter as putrikā or
‘daughter functioning as son’ who will be his legitimate heir (IX.127). The wealth owned
by the mother will pass to the daughter (IX.131). It is surprising to note that Manu is com-
pletely silent about the rights of the widow.
The codes of Manu had a tremendous impact not only on the subsequent lawgivers but
also on others belonging to different disciplines. Even a philosopher like Śaṅkara uncondi-
tionally says that in regard to social matters Manu is final. Of course, among the subsequent
lawgivers some differences from Manu in approach are found. For example, Yājn̄avalkya
supports Manu’s insistence on the doctrine of primogeniture, but he holds that the father
and sons have equal ownership of ancestral property which subsequently led to the emer-
gence of janma-svattva-vāda, peculiar to the Mitāksarā school. He says in conformity with
Manu’s view that after the father’s death the sons shall divide property among themselves,
the mother taking an equal share and the sisters a fourth part of the son’s share. Like Manu,
Yājnn̄avalkya does not make any clear statement whether this one-fourth share, enjoyed by
the sisters, is owing to a natural succession or to a moral obligation for which the brothers
should forego their one-fourth. So far as Strīdhana is concerned Yājn̄avalkya clarifies the
stand of Manu and insists categorically on the exclusive right of women of their Strīdhana.
The husband can make use of it only in case of a famine, or for the performance of some
specially efficacious religious rite, or during illness or under such severe conditions when
he has no other way to save himself without the help of his wife’s money.
190 N. N. BHATTACHARYYA

Later lawgivers like Nārada, Bṛhaspati and Kātyāyana, and their successors follow either
Manu or Yājn̄avalkya with diminishing importance on the doctrine of primogeniture upheld
by the earlier authorities. In regard to inheritance and partition, so far as the shares of women
are concerned, they also speak of the one-fourth share conventionally without any further
clarification. However, in regard to Strīdhana some of them are more particular. Among
them Kātyāyana (594 ff., 895–920) makes the most elaborate treatment of Strīdhana making
improvement of what was suggested by Manu and Yājn̄avalkya and his version has been
accepted by all digests including the Dāyabhāga. He defines Strīdhana under the following
categories: adhyagni or what is given to a woman at the time of marriage before the nuptial
fire; adhyāvahanika or what she obtains when she is being taken from her father’s house to
the bridegroom’s; prītidatta or what is given to her through affection (to this category Manu
includes gifts from the husband during love-making); śulka or what is given to her as the
bridal price (which includes household articles as well); anvādheya or what is given to her
after marriage from the family of her husband or of her own parents (to a certain extent it
corresponds to Manu’s pitṛdatta, mātṛdatta and bhrātṛdatta categories, though he refers to
a seventh category under the title anvādheya meaning ‘gift-subsequent’); and saudāyikā or
what is obtained by a married woman in her husband’s house or by a maiden in the house
of her father. In other words, ‘all property (whether movable or immovable) obtained by
a woman, either as a maiden, or at marriage, or after marriage, from her parents or from
husband and his family (except immovable property given by husband) is included within
the scope of strīdhana’ (Priyanath Sen, 335–36).
From the tenth century onwards there was a qualitative change in the approach towards
property and property relations. It was possible after the advent of Jīmūtavāhana (c. ad
1100–50) and Vijn̄ āneśvara (c. ad 1080–1100). The Dāyabhāga of Jīmūtavāhana and the
Mitākṣarā of Vijn̄āneśvara became so important that throughout the successive ages these
two works and their legal interpretations came to be regarded as almost the sole source of the
Hindu laws relating to ownership, partition and inheritance. According to the Dāyabhāga of
Jīmūtavāhana, ownership implies absolute competence of the owner to dispose of his prop-
erty at his will. The owner is the sole lord of his property having the right of its alienation
without the consent of his sons or relations. Jīmūtavāhana has also brought a significant
change in the concept of sapinda relation. He says that there is no reason to hold that this
relation should evolve only among the strictly patrilineal agnates. Rather those who are more
intimately associated with the family, notwithstanding cognates of different male descent,
like the daughter’s son, father’s daughter’s son, maternal uncle, etc., should be regarded as
belonging to the sapinda relation. This is a revolutionary departure from the approach of
the previous lawgivers. Jīmūtavāhana accepts Kātyāyana’s definition of Strīdhana allowing
every right to the woman to give, sell or enjoy it independently of her husband. Jīmūtavāhana
also categorically says that if the owner of the Strīdhana does not bestow her property at
her own will to her chosen person or persons, the property will devolve equally upon the
sons and unmarried daughters.
The Mitākṣarā of Vijn̄āneśvara, which is actually a commentary on the Yājn̄avalkyasmṛti,
is of more complex character than the Dāyabhāga of Jīmūtavāhana. Vijn̄āneśvara, unlike
Jīmūtavāhana, does not admit absolute ownership of an individual over the property and holds
that certain relations acquire ownership at the moment of their birth. As soon as a son is born
 Chapter 14  Property Rights of Women in Ancient India 191

he becomes co-owner of the property enjoyed by the father. In the field of succession agnates
are preferred to the cognates. Vijn̄ āneśvara has given the sonless widow the right to succeed
to the whole property of her husband. As between the claims of the daughters he prefers
unmarried to the married and unprovided to the endowed daughter. His rule of succession is
mainly based upon the principle of propinquity or proximity of relationship and as such he
allows to daughter’s son to succeed immediately after the daughter and before the mother
and the father, and the mother to succeed before the father. According to Vijn̄ āneśvara’s
concept, the Strīdhana is that form of property which is acquired by a woman ‘by inheritance,
purchase, partition, seizure and finding’. Among the six categories of Strīdhana, in the case
of those belonging to anvádheya and prītidatta categories, daughters are allowed to succeed
equally and in their absence the sons. Strīdhana belonging to four other categories will be
succeeded in the following order—unmarried daughter, unendowed married and endowed
married daughter. The Strīdhana of a childless woman goes to the husband.
Although there was not so much anomaly in the case of Strīdhana which could be accrued
in the hand of a woman through a variety of sources and after her lifetime possession and
enjoyment of it, it could be succeeded by her heirs in the female line on the basis of the
principle of propinquity, the question of a woman’s natural right to succeed her father’s
property directly, as that happened in the case of her brother’s, has not been clearly answered
in the Smṛtis and their commentaries. From the bewildering variety of statements found in
these texts what actually emerges, as has rightly or wrongly been understood by the present
writer, may be reproduced as follows. Regarding direct inheritance of the father’s property
the Dharmaśāstras or the Smṛtis and their commentaries follow the Dharmasūtra tradition
according to which property will devolve only among the sons and in their absence among
the agnates in the male line. That the sisters were entitled to get one-fourth of their broth-
ers’ share on account of their marriage was more an expression of moral obligation than
of a legal compulsion. When all the Smṛtis and their commentaries unanimously say that
what a woman obtains through inheritance becomes a category of her Strīdhana it does not
mean direct inheritance of her father’s property; rather it means the direct inheritance of her
mother’s Strīdhana. What she obtained from her father, brothers and paternal relations was
gift rather than inheritance, and the wealth thus accrued in the Strīdhana might be turned into
a property to be inherited by her daughters. The question of a daughter’s direct inheritance
could arise only when the father was sonless. But the Smṛtis and their commentaries are
not at all unanimous on the question whether in the case of a sonless person his daughter
can be natural heir of her father’s property or it will go to the agnates of the paternal line
according to the principle of propinquity. Even Manu’s concept of putrikā, that is, sonhood
ascribed to the daughter by the sonless father, has been subject of keen controversy among
the commentators. This remained a floating question, causing innumerable law suits, till the
enactment of the Hindu Code. Again when all the Smrāti writers agree that what is obtained
by a woman owing to the partition of a property will form a category of her Strīdhana, it
undoubtedly implies an inheritance, but it pertains to the wife, widow, mother and even
grandmother and not to the daughter. The wife, the widow, the mother or the grandmother
could not demand a partition by themselves but were entitled to a share when the partition
took place. The wife’s share in most cases was equal to that of a son. The widow of a deceased
coparcener was a member of the coparcenary, Kātyāyana (926) allows a sonless widow to
192 N. N. BHATTACHARYYA

become the sole owner of her husband’s property, though this stand is not maintained in all
the Smrātis. The Dāyabhāga holds that the widow of a sonless member of a joint family is
entitled to have a share of the property while the Mitāksāarā allows absolute ownership of
the widow over the movable property of her deceased husband.

SANSKRIT TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS

J. R. Gharpure, trans., Balambhatti, 3 Vols, Being a Commentary by Balambhatta Payagunde on The Mitaksara of
Sri Vijnaneswara on the Yajnavalkya-Smrti (1920).
F. W. Thomas, ed. and trans., Brihaspati Sutra, or, the science of Politics According to the School of Brihaspati
(Lahore: Motilal Banarsidass, 1921). (The Devanagari text prepared from his edition (in Roman script), with
introductory remarks and indexes by Bhagavad Datta.)
H. T. Colebrooke, trans., Dayabhaga of Jimutavahana: The Hindu Laws of Inheritance in Bengal (1818).
P. V. Kane, trans., Katyayana Smriti on Vyavahara (Law and Procedure), Sanskrit with English Translation (Bombay,
1933).
Julius Jolly, trans., Naradiya Dharmasastras or The Institutes of Narada, translated for the first time from the
Unpublished Sanskrit Original (London: Trubner & Co, 1878).
Max Muller, ed., Rig-Veda-Sanhita, the Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans, Together with the Commentary of
Sayanacharya, published under the Patronage of the Hounorable East India Company (London: W. H. Allen
and Co, 1849).
Ganganath Jha, trans., Shabara Bhasya, 3 Vols (Baroda: Baroda Oriental Institute, 1939).
H. T. Colebrooke, ed. and trans., The Law of Inheritance According to the Mitakshara (Calcutta: Thacker Spink
and Co, 1869).
Max Muller, ed., The Laws of Manu., translated with extracts from Seven Commentaries, Sacred Books of the East,
Vol. 25 (Oxford University Press, 1886).
Kisari Mohan Ganguli, trans., The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyas (Calcutta: Bharat Press, 1883–96).
B. D. Basu, ed., The Mimamsa Sutras of Jaimini, Sacred Books of the Hindus, trans. Pandit Mohan Lai Sandal
(Allahabad: The Panini Office).
Max Muller, ed., The Minor Law Book. Vol. 33 of Sacred Books of the East, trans. Julius Jolly (Oxford: The Clarendon
Press, 1889).
Lakshman Sarup, ed. and trans., The Nighantu and The Nirukta of Sri Yaskacarya: The Oldest Indian Treatise on
Etymology, Philology and Semantics (London: H. Milford, 1920–29).
The Purva-Mimansa Sastra of Gemini (Allahabad: The Panini Office, 1916).
Max Muller, ed., The Sacred Laws of the Āryas as Taught in the School of Apastamba, Gautama, Vâsishtha, and
Baudhâyana, Vol. 1 of 2. Part 1: Āpastamba and Gautama. The Dharmasutras, Vol. 2 of Sacred Books of the
East, trans. Georg Buhler (Oxford University Press, 1879).
Max Muller, ed., The Sacred Laws of the Āryas as taught in the school of Apastamba, Gautama, Vâsishtha, and
Baudhâyana, Vol. 2 of 2. Part 2: Vāsiṣṭha and Baudhāya. Vol. 14 of Sacred Books of the East, trans. Georg Buhler
(Oxford University Press, 1882).
Max Muller, ed., The Satapatha Brahmana. According to the Text of the Mâdhyandina School. Vol. 2 of 5, Books III
and IV, Vol. 26 of Sacred Books of the East, trans. Julius Eggeling (Oxford University Press, 1885).
A. B. Keith, The Vedas of the Black Yajus School entitled Taittiriya Sanhita, translated From the original Sanskrit
prose and verse (Cambridge, MA, 1914).
J. R. Gharpure, Yajnavalkyasmriti or the Institutes of Yajnavalkya, Together with the Commentary of the Mitaksara
by Sri Vijnaneswara. Book the Second. An English Translations with Notes, explanations etc: Collection of Hindu
Law Texts, no. 2 (Bombay).
 Chapter 14  Property Rights of Women in Ancient India 193

SECONDARY WORKS
Sir Gooroodas Banerjee, The Hindu Law of Marriage and Stridhan. Tagore Law Lectures (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink
&Co., 1879).
N. N. Bhattacharya, Indian Mother Goddess (Calcutta: Indian Studies Past and Present, 1971). (Formerly printed in
ISPP 11, 4 July–September 1970).
N. N. Bhattacharya, Indian Mother Goddess (Columbia: South Asian Books, 1971).
Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Bibliotheca Indica (Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1907).
S. C. Bose, The Hindoos as They Are, 2nd ed. (Calcutta, 1883).
Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism (New Delhi: People’s Publishing
House, 1959).
H. T. Colebrooke, A Digest of Hindu Law: On Contracts and Successions, with a Commentary by Jagannát’ha
Tercapanchánana, 2 Vols (Madras: J. Higginbotham, 1864). (Vol. 1, London, 1801).
H. T. Colebrooke, Miscellaneous Essays, by H. T. Colebrooke, with Life of the Author. By his Son, Sir T. E. Colebrooke
(London: Trübner & Co., 1873).
William Crooke, The tribes and castes of the North-western Provinces and Oudh, Volume I–IV (Calcutta: Office of
the Superintendent of Government Printing, 1896).
J. Duncan M. Derret, Religion, Law and State in India (London: Faber and Faber, 1968).
Reginald Edward Enthoven, The Tribes and Castes of Bombay, 3 Vols (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1920–22).
N. B. Halhed, A Code of Gentoo laws, or, Ordinations of the Pundits: From a Persian Translation, Made from the
Original, Written in the Sanskrit language (London, 1776).
D. C. J. Ibbetson, Panjab Castes (Lahore: Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1916).
L. K. Ananthakrishna Iyer, Tribes and Castes of Cochin (1912).
L. K. Ananthakrishna Iyer, The Cochin Tribes and Castes (Madras, 1909).
L. K. Ananthakrishna Iyer, The Mysore Tribes and Castes (Mysore: Mysore University Press, 1930).
K. P. Jayaswal, Manu and Yājñavalkya—A Comparison and a Contrast: A Treatise on the Basic Hindu Law, 1st ed.
(London: Butterworth & Co., 1930).
Julius Jolly, Outlines of an History of the Hindu Law of Partition, Inheritance and Adoption (Calcutta: Thacker,
Spink &Co; Madras: Higginbotham & Co and London: W Thacker and Co., 1885).
Julius Jolly, Recht and Sitte (Strassburg: Karl J Tubner, 1896).
P. V. Kane History of the Dharamsastras (Poona: Bhadarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1968–75).
K. M. Kapadia, ‘The Matrilineal Family’, in Marriage and Family in India, ed. K. M. Kapadia (Bombay: Oxford
University Press, 1966), 336–54.
Rao Sahib V. N. Mandalik, Hindu Law, or Makyukha and Yajnavalka (Bombay: Education Society Press, 1880).
John D. Mayne, A Treatise on Hindu Law and Usage, 7th ed., revised and enlarged (Madras: Higginbotham & Co.,
1906).
H. V. Nanjundayya and Rao Bahadur L. K. Ananthakrishna Iyer, The Mysore Tribes and Castes, 3 Vols (Mysore:
Government Oriental Library; Bangalore: Government Book Depot, 1928–35). (Published Under the Auspices
Of The Mysore University).
Omar Rolf Leopold Werner Freiherr von Ehrenfels, Mother-Right in India (H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1941).
J. E. Padfield The Hindus at Home. Being Sketches of Hindu Daily Life (London, 1923).
Radha Binod Pal, History of Hindu Law in the Vedic Age and in Post Vedic Times down to the Institutes of Manu:
Tagore Law Lectures (1930).
Peter Quennell, ed., The Memoirs of William Hickey (London: Hutchinson, 1960).
Recht and Sitte, Einschliesslich der einheimischen Litteratur in Grundriss der Indo-arischen Philologie und
Altertumskunde. Translated as Hindu Law and Customs by Bata Krishna Ghosh (Calcutta: Greater India Society,
1928).
H. H. Risley, The Tribes and Castes of Bengal (Bengal Secretariat Press, 1891).
194 N. N. BHATTACHARYYA

Horace Arthur Rose and Edward Douglas MacLagan, A Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North-
West Frontier Province (Lahore: Samuel T. Weston at the Civil and Military Gazette Press, 1911–19).
R. V. Russell and Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, 4 Vols (London:
Macmillan and Co., limited, 1916).
G. C. Sarkar, Hindu Law of Adoption (1891).
Priya Nath Sen, The General Principles of Hindu Jurisprudence: Tagore’s Law Lectures (1918).
N. C. Sengupta, Evolution of Ancient Indian Law (London: Probsthain, 1953).
L. Sternbach, Judicial Studies in Ancient Indian Law, Parts 1 and 2 (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965).
Thomas Strange, Hindu Law, 2 Vols (London: Parbury & Co, Payne & Co., Butterworth, 1830).
E Thurston and K. Rangachari, Castes and Tribes of Southern India (Madras: Government Press, 1909).
Sir Raymond West and Georg Buhler, A Digest of the Hindu Law of Inheritance, Partition, and Adoption, Embodying
the Replies of the Sastris: With Notes and Introduction (London: Sweet and Maxell, 1919).
 Chapter 15 Turmeric Land:
Women’s Property
Rights in Tamil
Society since Early
Medieval Times*

KANAKALATHA MUKUND

As with many questions relating to the status of women in Indian (and specifically Hindu)
society, the simple question, ‘what rights did women have to property?’ becomes an extremely
complex one with no uniform answers which are valid for all regions, castes or classes. To
begin with, there is no unanimity on this question even among the various Smṛtis and texts
of jurisprudence. That there should be a considerable variance between theory and custom-
ary practice is understandable. What is difficult to reconcile is the general perception that
women have no property rights in Hindu society, even though there have been several legal
cases about women’s property rights and the strīdhana which even went up to the Privy
Council1 This paper is an attempt to examine the issue of women’s property rights in the
specific regional culture of Tamil society. Inscriptional evidence and other sources allow us
to trace some aspects of how women have controlled and used property since early medieval
times. In spite of large gaps in data, this evidence can be related to usage in recent times.
Accordingly, we can try to capture, even though imperfectly, the arrangements which were
in vogue prior to the Hindu Act of Succession, 1956. To understand the nature of rights in
land or other property, we need to examine both customary and legal rights, the extent of
direct control, and the power of alienation. No surprisingly, what comes across is that, in
spite of some general, common features there is endless variation in customs and practices.

* Reproduced with permission from the author. Previously published in Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 27,
Sameeksha Trust, 1997. Reproduced in Kumkum Roy, Women in Early Indian Societies, Manohar Books, Delhi,
(1999); pp. 123–40.

195
196 KANAKALATHA MUKUND

Thus, what this preliminary investigation reveals is that the diversity of women’s prop-
erty rights across regions/sub-regions/castes/classes/families can be dealt with only through
a series of microstudies. What I have tried to do is to point to the diversities and hazard
some tentative hypotheses which may instigate other scholars to explore these challenging
untrodden paths.

WHAT IS WOMEN’S PROPERTY?

In the ancient Smṛtis and Dharmaśāstras (for the most part dating back to 200 bc–ad 400),
which were the first systematic treatment of Hindu law, the question of property rights and
inheritance formed one of the important aspects of civil law, with the more controversial
question of women’s rights also being discussed.2 Even the Manusmṛti recognised women’s
property or strīdhana, and the right of unmarried daughters to a share of the father’s prop-
erty. Yājñavalkya, Kātyāyana and Nārada were the important jurists who, though by no
means unanimous in their views, further developed and defined women’s property rights. To
condense their views in the simplest form, women could acquire property in four principal
ways: (a) what was given to them at the time of marriage (adhyāgni); (b) gifts given after
marriage, either by the parents, husband or husband’s family, ‘through affection’—often
referred to as saudāyika, prītidāna or prītidatta; (c) through inheritance and (d) by working.
The earliest recognised form of women’s property was strīdhana or what was given to the
bride at the time of marriage. There seems to be a sound basis to believe that this strīdhana
was originally part of the bride price or kanyāśulka paid by the bridegroom, a part of which
was passed on to the bride by her parents. The ready acceptance of this without reservation
as the property of the woman also derived from the general disfavour in which the practice
of kanyāśulka came to be held (so that, by excluding the husband from the right to this
property, the habit could be discouraged). Other gifts which were given on the occasion of
a wedding were also denoted as strīdhana, mainly because they tended to be small in value.
Saudāyika was also included in strīdhana. This specific allusion to a gift is in itself an
indication that a woman had no automatic right to this wealth, as an inheritance right. There
was also a further rider that if any immovable property had been gifted by the husband, the
wife had only limited, at best usufruct, rights in that property. Strīdhana, on the other hand,
was the absolute property of the woman and it is a matter of interest that husbands were
forbidden to use or sell the strīdhana, except in times of dire need.
The earnings of a woman were universally stated to belong to the family and could not
be considered strīdhana. In this context it is interesting to note that in present-day Tamil
Nadu, in common perception, the only class of women who were thought to have property
rights were the devadāsīs3 These women and their immediate kin usually constituted self-
supporting, female-headed households whose property (in legal language) was acquired by
‘self-exertion and mechanical arts’. Courtesans (gañikās), of course, were certainly prominent
on the social scene even in ancient times, but the debates on women’s property rights seem
to have been located only within the patriarchal system.
The really thorny issue in women’s property rights was the question of inheritance rights
to family property—of daughters to the father’s property and of married women/widows to
the husband’s property. Again there was no consensus on these rights, but slowly the view
 Chapter 15  Turmeric Land 197

gained ground that while daughters were normally entitled only to their marriage portions,
they could inherit property when there were no sons in the family or if they were unmarried
at the time of the death of the father. Somewhat reluctantly, widows were also accepted as
having the right to a share of the husband’s property, but, on the death of a widow her share
reverted to the heirs of her late husband.
Two major schools of thought on property rights emerged in the early twelfth century—the
Dāyabhāga school of Jīmūtavāhana and the Mitākṣarā school of Vijñāneśvara. The Dāyabhāga
school gave more comprehensive inheritance rights to widows, while the Mitākṣarā school
specified that strīdhana went by succession from mother to daughter (the preferred line of
succession was unmarried daughters first, married, but not well-off daughters next, married
daughters, sons and other heirs). The main significance of these works was that they became
the basis of Hindu law on these issues under the British courts, which referred to these
authorities for establishing what constituted women’s property. They ultimately developed
the idea of two kinds of women’s property. The first was that of strīdhana (as defined in
the older texts), which on the death of the woman would pass on to her children/heirs—that
is, she constituted an independent stock of descent. Most often, the recognised succession
was down the female line, but according to some schools, all children shared equally in the
property. The other form of property, termed ‘woman’s estate’, referred to the share of the
widow, over which she had no power of alienation (except under extenuating circumstances)4
These rights also varied from region to region, depending on whether local usage sub-
scribed to Mitākṣarā or Dāyabhāga.
Thus, traditionally there was no definitive or uniform code relating to women’s property
rights. Even among the Smṛti writers there was an ongoing debate as to whether customary
practice or śāstras should take precedence. We gather that what was being laid down as law
tended to be prescriptive and not always a record of what existed in practice; equally, that
the modifications which were made in strīdhana and widows’ rights derived at least in part
from de facto recognition of customary rights. That the usage varied from region to region
was also acknowledged, and even from very early times commentators pointed out that in
the dakṣiṇa (southern) region women’s rights were more broad-based.5 By the twelfth cen-
tury, when the Dāyabhāga and Mitākṣarā texts were being authoritatively codified, there
also existed a large corpus of inscriptions in south India. This coincidence in time makes it
possible for us to juxtapose the actual with the prescriptive, and to understand the historical
experience relating to women’s property rights in south India.

INSCRIPTIONAL EVIDENCE
There are many references to women and their use of property in inscriptions in Tamil Nadu.6
Their range and sheer volume indicate that inscriptions can indeed be used as a sound basis
for reconstructing social history. The 348 inscriptions used here are very suggestive of
local customs in this context. In order to understand the social background of the women,
a combined caste/class ordering has been drawn up.7 By and large, class, rather than caste,
is used as the reference point, so that even though most local chiefs and local elite families
were vēḷālas, and occasionally Brāhmaṇas, they are designated by the class and not by
caste (Tables 15.1 and 15.2). In 21 cases it has not been possible to identify either caste or
198 KANAKALATHA MUKUND

Table 15.1  Distribution of Women Property Owners

District Century Status Number
Chingelpet 0 Brāhmaṇa 2
Chingelpet 8 Major Royalty 2
Chingelpet 9 1
Chingelpet 9 Brāhmaṇa 1
Chingelpet 9 Local chief 5
Chingelpet 9 Major royalty 1
Chingelpet 10 Tēvaraṭiyāl 2
Chingelpet 10 Local chief 1
Chingelpet 10 Major royalty 6
Chingelpet 11 Brāhmaṇa 9
Chingelpet 11 Tēvaraṭiyāl 3
Chingelpet 11 Local chief 2
Chingelpet 11 Local elite 1
Chingelpet 11 Maidservant 1
Chingelpet 11 Major royalty 2
Chingelpet 11 Palace maidservant 1
Chingelpet 12 3
Chingelpet 12 Brāhmaṇa 2
Chingelpet 12 Tēvaraṭiyāl 4
Chingelpet 12 Local chief 1
Chingelpet 12 Major royalty 1
Chingelpet 12 Temple servant 1
Chingelpet 13 1
Chingelpet 13 Tēvaraṭiyāl 6
Chingelpet 13 Local chief 1
Chingelpet 13 Local elite 1
Chingelpet 13 Religious/Hindu 1
Chingelpet 14 Tēvaraṭiyāl 2
Chingelpet 14 Local chief 2
Chingelpet 16 Tēvaraṭiyāl 1
Chittoor 9 Major royalty 1
Chittoor 12 Local chief 2
Chittoor 13 Local chief 4
Chittoor 15 1
Chittoor 18 Local chief 1
Chittoor 19 Local chief 1
Coimbatore 11 2
Coimbatore 12 Major royalty 1
Coimbatore 12 Vēḷāḷ 2
Coimbatore 13 Tēvaraṭiyāl 1
Coimbatore 13 Local elite 1
Coimbatore 13 Palace maidservant 1
Cuddapah 12 Local chief 1
Cuddapah 12 Military leader 1
 Chapter 15  Turmeric Land 199

District Century Status Number

Madurai 8 Local chief 1
Madurai 8 Shepherd 1
Madurai 11 Major royalty 2
Madurai 13 Local chief 2
Madurai 18 Local chief 2
Madurai 18 Major royalty 2
Madurai 19 Tēvaraṭiyāl 1
Nellore 17 Local chief 1
North Arcot 9 Local chief 1
North Arcot 9 Major Royalty 4
North Arcot 10 Major royalty 4
North Arcot 10 Religious/Jain 1
North Arcot 11 Tēvaraṭiyāl 1
North Arcot 11 Local chief 1
North Arcot 11 Major royalty 1
North Arcot 11 Merchant 1
North Arcot 13 1
North Arcot 13 Local chief 6
North Arcot 13 Local elite 1
North Arcot 14 Tēvaraṭiyāl 1
North Arcot 14 Local chief 1
North Arcot 16 1
North Arcot 16 Local chief 1
North Arcot 16 Local elite 1
Pudukottai 10 Local chief 2
Pudukottai 11 Local chief 1
Pudukottai 12 Tēvaraṭiyāl 2
Pudukottai 13 Tēvaraṭiyāl 1
Pudukottai 13 Local chief 1
Pudukottai 14 Tēvaraṭiyāl 1
Pudukottai 15 Temple servant 2
Ramnad 8 Brāhmaṇa 1
Ramnad 11 Brāhmaṇa 2
Ramnad 11 Tēvaraṭiyāl 1
Ramnad 11 Local chief 1
Ramnad 12 Major royalty 1
Ramnad 14 Local chief 1
Salem 12 Local chief 1
South Arcot 9 Local chief 2
South Arcot 10 2
South Arcot 10 Brāhmaṇa 1
South Arcot 10 Tēvaraṭiyāl 1
South Arcot 10 Local chief 9
South Arcot 10 Local elite 1
South Arcot 10 Major royalty 2
South Arcot 10 Palace maidservant 1
200 KANAKALATHA MUKUND

District Century Status Number

South Arcot 11 1
South Arcot 11 Tēvaraṭiyāl 3
South Arcot 11 Local chief 4
South Arcot 11 Major royalty 4
South Arcot 11 Palace maidservant 1
South Arcot 11 Temple servant 1
South Arcot 12 Tēvaraṭiyāl 2
South Arcot 12 Local chief 3
South Arcot 12 Merchant 1
South Arcot 13 Tēvaraṭiyāl 4
South Arcot 13 Major royalty 1
South Arcot 18 Merchant 1
Tanjavur 9 Local chief 2
Tanjavur 9 Major royalty 2
Tanjavur 10 Brāhmaṇa 1
Tanjavur 10 Local chief 2
Tanjavur 10 Local elite 1
Tanjavur 10 Major royalty 36
Tanjavur 10 Military leader 1
Tanjavur 10 Palace maidservant 4
Tanjavur 11 Tēvaraṭiyāl 5
Tanjavur 11 Local chief 2
Tanjavur 11 Major royalty 37
Tanjavur 11 Palace maidservant 3
Tanjavur 12 4
Tanjavur 12 Tēvaraṭiyāl 2
Tanjavur 12 Major royalty 1
Tanjavur 12 Palace maidservant 1
Tanjavur 13 2
Tanjavur 13 Brāhmaṇa 2
Tanjavur 13 Tēvaraṭiyāl 2
Tanjavur 13 Local chief 1
Tanjavur 13 Religious/Hindu 1
Tanjavur 17 Tēvaraṭiyāl 1
Tanjore 11 Brāhmaṇa 1
Tanjore 12 Local chief 1
Tiruchi 0 1
Tiruchi 10 Brāhmaṇa 1
Tiruchi 10 Local chief 2
Tiruchi 10 Major royalty 13
Tiruchi 11 Brāhmaṇa 2
Tiruchi 11 Local chief 1
Tiruchi 11 Local elite 1
Tiruchi 11 Maidservant 1
Tiruchi 11 Major royalty 3
Tiruchi 12 Brāhmaṇa 1
 Chapter 15  Turmeric Land 201

District Century Status Number

Tiruchi 12 Tēvaraṭiyāl 2
Tiruchi 12 Major royalty 1
Tiruchi 13 Local chief 3
Tiruchi 13 Major royalty 1
Tiruchi 13 Temple maidservant 1
Tiruchi 14 1
Tiruchi 14 Local chief 1
Tiruchi 17 Major royalty 2
Tiruchi 18 Tēvaraṭiyāl 1
Tiruchi 18 Local chief 1
Tirunelveli 8 Local chief 1
Tirunelveli 12 Brāhmaṇa 1
Tirunelveli 13 Brāhmaṇa 1
Tirunelveli 18 Major royalty 1
Total 348
Source: SITI and VRR.

Table 15.2  Class/Caste Background of Women Property Owners

Status Number
Brāhmaṇa 28
Tēvaraṭiyāl 50
Local chief 79
Local elite 8
Maidservant 2
Major royalty 132
Merchant 3
Military leader 2
Palace maidservants 12
Religious/Hindu 2
Religious/Jain 1
Shepherd 1
Temple maidservants 1
Temple servant 4
Vēḷāḷa 2
Total 327
Source: SITI and VRR.
202 KANAKALATHA MUKUND

class background. ‘Major royalty’ refers to dowager queens, or queens and princesses of
the imperial dynasties (predominantly Coḷas, Pāṇḍyas and Pallavas). The temple dancers
are referred to by their old Tamil name tēvaraṭiyāl rather than the more familiar devadāsī.
This has been done intentionally because the word tēvaraṭiyāl specifically means a servant
of god and clearly, the dancer was only one of the many kinds of tēvaraṭiyār (the masculine
and plural form) who served in the temple in various capacities—in the kitchen, arranging
the flowers, keeping the temple clean, etc. The local chief and local elite were the dominant
landowning classes; in modern terminology they might be termed dominant peasant classes.
Their power base derived from their landownership and their relationship with the royal
families, since most of the queens came from these families.
The inscriptions refer to several kinds of property transactions—gifts to the temple, sales,
and assignment of property and/or land revenues to the tēvaraṭiyāl for their services. These
transactions also indicate that the ownership rights of women with regard to their property
extended to the power of alienation through gifts and sales. Women also bought property
in addition to acquiring property through inheritance or being employed, so that virtually
all the forms of women’s property rights were found to operate among the Tamil people,
though the Smṛtis did not acknowledge some of these rights.
The temple was the focus of social and economic life of the locality, and was the ben-
eficiary of major patronage and endowments from the royal houses and the state as well
as a variety of more modest offerings, usually for the ‘merit’ of the donor or a specified
beneficiary (such as husband, son, brother, king, etc.). The latter were necessary to finance
a variety of routine temple services: lamps which burned day and night (nantā viḷakku) or
at dawn/dusk (sandhyā dīpam), food offering to the various mūrtis in the temple, or flowers,
etc., to the devotees and Brāḥmanas.8 Gifts were sometimes made directly in kind—gold
and silver jewellery or vessels, lamps, etc., but were more often given indirectly in a two-
stage process, in which the service was maintained through the income earned or interest
on an asset which was assigned to the temple, or farmed out to specific individuals/groups
or local assemblies. For instance, the normal assignment for a specified measure of oil
or ghee to be given per day to the temple for burning an eternal lamp was 90 sheep or 32
cattle. The recipient of the livestock would have to ensure that the oil or ghee, as specified,
was regularly given to the temple. Similarly money (gold coins or gold) would be donated
which would be given out to individuals or groups or even the local assemblies who would
undertake to pay 15 per cent interest (or an equivalent value in ghee or oil) to the temple.
Strict fines (up to 25 per cent of the value of the endowment) were specified for even one
day’s failure to keep up the payment and groups which had received the money but had
been unable or unwilling to fulfil these terms and conditions would have to sell some land
of equivalent value to the temple. Since the scope for malfeasance was very large under
these arrangements, audit committees were often appointed to check the temple accounts.
Against this general background, we can also get a more detailed picture by referring to
some specific information in the inscriptions. Coming to the class background of the donors,
two groups (Table 15.2) are predominant—the ruling classes (royalty, local chiefs, local elite
and military) account for 63.5 per cent (221) of the donors. Women of the royal families
were involved actively in the construction and maintenance of temples. The extent of their
endowments precludes the facile assumption that they were only utilising some kind of a
personal ‘allowance’ made to them. The earliest reference to a queen who constructed a
 Chapter 15  Turmeric Land 203

temple was to the Pallava queen Raṅgapatākā in the eighth century.9 The local feudal chiefs,
whose daughters married into the royal families, maintained a steady and continuous tradition
of patronage to temples, but the most vigorous and emphatic patronage came from the Coḷa
queens and princesses. A look at Table 15.1, for instance, shows that in Tanjavur district
alone there are 73 inscriptions (in the tenth and eleventh centuries) and 13 in Tiruchi district
(tenth century) which record their gifts to temples. Since dowager queens and princesses
were also actively promoting these activities, it seems reasonable to argue that they must
have been making these endowments out of their personal property (most likely inherited
on the maternal side from the local landowning elite families).
Three significant personalities in this respect were Cempiyanmādevī, mother of King
Uttama Coḷa, Lokamahādevī (or Olokamahādevī), Dantiśakti, queen of Rājarāja Coḷa,
and Kuntavai, his sister. The dowager queen Cempiyanmādevi, in addition to her numer-
ous gifts and endowments, exercised such authority even in the reign of her grandnephew
Rājarāja that she could command one of the temple managers to donate money to meet
the expenditures incurred in the daily rituals of the temple, besides fixing the emoluments
of the temple servants, and arranging for various items of temple expenditures to be met
from land assignments.10 Queen Lokamahādevī not only built a temple in her own name
(Lokamahādevīśvaram), but she also took a keen interest in the day-to-day management of
the temple. Even as a dowager queen she ordered the reclamation and cultivation of waste
lands in a village, the income to be used for special festivals in the temple.11
The other important class of women referred to in the inscriptions were the employed
women (19.8 per cent). While the most numerous group was the tēvaraṭiyāl, it is clear
that women were employed in various capacities in the palaces, households of the elite,
in the temples and in their capacity as wives of temple servants. In all cases they obvi-
ously could exercise ownership rights over their income/property, although this was not
accepted by the Smṛtis, once again highlighting the dichotomy between the law in theory,
and the practice.
The tēvaraṭiyāl, of course, represents a case worth studying in itself. In the early period,
the temple dancer had both a secular and religious significance in the social milieu which
revolved around the temple. She was clearly regarded as an employee of the state who served
in the temple at par with other temple servants. The dancers could be transferred from one
temple to another and were paid either by being assigned shares in land; the revenue from
specified taxes, or ‘kāṇi’ (landholding) rights in temple lands.12 Paying for a tēvaraṭiyāl to
dance in the temple was considered to be an act of religious merit even in normal times, and
especially when temples had suffered after the Muslim invasions in the fourteenth century
and the consequent disruptions in social and political life.13 There are several references to
the property owned, sold and bought by the tēvaraṭiyāl which indicate that they had property
independent of the temple.14
Contemporary consciousness tends to locate the temple dancer within the social structure,
primarily with reference to her sex life. The earlier evidence indicates a far more complex
reality. There is even a reference to a married tēvaraṭiyāl, while the sister of another was
evidently a favourite wife/concubine of a local chief.15 The most common arrangement, as
in later times, may well have been that they became the mistresses of the local landed elite.
But this seems to have been not only an accepted, but even a respectable social practice,
and there are several references to the concubines (pōkiyār) of local chiefs who made gifts
204 KANAKALATHA MUKUND

to temples in their own right. At least one reference shows that property was transferred to
the ‘unofficial’ family as gifts given out of affection or prītidāna.16
Though we thus have convincing evidence of women’s property rights, it is also equally
clear that such rights were not universal or uniform for all women. The extent to which women
could control their property depended on the usage current in their immediate social circle.
Among the well-to-do, land was given as strīdhanam to the daughter on her marriage—there
is even a reference to it and gifted as strīdhanam to the goddess in the temple—but, as this
gave the husband the status and the right of doing service in the temple and the privileges
due to that in local affairs,17 it was clearly he who was regarded as the landholder.
Two contemporary inscriptions of c. 1270 capture the anomalies in women’s status
very well. One refers to a woman who was a member of the local committee of justice
(niyāyattār): the other to two Brāhmaṇa widows without sons who were forced to sell their
land.18 The latter gives the bare outlines of what was perhaps a fruitless struggle on the part
of the widows to retain their land. They were, however, not given any help by their relatives
(jñātis) and finally had to sell the land. The fact that they were represented by close male
relatives—one by her father, the other by her son-in-law who was also her brother—in the
sale negotiations indicates that there was strong social and intra-family opposition to their
owning land when they had no sons. While the rights of the women of the royal families at
one end of the social spectrum, or of the tēvaraṭiyāl, a special group, were not questioned,
in the middle classes these rights were not equally well protected or accepted.
The inscriptions (Table 15.1) also throw up some tentative inferences. One noteworthy
fact is that, with the beginning of Hoysala/Vijayanagar rule, there is a sharp decline in the
number of references to women (after the fourteenth century). The inescapable inference
seems to be that Vijayanagar society was far more restrictive when it came to women’s
property rights. Even though women probably continued to enjoy the more open traditional
arrangements in Tamil Nadu, the culture of the rulers discouraged the public display of these
rights through recorded endowments, sales, etc. Another point to note is that the inscriptions
are most numerous in the heartland of imperial power—Tanjavur, Tiruchi, South and North
Arcot and Chingelpet districts. It would be interesting to investigate whether significant
sub-regional variations existed within Tamil country.

URBAN PROPERTY, ‘MAN̄CAL KĀṆI’ AND OTHER RIGHTS

The temple economy was primarily structured on the power relations of the agrarian society;
from the inscriptional evidence it is not possible to reconstruct the nature of the property
rights of urban women. For the more recent period, some scattered evidence exist which
indicate that women did inherit non-agricultural property, both movable and immovable. The
records of the mayor’s court in Madras19 contain the details of several cases when women
were involved in litigation concerning money given on loan, urban property which was mort-
gaged, division of property, etc. Just to cite one instance, the widow of Beri Timmanna, the
chief merchant of the English at Madras, had sued borrowers for repayment of loans which
amounted to more than 15,000 pagodas. In another case initiated by her son, the property
in contention was a house which she had made over to her daughter.20 There was also an
intriguing case in which a woman claimed the estate of her ‘first husband’s first wife’s son’
 Chapter 15  Turmeric Land 205

(which he had inherited from his mother) as the natural heir, because the son was mentally
deranged.21 Almost all the more complex cases involving inheritance claims to property
were arbitrated by the caste councils, which shows that while customs may have differed
from caste to caste, women’s rights to inherit, own and manage property were accepted.
On the other hand, the almost contemporary diaries of the famous dubash, Ananda Ranga
Pillai, also record several cases where widows were disinherited, mistreated and denied even
maintenance rights.22 Family customs, local social mores and, in these times, the attitudes of
the colonial rulers all seem to have been important in the effective realisation of women’s
rights. The English at Madras, as the eighteenth century progressed, seem to have abandoned
their earlier deference to local customs and caste decisions. This probably explains why, at
the end of the century, the litigation over the estate of the extremely wealthy merchant and
dubash, Pachaiyappa Mudaliar, dragged on, though he was survived by two widows and a
daughter, until all the claimants to the estate died.23
In contemporary Tamil society, one of the most important rights of women is the right
to inherit land. This again was strīdhanam, which devolved on the female heirs, and passed
from mother to daughter. Usually handed over to the girl when she got married, this land
was called mañcal kāṅi (man̄cal means turmeric). The origin of this name in itself would
be interesting to investigate. I have been told that the reference to turmeric indicates that
this was land, probably not a part of the patrilineal property, on which minor cash crops like
turmeric could be grown. The more plausible explanation seems to be that this was meant to
provide an independent income to the daughter which would be enough at least for personal
expenses (mañcal and kumkumam). In almost all cases, the income from this land certainly
seems to go to the woman; the extent of control or decision-making right that she has over
this land would, however, seem to vary from individual to individual, and family to family.
It would also be interesting to explore whether the practice of cross-cousin marriage as well
as marriage with the maternal uncle was an attempt to keep the property which went to the
daughter within the control of the natal family.
How did this line of female property originate? One possibility is that in almost every
family at some time there must have been a generation with only daughters, who would
accordingly succeed to the property. This is a hypothesis which instinctively I tend to reject.
The rights of women without brothers tend more often to be appropriated by other male
relatives than to be protected, and there have even been cases which went up to the Privy
Council when the male members of a family disputed the right of an only daughter to her
father’s property. Was this custom then the legacy of a distant, matrilineal social system
which existed in this region (as it still does in neighbouring Malayalam country)? These
questions need to be investigated in much greater depth. Sadly, many of these practices
seem to have degenerated in the past few decades, even before the enactment of the 1956
law. Dowry seems to have replaced traditional strīdhanam almost completely, weakening
the rights and status of women.
Another form of property over which a woman had absolute control was her jewellery
and personal belongings. Jewellery inherited from the mother, almost always, was handed
over to the daughters, while jewellery presented by the in-laws or husband could be given
to daughters-in-law or their children. The extent to which these norms of preserving the line
of descent were adhered to seems to vary, again, from family to family. I have been told of
instances when a signed release was obtained from all the granddaughters on the female line
206 KANAKALATHA MUKUND

by a lady who wanted to gift her strīdhanam jewellery to her son’s daughters. More often,
this seems to have been less rigidly observed; women usually gave their jewellery to their
daughters and their daughters’ daughters, but not invariably so.
In addition to these inheritance rights, women also have some customary rights in Tamil
society. Among all castes and classes in Tamil Nadu the bride receives a gift from her
mother’s family, usually from the maternal uncle, known as the amman cīr, which includes
the bride’s sārī, a gold ring and silver toe rings. Married daughters similarly continue to
receive poṅkal cīr from their brothers each year, besides having several other claims to
ritual gifts from the natal home. These may be small in value, but are important in that they
establish a continued claim on the family property.24
One community which stand out from the rest are the Nattukottai Chettiars, a traditional
mercantile caste, whose activities mainly centred on moneylending and trade. The men would
travel extensively in the course of their trading operations, often being away from home for
several months or years. The moneylending activity, which was essentially home-based, would
be managed by the women. This was particularly common once the Chettiars established
themselves in trade in Burma (Myanmar) and Malaysia (in the last decades of the nineteenth
century). In the mayor’s court records series, there are also extant some account books in
Tamil dating back to the 1790s, where the accounts of some Chettiar women are recorded,
indicating that this practice is not of recent origin. Yet, the traditional property rights of
Chettiar women seem to be particularly weak. Since the community, by and large, was not
an agriculture-based community, at the time of her marriage, the girl would receive a large
cash settlement which was theoretically her property. In most cases this was absorbed into
the business capital of the in-laws’ family enterprise, and there does not seem to have been
the concept of her individual property rights. In fact, as long as the daughter-in-law stayed
in a joint family, her natal family would provide for the personal expenses of the girl and
her children. There was a curious case of women managing and controlling large amounts
of money and substantial business transactions but without individual property rights.
Another example of a unique locality-specific system is found in Kilakkarai, in southern
Tamilnadu.25 This is a small coastal town where the local population, mostly Muslims, have
traditionally been chank divers. Here, there is a strong tradition of property which is passed
on from mother to daughter. On marriage, each girl receives a house, household necessities
and jewellery from her mother. When there are several daughters, the house property has
to be sub-divided. Whatever money is left over after all the daughters are provided for is
divided according to the shariat. Yet, the entire arrangement of women controlling property
and forming the line of descent is entirely at variance with Islamic law.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
It is obviously difficult to conclude with definitive comments or analysis of the nature or
basis of women’s property rights in Tamil society. A common factor which these women
share with women all over India is that the property rights seem to be acquired only on
marriage. In traditional society, there are so few instances of women remaining single that
 Chapter 15  Turmeric Land 207

the rights of an unmarried woman are, at best, notional. The condition of widows and their
inheritance rights is again difficult to capture. The common experience seems to be that few
widows actually received their just dues from the husbands’ families, though here again the
experiences varied from family to family.
One significant feature of the usage in Tamilnadu which needs to be stressed is that, even
though the daughter was given her property when she got married, this took the character-
istics of an inheritance right and not a marriage settlement or dowry, arrived at on the basis
of mutual bargaining between the two families.26The notion that a woman has a continued
right to small gifts and cīr from her father or brother is again not ubiquitous in north Indian
society. One can also tentatively link the traditional rights of women to own land in Tamil
society with recent research findings which point out that only in Tamilnadu and Kerala
do women directly supervise cultivation, for control and management go with ownership.
Thus, even as we answer some questions, many unanswered and until now unanswerable
ones emerge, which need much more intensive exploration.

NOTES
[I wish to thank all the women who have generously shared their family experiences with me. Special thanks are
due in this regard to Sakuntala Jagannathan and Sarojini Varadappan, and to Lalitha Iyer for sharing her research
experience and notes.]
1. For the legal background on women’s property rights, see Paras Diwan, Dowry and Protection to Married Women,
New Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1987, Chapter 4: ‘Strīdhana’. An oft-cited legal work on the same issue is Gooroodas
Banerjee, Hindu Law of Marriage and Strīdhana, Calcutta, 1923.
2. A. S. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991 (rpt.), Chapters
VIII and IX offer a clear discussion of the various aspects of women’s property rights. See also Diwan, op. cit.
3. This general perception seems to have really crystallised during the debate on the proposed Devadasi Abolition
Bill in the 1940s, and has now become part of popular wisdom.
4. ‘Women’s estate’ has also been converted into ‘strīdhana’—that is, with full property rights for the woman—under
the Hindu Succession Act, 1956, Diwan, op. cit., p. 121.
5. Both Yājñavalkya and Vijñāneśvara of the Mitākṣarā school, who were more liberal in their views, were from
the south, Altekar, op. cit., p. 258.
6. The two sources for inscriptions are: T. N. Subramaniam (ed.), South Indian Temple Inscriptions, Madras: GOML,
1953–57, 3 vols. (hereafter SITI) and V. R. Rangacharya, A Topographical List of the Inscriptions of Madras
Presidency, New Delhi: Asian Education Service, 1985 (rpt.) 3 vols. (hereafter VRR). I have taken care to see that
the inscription which are cited in both—and these are, surprisingly, very few—are used only once. The ‘border’
districts of Cuddapah, Nellore and Chittoor have been included, partly because during the linguistic reorganisa-
tion of states some tāluks in these districts became a part of Tamilnadu. The original classification of districts,
including Pudukottai (in VRR, III) have been retained for simplicity.
7. The basic limitation is that only women of property-owning classes are considered here. There are references to
women/families who are ‘donated’ to the temples for various kinds of service (like husking paddy), etc., but these
are not included because of the limited terms of reference of this paper.
8. The terms and conditions of the endowments, as outlined here, were common for male and female donors. However,
only the references to the gifts made by women are studied.
208 KANAKALATHA MUKUND

9. In the Kailasanatha temple in Kanchipuram. Making a pun on her name, the inscription describes her as an
exemplary ‘flag (patākā) among women’.
10. Inscriptions from Tirumananjeri, in Tanjavur district, VRR, vol. II, Tanjore, 672, 673 and 687.
11. SITI, vol. II, 610 and VRR, vol. 1, Chingelpet, 727.
12. VRR, vol. II, Tanjore 1363 and SITI, vol. III-2, 1299.
13. VRR, vol. I, Chingelpet, 567.
14. Ibid., Chingelpet, 214, refers to a tēvaraṭiyāl who was forced to sell her land by public auction to pay a fine. Such
matters were obviously a collective local responsibility for, when neither the local people nor the local assembly
would buy the land, the temple management (tānattār) had to buy it.
15. VRR, vol. I, Chingelpet, 1016 and SITI, vol. I, 537.
16. SITl vol. III-1, 1102, dated ad 1374.
17. SITI, vol. II, 1008.
18. VRR, vol. I, Chingelpet, 771 and SITI, vol. II, 819.
19. Records of Fort St George, Tamilnadu Archives, Series under mayor’s court records, proceedings and pleadings,
dating, but not continuously, from 1689.
20. Fort St George, Diary and Consultation Book, 22 March 1694, (Tamilnadu Archives); mayor’s court proceed-
ings, 1717–19.
21. Pleadings in the mayor’s court, 1744–45.
22. Lalitha Iyer, ‘Glimpses of Women’s Lives in Eighteenth Century Tamilnadu’, paper presented at a symposium
on Ananda Ranga Pillai’s diaries at Pondicherry in February 1991.
23. K. Srinivasa Pillai, Kāñcipuram Paciyappa Mutaliyār Carittiram (Ripon Press Madras, 1911) (Tamil) (from
Lalitha Iyer).
24. Louis Dumont (Affinity as Value, Oxford, Delhi, 1988, p. 87) comments that the function of gift-giving and
gift-receiving come down by one generation. A woman gets gifts from her parents, who are later replaced by
her brother. The brother/maternal uncle also becomes the gift-giver to his sister’s daughter and other children.
25. Personal communication from Lalitha Iyer, who passed on her research notes to me.
26. It is interesting to compare this with the practices in several parts of Andhra Pradesh. In Nellore district, the
women inherit the equivalent of mañcal kāṇi which is referred to as pasupu kumkumamu, with a striking similar-
ity even in the name. Further north, in coastal Andhra, pasupu kumkumamu is the strīdhanam which is given as
dowry to the bride, but the woman retains complete right to this property.
 Chapter 16 Property Rights of
Women in Medieval
Andhra*

A. PADMA

EDITOR’S NOTE
A. Padma, the author of this essay, had originally combined the themes of both ‘profession’
and ‘property’ in relation to women in medieval Andhra. Her perspective was primarily
to highlight economic empowerment and financial independence. We have, however, split
this essay into two parts in order to make it more comprehensive to students. The editor felt
that this would better serve the purpose of young scholars. The present section on women’s
property rights in medieval Andhra comprises the second part of Padma’s essay.

***
The evolution of women’s property rights has witnessed several stages. Initially, a woman
is regarded as an item in the movable property of the husband and is along with sons, slaves
considered as money less.1 They were given away as gifts to the priests in lieu of their
services or sold as slaves to clear the debts made by their husbands.2 By the first century of
Christian era, the Dharmasastra writers made it very clear that wife and children are not to
be tendered as objects of gifts or sale under any circumstances.3 Āpasthambha’s theory of
wife and husband as the joint owners of the family property secured minor rights for a wife
but they were conditional as she had no right to spend money or incur normal expenditure
even on household without the consent of her husband.4 Among the other Smṛti writers,
Yājñavalkya came forward with more liberalised principles regarding property rights of
women. Mitākshara, a medieval digest on the same further enlarged the scope of women’s
right over property.

* Reproduced with permission from the author. Previously published in ‘The Socio-Cultural World of Women in
Medieval Andhra (from eleventh to thirteenth centuries ad)’, Bharatiya Kala Prakashan, Delhi (2001); pp. 71–84.

209
210 A. PADMA

There are two sources of property for women, inheritance and acquired (strīdhana).
Available evidences from ancient test and legal treatises point to the prevalence of both these
rights. However, references to the term strīdhana are more commonly found.

INHERITANCE
Inheritance can be the property that is inherited by a woman as an heir to the parental property.
Different views are expressed by the legal text writers on this issue. From Manu, it is known
that a daughter cannot become an heir to the paternal property under normal circumstances.5
She can become so only when she is duly appointed by her father in the absence of male
issue with a view to beget a son through her, who shall take on to the estate of his grand-
father besides offering funeral cake to him. Such an appointed daughter is called Putṛika.6
Mitākshara, on the contrary, gives a different picture on this issue. It says that the property
shall pass on to the successors depending on their relationship with the owner of the prop-
erty. They are of two categories—those who get share through Apṛatibaṅdha dāya (sons,
grandsons, great grandsons… who are presumed as coparceners to one’s property by birth)
and those who get their share through Sapṛatibaṅdha dāya (wife, daughter and such others
who become owners of the property only after the death of the owner.7 Thus, in the absence
of male heirs, the wife (widow) becomes the first heir. Next to her in order of succession
are, daughter, mother, father, brothers, their sons or persons of the same gōtṛa, disciples,
co-students in the respective order.8 It is here that a great change is brought by Vijñāneśvara
by making widow as the first heir of her sonless deceased husband’s property, provided she
be pious, chaste and religious minded.9 It appears that the laws of Mitākshara were closely
followed in Āndhradeśa, as the same is translated into Telugu by Ketaṇa as Vijñānēśvaramu
which formed the basic source of law during Kakatiya period.
Both Manu and Vijñāneśvara converge on few issues of daughter’s nomination as natural
heir, providing maintenance allowance to the widow of the deceased to the extent that her
share in the property shall be equal to that of the sons’ and setting 1/4th of each son’s share
towards marriage expenses of unmarried daughters.10
One of the Mukhalingam temple inscriptions refers to the distribution of property of a
deceased desi trader among his heirs. The widow was provided maintenance allowance and
some amount was set apart for the marriage expenses of unmarried daughters.11
Mitākshara further states that the ownership of a woman on such property is complete
in all respects whether the heir belonged to Apṛatibatidha or Sapṛatibatidha category. In
other words, the holder of the property had the rights of Dāna (giving in charity), Damana
(overpowering-destruction), Bhōga (enjoying), Vinimaya (consuming) and Vikṛaya
(­selling).12 Questioning Manu’s theory of dependence of a woman on man at every stage of
her life, Vijñāneśvara states that she may be dependent on her male counterpart due to her
weak physical nature, but that should not fall in the way of her economic independence or
her claims to parental property of whatsoever kind.13 In the case of the community of temple
dancing girls and those women whose profession is prostitution, daughters become the Ap
ṛatibaṅdha dāya holders (natural heirs) and succession is in the female line. Sons become
Sapṛatibaṅdha dāya holders.14
 Chapter 16  Property Rights of Women in Medieval Andhra 211

ACQUIRED PROPERTY
Besides property obtained through inheritance, women also acquire property through various
means. The origin to the acquisition of property by women can be traced to Vedic times.
The wedding hymns of Ṙgvēda indicate that gifts are to be sent to the bridegroom’s house
with the bride and over such articles the wife is the mistress.15 Ornaments, costly dresses and
household articles constitute those and they are generally kept under the control of women.
Gradually, such kinds of property went on increasing in extent and value necessitating the
early jurors to be specific on the claims on such property, which is otherwise called Stṛidhana.
Manu defines Stṛidhana as the six folded property of a woman—that which is obtained
through gifts before the nuptial fire, on the bridal procession, what was given in token of
love, and what was received from her brother, mother or father.16 This concept is elaborated
greatly by the jurors Yajñavalkya and Kātyāyana.17 Accepting these definitions, Mitakshara
also included inherited property under strīdhana. Furthermore, gifts given by husband out
of love, the amount due to her at the time of his second marriage superseding her and the
property acquired through general methods of earning such as Ṙikhta (inheritance), Kṛaya
(purchase), Saṁvibhāga (partition), paṛigraha (chance) and Adhigama (adverse possessions),
bride price (ōli or sulka), uṅkuva and Aṛaṇamu are included under woman’s property.18
The provisions of Dharmasastras are supported by plenty of contemporary, literary and
epigraphical sources.
An epigraph dated 1255 ad recorded a gift of a land containing Pōka trees as stṛīdhana by
Achanta Sūraparaju to his daughter. This strīdhana is referred to in the grant as Aṛaṇamu.19
The Bayyāram, Niḍigoṅḍa and Kuṅdavaram inscriptions refer to the villages Bayyāram,
Niḍigoṅḍa and Kuṅdavaram as aṛaṇamu lands given to the donors Mailama and Kuṅdama
at the time of their marriage with Natavaḍi chief Rudra.20 Palnāṭi Viracharitra, refers to
aṛaṇamu on many occasions. At the time of the marriage of Mahadevarāju, a Haihaya chief
of Palnad, the bride’s father gave several cows and many bōya servants as aṛaṇamu to the
bride.21 On the occasion of Mailama’s marriage with Anugurāju, her father, the Velanāḍgu
chief Goṅka gave Palanāṭisīma as aṛaṅamu.22 Similarly, Anugurāju’s son Mallarāju was
married to Kālāchūri princess Sirādevi who brought 1000 cows, 1000 sheep and the neces-
sary bōya attendants as aṛaṇamu along with her. 23 Nannechoḍa, in his Kumārasaṁbhavamu,
mentions that Parvati’s father gave several valuable presents to her in lieu of her marriage
with Lord śiva.24 Raṅganātha Rāmāyaṇamu also has a reference to aṛaṇamu paid to Sitā
by her father in lieu of her marriage with Lord Rama.25
Ōli, Uṅkuva are the other terms found in the contemporary literary sources as well as
in the epigraphs. These correspond to the Sulka or the bride-price which is included under
strīdhana by the legal writers. However, it appears that the demand seemed to be very high
from the parents of the girls. Because of this, the caste associations decided the amount of
Ōli to be paid to the bride’s father. An epigraph from Malleśvara temple, Vijayawada records
one such arrangement made by the Telikivēvuru (Teliki/Telaga community association) of
the regions of Koṇḍavīḍu, Koṅḍapalli and Rājamahēndravaramu. It is decided that for the
first marriage, the Ōli should be 21 chinnamāḍalu (gold coins) and certain amount of silver.26
Palnāṭi Vīracharitra also has a reference to this practice. At the time of Balachandra’s
marriage with Manchala, the bride’s mother demanded huge sums of money towards Ōli.27
212 A. PADMA

Uṅkuva too finds frequent mention in the contemporary literary works.28 Generally, it is the
amount paid by the groom to the bride or her parents at the time of marriage.29 However, the
use of the term is often associated with the business of prostitution in terms of the money
paid to the mother of the girl.30

WOMEN’S DOMINION ON STRĪDHANA

The treatises on Dharmasastras and moral literature not only dealt with the property rights
and possessions of women but laid some restraints and limitations on their appropriation. For
the sake of deciding the dominion of a woman on her stṛīdhana, the property received by her
is divided into two categories based on its source (a) Saudāyika that which is received by a
woman whether as a maiden or as a married woman, from her parents or husband and over
which she had complete control and (b) Non-saudāyika, the property received by all other
means. On this she has only the right to enjoy.31 A maiden is free to dispose of Saudāyika
as well as non-saudāyika property at her pleasure.32 A widow too can dispose of every kind
of strādhana including movable property but not immovable.33 However, she can alienate
a portion of immovable property towards religious purposes or for śraddha rituals for her
husband.34 A married woman, if her husband is alive can dispose of at her pleasure only
Saudāyika property.35 The husband’s rights on strīdhana also are determined by this divi-
sion. The non-saudāyika property is subject to husband’s dominion during his life and may
be taken by him even when there is no distress.36 If, however, the property is of saudāyika
category, he has no domain except under certain circumstances of distress, disease, famine
or religious purposes.37 For all other purposes he is liable to return the same. No other person
has any right to use it under distress or otherwise.38 If he takes away the ornaments by force,
he is liable to be punished in the courts.39
The succession to strīdhana again varies according to the marital status of a woman and
the form of marriage. Generally, strīdhana devolves in the line of females only.40 The order
of succession to strīdhana except for Sulka and maiden’s property is:

1. unmarried daughter,
2. married daughter who is indigent,
3. married daughter who is well provided for,
4. granddaughters through daughter,
5. daughter’s son,
6. sons,
7. son’s sons,
8. husband (in approved form of marriage), and
9. sapiṅḍas of husband41

The paternal gifts given to the deceased women can be claimed by the husband in the event
of absence of daughters provided the marriage is one of the approved forms.42 Nādiṅḍla
inscription records an interesting issue of parent’s claims on a married woman’s property
after her death and reasserts the husband’s right on the same.43 Guilds like Teliki Samayamu
 Chapter 16  Property Rights of Women in Medieval Andhra 213

as in the above instance decide such issues. However, if the marriage is not approved by the
legal traditions, the property claims can be made by the parents.44 The property specified
under Oli or Sulka has a separate course. It generally devolves on brothers and parents, and
the husband has no dominion on the same.45
Though Vijñāneśvara did not intend to give women, the full rights of disposal over the
immovable property, both inherited and acquired, they are to a limited extent exercising
their property rights as revealed from the extensive inscriptional evidences registering
grants.by women of all classes of the society. We even have few instances of the purchase
of lands by women paying suitable price and donating the same to the deities. A record from
Nilakaṅṭeśvara temple, Nārāyaṇapuram registers grant of a piece of wet land to the temple
by Nagava, a Sānikāpu woman.46 It is mentioned in the record that she bought the same by
paying a suitable price. Another record refers to the purchase of land by one Komaṛasāni,
though details are not given.47 An epigraph mentions that a couple obtained sale deed of a
piece of land on which both their names are written as partners of the property.48
As the purpose is religious for which both husband and wife enjoy equal status, it is
very difficult to arrive at the economic independence of women. The case of temple girls
too cannot be viewed in isolation to the temple and their economic independence is always
related to their status in the temple and their conditions of service. In this connection, the
observation of Dhrama Kumar is worth mentioning, ‘In the medieval period, there existed
no legitimate private property rights worth the name as the king reserved the right of evic-
tion of land for certain reason’.49 Thus, even the male coparceners had no unrestricted right
over their self-acquired property.

REFERENCES
1. A.S. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation (Delhi, 1962), p. 213.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 214.
4. S. Bhattacharji, ‘Economic Rights of Ancient Indian Women’, in EPW, March, 2–9, 1991, pp. 507–512.
5. Bühler, Laws of Manu, IX, verse 134.
6. Ibid., IX, 127. Also, for a detailed description on the issue, Arudra, ‘Puṭrika Elāṇti Kūtuṛu’ Vyāsapitham,
(Vijayawada, 1985), pp. 54–59.
7. Saṁgrahāṅdhra Vijñākōsamu, pp. 174–179.
8. Ibid.
9. The chastity of a widow’s life is given great emphasis. It is stated that she should observe fast, make gifts in the
name of her husband and perform such other good deeds and lead a virtuous life. Then only she would become
the heir of her sonless deceased husband’s property. P.V. Kane, Op. cit., Vol. III, 1974, pp. 735–738.
10. Buhler, Laws of Manu, IX, 118.
11. Temple Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh (TIAP), Vol. I, (Srikakulam Dist), No. 35.
12. Saṁgrahāndhra Vijñāna Kosamu, pp. 174–179.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., Also G.R. Kuppuswamy, Economic Conditions in Karnataka (a.d. 973–a.d. 1336), (Dharwar, 1975), FN
126, ‘A note on Mitākshara’ p. 40.
15. A.S. Altekar, Op. cit., 1962, p. 218.
214 A. PADMA

16. Buhler, Laws of Manu, IX, 194.

17. Yajñavalkya is the foremost among the promoters to the cause of women’s property rights. Kātyāyana defines
Strīdhana.as the property acquired through -Adhyagni (nuptial fire), Adhyāvāhanika (bridal procession),
Pādavaṅdanika (doing obeisance at the feet of elders), Prītidatta (out of love), Sulka (bride price) and Anyādhēyaka
(received after marriage). Mitākshara includes a wider range of definition, making strīdhana as applicable to all
kinds of money that belonged to a woman.
18. Saṁgrahāṅdhra Vijñana Kosamu, pp. 174–179.
19. South Indian Inscriptions (SII), Vol. X, No. 349.
20. LAP: WD. No. 57, 58 and Epigraphia Andhrica, Vol. I, ‘Bayyaram Tank Inscription of Kakati Mailama’, pp.
71–94.
21. Palnāṭi Vīracharitra, p. 139.
22. Ibid., p. 24.
23. Ibid., p. 56.
24. Kumārasaṁbhavamu, 7th canto, verses 139, 140.
25. Raṅganātha Rāmāyaṇamu, Bālakāṅḍamu, p. 67.
26. SII, Vol. VI, No. 797.
27. Palnāṭi Vīracharitra, pp. 341–343.
28. Kumārasaṁbhavamu, 7th canto, verse 136.
29. Raṅganātha Rāmāyaṇamu, Bāla Kmṅḍamu, p. 55.
30. Daśakumāracharitramu, 6th canto, verse 51. Also, Palnāṭi Viracharitra, pp. 341–344.
31. N. Aruna Kumari, ‘Concept of Stridhana in Mitakshara’ in PAPHC, 8th Session, (Kakinada, 1984), pp. 42–44.
32. P.V. Kane, History of Dharamasastra, Vol. III, 197, p. 784.
33. Ibid.
34. Generally permission from the king or the members of village assembly or elders is necessary for such an act.
Andhra Pradesh Government Report on Epigraphy, 1965, No. 4 records the confirmation of the grant of land
by one Srimahādevi by the king, while her husband Vijayaditya predeceased her.
35. P.V. Kane, Op. cit., Vol. III, 1974, p. 784.
36. Ibid., p. 785.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., p. 787.
39. Vijñāneśvaramu, Vyavaharakāṅḍamu, verses 53, 54.
40. Ibid., verse 138.
41. Mitākshara on Yaj. II, 145, quoted from P.V. Kane, Op. cit., Vol. III, 1974, p. 794.
42. Buhler, Laws of Manu, IX, 196. Mitākshara also agrees with Manu on this issue.
43. SII, Vol. X, No. 221.
44. Bühler, Laws of Manu, IX, 197, Mitākshara too opines the same.
45. P.V. Kane, Op. cit., Vol. III, 1974, p. 793.
46. SII, Vol. X, No. 654. Also, Ibid., Vol. VI, Nos. 967 & 979 are of the same nature.
47. Hyderabad Archaeological Survey (HAS), Vol. XIX, Km. 17, Ramakrishnapuram.
48. SII, Vol. V, No. 1014.
49. Dharma Kumar, ‘Private Property in Asia? The case of Medieval South India’, in CSSH Vol. XXVII, No. 2,
(April, 1985), pp. 340–366.
Contextualising Women’s
Work in the Public Domain

Section IV
 Chapter 17 State of the Field:
Perspectives on
Women and Work in
Early South India*

VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

This essay is intended to be a long duree ‘thick’ description of women and work in South
India. It is a broad mapping of what has been perceived as women’s work from the early
Christian era correspondingly roughly to the period of the Sangam literature1. Medieval
literature such as Vallabharaya’s Kreedabhiramamu and Srinatha’s Palnattuvira Charitra
from the Vijayanagar period, apart from inscriptions, have been the primary sources for sal-
vaging information on women’s work and women and work from the tenth to the seventeenth
century. The accounts of women’s involvement in specific economic sectors sometimes get
carried forward into the early colonial era. The primary economic domains within which this
study is located constitutes the primary sectors of economy in the pre-colonial era such as
‘women and farm work’, women in dairy farming and women in crafts especially the textile
sector. The study also looks at the role of the Devaradiyar in Tamil economy and culture
and secondary areas of women’s work such as catering, inn-keeping, fisheries and liquor
distilling and tertiary levels of women’s work such as acting as wet-nurses or as official
mourners. All these activities, while they could be seen as women’s work fell under the
two seminal categories of domestic work and non-domestic ‘paid’ work. Work within the
household included such activities such as spinning apart from cooking, child-rearing and
home economics while women’s work in the public domain included women’s participation

* Previously published in ‘State of the Field: Perspectives on Women and Work in Pre-Colonial South India’,
International Journal of Asian Studies. Vol 7, No. 1, Cambridge University Press (2010), pp. 51–79.

Dhiraj Knite, Eugenia Vanina, Chitra Joshi and Rohan de Souza made sharp critical comments on the draft which
helped me to re-form my arguments. Divya Narayanan provided me with valuable references on Mughal society. To
all of them much thanks.

All translations from Tamil texts and folk songs are mine unless otherwise stated.
1
See my article on economic transition in this collection for a critical definition of the Sangam Age and Sangam
literature.

217
218 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

in agricultural and craft activities outside the household as well as the range of economic
activities carried out by temple women.

WOMEN AND FARM WORK

The Sangam texts2 provide us with several instances of women’s participation in the rural
economy, especially agriculture. Weeding and planting (this includes the task of transplant-
ing), guarding of the crops (which is exclusively the work for young, unmarried girls),
husking and winnowing and pounding (of the paddy) were women’s tasks. Women also
participated equally with men in the work of irrigation and harvesting. The Perunkadai3
which is one of the five great Tamil epics (based on the Sanskrit Brihatkatha) belonging to
the Post-Sangam period and authored by Konguvelir, states that women were particularly
skilled in planting seeds. The Perumpanattruppadai4 anthology gives a detailed description
of the Eyirriyar women smoothening and weeding the fields with furrows which had an
iron tip called kozhu.5 The Eyirriyar women in the post-Sangam era constituted low-caste
agricultural labour but for the period of this text (which may be roughly dated between the
second and fourth centuries ce), it is not clear whether they were working as agricultural
labour or tilling their own land. The Narrinai6 describes the Uzhavan and Uzhatti, the
farming couple, leaving for their fields at dawn, after a simple meal of rice gruel with fish.
However the term ‘uzhatti’ was not applied exclusively to the farming wife but also to a
woman working as an agricultural labourer.
Farm work related women’s folk songs provide a major source of alternative history in
reconstructing the lives of women in Tamil society and economy. Interestingly, women’s
farming songs are also found in the Sangam literature itself. The Malaipadukadam7 and the
Kurunthogai8 refer to the women pounding the grain rhythmically to the accompaniment of
a song. This genre is called vallai pattu.
The technological transition from hoe agriculture to plough agriculture has been recorded
as an important marker in changing gender balance within the agricultural domain in the
context of traditional Asian (and African) economies. This is a major plank of the argu-
ments raised by Ester Boserup in her discursive analysis of Women’s Role in Economic
Development.9 She talks about the marginalisation of women with the coming of the plough
essentially in the traditional Asian economy. To quote from Boserup10:

2
See my article in Nathan ed. 1997, pp. 223–228 on classifying Sangam texts on the basis of historical blocks and
locating women within these blocks.
3
Perunkadai, stanza I; 413, p.234, stanza I.163–4 vide Hanumanthan 1979, p. 100.
4
Perumppanatruppadai in Pattupattu lines 90–7.
5
Perumpanatruppadai, 90–97 vide Ramaswamy 1989, pp. 81–99.
6
Natrinai stanza 60: 1–8.
7
Malaippadukadam from the Pattupattu, 342.
8
Kuronthogai verse 89:1.
9
Boserup 2007 pp. 12–14 of the section ‘The Plough, The Veil and the Labourer’.
10
Ibid. pp. 13–15.
 Chapter 17  State of the Field 219

The main farming instrument in those regions, the plough, is used by men helped by draught ani-
mals, and only the hand operations—or some of them—are left for women to perform….The land
is prepared for sowing by men using draught animals, and this thorough land preparation leaves
little need for weeding the crop, which is usually the women’s task. Therefore women contribute
mainly to harvest work and to the care of domestic animals… Sometimes such women perform only
purely domestic duties, living in seclusion within their own homes and appearing in the village street
only under the protection of the veil, a phenomenon associated with plough culture, and seemingly
unknown in regions of shifting cultivation where women do most of the agricultural toil.

I have argued in an earlier essay that the evidence of the Sangam texts could itself be
divided into three historical blocks11 which indicate a gradual transition from a society in
which women were co-sharers with men in most farming activities to a patriarchal society
in which women (along with the lower castes) were beginning to be marginalised. In liter-
ary terms this change can be perceived in the movement from the Ettutogai anthology to
the Pattupattu anthology. The eventual emergence of a patriarchal structure can be roughly
assigned to the period between the fifth and seventh centuries ce, marked by the last block
of the Sangam texts called kizhkannu. The predominance of plough agriculture or settled
cultivation and the gradual displacement of shifting cultivation based on the hoe in which
women were active participants, resulted also in the gradual emergence of a patriarchal and
caste based society. The increasingly significant concepts of purity and pollution meant that
women (because of their menstrual cycles) should not be allowed to handle the ‘sacred’
plough. Women therefore came to be called ‘Kalam toda magalir’12 literally ‘women who
do not touch the plough’.
A major shift occurred in production organisation between the Sangam and late-Sangam
period (late-Sangam or post-Sangam period can be situated between the third century ce to
the fifth century ce) and the beginnings of medieval state formation under the Pallava and
Chola dynasties in around the eighth century. The movement of Tamil society from a loosely
stratified clan and kinship-labour based production system to a much more economically
stratified and socially and ritually hierarchical society, dominated by Brahmanical ideology
and brahmadeya land systems, resulted in a new production system. This was based increas-
ingly on the exploitation of the labour of landless lower castes like the Pallar, Kadaiyar,
Tudiyar and Paraiyar. Epigraphical records throw up new terms for servile labour such as
‘kudiyar’, ‘vettiyal’ and ‘muttal’13. This shift had a major impact on the position of women
and social perceptions of their labour. From being co-sharers in farm work, women came
to be perceived as domestic subordinates. The new (read non-Brahmanical/Brahminical
upper caste) cultural markers in society celebrated the ‘subordinated labour’ of the woman
as evidence of her virtuous commitment to her hearth, husband and children while rendering
invisible her work-participation in the home. Increasingly, the upper caste women came to be
confined to their domestic chores and extolled in their re-productive functions as producers
of males. The iconisation of the upper-caste/upper-class housewife in medieval canonical

11
Ramaswamy 1997, pp. 223–246.
12
Puramnanuru: 299 vide Hanumanthan 1979, p. 32.
13
It is interesting that the term ‘muttal’ (pronounced as in the English word ‘tall’) today means ‘a stupid person’ in
Tamil, in the same manner in which the medieval English term ‘villein’ or serf, becomes transformed in modern
parlance into ‘villain’, the obvious inference being that poverty breeds both ignorance and crime.
220 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

and literary texts, as chaste wife and self-sacrificing mother, goes hand in hand with her
marginalisation in the economic domain.
The differential impact of these changes on lower caste women, the ‘kadaisiyar’, like the
Pallar and Paraiyar, is striking. While undervaluing their labour, it brought them into the
public domain as waged workers. It seems likely that some of women’s farm related activi-
ties such as irrigating the fields, harvesting crops and the pounding of grain to the rhythmic
music of the vallai pattu may have changed from unwaged to waged labour in the case of
lower caste women from the medieval period onwards. While pounding of grain may have
constituted a part of the ‘domestic’ duties of women whether upper caste or lower caste, it
is likely that this became a paid profession for low caste/untouchable women sometime in
the medieval period. The Periyapuranam, a twelfth century hagiographical text, refers to
the Pulatti singing while husking paddy while her husband the Pulayan was employed in the
field14. The Pulaya and the Pulatti were clearly categorised as ‘polluting castes’ associated
with death, scavenging etc. They were also invariably landless agricultural labourers and
the term used for them is ‘kadaisiyar’ or the ‘lowest’. It can therefore be logically inferred
that both the Pulayan and the Pulatti were being employed in agricultural labour by the
landlord. A similar inference can be made for the Parayan and his wife the Parchchi. This
is the sense in which Chekkizhar uses the word in the Periyapuranam where in the story of
the Paraiya saint Nandanar, the Uzhatti is described by the poet as resting under a Marutu
tree while her baby slept on a leather sheet.15

WOMEN AND FARM WORK IN THE TAMIL FOLK SONGS

The folk song genre in women’s work situations constitutes an important source for mapping
women’s farm related work. These folk songs specifically reflect the predicament of low
caste and/or destitute women (primarily widows with children) who had to labour for their
survival. The natru padal (seed planting songs) and etra padal (water lifting songs) are still
to be heard in the Tamil Nadu countryside. In reconstructing the history of women and work,
these songs can become a major source of alternate history because most agricultural songs
relate to women from the lower strata of society.16 In terms of the class structure identifiable
in the majority of these work songs as clearly ‘lower class’, this genre becomes crucial to
the study of women’s labour history.
There is a complete absence of the woman’s voice in most of what is classified as high
literature (broadly canonical/Sanskritic), within which one would locate the majority of
upper-caste women, working within domestic spaces and secluded from the public gaze.
These women lacked access to the means of creating, disseminating or preserving their
own history. As Maria Mies points out, the process of ‘housewifization’ rendered women’s

14
Periyapuranam, vide Sastri 1975, pp. 568–69. The passage contains a brief description of Adananur village’s
low-caste settlement where Nandanar lived.
15
Periyapuranam 5:22–4 and 6:206–7 vide Sastri 1975 pp. 568–69.
16
One does occasionally come across songs by upper class rural women engaged in domestic chores in what is now
described as ‘unpaid’ or ‘unwaged’ labour.
 Chapter 17  State of the Field 221

(in the Indian context I would qualify this with ‘upper caste’ women) ‘unpaid’ household
work, ‘invisible’. To quote her, ‘The construction of woman as mother, wife and housewife
was the trick by which 50 per cent of human labour was defined as a free resource. It was
female labour.17 ‘In contrast, the work songs (literally ‘tozhil paadal’), which would include
voice of both lower caste and destitute upper-caste women, which are a part of Tamil folk
tradition, provide us with a grassroots perception of women’s place in historical societies
as perceived by women themselves.18
I would like to give an example here. In the case of women with infants, the task of
working in the hot mid-day sun was rendered doubly painful. The following is a cradle
song reflecting this mood:

While harvesting if
I strap you to my shoulders
in the noon-day heat
Will you not feel faint?
while I work in the fields
and leave you by the side
Will you not begin to cry?
I am a low-paid labourer (term used is chital)
The overseer (kangani) will be enraged
And if the overseer were to scold
will not my child feel sad.19

The work of lifting water for the agricultural fields was performed either by bullocks or by
women (the equating of animal power with woman power is interesting) by moving up down
a plank in order to rotate the wheel with the chain of buckets. The tedious work of lifting
water required enormous staying power which was to be found only in the draught animals
and in women. This set of etra padalgal are sung by women punctuated by the rhythm of
the buckets being drawn up. A woman sings:20

If I become an old hag

Where is the fragrance in me?
For him there will be one without the home
And one within.
Forty six, forty seven, forty eight.

The song indicates several aspects of a working woman’s life—the tedium of her work situa-
tion, a typical domestic situation of a patriarchal home where the man moves freely between
his wife and his mistress, seen in the phrase ‘one without the home and one within’, and the

17
Mies 1998 (originally 1886). intro. p. ix.
18
Ramaswamy 1993, pp. 113–129.
19
Tamizhannal 1956, p. 99. The translation of the song is mine.
20
Vanamamalai 1964, p. 417. For more such examples from Tamil work songs see Ramaswamy 1994, pp. 23–24.
222 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

compulsions under which a woman has to work in order to survive. The longish folk song
eventually takes the bucket count beyond hundred.

WOMEN AND WORK IN THE NON-FARM AGRICULTURAL

SECTOR
Mullai: The Pastoral Tract and Dairy Farming:
A familiar sight in the Tamil countryside even in my childhood (1950’s and early 1960’s)
was the ‘morkari’ and ‘neykari’, literally ‘the buttermilk woman’ and ‘the woman who vends
clarified butter’ (ghee). These women are itinerant peddlers and generally carry their wares
on an earthen vessel on their heads. Women’s predominance in the production and sale of
dairy products goes back a long way in Tamil culture. In the Sangam period poetry of the
Mullai (pastoral) tinai, consists of extensive metaphors and imageries pertaining to women
churning buttermilk, milking cows and selling curds and butter. The Perumpanattrupadai,21
which can roughly be ascribed to the fourth century ce, gives a detailed account of the work-
day of a shepherdess. In a somewhat clumsy simile it compares the rhythmic churning of
the curds by her to a tiger’s roar! The shepherdess in the Tamil country is known by names
such as ‘Aaichchi’, ‘Kovichchi’, ‘Idachchi’ etc. Starting her day at dawn, she churns the
curds to take out butter. She then sells the buttermilk from door to door in the kurinji and
Marudam regions and with the money she gets, she buys food grains and other necessities.
Elsewhere in the Purananuru it is said that curds were directly exchanged for foodgrains
with the farmer’s wife.22 Women were therefore key participants in the rural barter economy.
The process of setting curds by curdling the milk, is used as a simile in the Purananuru
where it says ‘Like the curd being squirted into a pot of milk from the fingers of a tired
shepherdess’23. The same anthology contains another poem, which says that in the Pandyan
country the prosperous housewife exchanged her paddy for the goat meat brought by the
shepherdess from Mullai.24 In the Perumpanattrupadai25 it is said that the Aaichchi is not
satisfied with the gold she saves up from her dairy sales but uses the ‘capital’, to buy a good
milch buffalo, a good cow and a black buffalo in order to expand her business. The term
used is ‘mudal’ which literally translates as ‘capital’. This indicates that some women went
beyond simple barter and actually set up dairy business.
In the religious literature of the early medieval Bhagavata movement (commencing
around the seventh century ce), the image of the shepherdess figures very strongly. In the
Tiruppavai (a lyrical religious composition) of the woman saint Andal (seventh century),
the picture of the dusky shepherdess, with her heavy chains and clinking bracelets, churn-

21
Perumpanatruppadai ed. Swaminathayyar 1931, lines 156–60.
22
Purananuru ed. Swaminathayyar 1935, stanza 33, lines 1–6.
23
Purananur in ibid., 276, lines 5.
24
Ibid., lines 166–68.
25
Perumpanatruppadai edited by Svaminathayyar 1931, 164–65.
 Chapter 17  State of the Field 223

ing the curds at dawn, occurs repeatedly26. Andal’s home was Tirumullaivayil which was
a pastoral zone specializing in dairy products. The very name mullai connects it with the
pastoral economy as evident from the Sangam eco-zones analysed earlier. In course of time
it may have gained the status of a small town. Today Tirumullaivayil constitutes a suburb of
Chennai and is a sacred site. It is noteworthy that Krishna or Mayon, the deity of the pastoral
tract called Mullai, became a central cult figure of the Bhagavata movement. The centrality
of the ‘milk maids’ who milked the cows, churned buttermilk and sold their products such
as milk, curds (yogurt) and butter, is bound up with the medieval bhakti movements and the
devotion of the gopis or milkmaids towards Krishna. If one were to look for parallels from
other regions, the milk maids of Brindavan (Mathura) come in for a close comparison.27
The evidence regarding the persistence of the pastoral zone with its predominantly
dairy economy in the medieval period can therefore be logically deduced, both as a result
of historical evidence of these towns and the flourishing of Krishna bhakti signifying the
popularity of Mayon, the pastoral deity. However the nature of pastoral women’s share
in the overall medieval economy is more difficult to determine. European sources for the
medieval period suggest that due to the proximity of the pastoral and agricultural tracts, the
women from poor peasant families often hired themselves out as servants in the dairy sector
in the emerging European towns. As the housewife became free from labour in the larger
dairy farms, milking, cheese making and butter making became the work of hired women
workers. An experienced cook would carry her spoon or ladle in her apron and a dairymaid
a stool. Daniel Defoe commented on the attention attracting techniques of these ‘working
women’ as ‘eminently impudent’.28

Neydal: Women in the Coastal Economy

Women living in the coastal terrain have traditionally played an active role in salt panning
and sale of salt. Women engaged in salt production and sale were known as umanapendir.29
The Perumpanatruppadai30 describes how the umanar couple extracted the salt, loaded it
on carts and sold it in the neighbouring eco-regions. The umanapendir also hawked the
headleads of salt from door to door getting in exchange paddy and other essentials31.
Fisheries is another economic sphere in which women played a major role in traditional
society. In early Tamilaham (which includes the regions of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh)
women played a key role in fishing and in hawking the fish. The Paradaiyar women caught
and sold fish. Young girls of this community kept watch over the fish drying in the sun.32 The

26
Andal’s Tiruppavai, songs 7, 8, 12 etc. I have translated from the Tamil text in Nachchiyar Tirumozhi and
Tiruppavai, 1985.
27
Mukherji 1982, pp. 325–331.
28
Hufton 1993 on p. 18 cites Daniel Defoe’s ‘The Behavior of Servants in England’, London 1724, pp. 1–9.
29
Perumpanatruppadai ed. by Svaminatha Iyer 1931, lines 61–65.
30
ibid. lines 50–60.
31
Ahananuru: 390: 8–10; 140; Kurunthogai:269: 5.
32
Ahananuru, 9, 20.
224 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

Ahananuru33 refers to these women as panimagal, literally ‘working women’ and says that
they sat in street corners selling fish. This does suggest that the more affluent fisherfolk may
have hired women to carry out the actual task of hawking the fish. There are also references
to fisherwomen exchanging fish for paddy from the Marudam tinai. The Aingurunuru34 says
that the Valaiyar (another fishing community) women sold viral fish (regarded as a delicacy)
and got year-old white rice (that is, high quality rice) in return.

The Handloom Sector

While weaving has been a male preserve in most traditional Indian societies, (the exception
being hill regions and tribal belts), spinning has been exclusively women work. Vedic texts
however, refer to women weavers as ‘vayatri’35. While the overall number of women weav-
ers vis-à-vis men, remains ambiguous, canonical literature like the Shatapatha Brahmana36
makes it clear that spinning was the exclusive domain of women.
Sangam literature refer to spinner as parutti pendugal literally ‘the spinning women’.
Spinning was particularly the occupation of destitute widows, and single women, interest-
ingly those categories of women who had to sustain themselves through their own earnings.37
The Purananuru, a Sangam text datable to anywhere between the third century bce and the
third century ce, uses the expression: Parutti pendir paruvalenna for the thread spun by
spinsters38 and says that spinsters spun late into the night with the aid of a lamp39. Another
text Natrinai referring to windows/spinsters, as ‘alil pendir’ which means ‘women without
men’ says that they spun fine yarn.40 A celebrated more or less contemporaneous text from
Northern India, Arthashastra of Kautilya, states that the Devadasi, who was too old to per-
form any service in the temple, was employed to card cotton for her livelihood. Devadasis
and old maid servants were also employed to cut wood, pick cotton, hemp and flax.41
The Virasaivite movement in Karnataka which began in the twelfth century provides a
refreshing perspective on professional women spinners. The movement has two prominent
vachanakaras from this profession—Kadire Remmavve and Kadire Kayakada Kalavve.
Both women have prefixed their names with their profession ‘kadire’ meaning spinner and
this is quite in keeping with the social philosophy of Virasaivism. A celebrated dictum of
the religion is ‘Kayakave Kailasa’ which in idiomatic English would be ‘work is workship’.
Virasaivism holds as its cardinal principle the necessity to work and be self-reliant. In so
saying it challenged the Brahmanical notion of mendicancy and alms-taking as a path to

33
Ahananuru, 126.
34
Aingurunuru ed. Swaminathaiyyar and Sundaranar, 1957, 47: 1–3 and stanza 48. See also Purananuru, 343:1.
35
‘gnas tva krantann apaso tanvata vayitriyo vayan’ says the Panchavimsha Brahmana—vide Rau 1970, p. 16, n.13.
36
tat vai etat strinam karma yad urnasutram’ 12.7.2.11, vide Rau 1970, p. 16.
37
In this connection, the English word ‘spinster’ for a single woman provides an interesting parallel since the word
originates precisely in the same context, as a woman who had to spin for her survival.
38
Puramnanuru ed. Swaminathaiyyar, Madras, 1935, song 61:line 1.
39
ibid. 327.
40
Nattrinai ed. Narayanaswami 1952, 353: 1–2.
41
Arthashastra of Kautilya II: 23 vide Tyagi 1994, p. 105.
 Chapter 17  State of the Field 225

salvation. For the first time the working woman gained her own identity and social space
despite the fact that the movement functioned within a patriarchal framework.
Kadire Remmavve used the imagery connected with her occupation to describe not only
her faith but her social situation as well. She says:42

Fast turning spinning wheel

Listen to the caste and lineage (kula jati)
of the spinning wheel I turn
The plank below is Vishnu
The wooden idol (bobbin winder) Maha Rudra
The two threads that pass through constitute intellect
awareness is the spindle
You turn the wheel by the handle called devotion
The threads turn and the bobbin is filled.
I cannot turn the spinning wheel
because my husband has beaten me
What can be done, My Lord Gummisvara!

Kadire Kalavve says that the spindle of spirituality will break if one mixes with vrataheena or
persons with the faith and devotion. The ‘Charkha Namah’ (Spinning Loom Songs), popular
among Muslim women in the North Deccan during the medieval period, also belongs to the
same genre. The medieval historian Isami in his Futuhat-us-Salatin has a very interesting
passage on women and the profession of spinning. Talking about the failure of Razia Sultana,
the ruler of Delhi Sultanate, Isami writes ‘a woman cannot acquit herself well as a ruler, for
she is essentially deficient in intellect. It is better for a woman to occupy herself with the
charkha since the attainment of high position on her part would make her intoxicated.’43
Spinning continued to be the exclusive professional preserve of women during the medi-
eval Vijayanagar period. Srinatha in the Palnattu Viracharitra (circa fifteenth century), says
that in Palnad while the farmers ploughed the field, their wives spun thread. Women spin-
ning thread must have been such a common sight in the region, for Srinatha44 comments,
that even if the celestial dancer Ramba were to come to Palnad, she would perforce have
to rotate the spinning wheel!
A. I. Chicherov in his path-breaking monograph on medieval craft and trade45 between the
sixteenth and eighteenth centuries brings together evidence from diverse regions, especially
Bengal, to show that spinning was the profession of upper caste women, more particularly
impoverished Brahmin widows. In the pre-colonial period spinning was by and large a part
of the informal sector of the economy. Women did the spinning within their domestic space
and then either sold them directly at the local fairs or delivered them to the middlemen (agents
of Master-Weavers or merchants) who collected the spun yarn from them.

42
Ramaswamy 1996, p. 54. Remmavve’s term ‘wooden idol’ clearly indicates a bobbin winder.
43
Futuhat-us-Salatin 1976, vol. II, pp. 253–54. For an overview see Siddiqui in Pawar ed. 1996, pp. 87–101.
44
Palnattu Viracharitra of fifteenth century poet Srinatha in Sastri and Venkataramanayya 1946, vol. III, p. 52.
45
Chicherov 1971, pp. 52–56.
226 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

In the handloom sector the bleaching and washing of cloth has also been a predominantly
women’s activity. The washerwomen came from the lowest caste and were called ‘Pulatti’.
The Purananuru46 say that the Pulatti washed the clothes in the particular area called ‘kalar’
whose mud was a good purifying and whitening agent. Their use of the kalar mud for wash-
ing, earned them the name ‘kalayar’. The texts describe how she prepared starch from rice47
and dipped the clothes in the starchy solution48. Finally with her long tapering fingers she
removed the lumpy or excess starch from the clothes.49 The Ahananuru also refers to wash-
ing and starching of cloth by the Pulatti.50 Natrinai says that the Pulatti worked far into the
night, drying clothes and/or starching them.51
Washing of clothes was done by both men and women of the Pulaya caste. Washerwomen
were called Vannati or Pulatti in the Tamil country and as ‘Chakali’ in Andhra. It is repeat-
edly stated both in Sangam texts and early medieval texts that apart from bleaching woven
cloth, the washermen washed the clothes of people and presumably were paid for it. The
Pulatti are clearly mentioned as women who washed impure clothes52 (rendered impure by
neo natal ceremonies following birth or by death). Her male counterpart, the Pulayan, was
usually the one who handled the dead body and the Pulatti cleaned the house of death with
cow dung etc. It was logical in the traditional social structure dominated by fear of death
pollution, for the Pulayar to be regarded as an ‘untouchable’ (located below and beyond
the four varnas) caste.
There are a few medieval inscriptional references to them.53 It is clear that the washing
of clothes was a paid service but there is no indication of what was the nature and mode of
payment. There are hardly any historical references to this. One can only logically assume
that like other menials and professional of the village community they were being paid from
the grain heap. An isolated piece of evidence is a document from the Mackenzie Collection
which says that the Pulatti was paid three sheep and three rupees collectively by the village
community as her wages.54
A sociological facet to the professional and social status of the Pulatti is provided by the
comments in the medieval twelfth century hagiographic text Periya Puranam. It refers not
only to their drinking habits but says that they frequently went into a state of possession’
and danced in frenzy ‘jumping about the cattle’55! An analysis of ‘possession’ behaviour
has shown that it was quite often the means adopted by the disempowered and unprivileged

46
Purananuru, 311: 1–2. Also Ahananuru 89 which says that the washermen were called kalaiyar because of the
mud they used for washing.
47
Natrinai 90: 2–4 vide Ramaswamy 1989, p. 87.
48
Kurunthogai, 330: 1, ibid., p. 87.
49
Ahamnanuru, 34: 11–12 ibid., p. 87.
50
Ibid. Ahananuru: 34 and 387.
51
Natrinai:353 vide Balambal 1998, p. 39.
52
Ahamnanuru: 387: 6–7 and Purananuru: 368: 15–16 vide Hanumanthan, 1979, p. 131–132.
53
South Indian Inscriptions (henceforth S.I.I.)., vol. IV, No. 1384.
54
Appadorai 1936, vol. I, p. 280 cites Colin Mackenzie, ‘The Village Feast’, Indian Antiquary, III, pp. 6–9.
55
Periyapuranam vide Sastri 1975, pp. 568–69.
 Chapter 17  State of the Field 227

to seek empowerment and social recognition. The logic would certainly hold true in the
case of the Pulatti.

WOMEN IN CRAFTS: POTTERY, BASKETRY, MAT-WEAVING,

PITH WORK AND GARLANDS
A major poet of the Sangam period called Venni Kuyattiyar (literally ‘the potter of the Venni
region’) became well known for her poem celebrating the victory of Karikala Chola (circa
second century ce) at the battle of Venni (in Tanjavur district). An inscriptional reference to
Kumbari or the potter’s wife who assisted her husband in smoothening the clay and baking
the pots, is found from the Andhra region.56
Basket-making and mat-weaving have been traditionally associated with women. Both
are part of cottage industries and are very poorly paid professions. In the Kalittogai roughly
datable to the sixth century ce, it is said that besides washing it was the work of the Pulatti
to make baskets out of ‘korai’ weeds57 In inscriptions there is reference to Medari, meaning
female basket weaver.58 In the Karnataka and Andhra regions the basket weavers belonged
to the Medara caste. There is a reference to women basket weavers whose work is known
as ‘kantakara vritti’ in the Vallabharaya’s Kreedabhiramamu59 (fifteenth century). The same
text also states that many of these Medara women were so poor that they took to prostitution
out of economic compulsions. Basketry is the auxiliary craft of the Parava (fisherwomen)
of Kerala.
Pith work called netti in the south was also done by women. The plant known as shol-
apith has soft flexible stems with spongy cellular tissues in them and also in the branches.
The Sangam texts refer to the many crafted items made out of netti including hair decora-
tions and garlands. The Silappadikaram refers to the netti work done in Pumpuhar and the
sale of netti products in the markets of Pumpuhar.60 With netti were made flowers, toys,
hair decorations especially marriage coronets etc. Although the text does not specifically
state that netti workers were women, one can logically presume so, since women are still
engaged in netti work in South India. In Karnataka among the Gudagara caste, the men
carve wooden figures while the women engaged in pith/netti work.61 Whether it is basketry,
mat-weaving or netti-working, evidence indicates that while the production was dominated
by women, their labour was informal and extremely underpaid, compounded by economic
and sometimes sexual exploitation.

56
S.I.I., vol. IV, No. 677.
57
Kalittogai, Nachchinarkiniyar commentary, ed. Anantharaman 1925, Marutam: 13–14 and also verse 117.
58
Journal of the Andhra Historical Research Society, vol. VI, Pt.3 and 4, p. 205 vide Hemlatha 1991, p. 41.
59
Kreedabhiramamu of Vallabharaya,ed. Sastry 1952, verse 67. The first English translation of Kreedabhiramamu
was by Rao and Shulman in 2002.
60
Silappadikaram, 4: 45–51 and 5: 28–34.
61
Chattopadhyay 1985, p. 111.
228 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

Garland making and flower selling was and continues to be predominantly women’s
occupations. The Ahananuru says that Vettuva (feminine of Vedar, hill tribe) girls gathered
the flowers in bamboo pipes and went to the villages to sell them.62 Devaradiyar usually
undertook the task of garland making in the temples. A eleventh century record from the
Abhiramesvara temple in Tiruvamattur63 in South Arcot district refers to women being
employed for picking flowers and making garlands. The same record says that while male
workers employed by the temple for drawing water and irrigating the fields were paid at 8
nalis of rice per day, the women workers were given exactly half the rate, that is 4 nalis of
rice. The Kreedabhiramamu64 also refers to women engaged in the profession of garland
making and flower selling.

‘Dancing Girls’ as Working Women: From Devaradiyar to

Tevadiya
The changing phases of the Devaradiyar and the nature of the work associated with the
community of temple women is crucial to the theme of women and work.
In Sangam literature, dancing girls are called Parataiyar and, Madhavi, the rival protago-
nist of the ‘chaste’ wife Kannagi, in the epics Silappadikaram and Manimekalai, (dated
roughly between the second century ce and fourth century ce) was a well-known dancing
girl of Kaveripumpattinam.
It is important to point out that nowhere in early medieval inscriptional records does the
term ‘Devadasi’ actually figure. This term which dominates our understanding of women
temple workers, begins to be encountered only in the nineteenth century. In the inscriptions
and early texts, they are known by various terms such as ‘Devaradiyar’, Soole, Sani, Paatra
and sometimes Ganika or Dasika. Historically, temple women seem to have been divided
into three categories—Devaradiyar, Padiyilar and Ishtabhattaliyar. There is clear inscriptional
and literary evidence that some Devaradiyar did get married.65 The Dashakumara Charita
of Dandin refers to this practice.66 There is even reference to a Devaradiyar having married
a king of the Velanadu family whose territoriality comes under the Eastern Chalukyas of
Vengi.67 The category of women called ‘Padiyilar’ remained single and their name literally
means ‘those who are without husbands’.
Inscriptions suggest that there was a hierarchy of the devaradiyar as well as the nature of
the temple work assigned to them, ranging from slaves and prostitutes to temple attendants/
servants at one end of the trope to affluent, land-owning devaradiyar.
There are several instances recorded in inscriptions of the sale of dancing girls to the temple
indicating that their status must have been that of virtual slaves. A record dated 1119 ce states

62
Ahananuru ed. with commentary by Nattar and Pillai 1943, song: 231.
63
Annual Report of Epigraphy (henceforth A.R.E.), 1922, No. 18 dated ce 1030.
64
Kreedabhiramu: 174.
65
S.I.I., vol. V, No. 1102.
66
Dashakumara Charita pp. 74–75, 86, 125, 150, 163, 167 etc. vide Gupta 1972, p. 222.
67
Venkataramanayya, 1950, p. 287.
 Chapter 17  State of the Field 229

that an army captain called Alagiya Pallavarayar gave the girls of his family to the Tiruvallan
temple after branding them on their foreheads with a trident68. A similar sale of four women
as Devaradiyar to the Tiruvalangadu temple for a sum of 700 Kasu is reported in an inscrip-
tion date 1175.69 Another record from Tiruvorriyur70 refers to the gift of five women and their
descendants as ‘Devaradiyar’ to the Tiruvorriyur temple, who were employed in husking
paddy by the temple authorities. These records indicate that the devaradiyar were drawn from
divergent castes ranging from Kaikkolar to Isai-Vellalar.
Inscriptional evidence is, however, equally clear on the point that while slaves may have
constituted one rung of female temple servants, the other rung consisted of independent
women professionals. Even among the professional female temple servants, the work
structure was not monolithic but hierarchical. The inscriptional record dated 1265 from
Tiruvorriyur71 (Chingleput district) of the period of Rajanarayana Sambuvaraya refers
to a strike by the Devaradiyar, Padiyilar and Ishtabhattaliyar as a result of the confusion
over the allocation of duties and their ritual hierarchy. A committee constituting of Nattar,
Maheshvaras, Sthanathar, Virachola Anukkar and Kaikkolar headed by a Mudaliyar of
Bhiksha Matam of Chidambaram enquired into the charge and allocated the functions of the
Devaradiyar and regulated their status. The arbitration was necessitated by the fact that the
Padiyilar were dying of poverty and had become greatly reduced in number. The committee
appointed the Ishtabhattaliyar to assist the Padiyilar. It however appears that the Devaradiyar
may have been at the top of this hierarchy because they were specifically exempted from
such menial chores such ‘taligai vilakku’ or ‘rice cleaning and ‘tiruvillakku tirumelugu’
meaning ‘cleaning the lamps with cow dung’. The Devaradiyar were to carry the flower plate
‘pushpataligai’ and ‘tirunirkappu’ (?) while the Ishtabhattaliyar, the lowest in the hierarchy
made the varikkolam that is decorating the temple floor with rice flour and cleaning vessels.
Holding the mirror before the deity, fanning the deity with the fly whisk72 and holding the
‘Sripadam’73 (literally the auspicious feet of the Lord represented in gold) were performed by
the ‘superior’ dancing girls. The dispute continued, necessitating another arbitration commit-
tee under the aegis of Vittappar of Anegondi, an official of Kampana Udaiyar and yet another
committee three years later under Tunaiyirunda Nambi Kongarayar. The task of dancing and
singing in the temples was assigned to the dancing girls with the Ishtabhattaliyar dancing
before the god and the Devaradiyar before the goddess. The same Tiruvorriyur inscription
refers to Devaradiyar being assigned the task of singing Tiruppadiyam in ‘aagamamargam’74
(literally the path of the Agamas) style to wake up the deity.

68
A.R.E., 230 of 1921–22, part two, para 19.
69
A.R.E., 80 of 1913.
70
A.R.E., 122 of 1912.
71
A.R.E., 196 of A.R.E. 1912–1913, p. 128 ff para 51 of part two.
72
S.I.I., vol. XI, no. 1035 from Simhachalam (in modern Waltair in Andhra Pradesh).
73
A.R.E., Nos. 373 and 380 of 1919 published in Subramanian 1957 as Nos. 358 and 369.
74
The Agamas are theoretical treatises as well as practical manuals on modes of ritual temple worship.
230 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

Considering the wide trope of economic and social activities engaged in by these ‘temple-
women’ it becomes important to locate these women as active agents in the temple economy
whether in a subordinate or controlling capacity.75
Therefore historical evidence makes it amply clear that not all temple women were
slaves or of a lowly status. Many of them enjoyed a high status, property and a respectable
position in society. Inscriptions from the Chola-Pandya period, refer to the land holdings of
Devaradiyar. The eleventh-century Rajaraja inscription76 states that the Devaradiyar were
invited to serve the Thanjavur periya koyil and given house site and land near the temple.
In 1337, the task of conducting the celebration of an important festival at the temple of
Alumelumagamma in Tiruchchanur (Tirupati) was jointly given to the Devaradiyar and
the Kaikkolar.77 The Devaradiyar also enjoyed the rare privilege of an exclusive audience
with the king.78 These women were then, powerful, financially independent and apparently
socially respected.79 There are records which testify to them as land owners as well as gen-
erous donors of land to the temples.80
The position of dancing girls in the context of the economic domain has to be determined
in terms of the data, however sparse, of the structure of work and wages. An inscription from
the Tiruvorriyur temple81 clarifies that the women employed as garland makers were paid
10 nalis of rice each per day together with 1½ kalanju of pon per annum for buying clothes.
One of the earliest inscriptions which refers to the grant of house sites and paddy shares to
the Devaradiyar is the tenth-century record of Rajaraja I from Brahadisvara temple.82 An
undated inscription from Malkapuram states that Kasisvara Siva Ayyamgaru (village com-
munity) made a gift of one khandika and ten tumus of land to each of the eleven Sanis.83 The
Srikurmam inscription dated 1250 ce provides us with valuable information regarding the
wages paid to the Sanis stating ‘to each of the thirty Sanis, 42 puttis of paddy per year, two
tambulams every day and three appanas per month’.84 The Chebrolu inscription of Jayappa,
the general of Kakatiya Ganapati dated 1235 ce, records the construction of double storied
houses for the sixteen best ganikas of the temple of Chodisvara at Tamrapura.85

75
Interesting perspectives on temple Devaradiyar in the Chola period is provided in Orr 2000. Apart from discussing
‘Temple Women as Servants of the Lord’ she also engages with ‘Temple Women as Temple Patrons’ and ‘property
and piety’. Orr has looked at the material assets especially landed properties of the Devadasi. Her work can therefore
be seen as a break-away from traditional historiographies which tend to conflate the categories of temple women,
ritual dancers, temple servants and ‘sacred’ prostitution.
76
S.I.I., vol.II, part two, no. 66.
77
Tirumalai Tirupati Devasthanam Inscriptions (henceforth T.T.D.I.), vol. I, No. 108.
78
A.R.E., 229 of 1919. The inscription dating to the period of king Deva Raya II of the Vijayanagar empire states
that the Devaradiyar alone, among women, enjoyed the privilege of a direct audience with the king.
79
This is the thrust of the article by Sen 1993, pp. 240–277.
80
For example S.I.I., vol.V, Nos. 1026, 1027, 1102 etc.
81
A.R.E., 146 of 1912. The 1912–13 volume of the A.R.E. series is particularly rich in its information on the Devaradiyar
of the Tiruvorriyur temple.
82
S.I.I., vol. II, pt. 2, No. 66.
83
S.I.I., vol. X, No. 396 vide Reddy 1991, p. 74.
84
S.I.I., vol. V., No. 1188 vide Reddy 1991, pp. 74–75.
85
Epigraphica Indica, vol. VI, pp. 38–39, text lines 152 to 155 in Reddy 1991, p. 75.
 Chapter 17  State of the Field 231

A very interesting inscription from Mangalore dated 1204 ce states that if the dancing
girls did not turn up to perform their specified duties in the temple they were to be fined 5
½ coins as penalty.86 It is said of the dancing girls coming under the purview of the Sanula
Samayamu, literally, the collective organisation of Sanis, that any ethical violation of the
professional/social code could result in the expulsion of the dancing girl.87 Medieval inscrip-
tions which refer to the ‘Soolevala’88 suggest that this must have been an official specifically
appointed to supervise the duties of the dancing girls.89
Prostitution was and continues to be a female preserve. Since this is the only profes-
sion, which has been recognised as a woman’s profession, there is a plethora of literature
on prostitution. The fee collected by the prostitutes for their services was called roya and
the non-payment of fees to the prostitute was punishable by law as was the charging of
excess money from the customers by the prostitute. Reference to special courts called Jara
Dharmasasanamu which dealt with issues of justice90 concerning prostitutes comes from
both inscriptions91 and literature.92 The Shiva Sharanes within the Virasaiva movement,
which originated in Karnataka in the twelfth century but spread over much of Andhra as
well, includes a few who were professional prostitutes such as Gangamma, Soola Sankavve
and Virasangavve.93 One of them called Soola Sankavve in her vachana speaks of profes-
sional ethics:

In my harlot’s trade,
having taken one man’s money
I daren’t accept a second man’s, Sir.
and if I do,
they will stand me naked and
kill me, Sir.
And if I cohabit
with the polluted,
my hands, nose, ears
they’ll cut off
with a red hot knife, Sir.
Ah, never, no
knowing you, I will not.
My word on it
Libertine siva!

86
S.I.I., vol. VII, No. 185 Gururajachar 1974, p. 246.
87
S.I.I., vol. VI, No. 1202
88
S.I.I., vol. IX, i. 80 (introduction) and Hyderabad Archaeological Series (HAS) 18, p. 35. See P.B. Desai’s
­introduction in Gururajachar 1974, p. 246–247.
89
The office is similar to the ‘Ganikadyaksha’ meaning ‘Head of the Courtesans’, referred to in Kautilya’s
Arthashasthra (Sanskrit text dated between third century bce and second century ce) ed. Kangle 1965, lines: 2.27.1.
90
A brief but interesting article on this theme is by Padma in Satyanarayana and Reddy 2005, pp. 12–15.
91
Hyderabad Archaeological Series, vol. XIX, Warangal 3, Koravi inscription, pp. 135–138 vide Padma, Ibid., p. 14.
92
Kreedhabiramamu of Vinukonda Vallabharaya 1960, verses: 265, 272 vide Padma, Ibid., p.14.
93
I have briefly discussed this aspect under the section on ‘Social Philosophy’ in my book 1996, pp 52–55.
232 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

(translated by Susan Daniel in Susie Tharu and K.Lalita ed. Women Writing in India 600
bc to the Present, OUP, 1991, pp. 81–82).
Perhaps the only professional women’s guild consisted of the temple women and the
inscriptions characterise them as Sani Munnuru.94 The guild seems to have enjoyed some
power because a thirteenth-century record (dated 1292) from Peddakallepalle in Krishna
district95 even indicates that the Sani Munnuru along with the Sthanapatis (also called
Sthanathar, i.e., temple trustees) were part of the temple management. In another record
the collective organisation of the Sani is referred to as ‘Nibandhakaralu’ in the context of
temple managers/trustees.96 Two records from the Narasimha temple at Simhachalam dated
1427 and 1447 respectively refer to them as ‘Sanula Sampradayam’ literally ‘hereditary/
traditional temple dancers’.
The ubiquitous presence of devaradiyar as ‘professionals’ functioning in the public
domain, makes the trope of these so called ‘dancing girls’, vital to an understanding of the
nature of women and work within and beyond domestic spaces.

Maids and Menials

The references to low caste women employed as domestic workers are fewer in the Sangam
period essentially because while the texts mention the poorer classes and low castes as
‘kadaiyar’ and ‘kadaisiyar’, there is no clear evidence that they worked as domestic labour.
This can only be logically inferred from Sangam texts like Mullaipattu which refer to the
employment of girls for lighting of huge lamps and for serving as handmaidens in war-
camps.97 Maids in the capacity of female attendants or companions do figure in a number
of Sangam texts. In the Ahananuru, the maid chastises a philanderer for trifling with the
affection of her mistress and then abandoning her ‘like an evil man who falls out with a
friend who has lost his wealth98. For northern India however, there is a plethora of evidence
of servant-maids, especially from Buddhist sources99. The women employed as servants or
menials were both free and unfree (slaves). According to the canonical text Narada Smriti,
‘impure work’ like scavenging, cleaning the house of death or the giving of ‘message’ was to
be performed by slaves while ‘free’ servants were exempt from such socially ‘de-meaning’
tasks100. Finley describes domestic servitude as ‘Between Slavery and Freedom’101 and this
would also be an accurate description of the karmakaris in the Indian situation.

94
S.I.I., vol. V, No. 161.
95
S.I.I., vol. VI, No. 84.
96
S.I.I.,vol. X, No. 10.
97
Mullaipattu: 45–49 Vidyanandan 1954, op.cit, p. 265.
98
In the Ahananuru, both ‘Aintinai Elupatu’ and ‘Aintinai Aimpathu’ have a number of references to female atten-
dants/companions. See Krishnan 2000, pp. 239–245.
99
Important investigation on the nature of the work undertaken by the dasis, karmakaris and other categories of
women workers have been made by Uma Chakravarti in her many writings on women. See especially her essay ‘of
Dasas and Karmakaras’ in her book 2006, pp. 70–100.
100
Narada Smriti, Chapter V: 23–42 vide Hanumanthan 1979, p. 55.
101
Finley 1964, pp. 233–249.
 Chapter 17  State of the Field 233

The twelfth-century Sanskrit text Manasollasa102 written in north Peninsular India by the
Chalukyan king Somesvara, recommends the employment of women for such menial tasks
as drawing water, serving food (women cooks would be of a superior strata), sweeping and
swabbing of the premises, washing feet, messaging, hair dressing etc. In Tamil inscriptions
these maids are referred to as atiyar, totti (untouchable caste?) or panimakkal. In Sanskrit
the commonly used terms are paricharika or dasi. According to the medieval text Basava
Puranamu, carrying water and taking the cattle to graze also seems to have constituted the
maid’s duties.103 Women also worked as construction labour. One Chola inscription from
Tiruvamattur (in South Arcot district) says that at a site where there were both male and
female labourers, the women were to be paid half of what the men got.104 The record speci-
fies the work as lifting water from ponds and canals etc and irrigating the gardens and fields
as also gathering flowers and making garlands. For all such labour the male workers were
to be paid eight nazhis of rice perday while the women workers were to be paid only four
nazhis. Similarly another inscription states that among daily wage workers, women were
to be paid half of the wages given to men.105 Servants including those employed to sing in
the temples, were granted lands as service tenures106. Female musicians would of course be
in a slightly higher category of servants than the unskilled maids. However, a record dated
1235 ce states that even female attendants were given house sites.107 A thirteenth-century
Pandyan inscription refers to a curious case involving a murder where the Pandyan State
also confiscated the lands of the male and female servants of the murderer.108 A remark-
able record belonging to the fourteenth regnal year of Rajadhiraja II from Achchalpuram109
defines the lowly status occupied by workers and servants in medieval society. The record
says that workers should not use titles such as ‘Vel’ or ‘Arasu’, should not beat the drums
on sad or happy occasions and that even wealthier servants cannot own slaves. The medieval
text Yasatilaka refers to the employment of elderly and experienced women as supervisors
over the maid servants of the royal household.110
Within the Bhakti tradition there is an interesting reversal of this lowly status accorded
to servants, both men and women, in secular life. Basavanna, the twelfth-century saint who
spearheaded the Virasaivite movement, says in one of his vachanas or poems that ‘it is far
better to be a totti (maid) in a devotee’s house than a queen in the palace.111

102
Manasollasa of Somesvara III, ed. Shrigondekar, Baroda 1939, verses: 1817–18.
103
Early medieval references to this are found in Tattvasaram and the Basava Puranamu cited in.Kamat 1980, p. 63.
104
A.R.E., 18 of 1922.
105
A.R.E., 223 of 1917.
106
S.I.I., vol. II. No. 66.
107
Epigraphica Indica, vol. VI, pp. 38–39 vide Appadorai 1990, vol. I, p. 279.
108
A.R.E., 301,302 and 303 of 1923 and part. II, para 77.
109
A.R.E., 538 of 1918, 1919 part II, pp. 97–98. For an interesting analysis of this inscription see Pandarattar 1974,
pp. 572–73.
110
Handiqui, K.K., Yasatilaka and Indian Culture, Sholapur, 1949, p. 28 vide Kamat 1980, p. 119.
111
Bhakti Bhandara Basavannavara Vachanagalu vide Kamat 1980, p. 118.
234 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

Wet-nurses, Foster Mothers and Midwives

Wet nurses are important protagonists in the entire corpus of Sangam literature. The term
used is ‘chevili thai’. Though it is logical to presume that only indigent women took to this
profession, the nurse seems to have enjoyed the respect as well as affection of the family
she served. The Ahananuru112 refers to women adopting the profession of wet-nurse. The
Perumpanatruppadai113 lists the duties of the nurse which included amusing the child,
feeding it and soothing it to sleep etc. A beautiful poem from the Natrinai114 has a mother’s
reminiscence about her daughter who had just got married:

‘Is this my child behind whom the wet-nurse used to run, with a golden cup of rice mixed with honey
and milk in her hands, alternately coaxing and threatening the child.’

In the Kurijipattu115 the daughter of the house, first confides her love affair to her wet nurse or
foster mother who then convinces the mother and the marriage takes place. Wet nurses also
wielded some power in Peninsular politics. Devakabbe, the wet nurse of chief Irebedenga,
donated seventy dramma and land at Choppadandu which went towards the excavation
of a tank.116 The children of wet nurses also came to occupy administrative positions. An
inscription dated 1235 ce records grants made by a royal servant, who was the son of the
wet-nurse of king Kota Manmaketa.117 To provide a significant later day parallel from
Northern India, wet nurses played a crucial role in Mughal history. Much has been written
about the political involvement of Maham Anaga, the wet nurse of emperor Akbar and her
natural son Adam Khan, in sixteenth-century Mughal politics.
It appears that the ‘dhatri’ referred to in medieval inscriptions and texts indicate the tradi-
tional midwife called ‘dai’. An inscription refers to women being employed as midwives in
the prasutishala which can roughly be translated as ‘maternity home’.118 The dhatri or dai is
referred to in Vijayanagar period for instance in the text Vaddaradhana of Sivakotyacharya119
as well as in the Adipurana of Pampa.120 The role of the dai must have been ubiquitous at all
birthings in traditional societies but, because this is a process that involves extreme privacy
and secrecy, historical evidence is extremely sparse.

Oil Extraction, Toddy Making and Culinary Profession

The history of early Peninsular India suggests strongly that certain types of work were consid-
ered an extension of the ‘domestic’ and therefore women’s profession. This included cooking

112
Ahananuru, op.cit., 105.
113
Perumpanatruppadai, op.cit., 247–253.
114
Natrinai, op.cit., 110.
115
Kurinjipattu in Pathupattu, op.cit., 1–26.
116
Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh, Kurnool district, No. 8 vide Padma 2001, p.60.
117
A.R.E., 484 of 1913.
118
S.I.I., vol. V, No. 395.
119
Vaddaradhana of Sivakotyachary, vol. II, p. 34 vide Kamat 1980, p. 119.
120
Adipurana of Pampa, verse: 21 vide Kamath 1980, p. 119.
 Chapter 17  State of the Field 235

and hawking of sweetmeats, extraction and sale of oil, the preparation and sale of liquor made
at home from old rice or fruits and the making of pickles and pappad which were also hawked
by women. Extraction and sale of oil as well as extraction and sale of toddy involved women’s
labour. This equation changed in the later-medieval period when the profitability increased in
tandem with greater capital imput and improved technology. As a result of these developments,
these traditional domains of female enterprise were gradually taken over by men.

A. Oil Extraction
In the Sangam period the extraction and sale of fish oil seems to have been done by fisher-
women called Valachchi. The Porunaratrupada121 says that fish oil and toddy were exchanged
for honey and edible roots. The Kreedabhiramamu says that Teliki women extracted and
sold ‘champangi nune’, that is, oil from the Champangi flower.122 Reference to Telika or
women oil mongers also occur in medieval inscriptions.123 The Keyurabahucharitamu of
Manchanna describes a Vaishya girl bartering oil for rice in a small shop.124 In the course of
the colonial period traditional techniques of oil extraction by women gradually died out and
the building of oil distilleries meant the movement of this work altogether away from women’s
work spaces into the larger domain of mechanised oil extraction, dominated by male labour.

B. Liquor Distillation
Sangam texts are replete with references to the preparation of liquor from fermented rice
and fruits by women. They also state that women hawked toddy from door to door, carry-
ing it on their heads. The coastal Valaiyar women, from the Neydal region, are said to have
processed and sold toddy made from Palmyra juice or from rice. In the Marudam region
women were specifically associated with the production of rice toddy which was called toppi.
The Perumpanatrupadai125 clearly states that women enjoyed drinking the kallu or toppi,
which they prepared at home. The process is also detailed in this text. First, a kind of rice
starch was prepared which was allowed to ferment for a day or two. When impurities were
drained from this liquor it was called nerumpili.126 A mild toddy prepared from the palm fruit
was called pennai while liquor prepared from honey was called tekkal-tenal. Women also
hawked the liquor that they had prepared. The Ahananuru127 says that the Ariyal girls sold
toddy which they carried on their heads in pots. Like oil, the toddy was also exchanged for
paddy or rice.128 Since women prepared all varieties of liquor their consumption of alcohol

121
Ramaswamy 1999, pp. 150–171.
122
Kreedabiramamu of Vallabharaya verse 103. vide Rao and Shulman 2002, p. 48. I must add however, that the
description is of a purely sensuous nature and adds nothing materially to the theme of women and work.
123
S.I.I., vol. V, Nos. 1051 and 1076.
124
Keyurabahucharita of Manchanna, second canto, verses 11–15 vide Padma 2001, p. 61.
125
Perumpanatruppadai, line 142.
126
Ibid. Lines 274–281.
127
Ahananuru: 157.
128
Porunaratruppadai vide Pattupattu, Swaminathayyar 1937, lines: 214–15.
236 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

was logical.129 The Pattinappalai says that the Paratavar women (fisherfolk) of the Neydal,
first offered the liquor to the gods and then consumed it.130
The tenth-century medieval text Takkayakkapparani131 says that women consumed
strong rice liquor called neruvu. As cited earlier, the thirteenth-century hagiographical
work Periyapuranam132 refers to Pulatti women dancing and jumping around in an inebri-
ated state. Even in the medieval period, liquor distilling was apparently still considered an
extension of a woman’s domestic chores although liquor was also made for the local market
and sold by women.
As liquor distilleries separated from the rural sector and became professionally more
profitable, they were almost entirely taken over by men. This process was a gradual one
commencing from the late-medieval and moving into the early colonial times. This argument
finds an interesting echo in Judith Bennett’s book on ‘Ale-Wives’ and breweries in Medieval
England and the passing of the trade, in the course of the seventeenth century, into male hands
as it came to be dominated by better technology, more capital and greater profitability.133

WOMEN COOKS AS PROFESSIONALS

In the patriarchal register the kitchen has always constituted woman’s space and cooking is
seen as a woman’s primary occupation and pre-occupation. That besides constituting ‘wifely’
duties as enumerated in the Tolkappiyam, this was also perceived as woman’s profession
can be seen by the reference to the ‘appakkari’ (the aappam resembling pancakes) in the
Maduraikanchi134 as well as Silappadikaram.135 There are references to the appointment of
female cooks in the medieval period. An inscription from Talagunda in Karnataka dated
1158 ce states that three female cooks were appointed as cooks in an agraharam and were
paid money as well as given clothes.136 These could only have been destitute Brahmin
widows since no one in an agraharam (a Brahmin settlement) would eat food cooked by
a non-Brahmin. A late-Chola inscription from Tiruvorriyur (Chingleput district) refers to
the employment of four cooks to cook in the temple kitchen.137 Medieval inscriptions from
Tirupati Devasthanam provide evidence of female cooks.138 The Kreedabhiramamu refers
to women who maintained Pootakulla illu or small inns where the usual charge was one
ruka per meal.139 This reference clearly states that these cooks/inn owners were destitute

129
Pattinappalai in Pattupattu, line 108.
130
Ibid. Lines 80–85.
131
Takkayakkapparani vide Rajamanikkanar 1970, p. 507.
132
Periyapuranam Sastri 1975, p. 568–69.
133
Bennett 1996.
134
Maduraikanchi: 405–406.
135
Silappadikaram: 13: 122–23.
136
Epigraphica Carnatica: Vol. VII, Sk. 185.
137
128 of 1912–1913, p. 103 vide Raman 1959, p. 170.
138
T.T.D.I., ed. Sastri and Viraraghavacharya 1931–38, vol. II, No. 135 dated ce 1496.
139
Kreedabhiramamu 2002, lines 158–60; 161–166. A Telugu ruka is more or less the same as the Tamil panam, roughly
0.15 or 0.16 of the seventeenth century rupee. Another reference to ‘women cooks’ is in line 189 of the same text.
 Chapter 17  State of the Field 237

Brahmin women. Elsewhere the same text also refers to the Tammadi Sani Mandiramu140
which may have been rest houses run by the Devaradiyar. A Kannada text refers to an old
woman Pitavve who sold ‘dosa’ (similar to pancakes) while her neighbour Ammavve sold
cowdung cakes.141 Medieval Persian sources also refer to inns run by women. Tazkiratul
Muluk of Rafiuddin Shirazi (written between 1608–12) describes the women of the bhatiyara
caste as maintaining themselves by keeping inns.142

PROFESSIONAL WOMEN MOURNERS: UNIQUE TO THE

INDIAN SOCIO-ECONOMIC LANDSCAPE
There is one very important dimension of women’s work in the Indian context which not only
feminist historians but also feminist film makers are looking at now. This is the occupation
of the professional mourner, a profession which seems to have been a women’s preserve.
In India, even in early historical times, professional mourners have almost always been
women. In fact, a thirteenth-century inscription from Pudukottai state records that when
death occurred in any household, the Valaichchi women (low caste/untouchables) put a cloth
over their heads and mourned the dead with loud wails.143 The singing of these lamentation
songs constituted a special repertoire since songs meant for young wives dying in child
birth would be very different from the songs on the death of the master of the household or
the almost celebratory tone of the dirges sung at the death of elderly persons. Cleaning of
the death-polluted house with cow dung the next day was also their job. They were paid for
both. Professional mourning as women’s work has no parallel in Western societies to the best
of my knowledge and has therefore escaped the critical gaze of Western feminist scholars.

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
In recent years critiques of everyday life, where women’s work and the process of hous-
wifization occupies centre stage, has become a key concept within post-colonial discourse.
This encompasses not only feminist writings on the theme of women’s work space but also
sociological writings endeavouring to theorise ‘Everyday Life’. Written in 2000, Michael
E. Gardiner’s book Critiques of everyday life,144 brought together some of the perspectives
on everyday life from Mikhail M Bakhtin to the feminist sociologist Dorothy E. Smith.
In her writings145 Smith contends that mainstream institutionalised forms of sociology
(this would be true of most disciplines) present us with versions of the social world that
are systematically exclusionary and distorting. She uses the term ‘malestreaming’ for this

140
Ibid., verse 273.
141
Vachanadharmasara: 223 vide Kamat 1980, p. 118.
142
Divya Narayanan cites many such instances in her unpublished M.Phil dissertation 2006.
143
Inscriptions of the Pudukottai State, No. 601.
144
Gardiner, 2000.
145
Smith 1987 and Smith 1990, to cite just two out of her many writings on this theme.
238 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

insidious process of epistemological conditioning. These ‘malestream’ accounts of everyday

life effectively rob women of any real agency of understanding and thereby transforming
their world. Smith stresses the immediacy of developing a woman-centred ontology that
respects the integrity of every life, and hence the ‘lived’ character of female existence and
experience. The challenge lies in steering clear of all abstracted textual forms which feed
directly into the requirements of either capitalism or bureaucratic power and control. Such
efforts in the context of Indian history must perforce remain very tentative. A panoramic
survey of women and work in Peninsular Indian history up to the beginnings of colonial-
ism should be seen as initial steps towards a much more ambitious feminist enterprise.
The primary endeavour has been to salvage available data on women’s work both paid
and unpaid, both visible and less-visible in order to highlight South Indian women’s con-
tribution to the work domain and indicate directions of movement and change in women’s
work/labour history.

REFERENCES
Original Texts (in Sanskrit, Tamil, Kannada or Telugu)
Tamil Works:
Sangam Texts
(The Sangam texts referred to in this article can be dated roughly between third century b.c and third century a.d.)

Ahananuru ed. with commentary by Venkataswami Nattar N. M. and Venkatachalam Pillai, R. Madras: Saiva
Siddhanta Kazhagam, 1943.
Aingurunuru ed. Swaminathaiyyar U. V. and Kalyana Sundaranar, S., Madras: Kapir Achchukootam, 1957.
Kuronthogai ed. U. V. Swaminathaiyyar, Madras: Kapir Achukootam, 1962.
Kalittogai, Fourteenth century commentator Nachchinarkiniyar’s commentary, ed. Anantharaman, E. V., Madras:
Saiva Siddhanta Kazhagam, 1967.
Malaippadukadam from the Pattupattu, Anthology, ed. U. V. Swaminathaiyyar, Madras: Kapir Achukootam, 1965.
Natrinai Nanuru ed. by A. Narayanaswami, Madras: Saiva Siddhanta Kazhagam, 1962.
Perumppanatruppadai in Pattupattu, Anthology, ed. by U. V. Swaminathaiyyar, Madras: Kapir Achukootam, 1965.
Perunkadai, ed. by U. V. Swaminathaiyyar, Madras: Publishers not known, 1924
Porunaratruppadai in the Pattupattu Anthology, ed. Swaminathayyar, U. V., Madras: publishers not known, 1937.
Purananuru ed. U. V. Swaminathayyar, Madras: Kapir Achukootam, 1963.
Silappadikaram of Ilango Adigal (a Post-Sangam text) ed. Dikshitar, V. R. Ramachandra. New York: New York
University Press, 1954 (originally published in 1939).

Sanskrit Texts
Arthashastra of Kautilya (third century to second century a.d.) ed. and transl. in three parts by Kangle, R.P., Bombay:
University of Bombay, 1965.
Manasollasa (12th century Sanskrit text) of Somesvara III, ed. Shrigondekar, Baroda: 1939, verses: 1817–18.
 Chapter 17  State of the Field 239

Manusmriti as Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition And Translation of the Manava-Dharmasastra ed. By Patrick
Olivelle with the Editorial Assistance of Suman Olivelle, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006, chapter
IX, verses 10–12.
Manusmriti, (commentary by Kulluka), ed. Narayan Ram Acharya Kavitirtha, tenth edition, Nirmaya Press, Bombay,
1946, IX: 10–12.
Vimalakirtinirdesa Sutra, 1974.

Medieval Texts
Andal’s Tiruppavai, (Tamil Poetry, written in the seventh century ce by the Vaishnava woman saint Andal) songs
7, 8, 12 etc. Tamil text in Nachchiyar Tirumozhi and Tiruppavai in Sri Andal: Her Contribution to Literature,
Philosophy, Religion and Art—All India Seminar on Andal, published by the Sri Ramanuja Vedanta Centre,
Chennai, 1985.
Kreedabhiramamu of Vinukonda Vallabharaya ed. and transl. Rao, Velcheru Narayana and Shulman, David under
the title, Kreedabhiramamu: a lover’s guide to Warangal, New Delhi, Permanent Black, 2002.
Kreedabhiramamu of Vinukonda Vallabharaya, ed. Veturi Prabhakara Sastry, Muktiyala: (Hyderabad), Manimanjari,
1960.
Futuhat-us-Salatin ed. A.S. Usha and trans. Agha Mehdi Hasan, Three volumes, Aligarh, Aligarh Muslim University,
1976–77.

Epigraphical Records (inscriptions on rocks and copper

plates)
Annual Report of Epigraphy, Southern Circle (abbreviated as A.R.E. in the footnotes), 1887 onwards, Madras: Govt.
of Tamil Nadu.
Inscriptions of the Pudukkottai State translated and ed. K.R. Srinivasa Aiyar, Pudukkottai: Pudukkottai State Press,
1941–1946 (originally published in 1929 by the Sri Brihadamba State Press of Pudukkottai).
South Indian Inscriptions (abbreviated as S.I.I. in the footnotes) published from the 1890 onwards, Madras: Govt.
of Tamil Nadu.
Tirumalai-Tirupati Devasthanam Inscriptions, (abbreviated as T.T.D.I. in the footnotes) ed. Sastri, S. Subramanya
and.Viraraghavacharya, V 6 vols., Madras: 1931–38.
Subramanian, T.N. ed. South Indian Temple Inscriptions, Madras: Madras University, 1957.

Secondary Works (in Tamil) *Note that Chennai and Madras refer
to the same place but most Tamil publishers prefer to use the term
‘Chennai’ rather than the anglicised ‘Madras’.
Rajamanikkanar 1970.
Rajamanikkanar, M. Pattupattu Araichi, Chennai: Tamil Nadu Text Book Society, 1970.
Tamizhannal 1956
Tamizhannal, S. Taalattu, Karaikkudi in Tamil Nadu, Mathili Pathippagam, 1956.
Vanamamalai 1964
Vanamamalai, N. Tamizhar Nattu Padalgal, Madras: Madras University, 1964.
Vidyanandan 1954
Vidyanandan, S. Tamizhar Salbu, Chennai: Pari Publications, 1954.
240 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

Secondary Works (in English)

Appadorai 1990
Appadorai, A. Economic Conditions in Southern India, 1000–1500 ad, Madras: University of Madras, reprint 1990
(originally published in 1936).
Bachelard 1964
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space: The Classic Look at How We Experience Intimate Places, tr. By Maria
Jolas from French, Beacon Press, Massachusetts: 1964 (French original in 1958).
Bader 1964
Bader, Clarisse. Women in Ancient India: Moral and Literary Studies, tr. by Mary E.R. Martin. reprinted under the
Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series, vol. 44, Varanasi: Chowkhamba Publishers, 1964. (originally published in French
in 1867 and the English translation in 1925).
Balambal 1998
Balambal, V. Studies in the History of the Sangam Age, Delhi: Kalinga publications,1998.
Bennett 1996
Bennett, Judith. Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, New York and Oxford:
OUP, 1996.
Billington 1973
Billington, Mary Francis. Women in India, New Delhi: Amarko Book Agency (Reprint), 1973 (originally published
in 1895).
Boserup 2007
Boserup, Ester. Women’s Role in Economic Development, Earthscan, London: Sterling, 2007 (first published in 1970).
Chakaravarti 1989
Chakaravarti, Uma. ‘Whatever Happened to the Vedic Dasi?’ in Sangari, Kumkum and Vaid, Sudesh. Recasting
Women: Essays in Colonial History, New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989.
Chakravarti 2006
Chakravarti, Uma. Everyday Lives, Everyday Histories: Beyond the Kings and Brahmanas of ‘Ancient’ India, New
Delhi: Tulika Books, 2006.
Chattopadhyay 1985
Chattopadhyay, Kamaladevi. Handicrafts of India (rpt) New Delhi: Indian Council of Cultural Relations, 1985.
Chicherov 1971
Chicherov, A.I. India: Economic Development in the 16–18th centuries–Outline History of Crafts and Trade, Nauka
Publishing House, Moscow: 1971, pp. 52–56.
Ekejiuba 1995
Ekejiuba, Felicia. ‘Down to Fundamentals: Women-Centred Hearthholds in Rural West Africa’ in Deborah Fahy
Bryceson, ed. Women Wielding the Hoe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Finley 1964
Finley, M.I. ‘Between Slavery and Freedom’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.6, No.3, 1964, pp.
233–249.
Gardinaer 2000
Gardinaer, Michael E. Critiques of everyday life, London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
Gupta 1972
Gupta, D.K. Society and Culture in the Time of Dandin, New Delhi, Meharchand Lachamandas, 1972.
Gururajachar 1974
Gururajachar, S. Some Aspects of Economic and Social Life in Karnataka – 1000–1300, Mysore: Prasaranga
Publications, 1974.
Habib 2000
Habib, Irfan. ‘Exploring Medieval Gender History’, Calicut: Symposium on Gender History, Indian History Congress,
2000.
Hambley 1998
 Chapter 17  State of the Field 241

Hambley, Gavin. R.G. Women in Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage and Piety, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
Hanumanthan 1979
Hanumanthan, K.R. Untouchablity: A Historical Study up to 1500 AD, Madurai: Koodal Publishers, 1979.
Hemlatha 1991
Hemlatha, B. Life in Medieval Northern Andhra, New Delhi: Navrang Publishers, 1991.
Hufton 1993
Hufton, Olwen. ‘A History of Women in the West’, in General Editors Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot, volume
III, Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes edited by Natalie Zemon Davis and Arlette Farge, Cambridge
Masschusetts and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 15–45.
Kamat 1980
Kamat, J.K. Social Life in Medieval Karnataka, New Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1980.
Krishnan 2000
Krishnan, A. Tamil Culture: Religion, Culture & Literature, Delhi: Bharatiya Kala Prakashan, 2000.
Law 1981
Law, Bimla Churn. Women in Buddhist Literature, Varanasi: Indological Book House, 1981.
Mies 1998
Mies, Maria. Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour, London
& New York: Zed Books Ltd, 1998 (originally published 1886).
Moosvi 1994
Moosvi, Shireen. ‘Work and Gender in Pre-Colonial India’ in Fauve-Chamoux and Sogner Solvi ed. Socio-Economic
Consequences of Sex-Ratios in Historical Perspective, 1500–1900, Proceedings of the Eleventh International
Economic History Congress, Milan: Universita Bocconi, 1994.
Mukherji 1952
Mukherji, Lily. ‘Social Life in Mathura and Vrindavan in the Medieval Ages’, Proceedings of the Indian History
Congress, Kurukshethra: 1982, pp. 325–331.
Narayanan 2006
Narayanan, Divya. M.Phil dissertation (unpublished) titled A Culture of Food: Aspects of Dietary Habits and
Consumption in the Urban Centres of North-West India Between the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,
New Delhi: Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2006.
Orr 2000
Orr, Leslie. Donors, Devotees and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamil Nadu, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000.
Padma 2001
Padma, A. The Socio-Cultral world of Women in Medieval Andhra: from 11th to 13th centuries, New Delhi: Bharatiya
Kala Prakashan, 2001.
Padma 2005
Padma, A. ‘Women and Social Justice – A Study of the Kakatiya Period’ in A. Satyanarayana and P. Chenna Reddy
ed. Recent Trends in Historical Studies: Festschrift to Professor Ravula Soma Reddy, Delhi: S.K. Pathak for
Research India Press, 2005.
Pandarattar 1974
Pandarattar, Sadasiva. Pirkala Cholargal (Tamil), Chidambaram: Annamalai University, 1974.
Raman 1959
Raman, K.V. The Early History of the Madras Region, Chennai: University of Madras, 1959.
Ramaswamy 1999
Ramaswamy Vijaya. ‘Women and the ‘Domestic’ in Tamil Folk Songs’, Man in India, 74(1) 1994, pp. 21–37 and
reprinted in Kumkum Sangari and Uma Chakravarti ed. From Myths to Markets: Essays on Gender, pp. 41–42,
Shimla: Manohar and the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1999, pp. 39–55.
Ramaswamy 1997
Ramaswamy, Vijaya. ‘The Kudi in Early Tamilaham and Tamil Women from Tribe to Caste’ in Dev Nathan ed.
From Tribe to Caste, Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1997, pp. 223–246.
242 VIJAYA RAMASWAMY

Ramaswamy 1996
Ramaswamy, Vijaya. Divinity and Deviance, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Ramaswamy 1993
Ramaswamy, Vijaya. ‘Women and Farm Work in Tamil Folk Songs’, Social Scientist, Vol.21, Nos. 9–11, September–
November, 1993, pp. 113–129.
Ramaswamy 1989
Ramaswamy Vijaya. ‘Aspects of Women and Work in Early South India’, Indian Economic and Social History
Review, No. 23, 1989, pp. 81–99 and reprinted in Kumkum Roy ed. Women in Early Indian Societies, New Delhi:
Manohar: 1999, pp. 150–174.
Rau 1970
Rau, Wilhelm. Weben und Flechten in Vedischen Indien, Weisbaden: University of Wiesbaden, 1970.
Reddy 1991
Reddy, Nagolu Krishna. Social History of Andhra Pradesh: 7–13th centuries, New Delhi: Agam Kala Prakashan, 1991.
Sangari 1989
Sangari, Kumkum and Vaid, Sudesh ed. Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, New Delhi: Kali for Women,
1989.
Sastri 1946
Sastri Nilakanta K.A. and Venkataramanayya, N., ed. Further Sources of Vijayanagar History, 3 vols, Madras:
University of Madras, 1946.
Sastri 1975
Sastri, Nilakanta K.A. The Colas, Madras: University of Madras, 1975 (originally published in 1935).
Sen 1993
Sen, Aloka Parashar. ‘Temple girls and the Land Grant Economy’, in Sen, Aloka Parashar edited Social and Economic
History of Early Deccan: Some Interpretations, New Delhi: Manohar, 1993, pp. 240–277.
Siddiqui 1996
Siddiqui, I.H. ‘Socio-Political Role of Women in the Sultanate of Delhi’ in Pawar, Kiran ed. Women in Indian History,
Patiala-New Delhi: Vision & Venture, 1996, pp. 87–101.
Smith 1987
Smith, Dorothy E. The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology, New England: North Eastern University
Press, 1987.
Smith 1990
Smith, Dorothy E. The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge, Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1990.
Tyagi 1994
Tyagi, Anil K. Women Workers in Ancient India, New Delhi: South Asia Books, 1994.
Venkataramanayya 1950
Venkataramanayya, N. The Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi, Madras: Vedam Venkataraya Sastri and Bros., 1950.
Woolf 1974
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own, London: Hogarth Press, 1974 (first published in 1929).
 Chapter 18 Women’s Profession
in Medieval Andhra*

A. PADMA

EDITOR’S NOTE
The second part of A. Padma’s essay, dealing with women’s property rights in medieval
Andhra, has been placed under Section III. The first part which deals with various profes-
sions open to women in medieval Andhra is being dealt with here. It must be pointed out
that although this Reader has a separate section on prostitution, I have felt that in the case
of this particular essay the logical and historical flow is better maintained by retaining the
section on prostitution here rather than moving to Section V.

***
Indian tradition determines the space of men and women in public and private domains
respectively. However, interchangeability of gender roles is observed at times. Even in the
classical tradition though a man is deemed to succeed to the throne, in the absence of a male
heir/co-regent, his wife becomes the ruler to ensure continuity of rule. Women belonging to
the weak sections of the society take up economic activities along with men to supplement
the family income. Thus, it appears that there is no clear-cut demarcation between the gender
roles and they are very much influenced by the demands of the situation.
The law givers too provided ample space for women making them political heirs under
certain circumstances. They enabled women to enter into valid contracts or pledge their
husband’s property for the purpose. Not only these, they have also allotted certain rights
on property to women whether inherited or acquired by them. This largely explains the
economic participation of women in the medieval times.

* Reproduced with permission from the author. Previously published in ‘The Socio-Cultural World of Women in
Medieval Andhra (from 11th to 13th centuries A.D.)’, Bharatiya Kala Prakashan, Delhi (2001); pp. 71–84.

243
244 A. PADMA

PROFESSIONS
In the primitive societies, no division of labour is found between the two sexes.
Anthropological studies project women of ancient societies as food gatherers and food pro-
cessors.1 In due course, agriculture and crafts which necessitated a heavy muscular power
and labour were taken by men and the works which involved patience, skill and forbearance
were practiced by women.
Certain leisure time activities of women, like spinning, weaving, stitching clothes, etc.
contributed for the family economy. The dharmic literature also provided space for differ-
ent occupations to be held by different categories of women. For example, entertainment
maids in the royal courts.2 The duty of attending to the personal works of a king and his
family members was also assigned to women. Similarly, the profession of dance in the
courts became exclusive of women, with the result that a new class of courtesans came into
existence. Some of the wealthy and learned courtesans were patronised by kings as their
concubines. Concubinage became an established and respectable profession in the medieval
times. By about the same time, the temple too emerged as an important feudal institution
creating provisions for temple dancing girls and women attendants for carrying out various
ritual services to the temple deities, thereby widening the scope for their participation in
almost all spheres of socio-economic, politico-cultural lives.
The occupations held by different categories of women can broadly be discussed under 3
heads; Occupations of Kulastreelu (family women), Women as Bhōogastṛreelu (entertain-
ment maids) and the temple girls. Under each category folk-elite variation and integration
are discussed.

OCCUPATIONS OF KULASTREELU (FAMILY WOMEN)

Occupations taken up by women belonging to both elite and common sections of the society
whose marital status (maiden, married or widow) is specific are included in this category.
Generally women of elite group did not take up any profession. The exception being
women of ruling elite who entered into administrative jobs. This can be viewed more as
hereditary right to that of profession. However, women of the common sections of the society
had to take up various economic activities to supplement the income of their husbands and
to help them in the smooth running of the family. These include:

(a) Service in Royal Palace

A king’s household is a big affair. Royal palace served as the biggest employer with several
attendants for each type of work. Women are employed in the inner circles of the palace. Manu
holds that well trained women and whose toilet (attire/garments) and ornaments examined
should be appointed as entertainment maids by a king.3 They should attend to him with such
works as serving with fans, water, and perfumes. Mānasōllāasa, recommends employing
 Chapter 18  Women’s Profession in Medieval Andhra 245

women in the royal households for cleaning rice and serving food, washing feet, massag-
ing, dressing hair, applying unguents and for providing entertainment with programmes
of music, dance, instrument playing.4 The medieval dance treatise Nrittaratnākaramu of
Jāyapasēnani suggests that the king should be attended upon by maids alone while he watched
programmes of music and dance and there should be a woman who is perfectly talented in
these arts in order to explain the significance of the programme to the king.5 Contemporary
epigraphical and literary evidences throw much light on the different duties of women in
the royal households.
The wet-nurse is entrusted with the duty of bringing up the infant prince/princess to the
early years of its childhood. Preferably old and experienced women are appointed for the
purpose. Dādi is the term associated with these women. Epigraphical and literary references
provide more details of the post and the importance attached to it.6 Women attendants of
the palace performed tasks like giving oil or scented bath to the king, massaging hair or
other parts of the body, cleaning grains or such other works in the royal kitchen.7 A record
mentions the donor as the son of Aḍupulotteḍi Aṅgāṅḍi (one who massages the feet) of king,
Kulottungachoḍa Deva.8 Women are appointed sometimes to look into the catering services
of the royal kitchen. An undated epigraph from Amarāvati refers to the wife of Prolaya as
Vaṅṭala Kāmasāni, probably in charge of royal kitchen.9 Serving meals for the members of
the royal family, especially the king, is also one of the duties of women attendants of the
palace. Such women who arrange the meal plates for the king are referred to as Taḷiya10 It
appears that the court of Prataparudra II, the Kakatiya emperor had 3,200 women attendants.11
Women alone are appointed as guards for the inner apartments of the palace and as
personal body guards for royal women.12 Mānasōllāsa, prescribes elderly and experienced
women to supervise the work of the maids of the palace.13
Āndhra Mahābhāratamu mentions a post, Sairaṅdhri, (a woman engaged to decorate the
queen). According to Tikkana, often women who are deserted take up this job. They stay
for a specific period in the harem. Their duty is to decorate the queen and the job requires
perfect talent in arts like hair dressing, beautification processes and making different kinds
of garlands.14 This post probably had its origin in Vedic period. No specific payment is
prescribed but she was maintained within the palace and was given a respectable treatment.
Women belonging to Bōya, Eṛuka, Cheṅchu communities too are appointed for vari-
ous services in the royal palaces. Bōya women wrap clothes to the palanquins, while their
husbands were the palanquin bearers.15 The services of Eṛuka women were utilised to learn
the plans of rival political powers in the war fields.16
Details regarding the mode of payment, amount of salary paid to each of these women
employees are however not available. It appears that they are maintained out of royal income
and residential accommodation is also provided to them within the palace compound.
Moreover, the children or husbands of these women were assigned administrative posts
such as Talāṛi and Daṅḍanāyaka. An inscription dated ad 1235 records grants made by a
royal servant and son of the wetnurse of king Kōṭa Maṅmaketa.17 Another similar reference
indicates that the husband of one Itasāni, a servant of Ganapatideva was the horse-man of
the king.18
246 A. PADMA

(b) Other General Occupations

During medieval times, professions are mostly caste oriented. The contemporary sources
provide us with evidences of women’s direct involvement in most of them. The village fairs
and tiṛunāḷḷu held near the temples and pilgrim centres provided sufficient market ground
for carrying out their economic activities. In addition, some of them are involved in sell-
ing their goods in the streets of the cities and towns. The contemporary literature provides
abundant examples of women vendors.
Krīdābhirāmanu refers to women of Teliki community whose traditional occupation is
extraction of oil, selling hair oil made of Saṁpeṅga flowers (Michelia Champaka).19 From
the same work it can be gathered that few women sold herbal medicines and cosmetics for
beautification in the Maila-saṅta (market for the out castes).20 Women selling flowers are
termed as Pushpalāvikalu.21 Generally they sold flowers in the streets of the city during
evening or twilight hours. At times they also ran shops to sell flowers.
In Keyūrabāhucharitramu, a vaisya girl is described as selling oil in exchange to rice in
the shop.22 Srinatha’s Cātu verses refer to women running shops in the village fair to sell
fruits like mangoes,23 betel leaves,24 bangles,25 etc. Poor widows of brahman community
stitched meal-plates with broad leaves and earned money by giving them in the houses of
brahmans.26 In addition inns and rest houses are run by poor and destitute women mostly of
brahman community. Krīdābhirāmamu refers to Pōotakūḷḷa illu (inn) maintained by brah-
man widows where delicious food was offered at cheaper rate.27 The work further refers to
a rest house called Tammaḍi sāni Maṅdiramu.28
Women belonging to Mēdara, Eṛuka, Cheṅchu, Sabara communities too probably made
monetary use of their craft skills. Mēdara women were experts in basket weaving.29 Eṛuka
women were proficient in future telling.30 Sabara and Cheṅchu women probably earned
their livelihood through selling tanned animal skins, combs, false hairs and other forest
products.31 Women of Dommari and Goṛaga classes were expert jugglers. Krīdābhirāmamu
depicts them as performing gymnastic feats in the streets of Ōṛugallu.32 They were very
clever tumblers and tight rope dancers exhibiting their skills as they travel about. Some of
them sold date mats, cane baskets and combs of horn and wood.33 Basavapurāṇamu refers
to a golletha (Bōya womaṅ) selling milk, curd and butter in the streets.34
Literary and epigraphical sources refer to maids employed for domestic works like
bringing water,35 cooking,36 etc. The elite class, concubines and wealthy courtesans are the
employers for those maids. The maids of concubines and courtesans are supposed to acquire
sufficient knowledge in fine arts and instrument playing.37 Basavapurāṇamu mentions women
in bonded labour.38 Their occupation seems to be permanent for the family of the maid based
on the term Ilupuṭṭubānisa found in Paṅḍitārādhyacharitra.39 Large monastic establishments
running residential schools, choultries attached to the temples too employed women for
petty works like cleaning grains and vessels. An epigraph from Drākshārāmam registers a
grant of 3 kuṅchamulu of rice, 1 jīvita māḍa and 3 chinnālu as salary for the two women
employed for pounding rice grains, cleaning vessels and to bring water in the Kuloṭṭuṅga
Choḷa satramu attached to the temple.40 Another epigraph, also from the same place records
grants of lands in lieu of salary to two women for pounding rice in the temple choultry.41
 Chapter 18  Women’s Profession in Medieval Andhra 247

While these occupations are characterised by the direct involvement of women in earn-
ing money for the family, certain others like domestic service, rearing cattle, bringing up
children, assisting their husbands in craft occupations and agricultural processes remained as
supplementary roles as they are not recognised as works or paid jobs. Palkuriki Somanatha,
in his Basavapuṛāṇamu gives a detailed description of how medieval women brought up their
children, their care for the infants and concern about the general ailment of small children.42
A mother’s voice is considered important in deciding issues like marriages of children.43
Within the artisan tradition too women played a passive role in assisting their husbands
in the preparatory processes. Their work is not a full time wage employment as produc-
tion was not commercial. The woman worked in a joint endeavour with her husband. For
example, if a potter turns the wheel and moulds the clay into shapes, his wife paints them
and dries them.44 Similarly in other fields like weaving,45 dairy farming,46 oil industry,47
­fishing, nut processing,48 and such other domestic craft occupations, women’s subsidiary
role went un-noticed and remained hidden. Thus, her contribution to the income of the
family did not come to light.
Similar is the case of agricultural processes wherein a woman’s contribution is inevitable at
every stage of crop production. Planting of seeds, weeding of plants, husking and winnowing
of paddy and such other sundry jobs were done entirely by women.49 Kumārasaṁbhavamu
contains a description of young and unmarried girls keeping a watch over the paddy fields
to drive off the birds and other stray animals.50 Literary works refer to women singing songs
while engaged in agricultural activities such as pounding the grain.51
The occupations of family women are thus direct as well as indirect economic activi-
ties. In addition, midwifery and nursing, are the other professions taken up by women who
are elderly and experienced. The Gōḷakimaṭha established by Viśveśvara Ṥiva Dēsika at
Malkāpuram had one Prasūtiśāla (maternity home) attached to it. Though no other details
are available in the grant, it can be assumed that women were probably working in the said
maternity home as mid-wives and carrying out the duty of attending to child-birth.52

WOMEN AS BHŌGASTṚEELU (ENTERTAINMENT MAIDS)

All ancient works including Dharmasastras, mention a separate class of women working as
entertainment maids. It was a part of the traditional culture of having women with a separate
social status for the purpose of providing enjoyment to men. To this category are included
the courtesans, concubines and the prostitutes. Their professions are recognised by law and
are brought under its protection by framing rules of succession, maintenance and such other
property rights, distinct from those of family women. Laws are also made for protecting
them from the dangers of their profession.
In the medieval period, the increasing feudal character of the state necessitated the
king to be more authoritative on local chiefs. The existence and stability of the kingdom
depended on the king’s exercise (exhibition) of right and might. He had to undertake wars
for the purpose, assume titles, extend patronage to religious institutions, scholars and poets.
Along with these, it became a regular practice to maintain a number of beautiful and tal-
248 A. PADMA

ented women as courtesans in the courts or as concubines in the harems. The prowess of
the king is reflected in the number of women in his harem, thus creating a great political
significance to the institutions of courtesans and concubinage. Gradually the men of elite
as well as common sections of the society too maintained women besides lawfully wedded
wives. While courtesans and concubines of the king enjoyed higher social status and privi-
leges, prostitutes could not claim so. Even the classical tradition depicts them as money
minded. Thus it appears that there are three categories of entertainment maids, courtesans,
concubines and prostitutes.

Courtesans
The appointment of a group of dancers in the king’s court was a customary practice of
the ancient and medieval times. Āndhradeśa too is no exception to this. They are referred
to as Vārāṅganalu,53 Vāravilāsinulu,54 Gaṇikalu.55 Vatsayana defines Gaṇika as a woman
expertised in all 64 arts.56 Mānasollāsa ordains that the Gaṇikas along with women of royal
family, dancers, priests and feudatories are to attend the king’s assembly on special occa-
sions.57 The very presence of the courtesans brought gracefulness to the court. Ekamranatha
mentions that there are as many as 8000 Biṛudu Pātralu (courtesans whose profession is to
sing/dance in courts to the tunes in praise of the king) and 500 entertainment maids in the
court of Prataparudra.58 Though exaggerating, but the figure indicates the popularity of the
dancers in the courts of medieval period.
The contemporary literary sources indicate that every royal court had a contingent of
courtesans whose Nṛityāgana Vinōdamulu is a daily routine in the court.59 Girls proficient
in fine arts were appointed for the purpose. Courtesans were one among the tributes paid by
the feudatories to their overlord. Instances from Siṁhāsanadvātṛiṁsika refer to the vassals
sending girls as part of their tributary payments offered to their lords.60
The courtesans lived in separate streets in the capital cities. Their houses were well
furnished and beautifully decorated giving great appearance to the city itself. Literary and
epigraphical references show that capital cities like Vikramasiṁhapura,61 Tsandavole,62
Amarapuramu,63 were appearing graceful because of the beautiful houses of the courtesans.
This is suggestive of the higher socio-economic status of these women. They were a class by
themselves due to the nature of their profession. They received specialised training through
teachers appointed for the purpose. (For further information, readers can refer to Chapter
5 in Ref. 64.) Their higher social status and greater economic independence is reflected in
their patronising scholars, poets and involvement in religious services through gift making.

Concubinage
On the origin of this institution, N.Venkataramanayya says, ‘The existence of courtesans
in large numbers in the courts of kings and nobles and those attached to temples must have
fostered its growth and encouraged people to form irregular unions with members of this
community without any social opprobrium’.65
 Chapter 18  Women’s Profession in Medieval Andhra 249

The kings maintained rich, learned women and those skilled in fine arts as their con-
cubines in the harem. They are variously referred to as Bhōgastrēelu,66 Bhōgamahishi,67
Laṅjapeṇḍlamu,68 Lanjiya,69 Vārakanta,70 etc. No social stigma is attached to this prac-
tice. Even the kings and nobles patronising concubines took pride in assuming such titles
as Vāranāri manōraṅjana,71 Rāya vesyābhujaṁga,72 Vāranāriyauvana Vasaṁthudu,73
Kāminījana Manōvallabha,74 etc. as indicated in the contemporary epigraphs. A Telugu
Choda chief from Cuddapah region claimed that he was Vilāsavibhavabhōgapuraṅdara,
and Chātuṛvidha Kāminī—janaratīśvara.75 Another record from Drākshārāmam gives the
epithet of the king as Vāravanitājana Chitta Bhavudu.76 This gives support to the argument
that patronising concubines is considered as a status symbol of royalty during the period.
This practice of the kings is followed even by petty ruling chiefs and nobles.
The harlots lived in separate localities called Āryavāṭikas. Their houses were beautifully
decorated with paintings, ornate furniture, soft beds, decorated foams, comfortable chairs,
large mirrors and painting halls. They dressed themselves in the most elegant manner.77
Patronising scholars, poets, painters, musicians, holding literary assemblies, contributing to
the state’s development through their munificent grants to religious and charitable institutions
were part of their regular activities.78 Prataparudra’s concubine Māchaldevi was a famous
woman. She commanded a great respect in the society and was described as Pratāparudra
dharaṇīsopatta Gōshtipratishta Pāriṇa.79 Kota Keta’s concubines gave grants to Buddhadeva
at Amarāvati.80 The concubines of the kings took no hesitation to call themselves the
Bhōgastṛeelu of the ruling chiefs. Even their children who were generally appointed in the
royal service claimed identity through them. In the of Gaṅjam plates of Gōkaṛṇa and Mātuṛa
grant of Nārāyaṇa, the donees claimed themselves as Veśya Vamsodhbhava.81
The concubines demanded money in the form of Uṇkuva, while their men participated in
the wars. It is quoted in Palnāṭi Vīracharitra that Syāmāṅgi, the concubine of Blachandra
(son of Brahmanayudu) demanded a silk saree and Rs. 12,000 as unkuva at the time of his
leaving for the war field.82 She claimed that the amount was charged as she had to accompany
him to the heaven as velayalu.83 Unkuva forms a part of strīdhana, a woman’s property.84
Despite their economic stability and social security in royal courts as courtesans and
concubines, there was a need for their legal security and protection. Dharmasastras provide
maintenance allowance for the concubines of the deceased besides recognising their sons
as illegitimate heirs to the parental property.85 They also made strict regulations to check
the irregularities of the practice. Yājñavalkya prescribes a fine of 50 panas against a person
cohabiting with the concubine of another.86 Generally patronised by the men of elite section
as part of their privileges, these concubines enjoyed a higher socio-economic status whereas
prostitution differs from this in its operational manner.

Prostitution
Commonly referred to as Veśya, Vārāṅgana, Velayālu, Laṅjiya, these women constitute a
professional group by themselves. At times there is no clear distinction between a concu-
bine and a girl who practices prostitution as a profession. They trace their origin from the
heavenly nymphs called Apsaras.87 Not a single procession whether of political, social,
250 A. PADMA

religious or of festive significance advanced without the programmes by the girls of this
group.88 Raṅganātha Rāmāyaṇamu refers to a Gaṅikānikāyamu (an association of Gaṇikas)
on the occasion of the marriage of Lord Rāma with Sitā.89
Women following the profession lived in separate localities of the cities called
vesyavśṭikas. The Thousand pillar temple inscription of Hanumakonda describes one such
vesyavatika of Ōṛugallu.90 A similar account is given in the literary work, Krīdābhirāmamu.91
Pratāparudracharitra, quotes that there were about 1,27,000 houses of veśyas in Ōṛugallu.92
The figure seemed to be too high, but, at the same time is suggestive of the wide spread
nature of the profession. Contemporary poets described prostitutes of the temple city of
Drākshārāmam in their works.93
The material prosperity achieved through stabilised feudal political relations during
Kakatiya rule in Āndhradeśā could have given rise to the amorous nature of the class of elite.
The rulers and their officers needed company of women even during times of war to provide
them with relief through their programmes of music/dance and to give them strength and
relaxation of the mind. Common men too followed suit. The Saivite movement recognizing
the Paṅchamakāras as forms of devotion to God, accorded a sort of religious legitimation
to this practice.94 Saivite scriptures identified one’s sexual pleasure as that belonging to the
Lord, it being one form of devotion of God.95 Basavapurāṅamu reflects that Basaveśvara,
used to send presents, delicious food preparations to the Saivite priests who spend their
whole day in the company of prostitutes.96 From the various sources we gather that there
were about 12,000 such priests who were referred to as Miṅḍa Jaṅgamas.97 The large number
only indicates the wide religious sanction by the sect to prostitution.
From the very young age a harlot is trained properly, the syllabi of which is designed in
such a way as to make her occupation profitable. In addition, they are supposed to eat little,
observe vows for prosperity, learn tricks to deceive men and earn more money.98 The most
important guide and mentor for a harlot is her mother. The veśyamātha teaches her daughter
that money, costly garments and precious ornaments are compulsory for women following
this profession.99 She trains her daughter to be specific regarding matters of money and makes
efforts to prevent her from being carried away by the promises of Magalajiyalu (men who
try to save money through deceiving the innocent prostitutes), or by religious sentiments.100
She keeps guard over her daughter and protects her from unpecunious customers.
However, the practices of the mothers of the girls are not held in esteem by many of
the contemporary poets. They highlighted the greediness of the Vaśyamātha with great
contempt. This shows their male bias as they have not reflected the fear and foresight of
the mother for the security of her daughter based on the age bound and temporary nature of
their profession. They do not have any other occupation except utilising their youthfullness
for earning their livelihood. Once they cross their youth, their plight becomes miserable.
Moreover, in the continuous expansion of the institution they have to face competition in
their profession from the youngsters. A girl has to accumulate profits to the maximum extent
possible during this period of her life. Having realised this need, the veśyamātha guides her
daughter to be particular in demanding money from the customers. This is evident from the
story, of Chatuṛika, in Kēyūrabāhucharitramu, who very cleverly organised her profes-
sion and earned money.101 Daśakumāra charitra mentions Kuṅṭineelu probably women
 Chapter 18  Women’s Profession in Medieval Andhra 251

brokers.102 The fee collected from the customer is referred to as Rōyi. It can either be in
cash or kind. As long as the contract for which Rōyi was paid holds good, the girl cannot
entertain any other person.103 Generally the amount of Rōyi depends on the demands of the
girl. Krīdābhirāmamu quotes one Kaṛnāṭi veśya demanding satīhātakanishkamu (one sari
and some amount of gold) and another veśya asking for two sonnāṭaṅkamulu (two gold
coins).104 Sometimes their demands were so high that a person had to mortgage landed
property.105 Paṅḍitārādhyacharitra contains another practice called Vāḍapottu wherein men
of a particular street enter into a specific contract with a harlot as regards the person who
should visit her. The girl was thus maintained by the men of that street.106
The dangers of the profession and its temporariness lead the prostitutes going for unfair
means of earning money. Krīḍābhirdmāmu refers to a veśyamātha sending her daughter to
another person after collecting fee from a person. For controlling such practices the state
appointed officers and a separate court was established for the purpose, which is referred to
as Jāradharmāsanamu.107 The Koṛavi inscription and Vijhañeśvaramu of Ketana mention
laws made by the state to punish greedy mothers of the harlots and to control their unfair
practices of earning money.108 Generally a specific amount of fine is levied on the accused
together with such punishments as cutting the nose, ears or shaving the head.109 At the same
time laws are also made to protect women from the evil attempts of men. It is declared that
for women of this class having sex with men is not a sin.110 A customer who promises to
pay the amount to a veśya but fails to comply with is penalised with double the amount to
be paid to her and an equal amount as penalty to the king.111 Similarly, for impersonification,
one gold masaka is to be paid.112 Fines are also imposed for causing physical injury to the
girls.113 Thus, the protection offered is dual, protection of prostitutes against exploitation by
customers and society and protection of the public from the treacherous or dubious nature
or the prostitutes.
The contemporary literature provides instances of certain veśyas religiously inclined
towards Saivism. They took Dīksha from Jaṅgama priests and dedicated the whole of their
life in their service, not entertaining any other customer. Such girls were respected and
accorded motherly treatment from the disciples of the priests, who gave them initiation.114
Through references in the literary works of the period it appears that courtesans and con-
cubines of elite men enjoyed recognition in the society whereas prostitutes had to struggle
hard to earn money. Moreover, the state collected a tax on the mirrors used by the girls of
this community.115

WOMEN IN TEMPLE SERVICE

By medieval times, the temple achieved great institutional status linking itself closely with
the rise of devotional sects. It became a principal site for sect activity. The temples are pro-
vided with support and protection by the ruling warrior groups.116 This involved a diverse
body of functionaries with substantial pilgrim participation. In turn the temple culture firmly
established the agrarian feudal order. The rise of devotional bhakti literature of the times
too is suggestive of the new feudal class relationships and the corresponding ideology. The
252 A. PADMA

deity in the temple is equated with the king and a parallel world of authority is reconstructed
on the spiritual plane. Ritual worship in the temple is conceived on the same lines of ritual
services offered to the king. Thus, attempts are made to authenticate and legitimise the new
feudal polity of the period through a parallelism between the deity and the king.117
Since, the temple and God are homologised with royal court and king respectively, the
dēvasthāna maintained the same bureaucracy as that of the Rājasthāna. This aspect gains
further support from the inscriptional references indicating interchangeability of women
in temple service with those of the king’s court. An inscription from Srikalahasthi temple
registers orders of a king transferring a dancing girl and her descendants from his service
to the temple.118 Another record from Mukhalingam temple mentions that Vāsama, the
Guḍisāni of Madhukisvara temple was also the Laṅjiya of Doḍḍapanāyaka, an officer of
the Velanāḍuchoḍa king Rajendra Choḍa.’119 This interchangeability can be understood in
terms of the ritual exchange of honours between the king, his officers and the temple in the
feudal political background.
The God and the king had to follow elaborate rituals before they start their routine. The
temple rituals are of two types—Aṅgabhōga (the general worship services) and Raṅgabhṅga
(the ritual services specially in the Raṅgamaṅṭapa built for the purpose daily or on festive
occasions). Women are employed in both categories, however, in large numbers in the latter.
Big temples of the period in Āndhradeśa like Pālakolanu, Chēbṛolu, Drākshārāmam,
Siṁhāchalam maintained as many as 300 to 500 temple girls. They are generally donated
by the kings, vassals or their generals. 30 daughters from the Nāyaka families of Kaliṅga
maṅḍala were donated to the temple at Mukhaliṅgam by an officer of Eastern Gaṅgas to
execute various deeds specified in the record.120 General Jāyapa donated 300 girls of the
age of 8 years to the temple at Chēbṛolu.121 Another record indicates the donation of a girl
called Bhaṅdaramu Akkama as Sāni, to the temple at Velpūṛu by Ganapatidevaraja, son
of Kōṭa Bayyaladevi. Lands and gardens were also donated by him as vṛitti (maintenance
expenses) to her.122
Sometimes girls are brought from different places of the country and are given employment
in the temple as in the case of the Viśveśvara temple at Malkāpuram where the singers were
brought from Kashmir.123 Apart from these, it is also observed that many women enter into
temple service for employment probably for the sake of the shares in temple property and
a portion of prasādamu of the deity offered to them in lieu of their services in the temple.
A merchant at Elēśvaram donated his two granddaughters to the temple.124
The temple girls are commonly termed as Sānulu, Sāni Saṁpradāyamuvāru, Guḍisānulu
or sometimes indicating the numerical status as Munnūṭi Sānulu, Pedamunnūṭti Sānulu, Sāni
Munnūru, etc.125 The term does not indicate any caste status, though an inscription from
Simhachalam relates them to the sudra caste.126 Pātra is another term used generally to
denote the dancing girls of the temple.127 Dvādasa Sēva Vilāsini refers to women perform-
ing 12 prescribed duties.128
It appears that women temple employees performed a variety of functions in the temple
both of Aṅgabhōga and Raṅgabhōga services. They are paid generally in kind, with a share
in the temple property, a part of the prasāda offered to the deity. Occasionally they are paid
in cash. Sometimes the donors specify the manner of enjoying share in the temple lands
by the temple girls and deposit certain money in the temple treasury for their maintenance.
 Chapter 18  Women’s Profession in Medieval Andhra 253

Further it is seen that most of the lady temple professionals of the temple appear to be
married. But certain services of Raṅgabhōga needed elaborate and intensive training from
childhood, through dance master, for which purpose, they are generally dedicated to the
temple service unmarried and young.129
After passing through a prescribed test conducted on completion of training, they are
inducted into actual service which involved singing and dancing on particular occasions
of worship both in the morning and night and performing special programmes on festival
days.130 The professional and marital status of the temple girls is generally reflected in the
grants given by their relatives, father, husband or sons claiming matronymic identity.131
Due to their continuous service requirements at the temple for most part of the day,
these temple women are provided with quarters in the vicinity of the temple. The locality is
termed Sānivāḍa.132 Epigraphical references indicate that temples like Srīkūrmam, Kollūṛu,
Nādiṅḍla, Juttiga, Ghaṅṭasāla, Chēbṛōlu had separate quarters built for the temple dancing
girls.133 Chebrolu inscription of general Jayapa records construction of two rows of double
storeyed buildings for 16 lady temple attendants.134 Pillalamaṛṛi inscription of Rēcheṛla chief
Nāmireḍḍi records construction of houses to temple girls in the fort of Pillalamaṛṛi where
the temple of Eṛakeśvara was constructed by him.135
It is further observed that the services of these temple girls are hereditary.136 They enjoyed
a higher socio-economic status as revealed through their grants, which included not only
cash or kind but immovable property too. Their sons are generally appointed in the royal
service. The two sons of Sokkama, the naṛtaki of Paṅḍīśvara temple were in the service of
the king Goṅka II and her daughter Kāmidevi was one of the queens of the king.137 Similarly,
the son of sāni Bayyāṁmbika, of the same temple was in the service of the king Goṅka II.138
The expansion of temple building activity, the presence of temple girls in large numbers
in most of the temples together with their higher socio-ritual status necessitated an organisa-
tional operation for them. They formed into a professional guild called Sānula Samayamu
or Sāni Munnūṛu which was found in every big temple of Āndhradeśa.
These include, maintaining temple properties, supervising the grants or other endowments
of the temple, mobilising temple resources (through leasing out the lands, animals, etc.) in
addition to determining the rules and procedural aspects of the services of the temple girls
who were members of the guild.139 Gradually, their association became a part of the temple
administrative functionaries of the higher-rank referred to as Mānulu and figured in most
of the matters relating to the appropriation of temple property.140
Thus we can say that the involvement of women in economic activities was more promi-
nent in medieval Āndhra. Ketana’s Vijñaneśvaramu, the legal digest of the period giving
permission for women to enter into contracts with the prior consent of their husbands is worth
mentioning in this connection.141 Moreover, contemporary epigraphs contain ample references
to the involvement of women in gift making as part of their attempt to gain religious merit.
Can this be taken to mean the economic independence of women? It is doubtful, as
Dharmasastras, quote that the wages earned by a woman on her own exertion are not included
in her property but they become part of the joint property of the family. However, they have
provided for certain rights to women on property both inherited and acquired in the form
of gifts given to them on specific occasions such as marriage. Therefore, to understand the
extent of economic independence enjoyed by women more clearly, it becomes necessary first
254 A. PADMA

to study the rights on property allowed to them by tradition and to understand a woman’s
domain on the same.

REFERENCES
1. Monika vonder Meden and Kathee Myers, ‘The Hidden Talent, Women Creators and Inventors’ in Women’s
World, No. 10 (US June, 1986), pp. 5–8.
2. Buhler, laws of Manu, VII, verse 219.
3. Ibid.
4. Sōmeśvaradeva, Mānasōllāsa, (Trans.) S. Visvanathasarma, (Hyderabad, 1961), 3rd canto, Chapters, 1,4, 13,
verses 956, 958, 993, 1529, 1530 and 1531.
5. Jāyapa Sēnani, Nrittaratnākaramu, translation by Rallapalli Ananta Krishna Sarma, (Hyderabad, 1969), Chapter
VIII.
6. We find references to wet nurses in the literary works of the period like Kēyūrabāhucharitramu,
Siṁhāsanadvātrmsika, Kumāra saṁbhavamu, etc. They are supposed to maintain the secrecy of the personal
matters of king. Generally they were treated with much respect and their children were appointed in important
posts of administration. In the epigraph they figured as donors of lands. Devakabbe, the wet nurse of Iṛivebeḍeṅga
granted 70 Ḍṛammas and land at Choppadaṅḍu, wherein a tank was constructed. (IAP : KD, No. 8).
7. Mānasōllāsa, Chapters, 1, 4, 13.
8. South Indian Inscriptions (SII), Vol. IV, No. 1249.
9. Ibid., Vol. VI, No. 240.
10. Ibid., No. 178.
11. Pratāparudracharitra, p. 46.
12. A.S. Altekar, The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, (Delhi, 1962), p. 180.
13. Jyotsna K. Kamath, Social Life in Medieval Karnataka, (Delhi, 1980), p. 119.
14. Tikkana, Andhra Mahābhāratamu, (Virata, Udyoga Parvamulu), (ed.), K. Laxmi Ranjanam and Divakarla
Venkatavadhani, (Hyderabad, 1970), 1st canto verses 289–335 give a detailed description of the responsibilities
of the post of Sairaṅdhri.
15. K. Chengalraya Chetti, Āndhradeśa Sāṇghika Āaṛdhika Charitra (a.d. 1300–1600), (Tirupati, 1991), p. 198.
16. Ambati Subbaraya Chetti, ‘Kakatīyulanāti Saṁghika Charitra’ in Kakatiya Samchika, (Hyderabad, Reprint,
1992), pp. 141–149.
17. A.R. 484 of 1913.
18. A.R. 558 of 1925.
19. Krīdābhirāmamu, verse 102.
20. Ibid., verse 77.
21. Ibid., verse 173, also Nannechoda, Kumārasaṁbhavamu, (ed.), Korada Mahadeva Sastri, (Hyderabad, 1987),
8th canto, verse 122.
22. Kēyūrabāhucharitramu, 2nd canto, verses 11–15.
23. Veturi Prabhakara Sastri; (ed.), Cātu Padya Maṇimaṅjari, (Hyderabad, 1988), verse 314, p. 134.
24. Ibid., verse 313, p. 134.
25. Ibid., verse 353, p. 144.
26. Ibid., verse 325, p. 136.
27. Krīḍabhirāmamu, verses 161–166. The details of the food preparations are given in verse 166.
28. Ibid., verse 273.
29. Ibid., verses 68–69.
30. K. Chengalraya Chetti, Op. cit., 1991, p. 65.
31. Palkuriki Somanatha, Sri Paṅḍitārādhyacharitra, (ed.), Chilukuri Narayana Rao, (Madras, 1939), Paṛvata
Prakaranamu, Jōgula Naḍakalu, pp. 235–236.
 Chapter 18  Women’s Profession in Medieval Andhra 255

32. Krīdābhirāmamu, verses 143–144. The woman belonging to Goṛaga caste was able to take out the nose-ring
put in a tub of water with her nose and with her back facing the tub. Simialrly, she was able to string the black
beads into a chain within no time.
33. Edgar Thurston and K. Rangachari, (ed.), Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Vol. II, (Madras, 1987), pp. 185–190.
34. Palkuriki Somanatha, Basavapurāṇamu, (ed.), Nidadavolu Venkat Rao, (Madras, 1952), 2nd canto, pp. 41–42.
35. Ibid., 4th canto, Nimmavva Katha, pp. 103–105.
36. Ibid., Siriyāḷuni Katha, pp. 100–102.
37. Ibid., 3rd canto, Mugdhya Sangayya Katha, pp. 50–53. The harlot asks her maids to bring various musical
instruments and to play different tunes together with singing and dancing to entertain the devotee of Siva, who
came to her house.
38. Ibid., 4th canto, Piṭṭavva Katha, p. 115. Also 3rd canto, Nāṭyanamittaṅḍi Katha, p. 66.
39. Paṅḍitārādhyacharitra, Purātana Prakaraṇamu, Gurubhaktāṅḍāri Katha, pp. 78–83.
40. SII, Vol. IV, No. 1015.
41. Ibid., No. 1288.
42. Basavapurānamu, 3rd canto, Bejjamahādevi Katha, pp. 58–61. There is a detailed description of the way in
which small children were given bath, the procedure for feeding them and steps to be taken to prevent the general
ailments like indigestion, cold, etc.
43. Ibid., Also see Nannaya, Āndhra Mahābhārtamu, Adiparvamu, 8th canto, verse 254. At the time of the marriage
of Draupadi, importance was given to be mother’s voice which was equated by the poet to that of Vidhāta (cre-
ator)., A similar opinion was conveyed through Kumara Saṁbhavamu also at the time of the marriage of Parvati.
44. Papul Jayakar, ‘Handi Crafts’ in Tara Ali Baig, Women of India, (Delhi, 1958), pp. 212–220.
45. Catu Padya Maṇimaṅjari, verse 31 pp. 139–140.
46. K. Radhakrishna Murthy, The Economic Conditions of Medieval Āndhradeśa (Tirupati, 1987), pp. 131–132.
The idea is also based on few sculptures depicting women feeding animals, milching cows and churning curds,
available from the temples of Srisailam & Tirupati.
47. Krīdābhirāmamu, verses 102–103 contain the description of a Teliki woman moving along the mortar probably
while pressing the oil.
48. Though there are no exact references for the involvement of women either directly or indirectly in this industry,
we can presume that women played their part in cleaning the nuts and processing them. Because, we find plenty
of references in the inscriptions of the period to the gardens of Poka trees (areca nut) and thus it could be one
of the popular occupations of the period.
49. Generally, these works are associated with the beliefs in the fertility cult prevalent among the village people
and was reflected in the songs sung by them. And therefore, they are performed only by women (An interview
with Dr. Nayani Krishnakumari).
50. Kumārasaṁbhavamu, 7th canto, verse 92.
51. These songs are commonly called as Taṛuvōja, Arugra, St nagra Āndhra Sāhityam, Vol. I, (Madras, 1977), p. 77.
52. SII, Vol. X, No. 395. It is quite possible that Śaivism, during its process of propagation into the common sec-
tions of the society, opened up maternity homes for their help and could have recruited women as midwives for
providing assistance during the course of delivery. However, this assumption can not be proved as there are no
evidences for the same in the contemporary inscriptions or literary sources.
53. Pratāparudracharitra, p. 47.
54. Maineni Krishnakumari, ‘Rājarāja Deveṅdravarmuni Yudhapura Tāmrasāsanamu’, Bharati (Jan, 1986), pp. 30–33.
55. Kēyūrabāhucharitramu, 1st canto, verse 57.
56. Vatsyana, Kāmasutra, I. 3.20, quoted in P.V. Kane, History of Dharamasastra, Vol. III, 1974, p. 639.
57. Someśvaradeva, Mānasōllāsa, I p. 155, verses 3–5, quoted from Jyostna K. Kamat, Op. cit., 1980, pp. 115–116.
58. Pratāparudracharitra, p. 45.
59. Ibid., p. 47.
60. Koravi Goparaju, Siṁhāsanadvatṛmsika, (ed.), Gadiyaram Ramakrishna Sarma, (Hyderabad, 1982), 2nd canto,
verse 131, and 11th canto, verse 172.
61. Ketana, Daśakumāracharitra, (ed.), Kandukuri Viresalingam, (Madras, 1975) 1st canto, verse 11.
256 A. PADMA

62. Keyūrabāhucharitramu, 1st canto, verse 18.

63. Maineni Krishna Kumari, Op. cit., pp. 30–33.
64. A. Padma, The Socio-Cultural World of Women in Medieval Andhra, Delhi, 2001.
65. Nelaturi Venkataramanayya, The Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi, (Madras, 1950), p. 287.
66. SII, Vol. V, No. 290–252.
67. Ibid., Vol. VI, No. 55.
68. Ibid., Vol. V, No. 249.
69. Ibid., Vol. VI, Nos. 1083, 1090.
70. Ibid., No. 210.
71. Ibid., Vol. X, No. 258.
72. Ibid.
73. HAS, Vol. XIII, Vardhamānapura Inscription of Malyala Guṅḍadaṅḍādhisa.
74. SII, Vol. X, No. 258.
75. IAP : CD, (Hyderabad, 1977), No. 159, pp. 241–248.
76. SII, Vol. IV, No. 1039.
77. Kridābhirāmamu depicts the description of the house of Machaldevi, the concubine of Prataparudra II in verses
183, 187, 191, 192, 193 (pp. 50–55).
78. SII, Vol. VI, No. 669 refers to Viraṁba, Prēyasi of king Nṛisiṁha donating a kitchen to the temple at Paṅchadhārala.
79. Krīḍābhirāmamu, verse 180.
80. Epigraphia lndica, Vol. VI, No. 15A.
81. AR, 1952–53 (1958), No. 7.
82. Palnāti Vīracharitra, pp. 341–344.
83. Ibid., p. 341.
84. Uṅkuva is another term for Sulkamu or the bride-price. Also referred to as Oli in certain circumstances. It is the
money given by the bride-groom to the parents of the bride. It is a part of Strīdhana in the sense of Sulkamu.
(Saṁgrahāṅdhra Vijñāna Kosamu, pp. 174–179). We find references to this term in the other literary texts of the
period like Kumārasaṁbhavamu, 7th canto, verse 136, Daśakumāracharitramu, 6th canto, verse 51, Raṅganātha
Rāmāyaṇamu, Bālakaṅḍamu, p. 55, etc.
85. Nārada, Kātyāyana, Yāgñavalkya are the earlier Sṃriti writers who argued on this point. Mitakshara provides
further details of the maintenance to be provided to the concubines of the deceased. For more details, P.V. Kane,
Op. cit., Vol. III, 1974, pp. 808–812
86. Ibid., p. 812.
87. Ibid., p. 638.
88. B.S.L. Hanumatha Rao, Āndhrula Charitra, (Guntur, 1983), p. 282.
89. Raṅganātha Rāmāyaṇamu, Bālakaṅḍamu, line 75.
90. P.V. Parabrahma Sastry, Kakatiya Sasana Sahityamu (Hyderabad, 1981), Thousand pillar temple inscription,
pp. 7–16.
91. Such streets where prostitutes live are also referred to as Bhōgamu Vīdhi. Krīḍābhirāmamu, verses 114–117.
92. Pratiāparudracharitra, p. 43.
93. Paṅditārādhyacharitra, Purātana Prakaraṇamu, Gurubhaktaṅḍāri Katha, p. 80. Also, Catu Padya Manimanjari,
pp. 121–126.
94. According to R.S. Sharma, Paṅchamakāras, the five orgiastic rites. of Tantric religion are introduced into
Saivism due to socio-political changes of the medieval period. For details R.S. Sharma, ‘Material Milieu of
Tantricism’in R.S. Sharma, (ed.), Indian Society, Historical Probings, Essays in memory of D.D. Kosambi,
(New Delhi, 1984), pp. 175–189.
95. K. Satyanarayana, A Study of History and culture of Andhras, Vol. II, (Delhi, 1983), p. 76.
96. Basavapurāṇamu, 3rd canto, Mugdhasaṅgayya Katha, pp. 50–53. Also, 3rd canto, pp. 48–49. Basaveśvara,
without any hesitation, concedes to the demand of one such Jaṅgama priest, and gives with pleasure, the silk
sari of his wife.
 Chapter 18  Women’s Profession in Medieval Andhra 257

97. R.N. Naṅdi, ‘Origin of Virasaiva Movement’ in IHR, Vol. II, No. 2 (Delhi, 1976), pp. 32–46.
98. Daśakumāracharitramu, 5th canto, verse 1028. Hemadri, in his vṛata khāṅḍ of Chātuṛvaṛga Chiṇtāmaṇi, men-
tioned one Vāravṛata to be observed by the girls for prosperity in their profession. H.V. II, 541–548, quoted
from P.V. Kane, Op. cit., Vol. VI, Part I, 1975, p. 417.
99. Daśakumāracharitramu, 6th canto, verse 114.
100. Kumārasaṁbhavamu, 8th canto, verses 136–144.
101. Kēyūrabāhucharitramu, 2nd canto, Chaturika Katha, verses 42–74.
102. Daśakumāracharitramu, 5th canto, verse 49.
103. Paṅḍitrārādhyacharitra, Purātana Prakaraṇamu, Malhaṇa Katha, pp. 84–86. Also a. Gurubhaktāṅḍari Katha,
pp. 78–83.
104. Krīdābhirāmamu, verses 91, 286, 290.
105. Ibid., verse 245.
106. Paṅditārādhyacharitra, Purātana Prakaraṇamu, Gurubhaktaṅḍāri Katha, pp. 78–83.
107. Krīdābhirāmamu, verses 265, 272.
108. Vijñāeśvaramu, Prāyaschitta Kāṅḍamu, verse 110, Also, HAS, Vol. XIX, Wg 3, Koṛavi, pp. 135–138
109. Ibid., Also, Krīdābhirāmamu, verse 270.
110. P.V. Kane, History of Dharamasastra, Vol. III, 1974, p. 638.
111. Matsyapurāṇa, 227-144-146 quoted from P.V. Kane, Op. cit., Vol. III, 1974, p. 481.
112. Ibid.
113. Vijñāeśvaramu, Prāyaschitta Kāṅḍamu, verse 113.
114. Basavapurāṇamu, 3rd canto, Mugdha Sangayya Katha, pp. 50–53.
115. Gade Narsing Rao, Chāḷukyula Kalamnati Rajyanga Paristhithulu’ in Rajaraja Pattabhisheka Samchika,
(Rajahmundry, 1922), p. 132. Andhra Mahabharatamu Santiparva, 6–88 also refers to tax on prostitutes.
116. Burton Stein, ‘Social Mobility and Medieval South Indian Hindu Sects’ in Burton Stein, (ed.), All the King’s
Mana: Papers on Medieval South Indian History (Madras, 1984), pp. 282–301.
117. M.G.S. Narayanan and Veluthat Keshavan, ‘The Bhakti Movement in Medieval South India’ in D. N. Jha, (ed.),
Feudal Social Formation in Early India, (Delhi, 1987), pp. 348–373.
118. Inscriptions of Āndhradeśa, Vol. II, Part I, (Tirupati, 1968), No. 669.
119. SII, Vol. V, No. 1083.
120. Temple Inscriptions of Andhra Pradesh (TIAP), Vol. I (Srikakulam Dist), No. 264.
121. V. Yasodadevi, ‘A History of Andhra Country’, JAHRS, Vol. XXV, p. 147.
122. SII, Vol. X, No. 344.
123. Ibid., No. 395.
124. Abdul Waheed Khan, A Monograph on Yēlēśvaram Excavation, (Hyderabad, 1963), No. 25, p. 62.
125. The term ‘Sāni’ is very frequently mentioned and with various meanings in the contemporary inscriptions. It
was used as a suffix to the married women in the sense of Svāmini (wife) or to denote the courtesans or the
temple girls. The term Munnūṛu refers to 300 probably indicating the numerical status of the group. As their
post in the temple appeared to be hereditary, we find another usage – Saṁpradāyam Sānulu.
126. SII, Vol. VI, No. 1202.
127. Girls whose function is exclusively dancing and those who expertised themselves in the art of dancing are called
Pātṛa. We find several references to this term in the contemporary epigraphs in connection with providing vṛittis
to them. For instance SII, Vol. VI, No. 1052.
128. Ibid.,Vol. X, No. 74. For more details regarding the 12 services which are supposed to be performed by the
girls, see Alladi Vaidehi, Āndhrula Saṁghika Āardhika Charitra, (Madhya Yugam) (a.d. 1000–a.d. 1250),
(Hyderabad, 1978), pp. 61–62.
129. Saṁgrāhaṅdhra Vijñāna Kōsamu, Devālaya Nṛityamulu, pp. 708–717.
130. Ibid., The Syllabi of education for a temple girl is discussed in the next chapter.
131. The donor of a record from Tsandavole was the son of the Guḍi Sāni Bānāṁbika and he was also employed
with the king Kulōttuṅga Chola Goṅka. SII., Vol. IV, No. 1130, Similarly other references like SII., Vol. V,
258 A. PADMA

No. 1027, Vol. X, No. 5, 189, Vol. VI, No. 169 and many more are of the same nature, given by the children
of the temple girls. A record from Mukhalingam temple registers a grant by the father of Guḍi Sāni, (TIAP,
Vol. I, (Srikakulam Dist.), No. 165), and another from the same region records a grant by the husband of Sāni
Mādali Rekama (SII., Vol. V, No. 117).
132. AR, No. 164 & 1893 (SII, Vol. IV, No. 989).
133. SII, Vol. IV, 989. Also, Vol. X, Nos. 5, 107, No., 115, 116, etc.
134. V. Yasoda Devi, ‘A History of Andhra Country’, JAHRS, Vol. XXV, p. 147.
135. R.N. Sastri, Rēcheṛla Reḍḍy Vaṁsa Charitra, Sāsanamulu, (Hyderabad, 1989), Pillalamarri inscription, No. 5.
136. M. Ramarao, Inscriptions of Āndhradeśa, Vol. II (Tirupati, 1968), No. 135.
137. V. Yasoda Devi, ‘A History of Andhra Country’, JAHRS, Vol. XXV, p. 146.
138. Ibid.
139. A record from Siṁhāchalam, mentions the various regulations of the guild It is stated that if these instructions
are not obeyed properly the girls would be expelled from the guild. (SII, Vol. VI, No. 1202).
140. The term Māni refers to a person having a vow of celibacy.The temple administrative functionary containing
male members, together with the female functionaries form the unit Sānulu Mānulu, which takes care of the
temple properties. Please see Chart V for more details of their functions.
141. Vijñāeśvaramu, Vyavahāra Kāṅḍamu, verse 61.
 Chapter 19 Temple Women and
Work in Medieval
Kēraḷam

ANNA VARGHESE

INTRODUCTION
The region of Kēraḷam in the time period from eighth to seventeenth centuries ce is marked
by the growth, proliferation and transitions in the history of the temples and various occu-
pational groups associated with it. The study of temple women in particular is interesting as
it gives a powerful addition to the study of gender among the temple servants and donors to
the temples. This paper is an attempt to classify, contextualize and situate the temple women
of Kēraḷam of medieval time period.
I would like to attempt to answer a few set of questions in this paper, like, what did it
mean by the phrase temple woman in Kēraḷam region? What did the title ‘temple woman’
mean to the woman and to the larger society? Were the positions held by these women
honorific or ritual? What were its characteristics? What is the nature of the narrations in acci
caritams? How rooted were Kēraḷam’s temple women in the notions of patriarchy? Even
though Kēraḷam was the land of matriarchy for certain sections of the society, what was the
nature of property rights of the temple women? How effective was their power over their
resources, their body and sexuality? The tēvaṭicci was the representative of women engaged
and reflected in the accounts related to the temple society. How far can we take the term
tēvaṭicci as a generic term to point to temple women in Kerala?

I
There has been a popular debate among Kerala historians and literary critics about the pres-
ence and absence of dancing girls in Kerala temples. In Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai’s opinion,
tēvaṭiccistānam was a respectable position obtained by knowledgeable, artistic and noble

259
260 ANNA VARGHESE

ladies in association with the temples.1 Kunjan Pillai through an analysis of Uṇṇunīlisandēśam
argues that there were female temple dancers who existed on a large scale in Kēraḷam region.
He says that Cerukara Uṇṇiyāḍi, who is mentioned in 101 verse of Uṇṇunīlisandēśam,
lived just west side of Kaṇḍiyūr temple. Muttūṭṭu Iḷayacci who is another dēvadāsi who is
mentioned in 102 verse of Uṇṇunīlisandēśam lived north to Cerukara Uṇṇiyāḍi.2 The four
women of Kuṛuṅgāṭṭu house would be dēvadāsis of Maṭṭom temple.3 These women had
high sounding titles like ‘mahitacirutēvi’ denoting high position.4
M. G. S. Narayanan acknowledges the presence of dancing girls and opines, ‘the associa-
tion of dancing girls known as Naṅgacci or Tēvaṭicci as found in several temple inscriptions,
with the temple deserves notice as it shows that the temple, which was primarily a religious
institution, also catered to the needs of scholarship and culture.’5 Narayanan observes that in
a number of medieval Maṇipravāḷam poems, cāttirār or brahman students appear as heroes
and lovers of dancing girls and courtesans.6 At any rate ‘the rise of the Dēvadāsi system in
the South India may be dated to a period not later than the 8th century ad’.7
Kalamandalam Kalyanikuttiyamma sees the term tēvaṭicci as acci of tēvan’s aṭi or
dēvapadadāsi (maid servant at the feet of God).8 Rajan Gurukkal, even after observing
that the temple courtesans were of high birth and material status, has ruled away the idea
of comparing them with the dēvadāsis of other South Indian temples.9 Rajan Gurukkal
and Raghava Varier says that the dēvadāsi of the Tiruvalla temple borrowed gold from
the temple of which the interest was 290 para10 of paddy and he argues that the dēvadāsi
would have had land worth the interest to borrow such gold from the temple.11 Varier and
Gurukkal talk about dēvadāsi and naṅga as dēvadāsi, those associated with temples. Both
these categories received rice as jīvitam,12 as seen from the Neḍumpuram Taḷi inscription
and Tiruvalla Copper Plates.13
K. N. Ganesh traces the natural expansion of temples and the provision of dancing girls
to them as a process. He says that when the temples spread their ideological and economic

1
Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai, Kerala Charithrathinte Iruladanja Edukal (Kottayam: Sahitya Pravarthaka Sahakarana
Sangam Ltd., 1957), 75.
2
Elamkulam P. N. Kunjan Pillai, Unnuneeli Sandesam—From the Historical Perspective (Trivandrum: Sahityaniketan,
1969), 113.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
5
M. G. S. Narayanan, Perumals of Kerala, Political and Social Conditions of Kerala under the Cera Perumals of
Makotai (c800–1124 ad) (Calicut: Xavier Press, 1996), 190.
6
Ibid., 192.
7
Ibid., 193.
8
Kalamandalam Kalyanikuttiyamma, Mohinoyattom Charithravum Attaprakaravum (Kottayam: D.C. Books, 2008),
49.
9
Rajan Gurukkal, The Kerala Temple and Early Medieval Agrarian System (Sukapuram: Vallathol Vidyapeetham,
1992), 55.
10
A measure.
11
Rajan Gurukkal and Raghava Varier, Keralacharithram: A History of Kerala (Sukapuram: Vallathol Vidyapeetham,
2011), 167.
12
Daily allowance.
13
Gurukkal and Varier, Keralacharithram, 132.
 Chapter 19  Temple Women and Work in Medieval Kēraḷam 261

influence, the number of persons attached to the temples also increased, who were to be
provided by the lands. As an example, he says that the temples of Nān͂jināḍu provided a
number of dancing girls who were settled as kuḍis and they were provided with the income
from temple lands.14 K. N. Ganesh opines that in the medieval Kerala context, apart from
aḍiccutaḷi15 and women artists, the entire temple service personnel were men.16 In the medi-
eval maṇipravāḷam works, in many of the heroines’ houses, it was right in the female line
that existed. In temple arts, the position of the naṅgyār was matrilineal.17 From an analysis
of the maṇipravāḷam kāvyam heroines, K. N. Ganesh opines that they do not have similarity
with tēvaraṭiyāḷ or gaṇikas found outside Kerala. These women belonged to households
with female line rights. Women who were called accikaḷ and their homes are indications
of female line rights. Some of them were singers and dancers. Just like the war skills, the
skill in music and dance was considered indications of gender positions in South Indian
gōtra society. Importance given to songs and kūttu was a symbol of this. These female line
rights can be seen as part of tara rights.18 Ganesh argues that if we put aside naṅgyār, there
is no evidence of tēaraṭiyāḷ kuḍikaḷ in Kerala, as similar to those in Tamil Nadu. Naṅgyār
kūttu was seen as an independent dance form. Apart from that there were no evidences of
hereditary dēvadāsi lineages in Kerala.19
The basic argument of P. Soman was that there did not exist a dēvadāsi system in Kēraḷam
just like the fact that there did not exist large kingships or huge temples or temple urban-
ism in Kēraḷam like the other places in South India.20 Soman argues that the creation of a
dēvadāsi system which was never existent in Kerala by Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai and other
historians of his school to exaggerate the sensual desires of the nampūtiris (brahmans) were
not right. He argues that stating that all nampūtiris of Kerala delighted in women and were
lascivious was a very biased way of writing history.21 Soman argues that the female dancers
of Kēraḷam do not figure in folk songs or glorious stories of temples or northern ballads.22
The kūttambalams in Kēraḷam were built for cākyār kūttu and not for dēvadāsiyāṭṭom. The
naṅgyār women who took part in Kūḍiyāṭṭom and naṅgyār kūttu were not dēvadāsis.23
In Kerala temples, there was no performance rite of dēvadāsi dance during dīpārādhana
(the waving of lamps to an idol).24
P. Soman argues that it was Nair dāsis who pounded paddy in temples and on those
marumakkattāyam accimar (matrilineal accimar) tēvaḍiccittam was inflicted upon and were

14
K. N. Ganesh, ‘Agrarian Relations and Political Authority in Medieval Travancore ad 1300–1750’ (Ph.D. thesis,
Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 1987), 221.
15
This term referred to women who did menial services in the temple like sweeping and mopping the premises.
16
K. N. Ganesh, Keralathinte Innalekal (Thiruvananthapuram: Dept. of Cultural Publications, Government of Kerala,
1997), 220.
17
Ibid., 222.
18
Ibid., 222.
19
Ibid., 228.
20
P. Soman, Devadasikalum Sahitya Charithravum (Thiruvananthapuram: The State Institute of Languages, 2009), 35.
21
Ibid., 25.
22
Ibid., 55.
23
Soman, Devadasikalum Sahitya Charithravum, 59.
24
Ibid., 63.
262 ANNA VARGHESE

mentioned as tēvaraṭiyāḷ and tēvaḍiśśikaḷ in inscriptions.25 By charging gaṇika traits on

marumakkattāyam accimar, marumakkattāyam sexuality (sexuality as part of inheritance
through female line) became accepted. The brahman children born out of marumakkattāyam
accimar were never accepted as legitimate children. If Nairs or ambalavāsis called a brah-
man as father, it was a sin equivalent to killing a brahman.26
Soman says that the devādāsi system in temples and the dance and dance-related rituals
for Śiva who is Naṭarāja began in Tamil country in the medieval times with the establish-
ment of Śiva temples which were centres of the Śaiva bhakti movement.27 This postulation
is, however, not to be taken without a pinch of salt because we come across sources which
speak of instances where the girls associated to dance and Śiva worship are mentioned, in
the case of Orissa, Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala.

II
In the second section, I would like to look at the class of women addressed as peṇkaḷ in the
inscriptions. Peṇṇu is the singular term for woman where as peṇkaḷ is the plural term indi-
cating women, or is used as a term of respect. The term peṇkaḷ was used to denote a female
attendant in the context of a temple inscription of Southern Kēraḷam. The inscription is from
the temple of Udaiyār Śivīndaramuḍaiya-Nayinār in Śucīndram (the Śucīndram inscription
of Venrumankoṇḍa Bhūtalavīra Ravivarman 1537 ce).28 The inscription calls the female
attendant, Śrī-Parpanāda-Perumāḷ, by the term peṇkal. She is described as the daughter of
Nāchchiyār29 and her lineal descendants were to receive 12 nāl̤i30 of rice food hereditarily.
Here, the post and virutti31 were hereditary. This was a royal order by the Travancore ruler,
Ravivarman. Śucīndram, under the reign of Travancore rulers is also famous for the pres-
ence of dancing girls.32 Here, the inscription mentions the individual name of the female
attendant as Śrī- Parpanāda-Perumāḷ. This is significant because often the epigraphical evi-
dences about women servants of the temples are seen as a collective mention of the group
of women, not on an individual basis.

III
The third section is on the term peṇṇumpiḷḷaikaḷ from the inscriptions which also mean
female attendants. The Arrur copper plate of Ravivarman Siraivaymuttavar, Kollam year

25
Ibid., 79.
26
Ibid., 79.
27
Ibid., 27.
28
Suchindram Inscription of Venrumankonda Bhutalavira Ravivarman, dated Kollam 721 from Suchindram,
Travancore Archaeological Series, hereafter TAS, Vol. 4, No. 21, p. 104.
29
The term refers to goddess. Temple women were considered wives of gods and daughters of goddesses.
30
A measure.
31
Allotment of land as service tenure, usually with hereditary rights.
32
Kalyanikuttiyamma, Mohinoyattom Charithravum Attaprakaravum, 34.
 Chapter 19  Temple Women and Work in Medieval Kēraḷam 263

821 (1646 ce),33 records that peṇṇumpiḷḷaikaḷ (female attendants) were taken in processions
during the pārivēṭṭai (hunting day) of the holy deity of the temple of Muttalakkur̤ ichchi alias
Śrī-Vīrakēraḷapuram.34 They were taken along under the charge of Vikkiraman Śēgaran, the
cīpaṇḍāram (temple accountant). The copper plates of the Travancore Kings were related to
the accountant family of Kāriyatturai Kaṇṇan Vikkiraman of Pūvanga viḷāgattu Kōvikkal.
Vikkiraman Śēgaran was given the hereditary right with privileges to conduct the Aśvati
festival in the temple, taking with him the peṇṇumpiḷḷaikal, and discharge the arrow on the
hunting day. Neither the number of female attendants nor indications of any virutti to them
is mentioned.
The translation of a Tamil record from Viravanallur35, Kollam year 811 (1636 ce),
records that few women servants were set apart for menial work in the temple of God
Karpaka Vināyakar, Nayinār Tirunellaināttar and goddess Alagiyanāchchiyār-ammai in
Vīrakēralanallūr.36 The conduct of worship in this temple was done from the land grants
by Śettu Tirunelvēlipperumal Venrumālaiyitta-perumāl of Vīrakēralanallūr. I was able to
identify the proper names of four women, Nallakuṭṭi, Ayyanayinān Uḷḷittār, Kāḷi and Maruti.
Nallakuṭṭi is the daughter of Āndicci and Ayyanayinān Uḷḷittār is her sister. Kāḷi is the daugh-
ter of Aṇṇaiñji and Maruti is her sister. They were taken into service with the presence of
Ūr and Kaṇiyālar (accountant).37 The record is significant in terms that it gives the names
and details of the women servants appointed. However a close reading of the inscription
proves that the word signifying ‘women servants’ is absent. Another inscription from the
same Śiva temple at Vīrakēralanallūr of a later date, Kollam 854 (1679 ce),38 records that
Rama-Nāchchiyār, the daughter of Āndichchi, made gifts of land for maintaining maṭha and
conducting worship to Mahēśvara in the ambalam. We doubt whether the Āndichchi is the
same person mentioned in the inscription of Kollam 811 whose daughters are referred to as
women servants. If one daughter can be in a wealthy position as to donate lands, we doubt
whether the other daughters were given as servants or were they somebody higher in status.
The Arrur plate of Vīra Ravi Udaiyamārttāṇḍavarman (1251 ce)39 mentions that all temple
servants had to accompany the procession for paḷḷiveṭṭai and ārāṭṭu taken by God Mahādevar
at Nayinār Muttalakkurichchi/Śrī Vīrakēraḷapuram. The same inscription mentions about
female attendants to the temple. In the record which gives RaviKēralavarma Udayar the
kōyinma, ūranmai and sthāna by King Vīra Ravi Udayamarttāndavarman Śiraivāy Mūttavar,
king of Vēņadu, it is mentioned that the female attendants had to be taken along with the
paraphernalia for the God for two occasions. One was the paḷḷiveṭṭai on the 9th day of fes-
tival. In this the God was taken in procession accompanied by all temple servants, those in

33
Arrur copper plate of Ravivarman Siraivaymuttavar, Kollam year 821 (1646 ce) from Arrur in Padmanabhapuram
Division, TAS, Vol. 4, No. 44, p. 160.
34
Vīrakēralapuram was in Śengaḷunīr-valanādu, a sub division of Malai-mandalam. It was near Kannanur, a panchayat
town in Tiruchirappalli, now in Tamil Nadu. See Ibid., 153.
35
Viravanallur, a short form of Vīrakēralapuram, is a village in south Travancore.
36
Viravanallur record from Viravanallur near Kannannur, TAS, Vol. 7, No. 26, p. 40.
37
I have tried to translate the inscription which is in Tamil and Grantha script, published in Viravanallur record from
Viravanallur near Kannannur, TAS, Vol. 7, No. 26, p. 40.
38
Viravanallur inscription dated Kollam 854 from Viravanallur, TAS, Vol. 7, No. 28, p. 41.
39
Arrur plate of Vira Ravi Udaiyamattandavarman dated Kollam 426 from Arrur in Padmanabhapuram Division,
TAS, Vol. 4, No. 15, p. 86.
264 ANNA VARGHESE

charge of the sacred treasury with female attendants, and the other was ārāṭṭu, the sacred
bathing ceremony of the deity, where there was a similar procession to the river.
Leslie C. Orr says that there is no evidence that temple woman were dedicated or married
to the God, and only a small percentage of these women identified themselves as spouses
of men.40 This observation is interesting because it is contrary to the popular belief about
dēvadāsis that they are married off to Gods. The whole practice of ‘marrying off’ to the deity
would have begun quite late than the Cōḷa period to which Orr has assigned the book, that
is, 850–1300 ce. The dēvadāsis were rarely associated with dance.41 They performed menial
works or ‘attendance functions’ like fly-whisk bearing. The fly-whisk bearing women were
called kavarippiṇākkaḷ and were assigned residences in the temple precincts.42 Orr points to
two sorts of temple service in which women were predominant and were involved—menial
service associated with food preparation and cleaning, and attendance functions. ‘In the
former, the tasks were of extremely low status, and in the latter, they were nonessential,
occasional, optional, incidental—and perhaps ornamental’.43 Peṇkaḷ or peṇṇumpiḷḷaimar
from Kēraḷam are significant in the context that there were women attendants in the region
of Kēraḷam also who were employed in the temples. My attempt is not to compare Leslie
C. Orr’s description about women who performed menial services with peṇkaḷ because the
epigraphical evidences are from different time periods. However, the practice of having
women servants in temples continued in the later centuries in the region of Kēraḷam as we
find them in the earlier centuries in the Cōḷa country.

IV
The fourth section of the paper is on the term peṇval̤ikku avakāśam. This denotes that the
properties were handed over to the next generation in the female line. James Heitzman finds
one feature about dēvadāsis as fascinating from Orr’s book that is ‘many identified themselves
within female-focused family groups and matrilineages, with some inscriptions mentioning
several generations connected to the same temples’.44 This is similar to the instance where
rights were passed on to future generations of women servants through peṇval̤ikku avakāśam
or rights through female line.
We find inscriptional evidence of the cleansing works of a temple entrusted to female
members of a family, that also in peṇval̤ ikku (in the female line). The services of cleaning
the mahāmaṇḍapa and the sacred kitchen of the temple and of supplying turmeric for the
ārāṭṭu festival (holy bath) of the temple of Bhagavati at Tiruchchāranam was a right of the

40
Leslie C. Orr, Donors, Devotees and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2000), 74.
41
Ibid., 105–26.
42
Ibid., 89.
43
Orr, Donors, Devotees and Daughters of God, 125.
44
James Heitzman, review of Donors, Devotees and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu by
Leslie C. Orr, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 70, no. 3 (September, 2001): 660. Retrieved 1 January
2014, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1466540
 Chapter 19  Temple Women and Work in Medieval Kēraḷam 265

family of Dhanmaseṭṭi Narāyanan Kāḷi of Tirukkuḍakkarai.45 The inscription of Kollam year

540 (1365 ce) from Chitaral46 records that certain lands were given for the enjoyment of
female members of the family of Dhanmaseṭṭi Nārāyanan Kāḷi of Tirukkuḍakkarai for their
services of sweeping and sprinkling with water the premises of the temple. This inscription
transferred these lands to the pādamūlam47 of the same temple in Kollam year 540. If any
default in service was made, the lands were to be reverted to the family of Nārāyanan Kāli,
in the female line. It may have been an attempt to concentrate the temple services within
the ritual group and gain the kārāṇmai rights. However, a default of duties accounted for a
fine of 5 kal̤ añju of gold to be paid to the king and a reversal of the order. Here we see that
the names of the peṇkal, the women who were temple servants, were not mentioned again,
but that of the head of the family was recorded, even though the kārāṇmai land was given
for their services. We can read this fourteenth century ce inscription in association with the
matrilineal system in Kēraḷam that existed among certain sections of the society. This system
in the region gave the sole authority of properties in the hands of the Kāraṇavar, the senior
male member of the family. However, this particular inscription cannot be read in that light
because most probably the women mentioned were from the family of a merchant as the
name of the family head suggests (Dhanmaseṭṭi Nārāyanan Kāḷi, seṭṭi indicating a surname
of a merchant). And this region in the modern context being in Tamil Nadu is suggestive
that this particular family may have Tamil origins. So to link them with matriarchy and the
women’s right over property is problematical in this case. Even though the name of the king
is not mentioned, the gifting of kārāṇmai land is a case of royal patronage.

V
From the copper plate records of Travancore kings related to the temple of Tiruppār̤kkaḍal-
Bhaṭṭāraka of Kilimanur of the twelfth century ce we come across the term tēvaṭicci referring
to a woman servant of the temple. This is interesting as the copper plates of the temple of
Tiruvallavālappan of the twelfth century ce had references to tēvaṭicci as dancing girls.48
The tēvaṭicci in Kilimanur plates (1168 ce) was a woman servant who pounded the paddy
and carried the hand lamps.49 This tēvaṭicci received a daily virutti of 2 nāl̤i of rice from
the daily offerings every day. She is listed as a temple servant among the others as vāriyan,
tirupallittāyam, tirumanikāval and uvachchar. A noteworthy point here is that the tēvaṭicci
was mentioned in the list of the functionaries, not with the ritual personnel of the temple, like
the mēlśānti (head priest), kīlśānti (assistant priest) or tirukkuḍa (umbrella bearer). Mostly,

45
Chitaral Inscription of Kollam 540 from Chitaral, TAS, Vol. 4, No. 42, p. 149.
46
The village of Chitaral is 4 miles to the north-east of Kul̤ ittur̤ ai, the headquarters of Viḷavangōd taluk of the
Padmanabhapuram division of South Travancore, now in Tamil Nadu.
47
Servants of the god, men who wore silk cloth for purity sake, devoted to service in central shrine and the regular
conduct of worship.
48
Huzur plates of Tiruvalla from Tiruvalla dated c. eleventh or twelfth century ce, TAS, Vol. 2, P. 3, p. 151.
49
Kilimanur copper plates of 1168 ce from Trivandrum, TAS, Vol. 5, No. 24, p. 72.
266 ANNA VARGHESE

there was only one tēvaṭicci as the record uses the singular form tēvaṭicci (woman servant)
unlike the other plural forms of words,tirumanikāval (watchmen) and uvachchar (drummers).

VI
The sixth section of the paper is on temple dancing girls. There is a belief that the famous
Odissi dance which has captured the world’s attention is an improved form of Māhārī
(dēvadāsi) dance.50 Kalamandalam Kalyanikuttiyamma who has written on the dance form
Mōhiniyāṭṭom, and traced the origin of this classical dance form, from tēvaticciyāttom, the
dance performances done by the temple dancing women of early Kēraḷam, records that the
Śucīndram temple had 32 dancing women attached to it. They sang aṣṭapadi51 from South
to North nadās (temple entrances) in śrībali52 procession after attal̤apūja53 put the deity
to sleep and danced for all special occasions. They were taught dance by appointment of
naṭṭuvanmār from the dēvaswom. But this is the case of the temple in the twentieth century
ce; in the sixteenth century the peṇkal, as we saw in the first section of this paper, may have
been ancestors to the dancing girls, as she is called the daughter of Nāchchiyār (goddess)
which indicates that she was consecrated to the temple.54
The two main references to dancing girls from Kēralam region come from Cōlapuram or
Kōttaru55 or Mummudiśōlanallūr, a village in Nān͂jināḍu within Travancore. A Cōlapuram
inscription of Kollam year 428 (1253 ce) records that Kōmaḷavalli, dancing girl of the
temple of Rajēndraśōlisvaramudaiya-Nayinār at Tirukkōttaru alias Mummudiśōlanallūr,
received four nāl̤i of rice as cooked food daily and this was installed on a hereditary basis.56

50
Benudhar Patra, ‘Devadāsī System in Orissa: A Case Study of the Jagannātha Temple of Puri’, Annals of the
Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 85(2004): 166. Retrieved 1 January 2014, from http://www.jstor.org/
stable/41691949
51
A song from Geetagovindam. See Sreekantesvaram. G Padmanabha Pillai, Sabdataravali Malayalam Dictionary
(Kottayam: Sahitya Pravarthaka Co-operative Society Ltd., 1993), 232.
52
The term śrībali in the inscriptions which later became śīvēli in the colloquial usage refers to the procession of the
miniature of the main temple deity, usually three times during the course of the daily pūjas.
53
In Malayalam, Attal̤am is supper, Pūja is worship. Attal̤apūja is the last worship of the night, after which the sanctum
sanctorum and the temple is closed. See Pillai, Sabdataravali Malayalam Dictionary, 99.
54
For a detailed account of the dedication of temple dancing girls to South Indian temples; see Kay Jordan K., From
Sacred Servant to Profane Prostitute: A History of the Changing Legal status of the Devadasis in India,1857–1947
(New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2003), 1–2.
55
Kōttaru, situated near the Aruvaymoli mountain pass which was a highway of commerce and travel between
Travancore on the western side and plains of the Coimbatore, Madura and Tinnevelly districts, was a flourishing
town of commerce. This pass was frequently used by the Pāndyas, Cholas, Vijayanagara generals and Nāyaka kings
for entering Travancore. It was also a Chola military outpost with a permanent garrison (nilaippadai) to guard the
Chola interest there. Since the place had a close affinity with the culture and people of other areas of the South, the
presence of the dancing girls can also be attributed to it. See Ramanatha A. S. Ayyar, Travancore Archaeological
Series, vol. 6, part 1 and 2 (Thiruvananthapuram: Department of Cultural Publications, Government of Kerala,
November 2003), 1, 3.
56
Cholapuram Inscriptions from Cholapuram dated Kollam 428, TAS, Vol. 6, No. 16, p. 26.
 Chapter 19  Temple Women and Work in Medieval Kēraḷam 267

The rice was given to the temple by Vaḍugan-Guṇavan alias Rajēndraśōla-Vaiśravaṇan of

Tirukkōṭṭāru alias Śōlakēralapuram, the brother of Kōmaḷavalli. As the term Vaiśravaṇan
indicates, Vaḍugan Guṇavan might have been a merchant in all possibility. He gave 61
achchu for providing 5 nāl̤i of rice for offerings and vegetables for curry to the images of
God Periyadēva-Nayinār and goddess Nāchchiyar, consecrated by him in the temple. For
this 61 achchu, Vaḍugan Guṇavan obtained land on lease from Vīrapāṇḍiya Pallavaraiyan
for cultivation. From its produce he measured daily, without fail, 5 nāl̤i of rice and sup-
plied vegetables also. With this stipulated quantity of rice, the offerings were provided and
also 4 nāl̤i of rice as cooked food to Kōmaḷavalli.57 Even after the lease expired, the temple
servants, supervisors and Vaḍugan Guṇavan invested the lease amount and additional loan
aggregating to 61 achchu on some property, and Vaḍugan took it to cultivation on a heredi-
tary basis and provided the 5 nāl̤i of rice and vegetables for offerings without fail. Here, the
brother of the dancing girl is more prominent as it is he who consecrates the Nāchchiyār as
well as gives the donation of 5 nāl̤i of rice daily and vegetables for the land he obtains on
lease for the 61 achchu he paid.
This instance makes another point also clear, that even if Kōmaḷavalli has received patron-
age from the kings or landlords (which in itself is not clear from the inscription), the wealth
was handled by the brother. Even if she did not receive patronage and was a member of a
wealthy family and was thus offered to the temple,58 the wealth was managed and transacted
by her brother Vaḍugan Guṇavan. It is he who earns the right of hereditary cultivation of the
land even after the loan expires. Here we can problematise the matrilineal societal set up of
the region and the power of women. There are chances that she would have not been a Nair
woman and might have been one from the Tamil region also. However, the evidence again
reveals the fact that the power ultimately rested in the hands of the Kāraṇavar or the senior
male member of the family. Even though the dancing girls may have been wealthy, they
would not have been the actual power holders of the family. This inscription points to the
fact that the tēvaṭicci of the Kēralam was different from the dēvadāsis of the other regions
of South who were wealthy donors who wielded the power of decision and execution. From
the thirteenth century ce, ‘Amman Gods’ were revoked as Nāchchiyār-partners of Dēvan
and were consecrated. Amman Gods were goddesses of agriculture who were worshipped
throughout South India.59
Absence of inscriptional and literary evidences makes it clear that the tēvaticcikal of
Kēralam, even though were wealthy and donors, were not similar to the rich dēvadāsi donors
of Tamil and Andhra regions.60 To read them in association with the socio-economic situation
of the Kēraḷam region, we should infer that the dancing Tēvaṭiccikaḷ of the region were not

57
Cholapuram Inscriptions from Cholapuram dated Kollam 428, TAS, Vol. 6, No. 16, p. 26.
58
Kay K. Jordan opines that the dedication of dēvadāsis, the female ritual specialists to the deity, came as expres-
sions of gratitude for the conception and safe delivery of the child or the recovery of family member from illness.
See Jordan, From Sacred Servant to Profane Prostitute, 1.
59
Soman, Devadasikalum Sahitya Charithravum, 29.
60
For an account of dēvadāsi donors of Tamil Nadu see Orr, Donors, Devotees and Daughters of God, 171. For the
Andra region see Cynthia Talbot, ‘Temples, Donors, and Gifts: Patterns of Patronage in the 13th c South India’, The
Journal of Asian Studies 50, no. 2 (May 1991): 308–340.
268 ANNA VARGHESE

as powerful as their counterparts in other areas of the South. Since they lacked the power,
they could not have had much say in the decision making of the society or temple affairs.
These dancing girls were entitled to virutti from the temples. Sometimes more than one
tēvaṭicci shared the fixed virutti. During festive occasions specially, dancing girls were
appointed by the temple authorities and paid virutti collectively. The Tiruvalla copper plates
mention four Tēvaṭiccikaḷ in association with the festival of Ōṇam,61 who were given 12
nāl̤i of rice during the occasion. They may have shared this rice and taken 3 nāl̤i each. Here
we should note that while the ritual functionaries in the higher rungs of the hierarchical
ladder were paid individually and these were carefully recorded, these women were given
a collective virutti and we often do not know the details of number of them appointed or
the scale of distribution of their virutti. No mention is made about their families or how
they shared this rice.
The appointment of dancing girls in temples during festive occasions can be corroborated
from literary evidences also. Kalamandalam Kalyanikuttiyamma,62 with the help of oral
traditions, says that the women dancers from the Śucīndram temple (Southern Travancore,
now in Tamil Nadu) used to dance in Saraswatiamman Kōvil in Pūjapura for navarātri
pūja and in Padmanābhaswami temple (both in Thiruvananthapuram taluk) in the month of
Tulām and received special rights for that. They were said to have received the paḍaccōru
(share of cooked rice) of 2 idaṅgal̤i of rice as wages. The aspect of migration is very promi-
nent in the case of dancing girls. During the Travancore kings’ rule, the dāsis and artists
who performed mōhiniyāṭṭom and kēḷikka came from Tamil Nadu, particularly Tanjāvūr.63
Most of the old writs or documents are records of giving encouragement and expenditure
to South Indian dāsis and artists. They do not contain mentioning about temple dāsīs or
women artists of Kēraḷam.64
Regarding the Śucīndram temple and the dancing girls there, P. Soman argues that the
tēvaraṭiyāḷ mentioned in the Śucīndram temple inscriptions were pounders of paddy in
the temple and it was from this group that dēvadāsis were recruited.65 There were differ-
ent hierarchical divisions among the dēvadāsis as seen from the studies about Śucīndram
temple.66 While mentioning about the customs related to dēvadāsis in the temple, Soman
says that tōḍa denoted youth and was the symbol of dēvadāsi. Tōḍavaykkal was when the
dēvadāsi removed the tōḍa before the yōgam due to old age or terminal illness. Taikil̤avikaḷ
were those who had resigned with a particular pension, mostly in kind.67 Dēvadāsis got land
without taxes and paddy as wages for jobs in temples. The dēvadāsis had a right over the
paḍaccōru or rice offered to the Dēvan (God) in Śucīndram temple as a mark of right over
the leavings or leftover of her husband’s meal.68

61
See note 48.
62
Kalyanikuttiyamma, Mohinoyattom Charithravum Attaprakaravum, 34.
63
Soman, Devadasikalum Sahitya Charithravum, 57.
64
Ibid.
65
Ibid., 31.
66
K. K. Pillai, Suchindram Temple, A Monograph (Chennai: Kalakshetra Publications, 2002).
67
Ibid., 32.
68
Ibid., 32.
 Chapter 19  Temple Women and Work in Medieval Kēraḷam 269

The dancing girls sometimes accompanied the isthakabal party (welcoming group) of the
Maharaja at major temples like Sivaganga at Melkote.69 This is equivalent to the evidences
from Uṇṇunīlisandēśam that dancing girls used to receive the Travancore rājas when they
were out with their paraphernalia. When the Vēṇāḍu king Ādityavarma came through the
south side of the Umayanallūr temple and entered the Kollam town, he was greeted by a
dēvadāsi named Veḷḷūr Nāṇi.70 Before Ādityavarman leaft Thiruvananthapuram, a beautiful
woman named Uṇṇiyāḍi is said to have come and waited for him. Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai
is of the opinion that this woman would have been part of the matilakam dancers.71 He fur-
ther argues that there are references in Uṇṇunīlisandēśam that throughout Ādityavarman’s
journey from Thiruvananthapuram to Kaḍandhēri, whenever he was near temples, there were
women who came and received him.72 Since there was a custom that prevailed in Śucīndram
and Kēraḷapuram temples that when the Vēṇāḍu kings visited, dēvadāsis of these temples
received them, Elamkulam argues that these women who received Ādityavarman throughout
his journey near the temples were also temple dancers.73
Tēvaṭiccikaḷ were also a significant part of the temple economy. The donative inscriptions74
which showcase their names are also indications of their not-so-ignored roles in the temple
life. Tēvaṭiccikaḷ here were dancing girls who sometimes made handsome money and land
donations to temples. The girls’ families often earned fame and respectable status due to her
good deed. They claimed and often partook the share of sacred offerings from the temple.
Cynthia Talbot75 reads from the thirteenth century Andhra inscriptions that patronage
of religion may have been the only public activity women could have engaged in. Leslie
C. Orr, through a study on the Cōla inscriptions (850–1300 ce) states that temple women’s
relationships with the temple were secured through their donations.76 There is an argu-
ment that the unmarried status of the temple women gave them the economic autonomy
that helped them to act as temple patrons, while the donative activities of other women
were curtailed.77 At the same time we come across women donors in Andhra region who
were royal women—the wives of powerful kings and princes, and the non-royal women of

69
Janaki Nair, ‘The Devadasi, Dharma and the State’, Economic and Political Weekly 29, no. 50 (10 December 1994),
3161. Retrieved 1 January 2014, form http://www.jstor.org/stable/4402128
70
Pillai, Unnuneeli Sandesam, 95.
71
Ibid., 104.
72
Ibid.
73
Ibid.
74
Donative Inscriptions had a public significance, for they were highly visible documents situated on temple walls and
columns or on separate slabs and pillars within the temple compound. See Talbot, ‘Temples, Donors, and Gifts’, 333.
75
It is noteworthy that the thirteenth century Andhra inscriptions praise men mostly in terms of their military
accomplishments, where women are eulogized almost solely for their religious beneficences. See Talbot, ‘Temples,
Donors, and Gifts’, 329.
76
Temple women’s patronage was diffuse and individualistic. They used donations as a way to forge and strengthen
connections with the temple in their locality, connections that were critical to their status and identities as temple
women. See Orr, Donors, Devotees and Daughters of God, 162.
77
Orr, Donors, Devotees and Daughters of God.
270 ANNA VARGHESE

the humbler descent—the wives and daughters of peasant leaders (reḍḍis), warrior chiefs
(nāyakas), herders (bōyas) and merchants (seṭṭis).78
In the erstwhile Kēralam regions, which had a close affinity with the Tamil culture, we find
dancing girls installing the image of goddess and making cash donations for daily offerings
in the temples. The Cholapuram inscription of Kollam 428 (1253 ce) mentions Śeńgōḍan-
Pūvāṇḍi, a dancing girl of the temple of Rājēndraśōḷīśvaramuḍaiya-Mahādēva in Tirukkōttaru
alias Mummudiśōlanallur (part of Nān͂jināḍu, one of the 13 malaināttunāḍukal, now in
Tamil Nadu). She installed the image of the consort (nāchchiyar) to the God Kun̤ṛamer̤inda
Piḷḷaiyār in the temple and gave 3 śalāgai (or) 10 achchu and 10 new achchu of gold, 20
achchu in total, for the expenses of providing the sacred offerings to this goddess. The
temple servants and supervisors of the temple accounts who received the amount agreed to
give her daily 5 nāl̤i of paddy as interest for the 2 nāl̤i of rice she gave for sacred offerings
to goddess Nāchchiyār. If she measured out this 2 nāl̤i of rice on the palakaittalai,79 she was
given cooked food of one nāl̤i of rice after making the offerings to the goddess. She was
also presented with a cloth on the bathing day (tīrttam) of the annual festival. This supply
of cooked food, cloth and paddy was to be continued on a hereditary basis to the descen-
dants of Śengōdan-Pūvandi.80 The temple servants and temple account supervisor received
20 achchu and gave in writing an agreement on stone and copper to this dancing girl that
2 nāl̤i of rice will be provided forever. This inscription proves that Śeńgōḍan-Pūvāṇḍi had
active interaction with the temple authorities and the fact that she got the agreement written
on stone and copper was a part of the attempt to ensure the hereditary interactions and to
proclaim her name. The present of cloth on the tīrttam day was a public acknowledgement
of her position as the dancing girl of the temple. The economic significance of her act cannot
be lessened as she received an interest of 5 nāl̤i of paddy for the 2 nāl̤i of rice she gave daily
for the sacred offerings daily.
‘Muttakuḍi occurs in the Kēraḷapuram inscription where it refers to a family of dancing
girls attached to the Siva temple at that place’.81 The Kēraḷapuram inscription of Kollam
year 782 (1607 ce) records that two women, Nīlammaikuṭṭi, daughter of Māḍammai, and
Māḍammai, daughter of Ichchakuṭṭi, set up the pillar bearing the image of Kulaśēkhara
Perumāḷ in the south-western corner (kanni-mūlai) of the Rishabha—maṇḍapa of Śiva
temple at Śengalunir valanāḍu, near Padmanābhapuram.82 These two women belonged to
the mūttakuḍi (family) of dancing girls attached to the temple of Mahādēva at Kēraḷapuram.
These dancing girls attached to the temples would have been wealthy and holding high
position in the society then to have made donations to the temple.

78
Talbot, ‘Temples, Donors, and Gifts’.
79
A plank on which paddy was measured.
80
Cholapuram Inscription dated Kollam 428 from Cholapuram, TAS, Vol. 6, No. 15, p. 25.
81
Cheramangalam records of Jatavarman Sundara Chola Pandya from Cheramangalam in Eraniel Taluk of
Padmanabhapuram Division dated eleventh century ce, TAS, Vol. 5, No. 7, p. 29.
82
Keralapuram Inscriptions from Keralapuram, a suburb of Muttalakurichchi near Padmanabhapuram dated Kollam
782, TAS, Vol. 5, No. 27, p. 94.
 Chapter 19  Temple Women and Work in Medieval Kēraḷam 271

We come across few instances of female patronage to temples from an inscriptional study
of the region of Kēralam. An inscription of Rajasekhara of eighth century ce83 mentions
one Kaṇṇan Śaṅkaran, who held the position of Kāvadi. It says that the puraiyiḍam84 that
belonged to Śankari, the daughter of the Kāvadi Kaṇṇan, which yielded a hundred and fifty
tūnis of paddy and three dināras, was given to the God of Kailāsa. This instance can sug-
gest that the accountant would have been wealthy enough to grant her daughter with plots
of land. It can also be suggestive that the family of the accountant was in close association
with the temple and gave generous grants to the temple.
It was recorded in the Tirunandikkarai inscription of Vijayaragadeva of tenth century
ce85 that Kīlanadigal, the daughter of Kulaśēkharadēva and queen of Vijayaragadevan, gave
thirty kalañju of gold to maintain a perpetual lamp in the temple of Tirunandikkarai Bhatāra.
The accountant was among others present while the donation was made. Tiruvalla copper
plate records the gift of Rāmanmādevi of Muññinādu, the lands Iñjaitturutti and Kulikkādu
together with their tenants to the God Tiruvalla vālappan.86 With the income from these
lands, a food offering of 4 nāl̤i was to be made to the god.
Here, the relationship status of female donors was clearly mentioned that they were either
daughters of wealthy members of the society or wife of a king. The panels of evidences
where lay women or nuns were seen to contribute, as in the case of western Indian social
set up of Buddhist influence87 is missing in Kēraḷam.

VII
Accimār are a category of women who can be seen as having similar characteristics of
dēvadāsis. Some historians have called the accimār as dēvadāsis. However, they are
distinct and different from dēvadāsis in the sense that they were more subjugated to the
interests of landlords and men of power in the society even though they were sometimes
attached to temples. The dēvadāsi system formed as a sub institution related to the temples
in the medieval times. There is an opinion that many dēvadāsis belonged to Nair taravaḍus
(matrilineal ancestral homes) which were rich and privileged. It is said that the dēvadāsis
to Padmanabhaswami temple in Thiruvananthapuram were selected from a particular Nair
community with a status called pādamaṅgalam.88 When a girl gets selected as a dēvadāsi
to a temple, her mother or close relative forms a contract called jātakam with the temple

83
An Inscription of Rajasekhara from Changanasseri dated eighteenth century ce, TAS, Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 14.
84
Site of habitation.
85
Tirunandikkarai Inscription of Vijayaragadeva from Tirunandikkarai in Kalkulam Taluk dated tenth century ce,
TAS, Vol. 4, No. 38, p. 145.
86
Huzur plates of Tiruvalla from Tiruvalla dated eleventh century or twelfth century ce, TAS, Vol. 2, P. 3, p. 153.
87
Vidya Dehejia, ‘The collective and popular basis of Early Buddhist patronage: sacred monuments, 100 BC–AD
250’, in The Powers of Art. Patronage in Indian Culture, ed. Barnara Stoler Miller (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1992), 23.
88
P. V. Velayudhan Pillai, Manipravalakavitha (History of Manipravala Literature) (Thiruvananthapuram: The State
Institute of Languages, 2003), 21.
272 ANNA VARGHESE

administration. Later on at an auspicious time, she is wedded as wife of god and is accepted
by the temple. All the music and dance training of the girl happens in the temple. Dance
masters called naṭṭuvanmār were appointed in major temples for this purpose. On the attain-
ment of proper knowledge of dance and music, the young woman is accepted as a dēvadāsi.
‘According to the tradition recorded in the Mādalāpānji (the chronicle of the Jagannātha
temple at Puri) recitation of Gītagōvindam was introduced in the Jagannātha Temple of Puri
as a daily service of the Devadāsīs by Narasiṁhadeva I (ad 1238–1264)’.89 Kalamandalam
Kalyanikuttiyamma refers to the dancing women of Travancore who danced to the tune of
lyrics from Gītagōvindam.
Dēvadāsis acquired higher education and were proficient in music, dance, instruments,
kāvyas and śāstras. They were always married women without widowhood and hence were
considered to be a good omen. There existed a practice that when Vēṇāḍu kings came, the
dēvadāsis in different temples on his way should come out and receive him. This may be
because the kings were considered at par with or just below the status of gods and the maid
servants to gods were considered to be servants to kings as well. In southern Travancore,
the dēvadāsis of Keralapuram and Śucīndram temples are said to have had relationships
with Nair men.
Dēvadāsis were of different hierarchical statuses. Those of the higher status danced before
god only on festival days and respectfully received the kings and chiefs who visited the
temples. Those of the lower orders did services like holding the lamps for lights, worship
in the evenings, sweeping the room for śrībali, sing during attāḻa śrībali, bring water to the
temple and dance when the god comes out in procession. A woman, accepted as dēvadāsi
in a temple, received kuḍi and paḍi, kuḍi denoting the house to stay and paḍi her salary.
Very famous dēvadāsis received the status called rāyar. When they wanted to retire from
work due to illness or old age, they could do so by submitting their ear ring along with 12
gold coins to the temple administrative assembly.
Vaiśikatantram, written in the twelfth or thirteenth century ce, discusses about the custom
of vaiśikavritti or prostitution and narrates the outlook of a vaiśya or prostitute.90 In the text,
the grandmother educates the granddaughter that the dēvadāsi should be smartly talented
enough to perform on stage evoking in every member of the audience the feeling that it is
me whom she likes the most. This text, even though exaggerated, shows the presence of
women well versed in dance and music, which pleased men and were an integral part of
the social system.
Uṇṇiyacci caritam is an accicaritam text written in the first half of the thirteenth century
ce. Uṇṇiyacci, who was the dēvadāsi of Tirumarutūr temple in northern Kerala, belonged
to Atimayanallūr in Tamil Nadu and came with her mother Acciyār to Kerala. A gandharva
(heavenly being) sees her on the Aṣṭami festival in the Kumbha month in Tirumarutūr temple
and develops interest in her. The dēvadāsi should have had important role to play in this
temple festival.

89
Patra, Devadāsī System in Orissa, 163.
90
In Vaiśikatantram, a grandmother narrates the principles and rites of prostitution to her granddaughter. She says
that her family has a rich tradition of about eight generations of hereditary knowledge in the occupation and reminds
her how difficult it is to learn and master the occupation of prostitution. See K. Ramachandran Nair, Vaisikatantram
(Trivandrum, 1969).
 Chapter 19  Temple Women and Work in Medieval Kēraḷam 273

It is recorded in Uṇṇiyacci caritam that the dēvadāsis lived in houses which were close
to temples. It also refers to rōhiṇi who is a girl of nine years. ‘In a time when the dēvadāsi
system was prominent, a virgin of nine years had a very high status in the society’.91
A medical practitioner who was at the house of Uṇṇiyacci claims to have treated and
cured a dēvadāsi who gave him 50 accu (gold coin). ‘Dēvadāsis lure men through their
sweet talk’.92 The men assembled in front of Uṇṇiyacci’s house describes about a dēvadāsi
of Kāḷambaḷḷiyil house. That young woman bit the man on his lower lips and took his gold
ring and got rid of him. She said if he gives more gold, he will be allowed to sleep with her.
The man gave a gold coin to the dēvadāsi’s man in secret and that man said it is for her and
the gold and money given is not enough. This shows that a male member of the dēvadāsi’s
family took undue money from her seekers and tried to extract more money and gold from
men in her name. Here, the sexuality of the dēvadāsi is made just as a pawn in the hands of
the male member in the family to obtain maximum wealth from men who came to spend
time with her.
Uṇṇiyacci caritam also refers to the young daughter of Nīli who was much able. She was
a dēvadāsi. She is described as being clean, decorated and very smart. The men discussed
about going there. The men tried to appease the female attendants of Uṇṇiyacci hoping to
find entrance to her house.
Uṇṇicirutēvi caritam was written in the second half of the thirteenth century ce.
Uṇṇicirutēvi, the heroine of the text, was born as the daughter of Rāyirampillai and was the
granddaughter of Nangayya and belonged to the Poyilam village and Tōṭṭuvāyppaḷḷi house.
Uṇṇicirutēvi’s grandmother is described to be proficient than Lord Śiva in dance. Poets in
Unnicirutevicaritam are referred to as saying that they could receive the naivēdyam (food
offering) made to temple as reward for writing poems about women proficient in dance.
This may be taken as a clear reference to direct association between dēvadāsis and temples.
There were men who sold all their earnings and were ready to submit it before Uṇṇicirutēvi.
Poets who claim to have written poems about Uṇṇicirutēvi and are ready to present it before
her were many. Brahman men with vermilion marks, gold rings, nicely worn dhotis and
sacred thread were also present.93 Some cruel brahmans dressed up like clowns got embar-
rassed describing their sexual desire. It was almost like a practice where the women with
divine nature and high status in the society gave a vision of themselves to the common man
that was to happen in Uṇṇicirutēvi’s house.
Uṇṇiyāḍi caritam was written in the second half of the fourteenth century ce by
Damodaracakyar who was patronized by Kerala Varma, the king of Kayamkulam. Uṇṇiyāḍi
belonged to Cerukara illam and her mother was Uṇṇikuṭṭatti. The wide acceptance of the
dēvadāsi system is evident from the fact that a famous dēvadāsi called Kuṭṭatti was mar-
ried by Kēraḷa Varman, king of Kayamkulam, and their daughter Uṇṇiyāḍi turned out to
become another famous dēvadāsi.

91
Mughathala Gopalakrishnan Nair, Unniyacci caritam (Thiruvananthapuram: The State Institute of Languages,
2011), 47.
92
Ibid., 72.
93
Sundaram Dhanuvachapuram, Unnichiruthevi charitham (Thiruvananthapuram: The State Institute of Languages,
2005), 7.
274 ANNA VARGHESE

Poet says that the beautiful women of the Ōḍanāḍu region have been obtaining the wealth
of men which is the men’s courage. These beautiful women daily steal the hearts of young
men. Even the female attendants of Uṇṇiyāḍi are very beautiful. They bear the box of betel
leaves, hold a fan in the shape of umbrella made of peacock feathers, wear head ornaments
and are fully decorated in ornaments and they talk sweetly. Uṇṇiyāḍi is narrated to be beauti-
ful as a deer who won over the clan of heavenly dancers in her beauty.94
The Brahmeśvar Temple Inscription from Orissa describes the beauty and grace of the
dēvadāsis offered by queen Kalāvatī as those who appeared graceful by wearing various
types of ornaments, and at the time of dance flashes of lightning were revealed in their
movements.95 This can be seen in corroboration with the beauty of the tēvaṭicci and accimār
described in the acci caritams so elaborately.
A poet who waits at the doorstep of Uṇṇiyāḍi is referred to as boasting to have written
a taivampāṭṭu (poem) about the beautiful young damsel. Among the people impatiently
waiting to see Uṇṇiyāḍi are many poets who have written Maṇipravāḷa śḷōkas about her,
bhaṭṭanmār who are young brahman scholars who have come with their bundle of books,
rich nampūtiris (brahmans), chiefs and poor literary men.
P. Soman says that the ambalavāsi96 groups followed the practice of tālikeṭṭu as mar-
riage practice.97 When the ambalavāsi women maintained sexual relations with nampūtiri,
embrāntiri or paṭṭar, the ambalavāsi men had sexual relations in their own group or with
Nair women. For ambalavāsi women, sambandham98 with nampūtiri men was merit from
their previous lives.99

VIII
Leslie C. Orr refers to the term naṭṭuvar mentioned in the thirteen Cōḷa period inscriptions
that she located. In every case, the naṭṭuvan was male and was described as receiving sup-
port from the temple for his services, and in two of the inscriptions, the naṭṭuvan’s service
rights were transferred to male relatives. She argues that the naṭṭuvar were not linked to
temple women in the inscriptions, but in some cases they were associated with uvacccar
(drummers) or other musicians.100
Pertaining to the Kēraḷam region, P. Soman argues that men who belonged to the dēvadāsi
group performed as singers, and musicians as background supporters of dāsiyāṭṭom. They
were called naṭṭuvanmār.101 The naṭṭuvan taught dance and music, conducted the initiation
ceremony into dancing and played background music. The people who sounded kul̤al were

94
Sundaram Dhanuvachapuram, Unniyadicharitham (Thiruvananthapuram: The State Institute of Languages, 2007),
186.
95
Patra, Devadāsī System in Orissa, 167.
96
Many of the temple women later crystallized themselves into ambalavāsi caste.
97
Soman, Devadasikalum Sahitya Charithravum, 75.
98
Here sambandham means marriage.
99
Soman, Devadasikalum Sahitya Charithravum, 76.
100
Orr, Donors, Devotees and Daughters of God, 107.
101
Soman, Devadasikalum Sahitya Charithravum, 30.
 Chapter 19  Temple Women and Work in Medieval Kēraḷam 275

called parvaśanmār and the musicians were called ōccanmār.102 He argues that the naṭṭuvar
of Kēraḷam were cākyār and mārārs. They were never the male counterparts or the men of
the dēvadāsis.103
Literary evidence of naṭṭuvanmār from the Kēraḷam region is very scarce. However,
there is mention of male attendants of accimār in the caritam literature. But we are not sure
if they were dance masters—naṭṭuvanmār. There is a reference where the male attendant
of Uṇṇiyacci was approached by a man who had come to meet her. He gave a golden coin
into the attendant’s hands in order to meet her fast. The man seems to have promised that
he would not tell this matter to anyone and the coin was for her. But later the man said that
the accu (golden coin) and money was not sufficient for meeting her.104 Here the reference
indicates that this might only have been Uṇṇiyacci’s attendant and most probably not her
dance master.
However this does not deny the fact that there were dance masters who taught the dēvadāsi
girls from the age of 9. The age of 9 was significant for the dancing girls as mostly they
were dedicated to the god when the virgin girls were 9 years old.105

IX
CONCLUSION
We can see from the following study that the term tēvaṭicci cannot be used as a generic
term to indicate temple women. On the one hand, we come across the tēvaṭicci who was
the dancing girl and donor and on the other, we see peṇkal and peṇṇumpiḷḷaikaḷ who were
the female attendants and cleaners of temples. We see a clear hierarchical division among
them, the dancing girl being the donor and receiving the higher virutti, whereas the female
labourers, often mentioned collectively without any mention of their names, were attributed
a collective virutti. The dancing girl acquired a ritual status in the worship in temples. The
tēvaṭicci was part of the Śrībali in few instances. However, the actual control of these danc-
ing girls rested with senior male members of their families who possessed the real power
over their virutti lands.
Interesting is the instance where the term tēvaṭicci is used to denote the woman temple
servant. Here, the temple utilizes the labour of these women for low wages, often in kind.
The power play of the women was subtle as we see the hand of the Kāraṇavar as a control-
ling agency over the feminine. The king is evident as the generous patron, giving kārāṇmai
lands to the families of women servants. The hereditary rights on female donors was stressed
and recorded.
The accimār enjoy the attention given to them by their seekers which includes a wide
range of men like landlords, warriors, brahman scholars, brahman students, singers, poets,

102
Ibid., 33.
103
Ibid., 55.
104
Nair, Unniyacci caritam, 77.
105
Ibid., 47.
276 ANNA VARGHESE

rich and poor lovers who were ready to submit all their earnings before the accimār whom
they were eager to meet. However, male members of their family are seen to have extracted
money and gold from their seekers and their life reduced to giving pleasure by their dance,
songs and sexual favours to men wielding power. In society during the eighth to twentieth
century ce, Kerala was conditioned and tuned by its political, social, economic, intellectual
and literary dimensions which accepted and accredited the exploitation of these categories
of women as a natural phenomenon. There might have been voices of dissent and conflicts,
but they are carefully silenced in the sources of written history. An open analysis of the lives
of these women brings out a vivid narrative of these scenes of exploitation, marginalization
and subjugation through the thin layers of cleverly woven descriptions of glory, heavenly
beauty, high status, divine duties and just wages.
We can see that the inscriptional references to individual names of women as part of
service classes are very few, considering the fact that women may have been employed in
tying the paḷḷittāmam (sacred garland) and would have been among the śīkkol or aṭikkumavar
(sweepers). We see that they were mentioned, though in a collective term of peṇṇumpiḷḷaikal
or peṇkaḷ, as a very important part of sacred processions for paḷḷiveṭṭai and ārāṭṭu, significant
rituals involving the deity. Though the degree of their representation in the inscriptions is low
when compared to the ritual personnel and other functionaries, still we cannot close our eyes
towards the less visualized, yet rich images of the women among temple functionary groups.
I am also making an attempt to see the transition of the temple women through the centu-
ries from the eighth to seventeenth ce. When in the initial centuries we see dancing women
and women donors, later we do not have inscriptional evidences on them. The caritams
and sandēśa kāvyams which are dated from the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
ce contain a colourful description of accimār and heroines who were epitomes of beauty.
Some of them we have clear indications of being associated with temples. For others, it is
difficult to postulate that way. Hence, it is difficult to assume a picturesque description of
the temple women as dancing girls of medieval Kerala. However, the pounders of paddy
and the women who did services like sweeping and mopping—the aḍiccutaḷi—continued
to exist in the temples. The British attempt to showcase them as one category was not right
because they assumed various roles and various shades of womanhood absorbed in various
sizes and shapes in varied functional roles.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Subrahmanya K. V. Aiyar, Travancore Archaeological Series, Vol. 4, Parts 1 & 2 (Thiruvananthapuram: Department
of Cultural Publications, Government of Kerala, February 1999).
Ramanatha A. S. Ayyar, Travancore Archaeological Series, Vol. 5, Parts 1, 2 & 3 (Thiruvananthapuram: Department
of Cultural Publications, Government of Kerala, February 1999).
Ramanatha A. S. Ayyar, Travancore Archaeological Series, Vol. 7, Parts 1 & 2 (Thiruvananthapuram: Department
of Cultural Publications, Government of Kerala, December 2004).
M. G. S. Narayanan, Index to Cera Inscriptions: A Companion Volume to Thesis on ‘Political and Social Conditions
of Kerala under the Kulasekhara Empire’, (submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University
of Kerala, University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, 1972).
Gopinatha T. A. Rao, Travancore Archaeological Series, Vol. 2 & 3 (Trivandrum: Department of Cultural Publications,
Government of Kerala, 1992, March).
 Chapter 20 Gender, Caste and
Labour: Ideological
and Material Structure
of Widowhood*

UMA CHAKRAVARTI

In this essay, I attempt to explore the relationships among gender, caste and labour in the
context of widowhood. I look mainly at widowhood among the upper castes, an issue that
has dominated our consciousness for over a century, but try to understand the larger structure
of relations—material and ideological—in which patriarchal practices enforced permanent
widowhood on women. I argue that patriarchal practices among the different castes, though
dissimilar, are part of the larger structure of caste, production and reproduction. Thus, tra-
ditional patriarchal practices could be distinctive for various castes, to make for a hierarchy
of cultures and a system of production in which the low castes labour and reproduce labour,
whereas the high castes do not labour and reproduce only specialists—ritual specialists—or
a literati which performs specific types of non-manual work.
Further, I suggest that the distinctive cultural codes form a basis for the hierarchy of castes
in which not only are castes ranked in an elaborate hierarchy, but there is an ideological and
material rationale for the hierarchy. The stringent control of female sexuality among other
‘non-labouring’ high castes with permanent enforced widowhood at the apex of the cultural
codes becomes the index for establishing the highest rank in the caste system. Conversely,
the range of marriage patterns practised in the case of widows among the lower castes, which
the higher castes often impose upon them, nevertheless becomes the ideological rationale
for ranking these castes as low. This serves a double purpose: not only does it establish
distinctions between castes and legitimize the hierarchy of caste, it also establishes a firm
demographic basis for production relations. Thus a single-caste framework functioning both
at the level of ideology and material arrangements requires distinctive patriarchal arrange-
ment and cultural codes among the hierarchy of castes, to reproduce both the ideological
and material arrangements of a certain structure of production.

* Reproduced with permission from the author and the publisher, from Everyday Lives, Everyday Histories: Beyond
the Kings and Brahmanas of ‘Ancient’ India. Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2006, pp. 156–79.
This essay was first published in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXX, No. 36 (September 1995),
pp. 2248–56; it was republished in Martha Chen (ed.), Widows in India (Delhi: SAGE, 1998).
277
278 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

I argue in this essay that the experience of widowhood must be firmly situated in a ­certain
kind of production relations apart from its patriarchal context, as the discussion below will
amplify.

CONCEPTUALIZING WIDOWHOOD: WIDOWHOOD AS

SOCIAL DEATH
Widowhood in India among the upper castes is a state of social death.1 The widow’s social
death stems from her alienation from reproduction and sexuality, following the loss of her
husband and her exclusion from the functioning social unit of the family. Once a woman
ceases to be wife (especially a childless wife) she ceases to be a ‘person’—she is neither
daughter nor daughter-in-law. The problem posed by Brahmanical patriarchy therefore is:
since the wife has no social existence outside of her husband’s house, then, as a widow,
who or what is she? The texts and rituals attempt to work the problem out. The problem
itself is simply that although the widow is socially dead, she remains an element in soci-
ety; the question then is how to incorporate her. One way could be to constitute a separate
community of widows, a non-sexual community, such as that of female ascetics. Another
could be to retain her in society but place her on its margins and then institutionalize­
her marginality. This is what Brahmanical patriarchy did with the widow. The widow’s
institutionalized marginality, a liminal state between being physically alive and being
socially dead, was the ultimate cultural outcome of the deprivation of her sexuality as well
as of her personhood.
The widow’s marginal state meant that she was, in a manner of speaking, functionally
incorporated into the household while being considered an out-sider. Thus, while the widow
was functionally incorporated either into the natal or affinal family, she was, especially in
the affinal household, the ‘domestic enemy’. At the same time, she was the ‘insider’ who
had fallen, one who had ceased to belong and been expelled from normal participation in
the community (for failing to prevent her husband’s death). She was the object of divine and
social disfavour. Widowhood was perceived as a disrupter of the social order and a poten-
tial violation of the moral order. There were two modes of representing the social death of
widows: one was intrusive, in which the widow was conceived of as someone who did not
belong because she was an ‘outsider’ (as in the affinal home); and in the extrusive mode,
the widow who had left her natal home following marriage became an outsider because
she no longer belonged. The widow was both simultaneously—in the affinal and in the
natal home she became the outsider who now no longer belonged, and she thus shared the
sense of being an outcaste. It was not, however, the rules of purity and pollution but those
of inauspiciousness that were the means of maintaining social distance in the case of the
widow. The widow was socially differentiated by prescribed behaviour which she had, at
all costs, to follow.
Symbolic ideas of a cultural system are usually given social expression in ritualized
patterns. The death of the husband (without whom the widow ceased to be a social entity)
among upper-caste Hindus was ritually expressed through special ceremonies involving the
 Chapter 20  Gender, Caste and Labour 279

marginalization of the erstwhile wife who, as a widow, was defined as socially dead. The
rituals of widowhood incorporated certain basic features signifying the symbolic rejection/
deprivation of the widow’s sexuality. The rituals included the imposition of some visible
mark to define and highlight this new status. Following the assumption of the new status, the
widow was relocated within the household of her dead husband. Unlike the marriage rituals
marking the woman’s entry into legitimate sexual activity, which are elaborate, the rituals
marking the renunciation of the widow’s sexuality are simple but always deeply humiliating
and traumatic. The most dramatic and visible ‘ritual’ for Brahmana women is tonsure, or the
shaving of the head. The unique practice of tonsure, prevalent among many South Indian and
West Indian Brahmana communities, requires some analysis of the notion of widowhood in
Brahmanical patriarchy so that we may unfold the cultural meaning of this highly symbolic
act. It may be argued that to enforce permanent widowhood upon women the community
needs to continuously reiterate its authority over the widow; enforced tonsure is a way of
doing that. It is a reiteration by the community of their power to control the widow’s sexuality.
Meyer Fortes and R. Firth2 have suggested that symbols, both private and public, constitute
a major instrument of power when used directly or indirectly. This is true of tonsure, which
was deeply resented by widows and perceived by them to be an indication of their utter
powerlessness in the hands of a cruel system, insisted upon by Brahmana men.3 Here tonsure
represents the social aspect of symbolic behaviour, referring to ritual processes by means of
which symbolic ideas are acted out in terms of real human interaction. That such actions are
always highly formalized and ceremonial is evident in the removal of the hair of widows.
Widowhood is clearly a highly symbolized domain in the experience of upper-caste Hindu
society. While there are many elements of the widow’s existence that are symbolized, there
is an overwhelming concentration on the profound danger represented by the sexuality of
the widow. The continued existence of the widow after the death of her husband was to
convert what was most valuable to the husband in his lifetime into an awesome threat to
his community. The theme that dominates the ceremonies and rituals of widowhood is the
sexual death of the widow. And since the upper-caste woman in Brahmanical patriarchy
is primarily a vehicle for reproduction, the sexual death of a woman is simultaneously a
social death. The customs and rituals mark a social and ideological resolution of the ten-
sions inherent in a conceptualization of widowhood in which the widow continues to exist
but is sexually a non-being.

WIFEHOOD, WIDOWHOOD AND STRISVABHAVA IN

BRAHMANICAL PATRIARCHY
From the evidence of the classical texts it is clear that the upper-caste Hindu widow was an
anomaly in traditional Hindu society, since she had no place and no function in the Hindu
social order. The death of a woman’s husband marked the woman’s transition from wife to
widow, taking her from a central place in the family to its margins. In order to understand
the upper-caste widow’s marginal/liminal place, it is thus necessary to look at the wife, who
is the obverse of the widow in the Brahmanical texts.
280 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

The Wife in Brahmanical Patriarchy

The wife is the most important focus of attention among the different categories of women
in the prescriptive texts: symbols, rituals and norms are all concentrated in the person of
the wife. A woman is recognized as a person when she is incorporated into her husband—
only then does she become a social entity and in that state she is auspicious, a sumangali,
a saubhagyavati. It is therefore not surprising that marriage is the only ritual prescribed for
the woman. Together with her husband she performs rituals and procreates a son or many
sons.4 These two acts define her as a social being and for both, the presence of the husband
(who makes her complete) is imperative. Outside of the husband, the wife has no recognized
existence in Brahmanical patriarchy.
The performance of rituals, and procreation, are acts in which women are perceived as
agents or inferior partners through whom men discharge two of their three debts. The three
debts are: to the sages, to the gods and to the ‘pitr’. The debt to the sages is discharged
through brahmacharya, a compulsory stage that precedes marriage; the debt to the gods is
discharged by performing yajnas; and that to the pitr by reproducing sons.5 The wife thus
helps her husband in discharging two of his three debts, by associating with him in sacrifice
and by procreating sons. The role that the wife is assigned in participating in the ritual itself
stems from her primary function of procreating sons. Manu states the relationship quite
explicitly: ‘To be mothers are women created and to be fathers men; religious rites therefore
are ordained in the Veda to be performed [by the husband] together with the wife.’6
While men discharged their debts and ensured their salvation, women helped men to
achieve immortality and heaven through the son, and thus discharged their obligation. The
goal of the life of women was thus to get married and procreate sons—in fact, according to
the texts, women are created for the sole purpose of procreating sons (Stripumsa, V.19).7
It is not surprising that the Dharmasutras permit or, rather, recommend that the husband
marry again even when the first wife is living, if she has no son. The sonless wife should
not be an obstacle in the fulfilment of the husband’s goal.8 That she was merely the medium
through which the husband’s goals were achieved, and that she herself had neither person-
hood nor religious or social goals, is evident from the denial of children (and through sons
to immortality) to her in the event of her husband’s death.
The rituals at the time of marriage explicitly recognize the crucial place of procreation.
This is evident in the Brahmanical texts,9 and anthropological analyses of the Hindu marriage
ceremony repeat the centrality of reproduction in the rituals so evident in the Brahmanical
texts. For example, in the crucial haldi ceremony that precedes the actual marriage rites,
the spouse is smeared with turmeric. According to informants, the effect of the turmeric
application is that the body is heated up for sexual intercourse. The source of sexual energy
that haldi is believed to create is located unambiguously in women, in which sense they are
perceived as active agents in the process of reproduction.10 Further, the colour most often
associated with brides is red: red is the colour of vitality because of its connotation of blood.
It is appropriate where something important and life-giving is about to take place. The red
kumkuma or sindoora applied only by married women symbolizes the sexually active or
sexually potent female. The bride’s red sari and kumkuma together represent the fluids of
creation, life, female creative power and, specifically, the capacity to bear children.11
 Chapter 20  Gender, Caste and Labour 281

It is significant that the symbolism of marriage rites represents women not only as a source
of sexual energy, but also as having fertility closely identified with the fertility of nature
and possessing qualities that are juxtaposed with other qualities supposedly held by men.
However, these are held in such a way as to render them relatively ‘wild’ and ‘disorderly’.12
A concomitant of the ceremonies is that only in their relations to men as wives and mothers
do they become fully cultural or, indeed, fully human.
In handling the concept of wifehood, the prescriptive texts too constantly attempt to
resolve the basic contradiction that women represent, between their nature and their func-
tion. A demoniac and innately promiscuous nature is ascribed as their lot due to the previous
bad karma that produces female birth; it must be suppressed in favour of their function as
wives.13 Women are perceived as being caught in a trap caused entirely by their karma; they
are the sites of conflict between strisvabhava, their innate demoniac nature which is lustful,
and stridharma, their function as wives.14
The innate promiscuity of women requires the legitimate channelization of their sexual
energy in a stringently organized system of reproduction, without which the social order
would collapse. Thus, to ensure the absorption of the wife’s sexual energy, frequent satia-
tion is required, and the husband who does not approach his wife after the purificatory bath
following the end of menstrual pollution is to be punished. This is a race case of punishment
advocated by the Dharmasutras to an ‘erring’ husband’.15 Even so, the innate sinfulness
and lustfulness of women can easily lead them to adultery, which is severely punishable by
every form of humiliation to be publicly heaped upon the adulterous wife. Surveillance of
the wife within marriage is regarded as necessary and its repeatedly recommended in the
prescriptive texts.16
It was to channelize the overflowing sexual energy of women that early marriages became
so crucial in the structure of Brahmancial patriarchy. If a girl did not marry by the time
she reached puberty, she would easily and inevitably be led ‘astray’. As Selwyn states, an
unmarried, menstruating girl eventually becomes an object of ‘moral panic’. Such a women,
‘untamed by wifehood and motherhood, is…a liability to her kin, her caste, and to society in
general’.17 The Brahmanical textual position is unambiguous in the responsibility it places on
the girl’s family if she remains unmarried after puberty.18 The parents and, eldest brother go
to hell in a such a situation. If a girl is married after this point, her husband is to be socially
excommunicated. According to some texts, the father or guardian incurs the sin of destroy-
ing an embryo at each appearance of the menses as long as the girl remains unmarried.19
Marriage is thus imperative for women: within it alone can women’s innate sinfulness
and lustfulness be channelized, and thereafter, through legitimate reproduction, women
enable men to discharge their debts to the gods and ancestors and achieve heaven. Through
wifehood and motherhood, women discharge their functions in society, acquire person-
hood and, in this capacity, perform rituals with their husbands as sahadharminis. Within
marriage, as true followers of stridharma and pativratadharma, women can achieve great
powers. Through marriage and wifely devotion, the ‘biological’ woman—a wild, untamed
and disorderly entity—can be converted into the ‘cultured’ woman—a social entity who
has vanquished all the demoniac forces within her.20 Only thus can women overcome the
inauspicious marks of female birth and acquire the necessary karma to be reborn as men,
preferably dvija (twice-born men), entitled to seek the goal of immortal heaven.21
282 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

The overflowing sexual energy of women, containable and legitimately expressible only
in marriage, is regarded as assuming dangerous dimensions when the husband is away. Like
the unmarried, menstruating girl, the wife whose husband is absent is an object of moral
panic. The didactic Sanskrit and Pali literature abounds in stories of women’s licentiousness
in the absence of husbands, thus bringing about moral and social disorder.22 The way the
prescriptive texts deal with this situation prefigures the manner in which the sexuality of
women in widowhood is handled. All the advice given to the wife to make herself attractive
and to invite the sexual attention of her husband is explicitly prohibited in his absence. Her
movements are severely curtailed and so too her behaviour.
The contrast between the prescription to the wife while the husband is home and when
he is away is telling. The texts, for instance, prescribe a purificatory bath after her men-
strual pollution is ended and she is exhorted to make sexual advances to her husband that
night.23 But when the husband is away, the ‘chaste’ woman—‘sati’—is expected to forgo
perfumes, garlands, collyrium, the chewing of betel and even the use of the teeth-cleaning
stick. According to one authority, the face of the wife whose husband is away should look
pale and distressed, she should not embellish her body, she should be devoted to the thought
of her husband, she should not eat a full meal, and she should emaciate her body.24 These
traditional injunctions were repeated in the eighteenth-century text for women which lays
down that the woman whose husband is away ‘should abandon playing, adorning her body,
attending gatherings and festivals, laughing and going to other people’s houses, and even
laughing with the mouth open’.25 These are also the general prohibitions observed by men-
struating women and by widows. Such actions are regarded as making a woman attractive26
and providing occasion for interaction with others, making the wife vulnerable to her own
passions, and so must be avoided when the husband is unavailable either because he is
prohibited from touching his wife, or is away, or is dead.

The Widow in Brahmanical Patriarchy

As we have noted earlier, the wife who becomes a widow creates an anomalous situation
in the Brahmanical prescriptive texts. Since the wife represents the core of womanhood,
she is the real focus of attention both in the prescriptive texts and in mythology. The texts
concern themselves with converting biological entities into social or cultural entities. Once
the ideal of wifehood is achieved, the woman becomes a prototype and model for other
women, epitomizing ‘satitva’, the wifely power of the chaste woman. It is significant that
there is no widow in traditional mythology except Kunti. But even she, although important,
is not central to the narrative in the Mahabharata.27 The only woman who comes close to
such a position is Savitri, who is doomed to widowhood in the narrative. But the focus of
the story is how Savitri fights off her husband’s death. By implication, the narrative lays
the groundwork for the widely held belief that women who are widowed fall into that state
because they bring it upon themselves. To that extent, they are responsible for the death of
the husband.
The mythology of chaste wives who predecease their husbands is consistent with the
general position in the Brahmanical prescriptive texts that widowhood is solely attributed
 Chapter 20  Gender, Caste and Labour 283

to purva karma and is the punishment for a sinful existence in the past. A true pativrata can
never be widowed because she will never leave her husband, not even in death. She will either
die before him as a sumangali or will accompany him in death.28 Indeed, the wifely power
of the pativrata lies in the woman’s ability to snatch her husband from the jaws of death, as
Savitri did with Satyavan; the texts tell us that just as a snake-charmer forcibly draws out
the snake from its hole, so too the spiritual power of the pativrata snatches her husband from
the messengers of death and reaches heaven with him. On seeing such a pativrata, the mes-
sengers of death beat a hasty retreat, knowing that they have been thwarted by her devotion.29
The ideal type of woman in the Brahmanical texts is one who is imbued with the qualities
of a sati. She is a woman whose chastity makes her a living sati and gives her the power to
ensure that she dies before her husband. Alternatively, if her husband dies before her, she
has the power and will to accompany him in death as a sati and thereby reject widowhood.
This is the background to the religious sanction for sati, the immolation of the wife to
overcome widowhood. All the major texts exhort the wife to accompany her husband in
death by performing sahagamana or sahamarana. The husband is to be followed always:
like the body by its shadow, like the moon by moonlight, like a thundercloud by lightning.
In order to achieve this state, the wife is prepared for such an action right from the time of
the marriage vows.30 There is no doubt that the woman who gladly follows her husband
from his house to the cremation ground attains, with every step, the rewards of the horse
sacrifice.31 The woman who rejects widowhood can purify and rescue the most sinful and
evil husband. Even the woman who has been a bad wife, who has until then, because of her
wicked mind, despised her husband – even she, through the act of dying with her husband,
confers merit on herself. The act destroys her earlier sin even if she does it out of anger or
fear. This then becomes the scriptural justification for forcing women to burn themselves.
It is the ultimate and only effective prayaschitta for the bad wife; through it she redeems
herself and escapes the future misery that her bad karma would normally have brought her.32
Following these arguments, it is clear that according to the ideology of brahmanical
patriarchy, if a wife is widowed, she has certainly not been a pativrata, nor vanquished her
innate weakness and sinfulness (which her birth as a female entails), nor availed of her
last chance for redemption through satihood: in short, she is an outcaste. She is therefore
a doubly condemnable creature: to be feared and despised. The widow must thenceforth
atone for her sins, for bringing widowhood upon herself. Through bodily mortification and
steadfast devotion to her departed lord, she must stringently monitor her sexuality and master
the promiscuity that inheres in all women. To enable others to have proof of her virtue, she
must occupy the darkest recesses of the house and submit herself to the constant surveil-
lance of the patriarchal gaze, even as it might work through the women of the household,
with everyone committed to upholding the notions of family honour inscribed in the gender
and caste codes.33

The Widow in Prescriptive Texts

Since a woman becomes a social entity only when, as a wife, she is united with her hus-
band, the death of the husband represents the cessation of her social existence and the end
284 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

of her personhood. Once the husband dies, the wife’s sexuality, which within marriage
served familial and social goals, is of no use to the community. The death of the husband
thus marks a dramatic shift in the perception of the community towards the woman. Even
more than the unmarried, menstruating girl or the nubile wife whose husband is away, the
widow is an object of real moral panic. While the sexuality of these other categories can be
held in abeyance, the sexuality of the widow cannot: she must therefore be completely de-
sexed. And because this is not easy to achieve, the widow must be represented as the most
repugnant and despicable of characters. Feared and hated, she must henceforth be confined
to ‘dark spaces’ where she is inaccessible.
The prescriptive texts lay down stringent codes of behaviour in order to ensure that the
widow’s sexuality is repressed, mastered or forcibly contained. These prescriptions are out-
lined in all the major texts beginning with Manu, until which time the texts had recognized
the possibility of redeploying the sexuality of the widow after a specified period of celibacy
and mourning. The institution of ‘niyoga’, or levirate unions, is mentioned in the Rgveda
and survived into the first millennium ad. However, the Dharmasutra literature indicates
that the practice was conditional upon the absence of a son from the woman’s first husband,
and had to have the sanction of the elders in the family.34 Many condemned the practice, and
upheld the norms of a celibate and perpetual widowhood. Following Manu, the emergence
of the norm of celibacy became the basis for all the individual prescriptions: the widow
must give up all ornaments, observe fasts, emaciate her body and remain steadfastly loyal
to her dead husband.35
The vriddha Harita is more explicit about the marked nature of the widow’s appearance
and behaviour. ‘She should give up chewing betel-nut, wearing perfumes, flower, ornaments,
and dyed clothes, taking food from a vessel of bronze, taking two meals a day, applying
colloyrium to the eyes; she should wear only a white garments, curb her senses and anger,
and sleep on the ground.’36
The prescriptive texts provide only one models for the widow who continues to live after
her husband. and that is the model of the ascetic widow. This model closely corresponds
to two categories of males in the Brahminical texts who, like the widow, must transcend or
renounce their sexuality: the ‘brahmacharya’ and the ‘sannyasi’.37 The first is a male who
has not yet entered an active sexual phase, and the second is a male who has renounced
sexual life after completing his duties as a householder and begotten sons, and is therefore
free to pursue his salvation goals.38 For both these categories, celibacy is compulsory and
underpins all the codes to be followed. Indeed, the widow’s way of life is specially called
the renouncer’s life or, in the widest sense, a celibate life. But there is a crucial difference
because the widow cannot leave home as a true renunciate.39 Unlike the true ‘pravratiya’,
she has no individual salvation goals apart from those of her dead husband. The widow’s
asceticism and, bearing no personal results equivalent to that of the male ascetic, that is,
cessation of rebirth or ‘moksha’, is nevertheless necessary in order to ensure the peace of
mind and happiness of her dead lord. Devotion and loyalty to one’s husband remains the key
point of a widow’s life; the widow’s asceticism celibacy are thus negative, not positive. Her
‘stridharma’ continues in widowhood and requires her to master her sexuality. it will ensure
her salvation by ensuring her husband‘s salvation, otherwise he will descend to hell.40 For
this reason, the widow’s celibacy is not transient but must last as long as she lives. Thus,
 Chapter 20  Gender, Caste and Labour 285

although there is a certain similarity between the asceticism of the widow and that of the
renouncer, the goals are so distinct that the widow is not an ascetic; the transformative space
available to women within the ascetic tradition41 is denied to the widow.42
In brief, the prescriptive texts clearly outline only two models of widowhood: that of
the of the dying sati who mounts the pyre, rejects widowhood and proves herself to the
best follower of ‘stridharma’; and that of the living sati who becomes an ascetic within the
home, remaining a celibate, steadfastly devoted to her husband till she dies. There is no third
model, certainly not of the true renunciate, at least in the brahmanical prescriptive texts.
The two models—the dying sati who mounts the pyre and the living sati who morti-
fies the body—are repeated through the centuries in all the later texts of the brahmanical
tradition. Of the two, the first remained the more valued ideal for a variety of reasons. The
devotion of the dying sati who mounted the pyre and the merits such an action brought to her
relatives were no doubt greater than those of the ascetic widow. At the same time, it must
be remembered that the dying sati also solved the problem of the sexually active women
whose sexuality must not be expressed. The hazard of the sexually active widow forced in
to celibacy were ever-present in the texts.43
In the eighteenth century, Tryambaka took an unambiguous position on the issue of the
sati versus the ascetic widow. The practice of dying with the husband was commended for
all women. But if, for some reason, the wife did not follow her husband, then Tryambaka
exhorts that her virtue must be protected, for, as he puts it, if her virtue is lost the woman
falls down into hell. More important, the loss of her virtue causes her husband to fall down
from heaven to hell.44 The rewards for good behaviour are both material and spiritual. The
ascetic widow gains heaven for herself and her husband. Further, she ensures rebirth as a
high-status man for herself. Only the chaste widow is entitled to maintenance or the enjoy-
ment of property during her lifetime. According to Katyayana, ‘A sonless widow, preserv-
ing the bed of her husband unsullied and being self-controlled, should enjoy her husband’s
property till her death.’45 (This position was upheld in judgements in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.46)
The limited and conditional rewards, one necessary for her survival and the other to
secure an unseeable future, go along with an otherwise humiliating existence. While the
rules minutely regulate the widow’s conduct, it is clear from references that the lawgivers
could not effectively restrain men from violating the injunctions regarding strict celibacy for
widows. The Adi Parva (of the Mahabharata) recognizes that, ‘just as birds flock to a piece
of flesh left on the ground, so all men try to seduce a woman whose husband is dead’.47 Taken
together, the inherent sinfulness of women, their lustfulness and the predatory character of
men required the segregation, isolation and marking of the widow.
It is in the context of the above discussion that the rites and customs associated with
widowhood acquire meaning. These rites and customs were prevalent in different degrees
in the case of most widows, but were highly concentrated in the person of the high-caste
Hindu widow and included the rite of tonsure. Control over female sexuality was almost
obsessively applied among high-caste women because the danger to the structure of brah-
manical patriarchy was great in their case. The reproduction of the hierarchical caste order
with its horror of miscegeny subverting the entire edifice necessitated such stringent control.
Unlike the lower-caste woman, the high-caste woman did not labour outside the home or
286 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

participate in primary production. She was regarded solely as a receptacle through whom
reproduction could take place. The death of the husband of the high-caste woman and the
consequent cessation of her reproductive potential created a dangerous situation. The anxiety
about monitoring her sexuality doubled; while, as we have seen, the wife’s sexuality had to
be channelized, the widow’s sexuality had to be abruptly terminated. The rites reflect the
dramatic transition from one stage to another: from a controlled and channelized sexual life
and personhood, to sexual death and social obliteration.

THE SYMBOLIC STRUCTURE OF WIDOWHOOD

The passage of a woman from the position of a wife and sahadharmini to that of a widow
is marked by various rites. These rites are not the subject of sustained attention in the early
sacred texts, as the focus of attention was concentrated on the male corpse. However, the
texts do indicate that soon after the death of the husband, the appearance of the widow was
distinctly marked off from other women, as well as from those customs or symbols that were
associated with the marriage of a woman. These included the ‘kumkuma’, the red mark on
the forehead, the ‘sindoora’ applied in the parting of the hair in certain parts of India, and
the use of ‘haldi’, among other banned items. These items, as we have noted before, are
associated with sexuality and reproduction. Haldi, for example, has a strong relationship
with fertility and prosperity, and is considered so auspicious and powerful that ‘naturally’,
widows could not be allowed to use it.48
Other customs not specifically mentioned in the texts are also widely prevalent, such as
the breaking of glass bangles and the breaking of the ‘mangalsutra’, the sign of a married
woman in many parts of India.49 These acts are performed with a degree of violence that adds
to the humiliation the widow must undergo for the rest of her life, and which she begins to
experience immediately after the death of her husband. Two other markers of widowhood
are the white, ochre or occasionally maroon, coarse garment prescribed for widows, and,
among the high castes in southern and western India, the tonsured head. The colour codes
of red and white are systematically sustained in the wife/widow opposition. Whereas red
symbolizes fertility and sexuality, white symbolizes asexuality. In place of the red kumkuma
which is banned for widows, it is customary for them to use ‘vibhuti’, or ash, to mark their
foreheads. The white or ochre sari symbolizes purity, coolness and the asexuality of the
non-bride, more pertinently, the renouncer. White is also the colour of death; the ‘vibhuti’
or white ash is associated with the funeral pyre,50 and the exclusive use of this colour by
widows among women indicates their continued association with asexuality and death.51
The ritual of the tonsure marks a more extreme resolution of the asexuality of the widow.
It is significant that there are no references to the tonsure of widows in the early prescrip-
tive texts. On the other hand, these texts rule that the widow should not adorn her hair with
flowers and must keep it bound; so it is obvious that tonsure was not prescribed initially and
certainly not for all castes. There is every possibility that widows of royal families kept their
hair unbound during the period of pollution and mourning. Unbound hair appears frequently
as the sign of widowhood in the Mahabharata. When Draupadi kept her hair unbound for
twelve years she was symbolically proclaiming a state of widowhood and mourning.52
 Chapter 20  Gender, Caste and Labour 287

As a custom, the tonsured head appears to have been taken over from a very early practice
among the Tamils. The Purananuru, a second-century ad text, portrays widows as subject
to many restraints: they did not wear ornaments, slept on beds of stone and caked their
shaved heads with mud.53 The custom is mentioned in Sanskrit texts for the first time in the
Madanaparijata, a commentary on the Skandapurana written in the fourteenth century.54
The text states that the widow, like the son of the deceased, had to shave her head. Up to
this point in the account, the widow is depicted as sharing pollution or mourning along with
her sons.55 However, the text further states that widows are required to tonsure themselves
continually at periodic intervals till their death.56 The eighteenth-century Tanjore text, the
Stridharmapaddhati of Tryambakayajvan, argues that the rules prescribing shaving of the
head applied only to Brahmana widows and that women of other castes kept their hair.57
In eighteenth-century Maharashtra, the state enforced it in the case of Brahmana widows,58
and the custom was widespread among Brahmana widows in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu
and Karnataka.
The notion that both sin and pollution lodge in the hair appears to be widespread; it is,
for example, a ubiquitously held belief among Hindus and has been documented in the
case of the Hindus of Banaras.59 It is for this reason that funeral rituals require that on the
last day the hair is shaved off, thus ensuring the removal of the pollution. Normally, on
more everyday occasions of pollution, the ritual washing of the hair is considered enough.
However, death pollution for the upper castes requires more effective forms of ending the
pollution (as in the shaving of the head).60 In the case of widows, however, the requirement
of periodic shaving must necessarily have connotations other than mere death pollution.
Anthropological evidence provides us with some clues to the relationship between hair,
pollution and sex. Paul Hershman’s field observations of hair-grooming practices in Punjab
show that such practices are particularly important in the case of women.61 A similar notion
of pollution is prevalent even where tonsure is practised. It was enforced by the popular belief
that if the widow did not shave her head, every drop of water that fell on her hair polluted
the husband’s soul as many times as the number of hairs on her head.62 Hair is thus a major
marker of the state of pollution, or purity and auspiciousness, and of the possible shift from
one to the other, especially in the case of women.
In this context of the symbolism regarding hair, it is notable that of all the parts of the
body, hair has the most mystical association. There is hardly a culture in which hair is not,
for males, a symbol of power, manliness, freedom. It is the seat of strength in many myths
and cultures, the most well-known being the case. of Samson. It is also held to have fertil-
izing powers, as evident from Greek myths. At puberty the hair, already the seat of strength,
is considered to be enhanced and containing a double portion of vital energy, since at that
point it is an outward manifestation of the newly acquired power of reproducing the spe-
cies. Abundant hair is a sign of vigorous sexual energy, idealized as the essence of feminine
beauty, but indicative also of the wantonness of women.63 Since abundant hair is a symbol
of life-power, the way one handles it is a marker of what one does with this life-power. The
grooming or exhibition of hair, for example, has a pronounced erotic element in Melanesia.64
A shorn head is, conversely, symbolic of the loss of power and freedom, even of castration.
While Berg has analysed the unconscious meaning of an individual community’s attitude
towards hair, Leach65 and Obeyesekere66 have explored the symbolic structure of hair and
288 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

its relationship to sexuality in the context of renunciation, asceticism and sexual restraint.
Both argue that symbols have meanings at different levels and that, apart from their personal
meaning for individuals and groups, they have a socio-cultural message which is public.
Leach argues that while the private has indeterminate meaning, the essence of public sym-
bolic behaviour is that it is a means of communication in which the actor and the audience
share a common language—a symbolic language; every member of a certain culture will
attribute the same meaning to any particular item of culturally defined symbols.67 Leach
and Obeyesekere thus contest Berg on the unconscious symbolism of hair. On the basis
of anthropological evidence from South Asia, they argue that hair behaviour embraces a
widely understood set of conscious sexual symbolizations. It is because of this that hair
plays such an important part in rites of passage involving the formal transfer of a person
from one social–sexual status to another.68
The tonsured head, both in the case of men and widows, is clearly a public symbol—one
that is recreated each time upon an individual. It is also part of a larger symbolic set in which
the tonsured head, the half-shaven head of the Brahmanas and the matted hair of the ascetic
have different but related meanings; they are all linked within a unit of specific cultural
meanings attributed to hair and sexual behaviour.
In the case of the shaven head, Obeysekere and Leach accept Berg’s analysis of the
unconscious meaning of hair as symbolic castration. Leach argues further that allowing
the dishevelled state is an ascetic repudiation of the very existence of sex. Referring to the
practice of keeping a young girl’s hair short in Assam and Burma, whereas married women
wear their hair long, he suggests that short-haired women are those whose sexuality is under
restraint.69 Similarly, the elaborate half-shaved, half-haired head-grooming of the Brahmana
indicates the simultaneous control of sexuality and the legitimate raising of off-spring. In
the symbolic system of Brahmanism, the tuft means sexual restraint, matted hair means total
detachment from sexual passions, and the shaven head means celibacy. At least in South
Asia, then, sex behaviour and hair behaviour are consciously associated from the start.70
Obeyesekere argues strongly for a sharp distinction between the shaven head and matted
hair which, according to him, are not interchangeable, as their meaning is not confined to
chastity alone. It is only the shaven head that implies castration, although it implies chastity
and renunciation at the same time. The difference between the shaven head of the Buddhist
monk and the matted-haired ascetic is indicative of the gradations within restraint in sexual
behaviour. In the case of the celibacy of the monk, sexual passion must be eliminated, not
just held in abeyance, as in the Shiva mythology—the archetype of the symbolism of matted
hair. The biologically obvious way for the complete elimination of sexual passion is castra-
tion. Coming close to that is expressing it indirectly and symbolically, through a non-literal
interpretation, as tonsure. Obeyesekere concludes that the primarily psychogenetic meaning
of the shaven head is castration, its further cultural meaning is chastity and its extended
interpersonal meaning is renunciation. While all three meanings are contained within the
act of tonsure for widows, the most important level of meaning is that of castration.71
The tonsure of the widow, with its attendant meanings of castration, chastity and sexual
death, was, at the same time, a visible marker of the widow’s entry into a state of social
death. For the upper-caste widow, sexual death was social death, as there was no other role
assigned to her apart from that of reproduction. Such an ideology entailed the enforcement
 Chapter 20  Gender, Caste and Labour 289

of grim conditions upon the widow’s existence. Symbols and rituals of marriage and widow-
hood, along with material arrangements affecting widows, were linked together to form a
structure that governed the lives of upper-caste widows, which survived into the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries.72 This structure had a counter, but complementary, set of relations
that applied to lower-caste widows, as the field-based studies analysed below demonstrate.

MATERIAL RELATIONS AND THE IDEOLOGY OF

WIDOWHOOD: TWO CASE STUDIES
Widowhood in a South Indian Brahmanical Community
Anthropological analysis of the belief structure of a Brahmana community with regard
to gender relations provides a case study about latent ideas on widowhood among havik
Brahmanas in the Malnad area of south India.73 The study uncovers complex emotions of
fear and guilt located within a structure of power in which men wield total authority over
women who are economically completely dependent upon, and subordinated to them, in
every way; the most vulnerable section among women are widows. The study suggests
that those who wield power over others in real life invert the actual relations in their
belief system, and portray as malicious and dangerous the very people over whom they
wield power, as in the case of havik Brahmana men and havik Brahmana widows. At
the same time, the study shows that such beliefs are unique to havik Brahmana society,
and are absent among those communities in which gender relations are relatively less
authoritarian and women have relatively higher status within their caste than do havik
women.
It is believed by havik Brahmanas that widows, who occupy the lowest status position,
poison others at random with a substance obtained secretly by them from a strange reptile.
Widows without male issue are particularly suspects. The victim is said to develop an
incurable stomach ailment leading to a distended stomach. In young women, the symptoms
approximate to a pregnancy; treatment is not usually secured till it is too late. A number
of havik Brahmana informants hold that widows poison others to ensure that in their next
incarnation they will have many sons and will predecease their husbands.74 The implication
seems to be that Brahmana widows are unhappy in this life and that many of them perform
a harmful act in order to be happier in their next life. What is significant is that the alleged
victims are not selected for purposes of revenge or hatred; the widows act not against
someone but for themselves, to secure a different and better life in the future than the one
in which they have been widowed and subjected to infinite misery.
Havik Brahmanas occupy the highest position in society in the villages where they reside,
and derive their livelihood from the possession of small areca-nut plantations and from
land that they lease to the agricultural castes. Since havik Brahmanas never accept food
from any other caste, their poisoners have to be members of their own caste. Only widows
are believed by the havik to have indulged in this practice at some time or the other. The
deep-seated belief may be interpreted as representing the destructive potentialities of havik
290 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

Brahmana widows. According to Harper, the fear itself can only be explained in the context
of the havik social structure, especially its gender relations.75
All women, particularly widows, are feared by havik men. Women are a potent source of
pollution for havik men, for whom ritual defilement is a major concern. Menstruating women
and women who have recently given birth to a child—in other words, women in states that
emphasize their ‘femaleness’—must be segregated. Even inadvertent contact with them
causes much greater ritual pollution than does contact with a member of the untouchable
castes. In a state of ritual impurity women can cause untold harm to their families; should
an impure woman accidentally contaminate a god or a deity, it may cause illness or even
death to members of her family.76
At a more general level, all women are inherently dangerous because they are sexually
passionate and demanding: as temptresses of the flesh, they sap male vitality and stand
between brahmana men and their goals of salvation. In the context of everyday relations,
women are believed to disrupt fraternal solidarity, a cherished ideal among havik Brahmana
men but hardly ever actualized in real life, and not because of women: this is a stereotype
which, in Harper’s view, has no bearing on the breakup of the fraternal household.77 But
it is brahmana widows who are most feared amongst women. The very sight of the widow
is inauspicious, so inauspicious that if sighted at the start of an auspicious venture, the
venture must be postponed; even dreaming of a widow augurs ill. Further, in the system of
religious beliefs all female deities are, in general, more dangerous and malicious than their
male counterparts. Mariamma, the goddess of smallpox and the deity who has the high-
est malevolence potential, is in local mythology represented as a Brahmana widow. It is
of utmost significance that according to the narrative she slew her husband in a fit of rage
when she discovered that she had been deceived by him. Mariamma thus became a widow
by murdering her own husband. This is clearly linked to a deeply held belief in brahmani-
cal society that should a husband predecease his wife it is somehow, in some mystical way,
the wife’s fault.78
The belief in poisoning by widows is thus part of a more complex constellation of
ideas around the theme of fear of women, but particularly widows. In the havik Brahmana
household, the authority of males over females is absolute. At marriage, performed ideally
before puberty, authority over the bride is completely transferred from her natal family to
her husband’s family. Post-marital residence is virilocal for women and patrilocal for men;
women are excluded from inheritance and, except for certain types of jewellery, they do
not own property.79
Divorce is prohibited, polygamy is permitted but rare, widows must never remarry, wid-
owers are expected to remarry and often do. Since, at marriage, a woman is transferred from
one patrilineage to another, her natal kinsmen have no jural control over how she is treated.
A mistreated daughter-in-law (who, as a bride, occupies a position of low status and power
within her new house, where the male kinsmen have the right to discipline her severely)
should not complain to her natal kinsmen because this would only cause them grief about a
situation over which they have no control. The only recourse she has is to bring dishonour
upon her husband’s family through suicide. It is not surprising, then, that all havik families
prefer to marry their daughters to less wealthy families in order to maximize their influence
over their girls’ new social environment.80
 Chapter 20  Gender, Caste and Labour 291

Havik women labour only within the household, unlike women of nearly all other
castes in the region, who perform agricultural labour. Also, they do not handle financial
matters. Havik males characterize women as weak-willed, superstitious and constantly
in need of male protection. Prohibited from possessing sacred religious knowledge, they
are characterized as having ‘shudra minds’.81 The perception of havik men about the sub-
ordination of women and girls expresses itself in a dual manner: positively with regard
to comprehension and behaviour towards daughters, and negatively when it constructs
widows as malevolent.
Havik men hold deeply ambivalent and contradictory attitudes towards women. Mothers
are revered, sisters and particularly daughters are regarded as dependents towards whom
there is much affection. Harper argues that the havik male’s fear of women is linked to guilt
about the subordinate status of females compared to males. This recognition of status differ-
ence accounts for the compensatory behaviour exhibited towards daughters—the expressed
sentiment is that because daughters may suffer after marriage, they must be made as happy
as possible before the event.82 In the value system of the male havik, there is thus a great
disparity between the attitudes expressed towards wives and women in general, and towards
close agnatic kinswomen.
The fear about wives in particular is evident also in the way in which every structural
mechanism, ideological and organizational, is used to prevent women from uniting in opposi-
tion to the male dominance within the marital household. Women from the same patriarchal
family are barred from marriage into one household; indeed, brothers should not marry girls
even from the same village. These conventions prevent sisters, female patrilateral parallel
cousins and childhood friends from residing together in the same house after marriage. The
bride’s isolation in the new house must be complete for the subordination to be effective. The
life-cycle of women, however, has a certain progression even within the husband’s family.
After a period of trial and tribulation occupying the lowest position in her husband’s family,
a woman may, and often does, gain in respect, especially if and when she produces a son.
She may ultimately become a mistress in her own house and a mother-in-law with power
over her daughters-in-law. Time thus appears to be in her favour.83
But, as Harper points out, if she is widowed, especially without having borne a son,
even time cannot lift her out of her oppressive situation. She will be permanently deprived
of even the little she had as a wife—a husband and children. Forced to wear a distinctive
garment and tonsure her head to symbolize her degraded status, she is publicly defemi-
nized. More offensive than anything else, the widow is never again referred to as ‘she’ but,
instead, by the neuter ‘it’. The widow is ridiculed and is commonly the butt of jokes. She is
called a ‘prani’, an animal.84 A symbol of inauspiciousness, she can no longer participate
in the domestic ceremonies that form a part of women’s culture. Everyone concedes that
the life of the widow is one of unalleviated misery. But this does not merit real sympathy.
The fate that befalls a widow is believed to be deserved. Expected to pray daily that she
should predecease her husband, a woman is considered to be at fault if widowed. ‘It ate up
its husband’, is what people would say.85 Any move up or relatively high status she might
have gained through time is instantly diminished. That havik society would regard widows
to be sufficiently bitter and resentful to harm others in order to escape the sufferings (future)
entailed by widowhood, is thus entirely ‘rational’.
292 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

In the larger structure of relations governing caste, gender, widowhood and belief systems,
there is a crucial but inverse connection between the widow’s real powerlessness and her
imagined power to strike back. The subordinated status of the woman as widow is expected
to breed the desire for revenge. The overt submission of the widowed woman is perceived
as a mask which hides her suppressed anger and makes her infinitely dangerous, in some
cases even bloodthirsty.
It is notable that the structure of ideas with regard to widowhood among Brahmanas
grows out of the material and social position of widows in high-caste society. In marked
contrast, widowhood is not pitiable, nor are widows regarded as particularly dangerous,
among the different categories of women in the lower castes. Widowhood in non-brah-
manical society is not marked by the kind of dramatic break in the life of a woman as in
high-caste society: it is a different state, but the structural opposition between wife and
widow does not exist. Widowhood is organisable in the case of the non-Brahmana castes
along the axes of production and reproduction, rather than reproduction alone. Widows
from these castes are thus incorporated in the social and economic order. This is strik-
ingly evident if we look at the labouring castes who work for the havik Brahmanas in the
Malnad region. Post-marital residence in the case of the labouring castes is determined
by individual economic factors, and, sometimes, may even be in villages where neither
the man nor the wife has close ties but where work is available. Extended families are
not glorified among the shudras as among the haviks. Among untouchables, the extended
family is almost never found. Post-puberty marriages are the norm and divorce may be
initiated by either party. Family authority is more equally divided between the husband
and the wife: women earn and handle family finances. Menstrual taboos are less rigorous,
and payment of bride price is frequent.
Shudra and untouchable widows do not shave their heads, nor are they set apart by
distinctive dress, referred to as animals or excluded from auspicious ceremonies. In these
castes, widows and divorcees may, and do, contract second marriages. The status of a woman
who enters into a secondary marriage is only slightly less than that of a virgin bride. It is
significant that non-Brahmana widows in the Malnad region are absorbed into productive
and reproductive activities (if they belong to such an age-group); they are not considered
dangerous or inauspicious; women’s status is relatively higher than is the case with havik
women and, unlike the latter, they are not considered dangerous or inauspicious.86

Widowhood among Low-Caste Labouring Groups in North India

The manner in which material and social factors differentially organize conceptions of
widowhood is examined and analysed at length by Pauline Kolenda in the context of a north
Indian village. Kolenda’s essay is comparative with regard to region, and explores the con-
nection between present practice and historical texts which make references to widowhood,
the levirate and remarriage of women.
Kolenda examines widowhood among high-caste Rajputs and low-caste chuhras in a north
Indian village.87 Drawing from other anthropological works, especially on south India, she
notices that widowhood as well as the status of women in the high castes are related, among
other things, to control over property inherited by men, which may foster the ­degradation
 Chapter 20  Gender, Caste and Labour 293

of women in order to exclude them from a share in the inheritance. Ideologically, this is
portrayed as women being ‘assimilated’ to their husbands and becoming one flesh with
them. In contrast, the lower-caste women are not ‘assimilated’ to their husbands in marriage
but remain equal and opposite to them. An important factor responsible for the differences
between high and low castes is the contrast between high castes as landowners and low
castes as wage earners. There is here an equality between adult son and father, and between
husband and wife, which comes from their separate and more or less equal status as wage
earners. The lower-caste woman’s economic role accounts for her more equal rights both in
her marital and natal homes. Thus, the difference between high-caste and low-caste women
is caused by differences in relation to production.88
Kolenda carries forward the analysis of gender, caste and the economy with a close look
at widowhood, but particularly relating it to enforced widowmating among the low castes.
To begin with, the chuhras do not necessarily follow patrilocal residence. There is much
flux in the population as families change residence: chuhra families may settle in the wife’s
village, in other villages where one might find kin, or just anywhere that work is available.
Lack of land has resulted in the chuhras being more mobile and less anchored to locality than
the high-caste Rajputs in the area. Because of their poverty, chuhra women work outside
the home: it is they who do the ‘jajmani’ work. A chuhra widow can support herself and
her children as long as she can continue the jajmani work. There is no dramatic change in
the chuhra widow’s lifestyle or standard of living.89
The Rajput widow, on the other hand, is stripped of her jewels, is allowed to remain
on her dead husband’s property contingent only on ‘good’ behaviour, and is forbidden to
marry again. Only one sexual partner is envisaged for a Rajput woman during her lifetime,
and that is her husband. To him she is given in sacred ceremony, with community sanction
and a dowry. A woman, along with her family, is made impure by any subsequent sexual
relationships she might have. An adulterous Rajput wife or widow can be cast out and even
executed. Sati is an ideal, and worshipping at a sati shrine is the first ceremony in the mar-
riage of every Rajput woman.90
The main contrast between Rajput and chuhra women is with regard to work, marriage
and widow-mating. All chuhra women, along with other shudra or untouchable castes, can
remarry, and the practice of levirate is common among these castes. In the structure of ideas,
widow remarriage is one of the key defining practices that constitute the impurity of low
castes. But, significantly, as has been documented elsewhere, low castes were expected to
conform to the custom.91 The insistence on such a practice was in part a reinforcement of
closely guarded upper-caste privileges, including enforced widowhood, which ensured higher
ritual status for them. But it was also a means by which the upper castes manipulated and
controlled the demographic structure of all castes—high and low. Patriarchal formulations
were closely tied to caste and class formation.
That caste, class and patriarchy worked together to organize the sexuality of all women is
evident from widow-mating practices among the chuhras. Chuhra widows of child-bearing
age are expected to re-mate. Only the widow with grown children, that is, well past the
child-bearing age, is permitted to remain unmated, if she makes a declaration to the com-
munity to be a celibate.92 This is not a recognition of the sexual needs of widows, but an
arrangement to utilize the productive and reproductive labour of widows. While maintaining
land structures intact, as among agricultural castes such as the Jats (who were restricted to
294 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

levirate widow marriage), such an arrangement would ensure the full productive potential
of a woman to ensure maximal replenishing of the labouring and servicing castes.
Key elements in chuhra widow-mating are a hierarchy of mating patterns according to
the distance of the second mate to the dead husband, and a set of rules for the disposal of
the widow’s sexuality. The power to dispose of a widow’s sexuality lies with the patrifra-
ternal contingent of her husband’s paternal family. The preferred mate to whom the widow
will be assigned is the dead husband’s unmarried younger brother. If there is no unmarried
younger brother, she may be assigned to a married brother with his, his wife’s, the widow’s
and the widow’s father’s consent. She may be also given to a patrilateral parallel cousin
or a matrilateral cross-cousin of the dead husband, but here too, her consent as well as that
of her father are required. In the case of the latter, the new mate must pay for her. Both the
patrilateral parallel cousin and matrilateral cross-cousin have the right to sell her once she
has mated with them. A married woman or a widow who commits adultery can also be sold.
Once a woman is sold, she may be re-sold repeatedly.93
The hierarchy of marriage types are: (1) marriage by ‘pheras’ (the first marriage); (2)
secondary marriage to husband’s brother; (3) secondary marriage to husband’s patrilateral
parallel cousin; (4) being sold to a man who is a matri-lateral cross-cousin of the husband;
and (5) being sold to a stranger.94
It is evident from the above summary that, despite the relative economic indepen-
dence and security of the chuhra woman, it does not make her ‘close to equal to men’,95
as Kolenda establishes so decisively: the men can pressure her to take another mate, and
they can even sell her so that she is separated from her kin. Her inferiority is established
through the mating rules, but more so through rules regarding the buying and selling of
widows. Control over the sexuality and labour of the widow lies not with the widow but in
the hands of the husband’s family. Kolenda’s analysis of chuhra widow-mating customs
also considers the relationship of such practices to textual evidence; she suggests that the
customs among the low castes are not an aberration accountable to unsanskritic patterns,
but, rather, are an archaic survival of prevalent mating patterns before the brahmanical
codes proceeded to lay down definite and distinctive sexual codes for different categories of
women.96 While they prescribed ascetic widowhood, defeminization and the sexual death of
the upper-caste widow, and thereby raised the status of the entire caste in relation to others,
they characterized widow-mating, conceptualized in the practice of niyoga (the traditional
term of levirate) as fit only for ‘cattle’ and shudras.97 It then became a crucial index of caste
status in a deeply hierarchical order. The reproductive practices of the labouring classes
were simultaneously castigated and utilized; multiplying cattle and those who must labour
was consistent with the brahmanical caste order. Patriarchal formulations for women of the
high castes and women of the low castes were structurally integrated into the ideology and
material relations of the caste system. The high castes were required to restrict reproduction
so that there was no pressure on the resources in their control. Equally, since they did not
labour, the increased reproduction of the labouring classes would expand the potential to
exploit resources under the control of the upper castes. Chuhra widows, like all low-caste
widows, were socially subordinated but did not face sexual death (or social death) at the
death of their first husbands; the chuhra widow was the structural opposite of the Brahmana
or Rajput widow who faced sexual and social death when her husband died. While enforced
 Chapter 20  Gender, Caste and Labour 295

widowhood was the rule among the high castes, enforced cohabitation may be said to have
been the rule for widows of the lowest castes.
The apparent difference in widow marriage and widow-mating patterns between high
castes and low castes may lead to the conclusion that there were different patriarchies accord-
ing to the respective caste status. This is only partly true; it needs to be stressed that these
differences were arranged within a larger. single, conceptual and material organizational
structure. Within the larger rubric of a Brahrnanical patriarchy, caste, gender, land control
and demography were tied together inexorably both conceptually and in terms of material
and social arrangements.
This paper was first presented at a conference on ‘Widows in India’ held in March 1994
at the Institute of Management, Bangalore. I am grateful to Patricia Uberoi for comments
on an earlier draft, as well as for drawing my attention to certain anthropological writings
on the symbolism associated with hair. I am also indebted to Gerda Lerner for extended
discussions on gender which have helped to shape some of the arguments in this paper.

NOTES
1. I have made a free and associational use of this term, borrowing from Orlando Patterson’s classic work on slavery.
Although the upper-class widow was far removed from the slave—someone who was uprooted from family and
alienated from her/his culture—I find the concept of social death useful in capturing the peculiar status of the
widow: that of a non-being. The social death of the widow makes her permanently into a non-being, an indel-
ibly defective state that weighs endlessly upon her destiny, someone who can never be brought to life again. See
Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, p. 38.
2. Cited in ibid., p. 37.
3. Inamdar et al., Position of Widows.
4. Kane, History of the Dharmashastras, Vol. II, Part I, pp. 428–29.
5. Ibid., p. 560.
6. Manu Dharmashastra, IX.96.
7. Narada, Stripumsa, V.19, cited in Kane, History of the Dharmashastras, p. 561. As early as the Shatapatha
Brahmana, it is said that a sonless wife is possessed with nirrti, ill-luck or destruction.
8. Apastamba Dharmasutra, 11.5; 11.12–13.
9. According to the marriage rules of the Asvalayana Gryhasutra, the husband leads the wife thrice round the fire
and the water jar (a symbol of fertility), keeping their right sides turned towards it, and murmurs, ‘I am heaven
thou art the earth. I am ‘saman’ thou art the ‘rk’ Let us both marry here. Let us beget offspring.’ (Kane, History
of the Dharmashastra, pp. 528–30).
Later, when the bride enters her husband’s home, the husband chants, ‘Here may happiness increase to you
through offspring.’ Then he kindles the nuptial fire and, as his wife is seated on a bull’s hide, he makes oblations,
chanting, ‘May Prajapati create offspring to us.’ As the bride enters her husband’s house she breaks her silence
and says, ‘May my husband live and may I secure offspring.’ (Ibid., p. 530.)
The rites that relate to the ‘garbhdanam’ or the ‘chaturthikarma’ ceremony performed before the marriage
are consummated following the first menstruation of the girl. After the wife has bathed, her husband makes her
pound rice, which is then boiled and eaten. Then the husband fills a water jar and sprinkles the wife thrice with the
water, and repeats certain mantras: ‘May Vishnu ready your parts, may Tvasta frame your beauty, may Prajapati
sprinkle and may Dhata implant an embryo unto you. May the Asvins plant in thee an embryo. As the earth has
fire inside it, as heaven has India inside it, so I plant a garbha in thee.’ Brihadaranyaka Upanishaa (translated by
Max Mueller), V.1413. 19–22.
296 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

In the rite of the chaturthikarma, three nights after marriage the husband performs certain acts and murmurs,
‘into thy breath I put the sperm, may the male embryo enter the womb as an arrow into the quiver, may a man
be born here, a son after ten months’. (Kane, History of the Dharmashastras, pp. 202–03.)
10. Selwyn, ‘Images of Reproduction’, p. 684.
11. Fuller and Logan, ‘Navaratri Festival in Madurai’.
12. Selwyn, ‘Images of Reproduction’, p. 687.
13. Leslie Perfect Wife, pp. 248, 266.
14. See ‘Conceptualizing Brahmanical Patriarchy’ in this volume, pp. 147–48.
15. Apastamba Dharmashastra, I. 10, 28, 19.
16. Chakravarti, ‘Conceptualizing Brahmanical Patriarchy’.
17. Selwyn, ‘Image of Reproduction’, p. 688.
18. According to Parasara, an unmarried girl beyond the age of ten is described as a rajasvala (a menstruating
women). If the father has not given a girl in marriage by the time she is twelve, his ‘pitr’ (ancestors) have to
drink her monthly discharge. (Kane, History of the Dharmashastras, p. 444.)
19. Ibid., p. 442.
20. In one of the rituals at the time of marriage the husband says to the wife, ‘Be firm like a stone, overcome the
enemies, trample down the foes.’ (Ibid., p. 528)
21. Leslie Perfect wife, pp. 266–72.
22. Chakravarti, ‘Conceptualizing Brahmanical Patriarchy’, pp. 145–53.
23. The Agni Purana says, ‘anointed with unguents of ground turmeric and saffron, wearing bright garments, thinking
only of her husband, beautifully ornamented, she goes to bed’ (Kane, Histiry of the Dharmashastras, p. 565).
24. Ibid., p. 566.
25. Leslie, Perfect Wife, p. 291.
26. Ibid., p. 97.
27. Kunti was the senior wife of King Pandu and mother of the Pandavas. Kunti’s wife dowed status is not important
in the mahabharata. The significant aspects of kunti’s life are: first, her power to conceive through invoking the
gods; second, the conception of Karna before her marriage to pandu and the consequent abandonment of karna
which causes her much anguish, particular when great war takes place, since Karna fights on the side of the
kauravas and against her other sons; and third, her important role as mother of the pandavas. For an insightful
interpretation of Kunti, see Karve, Yuganta, pp. 37–55.
28. A Pativrata, for instance, is defined by Brihaspati as one who is emaciated when her husband is away on a
journey and who dies on the death of her husband. Leslie, Perfect Wife, pp. 293–94.
29. Ibid.
30. According to Tryambaka’s Stridharmapaddhati, the Brahmana priests should recite the words, ‘may you be the
one who accompanies your husband always, when he is alive and even when he is dead’. According to the same
text, there are great rewards in store for the pious sati: ‘if when her husband has died a women ascends with
him into the fire she is glorified in heaven, as one whose conduct is equal to that of Arundhati’. Leslie, Perfect
Wife, pp. 293–94.
31. Ibid., p. 292.
32. Ibid., p. 295.
33. Chtkravari ‘Social Pariahs and Domestic Drudges’.
34. Kane, History of the Dharmashastras, p. 599.
35. Manu Dharmashastra, V 157–60.
36. Vriddha Harita, XI.205–10, cited in Kane, History of the Dharmashastras, p. 584.
37. Fuller and Logan, Navaratri Festival in Madurai’, p. 89ff.
38. Leslie, Perfect Wife, p. 299.
39. A widow who for forsakes sons, brothers and other male relative after her husband’s death and lives independently
incurs great condemnation, according to Tryambaka. Ibid., p. 300.
40. Ibid., p. 299.
41. Chakravarti, ‘Rise of Buddhism as Experienced by Women’.
 Chapter 20  Gender, Caste and Labour 297

42. That the widow is not an ascetic is evident from the observations of parvatibai Athavale, a widow writing about
widowhood in 1928. Describing the forced tonsure of widows, Parvatibai distinguished between the voluntary
acceptance of the renunciate status and the coerced celibate status of the widow as embodied in her tonsure.
The voluntary shaving of the head as an initiatory rite for those who ‘give up’ the worldly lite was regarded
by Parvatibai to be a ‘rightful religious act’, but not the compulsory shaving of the head of the widow against
her volition. Volition, therefore, was the crucial difference between a true renunciate existence and a simulated
renunciate existence of the widow based on coercion exerted by others. In her view, the renunciate within the
home was a contradiction in terms.
Athavale, Hindu Widow, p. 242.
43. As early as the second century ad, Tamil poems portray the austerities required to keep the dangerous power
possessed by women under control. One poem describes the hazards of a young, chaste, high-born woman
attempting such control: unable to do so, she wanders towards the burning ground – only there is she freed from
the passions of her youth and able to protect her chastity. Hart, ‘Woman and the Secred’, p. 242.
44. Leslie, Perfect Wife, p. 298.
45. Kane, History of the Dharmashastras, p. 586.
46. Honama vs Timannabhat, Indian Law Reports (ILR), I, Bombay 559; Bhikhubai vs Haribhai, ILR, 49, Bombay 459.
47. Kane, History of the Dharmashastras, pp. 584–85.
48. Beck, ‘Color and Heat in South Indian Ritual’, p. 559.
49. The breaking of glass bangles and the ‘mangalsutra’ is now the most common form of representing the transi-
tion from the wife as suhagan or sumangali to that of the widow in the visual medium. In Indian cinema it is the
transformative symbol for widowhood followed by the donning of a stark white sari.
50. Fuller and Logan, ‘The Navaratri Festival in Madurai’, pp. 89–92.
51. Beck, ‘Color and Heat in South Indian Ritual’, p. 571, n. 13.
52. Hiltebeitel, ‘Draupadi’s Hair’, pp. 179–214, 208.
53. Hart, ‘Woman and the Sacred in Ancient Tamilnadu’, p. 241.
54. Kane, History of the Dharmashastras, p. 587.
55. Berg, Unconscious Symbolism of Hair, p. 26.
56. Kane, History of the Dharmashastras, p. 587.
57. Leslie, The Perfect Wife, p. 303
58. Chakravarti, Rewriting History, p. 24.
59. Fuller and Logan, ‘Navaratri Festival in Madurai’, p. 94.
60. Ibid., p. 95.
61. According to Hershman, there are certain times when pollution occurs for women: at the death of the husband,
during menstruation and following intercourse. The end of the pollution period is marked by a ritual bath when
it is crucial that the hair is washed, groomed and bound in the proper fashion, ‘Hair, Sex and Dirt’, pp. 274–98,
285–89.)
62. Personal communication from my maternal grandmother, C. Alamelu.
63. Berg, Unconscious Symbolism of Hair, pp. 29–30.
64. Ibid., p. 22.
65. Leach, ‘Magical Hair’, pp. 147–64.
66. Obeyesekere, Medusa’s Hair.
67. Leach, ‘Magical Hair’, p. 148.
68. Ibid., and Obeyesekere, pp. 45–50.
69. Leach, ‘Magical Hair’, p. 154.
70. Ibid., p. 156.
71. Obeyesekere, Medusa’s Hair, pp. 33–34, 45–50. In an influential nineteenth-century novel in Marathi, the
young widow’s resistance to the range of practices associated with widowhood is finally broken by her forc-
ible tonsure, executed brutally by her cruel and orthodox uncle. At the end of the tonsure the uncle says, ‘You
want to remarry! Go and remarry now. This is how one has to cut off the noses of the likes of you.’ Apte, Pan
Lakshyant Kon Gheto, p. 484.
298 UMA CHAKRAVARTI

72. Chakravarti, ‘Social Pariahs and Domestic Drudges’.

73. Harper, ‘Fear and the Status of Women’, pp. 81–95.
74. Ibid., pp. 81–83.
75. Ibid., pp. 87–88.
76. Ibid., p. 85.
77. Ibid., pp. 89–90.
78. Ibid., p. 86.
79. Ibid., pp. 87–88. The material condition of women as permanent dependents of men is a crucial component of
women’s vulnerability. This is compounded when a woman is widowed because she is then regarded as losing
even her limited entitlement to food and clothing to which she had access as a wife. She also loses the power
she may have wielded as manager of the domestic domain. Cultural values legitimize a low allotment of food
as widows are expected to fast often and eat minimally. In return for the ‘maintenance’ they receive from their
male official kinsmen (or even natal kinsmen), they must render labour which is invisibilized. Widows are often
taunted with the allegation that they are ‘drudges’, eating up the resources of a household. For an extended
discussion of the material dimensions of widowhood, see Chakravarti, ‘Social Pariahs and Domestic Drudges’.
80. Harper, ‘Fear and the Status of Women’, p. 88.
81. Ibid., p. 89.
82. Ibid., p. 92. See also Pandita Rainabai’s perceptive observations, especially on the relations between mothers
and daughters, in The High Caste Hindu Woman, p. 17.
83. Harper, ‘Fear and the Status of Women’, p. 90.
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid., p. 91.
86. Ibid., pp. 91–92.
87. Kolenda, ‘Widowhood among ‘Untouchable’ Chuhras’, pp. 289–354.
88. Ibid., pp. 299–300.
89. Ibid., pp. 306–07.
90. Ibid., pp. 316–19.
91. Chakravarti, Rewriting History, pp. 52–53.
92. Kolenda, ‘Widowhood among ‘Untouchable’ Chuhras’, p. 329.
93. Ibid., pp. 329–36.
94. Ibid., p. 336.
95. Ibid., p. 315.
96. Ibid., 326.
97. Manu Dharmashastra, IX, pp. 65–67.

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 Chapter 21 Work and Gender in
Mughal India

SHIREEN MOOSVI

The study of women as a component of the labour force in pre-colonial India is in infancy
as yet. Monographs on women in Mughal India and other pre-modern regimes have tended
to concentrate more on their social status, customs, clothing and fashion, or on individual
women.1 The inadequacy of secondary work is partly explained, perhaps, by difficulties of
source material. The kind of profuse documentation which exists for political and fiscal his-
tory of the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries is not available for either labour or demographic
history. There is no way one can reconstruct sex ratios in the general population or in the
non-domestic labour force.
One has, therefore, to cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth. Where some information
is available, though this had not so far been brought together, is in respect of the kinds of
work that women did. Incidental references in Indo-Persian and other literature from the
fifteenth to eighteenth century provide us with general statements or individual facts from
which general conditions may be inferred. Such material has been explored for this paper,
notably, Abū'l Faẓl’s Ā'īn-i Akbarī (c. 1595) and other historical works. Deserving of spe-
cial mention is Muḥammad Shādiābadī’s dictionary, Miftāh-ul Fuẓala, written in Malwa
in 1468–69, with the explicit purpose of explaining words relating to things of everyday
life. Its unique manuscript in the British Museum was illustrated probably early in Akbar’s
reign (1560s and 1570s), and these illustrations often help us when the text itself is silent.2
In 1825, James Skinner wrote at Hansi (Haryana) his Persian work on castes, the Tashrīh
ul-Aqwām. The splendid illustrations he provided from hands of Mughal-school artists in

1
Rekha Misra, Women in Mughal India (1526–1748) (Delhi, 1965); G. Rumer, Gulbadan, Portrait of a Rose Princess
at the Mughal Court (New York, 1980); C. Pant, Nur Jahan and Her Family (Allahabad, 1978); J. Brijbhushan, Razia
Sultan of Hindostan (New Delhi, 1990); A. Bulenschon, The Life of a Mughal Princes, Jahan Ara Begum (London,
1931); J. Brijbhusan, Muslim Women (New Delhi, 1980); S. Thomas, Women of Destiny (New Delhi, 1979).
2
British Museum MS Or. 3299.

310
 Chapter 21  Work and Gender in Mughal India 311

the British Museum copy add to the detailed textual information which relates mainly to
Haryana and the Delhi region.3
These two illustrated works exemplify the importance of pictorial evidence, notably
offered by miniatures of the imperial Mughal school of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies. Its well-known tradition of accuracy and realism invests this school’s portrayals of
scenes of the court and of everyday life with particular significance for our purpose. The
miniatures of the later Mughal-influenced Rajput and hill schools (eighteenth century)
supplement the Mughal school.
The third principal body of evidence comes from British surveys and reports of the early
nineteenth century, where conditions and traditions of the pre-colonial society were observed
and noted. Most noteworthy among these is Francis Buchanan’s set of celebrated Journey
from Madras (1800–01)4 and his detailed surveys of districts of the lower and Gangetic
basin, prepared between 1806 and 1812.5 These can be said to form the initial point of all
modern economic and anthropological enquiries in India.
What follows is a classified presentation of information of the gender division of labour
as one can reconstruct for pre-colonial northern India from this material. At the end, I hope
to examine the broad inferences one can derive from the description.

AGRICULTURE
Our evidence shows ploughing to be a man’s operation: all illustrations from the Mughal
and hill (pahari) schools, for example, show only men drawing the plough. In line with the
current practice, a Mughal miniature of c. 1610 depicts a woman sowing seed broadcast,
walking directly behind the man who is driving the plough.6 In 1811–12, Buchanan reported
that in Bihar women earned some wages through sowing seeds, though this was for them a
part-time job in addition to spinning.7
The work in the field that the women did in the eighteenth century included transplanting,
weeding and helping in harvesting.8 Though the actual operations carried out by women are
not always clear enough in Mughal miniatures, women working in the fields form part of
the typical rural scene depicted by the artists. Such illustrations may be seen in the Anwār-i

3
British Museum Add. 27,255.
4
Francis Buchanan, A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar, & C., 3 vols
(London, 1807). I have not used the very rich material contained in this work, because my present paper is confined
to northern India only.
5
Francis Buchanan, An Account of the District of Purnea in 1809–10 (Patna, 1986 [reprint]); An Account of the
Districts of Bihar and Patna in 1811–12 (Patna–Gaya Report) (Patna, 1986 [reprint]); An Account of the District of
Shadabad (Shahabad Report) (1832); An Account of the District of Bhagalpore (Bhagalpur Report) (1832); see also
Motgomery Martin, ed., The History, Antiquities, and Statistics of Eastern India, 3 vols. (London, 1838), where these
and other district surveys are reproduced in an abridged form.
6
T. Falk and S. Digby, Paintings from Mughal India (London, n.d.), Plate 18.
7
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, Vol. II, 618.
8
Buchanan, Purnea Report, 444 and 446.
312 SHIREEN MOOSVI

Suhailī illustrated in 15759 and Razmnāma, c. 1600.10 A line drawing of early nineteenth
century from Kashmir very clearly depicts a woman transplanting paddy along with a man.11
Both men and women were hired for weeding and transplanting work, and, at least in
District Purnea (Bihar), c. 1810, their wages were equal, though both were paid generally
in kind. Buchanan estimates that a man able to work 270 days in a year could earn about 12
rupees a year. His wife doing the same job could ‘make fully as much’.12
Besides these direct field operations, there was another task performed by women that
too merits classification as field work. They not only cooked food for their men working in
the fields, but also carried it to the field. In an illustration in the Anwār-i-Suhailī, a woman
is shown bringing food to her husband standing on the well irrigating the fields.13
After the produce was collected from the field, it apparently called for more work from
women than men. The beating of rice was exclusively a woman’s job, and in the illustra-
tion of pestle and mortar (okhlī), the Miftāh-ul Fuẓala, shows a woman working with it.14
Buchanan writing about Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, c. 1810, says that the cleaning
of rice was ‘performed entirely by the women’. The separation of husk from rice was done
by three methods, namely, by a wooden foot-worked hammer, called dhengli; by beating
by hand in mortar and pestle (okhlī), and by boiling. The first of these methods according to
Buchanan was ‘very laborious and was generally carried out by two women’. The beating
of rice in mortar with a wooden pestle was a comparatively lighter work, but the method
was less efficient. Only the winter or coarse varieties of rice were cleaned by boiling that
was the easiest method but considered most inferior.15 The payment for the work was made
in kind; A woman called upon to furnish 9 or 10 measures of husked rice for every 23 or 24
measures of paddy simply had as her wages the husked rice that she had left with her after
she had delivered to her employer the fixed measures. Buchanan estimates that the woman
was usually left with less than one-fifth of the rice she cleaned (Dinajpur, c. 1810).16 In
Purnea, a woman by cleaning rice, around 1810, earned not more than a quarter of a rupee a
month and allowing for sickness, etc., she worked about 10 months a year, and thus earned
not more than ` 2.50 in a year.17
Rice husking was not a full-time job as women did it along with their other domestic
duties and spinning. In any case, beating rice by working the dhengli was so laborious that
the women were only able to exert themselves for a limited number of hours.18
Not only the cleaning of rice but the milling of all food-grains as well was considered a
woman’s job. The Miftāh-ul Fuẓala (1468–69) shows a woman turning a rotary hand-mill,

9
Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi, No. 9069, f. 18.
10
Prince of Wales Museum, Bombay, Acc. No.43. 35 (dispersed copy).
11
D. D. Kosambi, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (Bombay, 1956), 319, Figure 41.
12
Buchanan, Purnea Report, 446.
13
Anwār-i Suhailī, Kala Bhavan, Varanasi, MS 9069, f. 61.
14
Or. 3299, f. 89a.
15
Martin, Eastern India, Vol. II, 822.
16
Ibid., 823.
17
Buchanan, Purnea Report, 444.
18
Martin, Eastern India, Vol. II, 822.
 Chapter 21  Work and Gender in Mughal India 313

with a single handle.19 In 1676, Fryer noted about India generally: The Indian Wives dress
their Husbands, Victuals, fetch Water, and Grind their Corn with an Hand-Mill, when they
sing, chat, and are merry.20
When Buchanan says that two women used to sit on the hand-mill, the labour being very
hard and the work restricted to three hours a day, he must be referring to a larger hand-mill
used for grinding of grain for non-domestic use or for the market. He adds that both men
and women were employed at such hand-mills.21
Fetching water for domestic needs, as Fryer observed, was another customary chore of
Indian women. The way the village women in India carried pitchers, filled with water, bal-
ancing them one over the other on their heads, became a popular theme for artists and was
a feat remarkable enough to draw the attention of Emperor Akbar who commended Indian
women for it.22 The pictorial representations show women drawing water from wells either
by throwing down a rope tied to a pot and pulling it up (c. 1570)23 or by drawing it over a
pulley set-up on the well (c. 1700).24 Some of these and other paintings from the eighteenth
century show women carrying filled pitchers.25
In the 1810s, Buchanan found in Bhagalpur ‘a great many poor women’ who made their
living by ‘carrying water for wealthy families’ and were called panibharin’ (water-fillers).
The usual payment for supplying one pitcher daily was 2 paisa (1 rupee = 64 paisas) a month
and the women were thereby able to earn about half a rupee a month. This income they gener-
ally supplemented by some spinning. In Patna, the wages for water-carrying were higher.26
Looking after cattle and making milk products formed another major sector of women’s
work. Explaining the term for butter (maska), the illustration in the Miftāh-ul Fuẓala shows
a women sitting and churning butter-milk.27 In a Kangra painting showing Krishna steeling
butter, women are shown making butter.28 A man is never shown in any illustration similarly
preparing butter or butter-milk.
Feeding cattle was also a part of women’s domestic chores. A miniature of Kangra school,
c. 1750, shows women feeding cows.29 However, milking cows was a job which men and

19
Or. 3299 f. 119a.
20
J. Fryer, A New Account of East India & Persia being Nineteen Year’s Travels, 1672–81, ed. W. Crook, Vol. II
(London, 1912), 118.
21
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, Vol. II, 637.
22
Blochmann, ed., Ā'īn-i Akbarī, Vol. II (Calcutta, 1867), 228.
23
Basil Gray, ed., Rajput Paintings (Faber Gallery of Oriental Art, n.d.), Plate 2.
24
Laurence Binyon, The Court Painters of the Grand Moguls (London, 1921), Plate XVII; Falk and Digby, Paintings
from Mughal India, Plate 26; T. Falk and M. Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library (Delhi, 1981),
Plate 42d, 514.
25
L. Hajek and W. Forman, Miniatures from the East (London, n.d.), Plates 46 and 47. E. Kuhnel, Miniatumalerei
Im Ishamischen Orient (Berlin, 1923), 147.
26
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, Vol. I, 287.
27
Or. 3299, f. 89b.
28
M. S. Randhava, Kangra Paintings of the Bhagvata Purana (New Delhi, 1960), Plate III (colour).
29
Ibid., Figure 4 (black and white).
314 SHIREEN MOOSVI

women both performed; and there seems no strict division of work here, for the paintings
show men and women both milking cows and goats.30
The women did a number of other sundry jobs related to agriculture for which we have
traditions but little literary or visual evidence. The jobs included feeding oil seeds or pieces
of sugarcanes in the press worked by men, cooking sugarcane juice for making jaggery,
etc. Their role could be so important that Akbar’s official historian, Abū'l Faẓl writing
about Bengal, says that the entire agricultural work depended upon women.31 Bengal being
mainly a paddy-producing area, this statement might not be an exaggeration, since weeding,
transplanting, harvesting and beating rice all essentially fell to the women’s share. Women
helped in irrigation as well: a nineteenth-century drawing from Kashmir shows a man draw-
ing water from a well while the woman cuts and makes water channels to irrigate the field.32
It appears that the women of common peasants invariably worked along with their men.
Only the castes who claimed a higher status tended to keep their women indoors, as in the
case of higher ranks among the Jats, according to the Tashrīh ul-Aqwām.33
An interesting evidence of women carrying out actual cultivation comes from the Middle
Himalayas, where only hoeing, not ploughing, could be practised to loosen the soil. Here,
in 1624, it was reported that ‘the women cultivate the soil, while men are weavers’.34 The
conditions in the Kashmir Valley were not identical, but a number of nineteenth-century
drawings from Kashmir show women performing almost all agricultural operations along
with men, except ploughing.35

TEXTILES
The process of textile manufacture, after cotton was removed from the field, followed fairly
well-marked stages. First of all, there was the process of separating the fibre from the seed,
a function which seems to have been performed mainly by women. The Ajanta frescoes of
the sixth century show a woman using the Indian cotton-gin, now called charkhī (two roll-
ers horizontally mounted on a stand, but without worm-gearing).36 In an eighteenth-century
painting a woman is shown carrying the same instrument, now provided with worm-gears
as well.37
After the seeds were expelled, the fibres had to be separated from each other (scutched).
The Ajanta frescoes mentioned above show a woman working with a roller and a board,

30
D. Barret and B. Gray, Paintings of India (British Museum, 1963), 74, 88 (c. 1595), 156 (c. 1690).
31
Blochmann, Ā'īn, Vol. I, 389.
32
Kosambi, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, Figure 43, 321.
33
Add. 27,255, f. 157a.
34
C. Wessels, Early Jesuit Travellers in Central Asia, 1603–1721 (The Hague, 1924), 52.
35
Kosambi, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, 318–19, 321.
36
Reproduced in G. Yazdani, Ajanta, the Colour and Minochrome Reproductions of the Ajanta Frescoes, Based on
Photography, Part I, Plate XII.
37
L. Hajek, Miniatures from the East (London, 1960), Plates 48 and 49.
 Chapter 21  Work and Gender in Mughal India 315

to obtain the separation;38 but this was a laborious process, which could also damage the
fibres. By medieval times, the bow-string device was in wide use for this purpose. This was
invariably operated by men so that a semi-itinerant class of men, dhunyās or naddāfs, went
around scutching cotton. In the fourteenth century we are told how, after obtaining cotton, a
mother gave it to a naddāf (male scutcher) to scutch it.39 Pictorial representations show that
the cotton-bow was used exclusively by men.40 But it appears that the bow did not altogether
replace hand-beating, and in the 1660s according to an English factor, women scutched
fibres by this process.41 Buchanan, c. 1810, too reports women beating cotton to separate
fibres. He adds, however, that ‘for greater part’ scutching was done by men using the bow.42
Not all dhunyās (carders) went door-to-door selling their services; a considerable propor-
tion of them (around one-third, according to Buchanan) purchased cotton and scutched it
at home.43 In the case of these ‘self-employed’ carders the women were entrusted with the
job of hawking the cotton scutched at home by their men.44
The next process, namely, spinning, was done almost exclusively by women, by hand-
spindle or by wheel. Writing at the close of the fourteenth century, Amīr Khusrau likens the
needle and spindle to a young woman’s spear and arrow.45 In the dictionary Miftāh-ul Fuẓala,
written in 1468–69 and illustrated about a hundred years later, where the text explains the
terms for spindle (duk and praiti), the illustration depicts it as being worked by women.46
The same work defines the charkha, or spinning wheel, as the device ‘by which women spin
yarn’.47 The earliest reference to spinning wheel in India dates back to 1350, when while
censuring Queen Raziyya for claiming to act as sovereign, the historian Isāmī says that a
women is suited only to work on the spinning wheel.48
From the succeeding centuries, continuous pictorial evidence of women working on the
spinning wheel grows in profusion, through the miniatures of Mughal painters as well as
other Indian schools. A selection is listed below:

(a) A woman spinning on wheel with no crank handle: illustration in Miftāh-ul Fuẓala.49
(b) Village women carrying spinning wheels, c. 1590.50

38
M. K. Dhavalikar, Ajanta: A Cultural Study (Pune, 1973), 2.
39
K. A. Nizami, ed., Khair-ul Majālis (Aligarh, 1956), 190–91.
40
Or. 3299, f. 66.
41
Foster, ed., English Factories in India 1665–7 (Oxford, 1927), 174.
42
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, 647.
43
Ibid.
44
Buchanan, Purnea Report, 536. A day’s sale proceeds are estimated as `1 to ` 2.
45
M. Sulaiman Ashraf, ed., Hasht Bihisht (Aligarh, 1918), 28.
46
Or. 3299 f. 151a.
47
Ibid., f. 94b.
48
A. S. Usha, ed., Futūḥ us Salāṭīn (Madras, 1948), 134. Spinning wheel, originally a Chinese device, came to India,
probably through the Islamic civilization. Interestingly enough, in the Persian poetry of twelfth–thirteenth centuries
the wheel (charkhī) is invariably seen as an instrument worked by women. Cf. Irfan Habib, ‘Medieval Technology
Exchange between India and the Islamic World’, Aligarh Journal of Oriental Studies II, nos. 1–2 (1985): 203–04.
49
Or. 3299 f. 151a.
50
Razamnāma, Or. 12076f.
316 SHIREEN MOOSVI

(c) A woman with a spinning wheel with no handles, dated 1606.51

(d) Three women working on spinning wheels, in the foreground, 1617.52
(e) A woman and a wheel with a half handle, Shāhjahān’s reign (1627–58).53
(f) A sturdy village woman sitting in front of a spinning wheel with handle, c. 1670.54
(g) Spinning wheel, with handle, being carried by a woman, Kangra painting depicting
a scene from the Mahabharata, 1785–90.55

As in the case of scutching, the two devices for spinning also remained in use simultane-
ously. The hand spindle was used by women to spin fine yarn and silk thread even in the
nineteenth century.56
Buchanan says that spinning was not a taboo for any caste and thus a large number of
women from all castes used to spin.57 We are told in the fourteenth century that Shaikh
Nizāmuddīn mother, when making a turban for him, spun half of the yarn herself, while
the other half was spun by her slave girl.58 The Tashrīh ul-Aqwām, c. 1825, says that the
women of the Kayasth caste also spun yarn.59 Even if women did not spin for wages, they
still spun for the use of the family.60
Spinning could be adjusted to the working time available to individual women. Thus,
Buchanan noted that they spun ‘when their other occupations permit’, spinning often coming
after the work of cooking, bringing up children and beating rice. On the other hand, ‘the
women of rank’ who sat before the wheel for a whole day could do so because they were not
obliged to attend to other work.61 Wages in both cases naturally varied. Women, working
part-time, on an average earned ` 3.25 a year in Bihar,62 ` 2.37 in Gorakhpur63 and a quarter
rupee a month, that is, ` 3 a year, in Purnea.64 As against this, those who worked full-time
and spun fine thread earned 15 annas a month or ` 11.25 a year in Purnea.65
Women spinners did not usually work for wages, but as self-employed persons, obtaining
the raw material themselves. At times they bought even unscutched cotton, had it scutched

51
E. Kuhnel and H. Goets, Indian Book Painting from Jahangir’s Album in the State Library, Berlin (London, 1926),
Plate 1.
52
A. K. Das, Mughal Paintings during Jahangir’s Time (Calcutta, 1978), 235, Plate 2.
53
Ivan Stchoukine, La Painteors Indienne a l’Epoque des Grand Moghols (Paris, 1929), Plate XLIV.
54
F. R. Martin, The Miniature Paintings and Painters of Persia, India, Turkey, from the Eighth to the Eighteenth
Century (London, 1912), Plate 207a.
55
Randhava, Kangra Paintings, Plate V.
56
Buchanan, Purnea Report, 536–37.
57
Ibid., 536.
58
Nizami, Khair-ul Majālis, 190–91.
59
Add. 27,255 f. 105b.
60
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, Vol. II, 639.
61
Buchanan, Purnea Report, 536–37.
62
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, 647–48.
63
Martin, Eastern India, 558–59.
64
Buchanan, Purnea Report, 536–37.
65
Ibid.
 Chapter 21  Work and Gender in Mughal India 317

on payment66 and then spun the yarn and sold it.67 It was perhaps more convenient and
practical for women since this arrangement did not subject them to any strict time schedule
or make them work outdoors. The spinning in case of part-time spinners was done usually
in the afternoon, while beating rice occupied them during the mornings.
Cotton was not the only material for women to work in. They also worked at reeling and
selling tasar-silk thread. The earnings estimated were 7.5 annas a month.68
In Kashmir shawl-wool was spun by girls who started work at the age of 10 and according
to an estimate, a hundred thousand women (out of a supposed total population of 800,000)
were engaged in spinning wool in the valley in 1822.69
Whereas spinning was strictly women’s work, the actual weaving was done mainly by
men, though women presumably assisted them in preparing the warp and weft-threads.
Mughal and later miniatures show only men with the loom.70 But Buchanan says that ‘each
loom requires one man and woman’, the latter to wind and to assist in wrapping.71
In carpet-making, while spinning was again done by women, the weaving was reserved
to men. The collective earnings of two men and two women were estimated by Buchanan
at ` 17.89 in a month. Here, too, the raw material was their own.72
In blanket-making, the same division of work prevailed; women spun and men wove. A
pair of shepherds (man and woman) in Bihar is reported by Buchanan to have produced a
blanket worth one rupee in four days.73
It seems that in other processes after weaving, the division of work between men and
women was not so sharply defined. In dyeing and perhaps bleaching both worked together.
Writing in 1675–76, Fryer says that in Calicut, washermen were ‘women as well as men’:
they were not only very competent but also cheap.74 In Bihar, too, both men and women
washed and bleached cloth for the English Company in c. 1810 and the earnings of husband
and wife collectively were ‘1 anna short of 28 Rs’ a year.75 The women besides working with
their husbands also washed the worn clothes of people, acting as domestic washerwomen.76
Calico printing too was apparently carried out by both. Moti Chandra finds words for both
male and female calico-printers, in the fourteenth–fifteenth century, namely, chhimpaka for
female and chhipa for male printers.77

66
Martin, Eastern India, 558–59.
67
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, 647–48; Buchanan, Purnea Report, 536–37; Martin, Eastern India (Gorakhpoor),
558–59.
68
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, Vol. II, 651.
69
W. Moorcroft and G. Trebeck, Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Punjab, in Laddakh and
Kashmir from 1819 to 1825, ed. H. H. Wilson, Vol. II (London, 1937), 174.
70
Or 3299, ff. 262a, 268; Tutinama, c. 1565–70, Chester Beatty Library, MS No. 21 f. 29.
71
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, 651.
72
Ibid., 657.
73
Ibid., 651.
74
Fryer, A New Account of East India, 121–22.
75
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, 616–17.
76
Ibid.
77
Moti Chandra, Journal of Indian Textile History, Vol. V, 51–52.
318 SHIREEN MOOSVI

From the seventh century we have evidence of women putting patterns on cloth by the
tie-and-dye process.78 Women’s role in this process has remained traditional, though often
professional men and women worked together.
Another craft that the women pursued was embroidery. They stitched ‘flowers’ upon
muslin, a profession said to be pursued by them at various places.79

BUILDING INDUSTRY
In its detailed description of the staff of the building establishment of the Mughal govern-
ment, Abū'l Faẓl's Ā'īn-i Akbarī does not indicate, directly or indirectly, any participation of
women labourers in construction work. But Mughal paintings provide firm evidence of their
participation. In a depiction (c. 1590) of the building of Akbar’s capital city of Fatehpur Sikri,
women are shown performing heavy tasks like breaking stones and old bricks by pounding
to prepare rubble, preparing bitumen mortar-cement and staining and mixing lime used to
surface walls.80 In another painting of the same time depicting Akbar’s construction of the
Agra fort, women are seen preparing lime-mortar, and carrying it in pans, held in hand or
over their heads, to the masons at work. At least one of them walks up a slanted platform
with the pan on her head.81 It is worth noting that these jobs continue to be traditionally
women’s jobs in the Indian building industry even today.
Unfortunately, there is no information about women’s wages. If the brick pounders (surkhī
kob) in Abū'l Faẓl’s account are women, we may take it that each woman worker earned
1.5 dāms (40 dāms = ` 1) for pounding 8 mans (200.70 kg) of bricks. If she then pounded
1.66 mans (267.62 kg), she would have earned the lowest daily wage specified for the same
work for unskilled labourers.82

PETTY COMMERCE
Women’s participation in petty commerce seems to have been considerable. Milk and its
products were usually hawked by them. Buchanan writing, c. 1810, about Bihar, describes
the division of work among pastoral castes as follows: The young men were ‘farmers’, the
old and the children tended cattle, and women sold milk and the cakes of dung that were
used for fuel.83 In fact, the collection of dung and the making of dung cakes for fuel was a
task traditionally assigned to women and children. The author of the Tashrīh ul-Aqwām,
1825, a work on castes, describing the Gujjar and Ghosi castes, differentiates between the

78
Banabhatta, Harshacarita, ed. P. V. Kane, 2nd edn. (Delhi, 1965), Ucchvasa IV, 14. I owe this reference to my
colleague Mr Ishrat Alam, who has also given me other help.
79
Buchanan, Purnea Report, 544 and Patna–Gaya Report, Vol. II, 655.
80
Binyon, Court Painters, Plate IX.
81
Geeti Sen, Paintings from Akbarnama (Calcutta, 1984), Plates 31 and 61.
82
Blochmann, Å’ðn, Vol. I, 170.
83
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, Vol. II, 635.
 Chapter 21  Work and Gender in Mughal India 319

two castes according to the way their women sold milk, curd, butter, etc. According to him,
the women of the Gujjars hawked the products from door to door, while those of the Ghosis
sold these at their own houses.84
Men and women of the Kunjra caste sold green vegetables85 while only the women of
gardeners hawked fruits and green vegetable in the markets and went from door to door.86
The women of gardeners’ caste also sold flowers; the Tashrīh ul-Aqwām mentions this, and
a miniature of the eighteenth century from Awadh depicts a female flowerseller.87
Bangle-makers sold bangles visiting the houses and hawking along streets and lanes:
their women carried the basket of bangles while they emitted cries to attract customers’
attention. The Tashrīh ul-Aqwām generally describes this as being the practice in Haryana
around 1825.88 Buchanan c. 1810 gives a similar account of the glass and lac bangle-makers
in Bihar.89
At least in Bihar, about that time, all grain parchers and sellers of parched grains were
women. They used to sit on the road sides with small fire places while the customers brought
their own grain to get it parched, the parchers keeping back small amounts of grain. In this
way, according to Buchanan, women earned no more than 2 paisas a day (that is less than
a rupee a month). But some had their own grain that they parched and sold sitting at their
shops, their earnings then being a good deal more.90
Selling fish either door-to-door or in the market was also traditionally a women’s profes-
sion among the fisher folk.91

SUNDRY PROFESSIONS
There were various other professions where gender division of work was not well-marked,
and men and women both carried the same professions either separately or together. The
potter’s wife, for example, kneaded clay for the potter working at the kiln, as shown in an
illustration, c. 1850–60.92
Men and women both worked as sweepers.93 In making ornaments out of lac, men and
women worked together. Possibly, here women did not work full-time since, unlike men, they
had other chores also to look after, for example, beating rice to supplement family earnings.94

84
British Museum Add. 27,255, f. 150a.
85
Ibid., f. 235a.
86
Ibid., f. 232b.
87
Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office, Plate 26.
88
Add. 27,255, ff. 326a–27a.
89
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, Vol. II, 620–21.
90
Ibid., Vol. II, 636.
91
Ibid., 291.
92
Reproduced in William Crooke, A Glossary of North Indian Peasant Life, ed. Shahid Amin (New Delhi, 1989),
Plate X.
93
Add. 27,255, f. 178b.
94
Buchanan, Purnea Report, 522.
320 SHIREEN MOOSVI

The leaves widely used for serving meals in were gathered, dried and stitched by men and
women working together. A husband and wife making such platters earned approximately
` 3 a month.95 In the manufacture of nitre salt, one man, one woman and two girls or boys
were required to look after each furnace, though perhaps they performed different tasks.96
In preparation of tobacco and charcoal balls, both the sexes were equally occupied.97
A profession where women had primacy, though it was not their sole preserve, was that
of inn-keeping. The inn-keepers (bhatyārdīs) were traditionally women. Rafīuddīn Shīrāzī,
a Persian merchant visiting India in the 1560s, tells us:

On roads used by people at every farsakh (2.5 miles) or half farsakh, notables of this country have
founded or left behind in trust sarāis (inns), where persons of the caste of bhatiyārās (male) reside
so that whenever the travellers arrive, they can on payment stay there and give provisions for food
to the bhatiyårð (female) who then cooks the food according to their taste and takes her wage.

He calls such inns ‘bhatiyārī’s houses’.98

Manucci records a tradition that Sher Shāh (1540–45) assigned the duty of looking after
the travellers to married slaves and their wives.99 Withington, visiting India in 1612–16,
mentions only women inn-keepers.100 Peter Mundy in India, c. 1630, not only emphasizes that
inn-keeping was the job of women but also informs us that their men were most commonly
Kahārs (palanquin bearers), fowlers or fishermen.101 G. Forster says more cautiously that
‘many’ of the inn-keepers were women.102 In the 1810s, Buchanan still found inn-keeping
as the job of old women.103 The inn-keeping, of course, included the work of preparing and
serving meals.
Women also served as wine-servers in taverns. There is an interesting pictorial repre-
sentation in the Miftāh-ul Fuẓala of a tavern where women are serving wine and eatables
and also entertaining the guests by singing with musical instruments. The fact that Emperor
Akbar in 1582 appointed a woman belonging to the caste of wine-distillers to the official
wine shop at the court104 suggests that the Miftāh-ul Fuẓala’s illustration was no fantasy,
but depicted actual conditions.
Among the nomadic roadside entertainers called nats (male) and natnðs (female) forming
a well-known caste of rope dancers and gymnasts, women performed various gymnastic
feasts. Thevenot in the 1660s describes a performance by a pair in Nander (Maharashtra)
where the major role was played by the woman-performer. He provides an illustration as

95
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, Vol. II, 617–18.
96
Ibid., 667.
97
Ibid., 629.
98
Tazkiratu’l Muluk, Add. 23883, ff. 172a–74b.
99
N. Manucci, Storia do Mogor, 1656–1712, trans. W. Irvine (London, 1907–08), 115.
100
W. Foster, ed., Early Travels in India (1583–1619) (London, 1927), 225.
101
R. C. Temple, ed., The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia (London, 1914), 121.
102
G. Forster, A Journey from Bengal to England (London), 86–87, 92.
103
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, 635.
104
Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, ed. Ahmad Ali, Vol. II (1865), 301–02.
 Chapter 21  Work and Gender in Mughal India 321

well.105 The Tashrīh ul-Aqwām shows a woman performing along with a man.106 There was
another class of female professional magicians (bhānmati) who showed their tricks and magi-
cal articles. A description of them, with illustration, is provided in the Tashrīh ul-Aqwām.107
Women of a number of lower castes went to upper class houses on occasion of celebra-
tions of births and marriages to sing and dance ‘in order to earn their livelihood.’108 Women
of lime-makers did this, according to the Tashrīh ul-Aqwām,109 and those of doms (domīnīs),
according to a contemporary narrative from Lucknow.110
Singing and dancing at a higher professional level was also carried out by women who
worked as free entertainers for higher classes. In most cases, their men acted as musicians
playing instruments or, in the case of less-accomplished persons, took other sundry profes-
sions. These women singers and dancers usually acted as prostitutes,111 a profession whose
prevalence was acknowledged. Emperor Akbar allotted a special locality in his capital,
Fatehpur Sikri, for the courtesans and tried to restrict their visits as dancers to the houses
of nobles and gentry.112
A crucial role was played by women as primitive doctors and physicians. They served
as midwives and as nurses to babies. The midwife and nurses invariably appear in Mughal
paintings depicting scenes of births of princes, as for example that of Emperor Akbar him-
self113 and those of his sons,114 as well as of the birth of Lord Krishna, painted during the
eighteenth century.115
A popular notion was that a number of diseases originated owing to excess or bad blood
and it had, therefore, to be sucked out by leeches. Mrs Meer Hasan Ali (c. 1820) observed
‘leech-women’ at Lucknow visiting homes with the insects and performing this operation,
which required a certain amount of skill.116
It was common for women to work on wages as domestic servants. The practice of employ-
ing female domestic servants was certainly not confined to aristocratic establishments. A
painting, c. 1740, depicts a rather modest home where a maidservant is seen killing a snake,
the operation being observed by three other women, one of whom is apparently the mistress
of house.117 Describing the practice in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, Buchanan states that
the wages given to women domestic servants were ‘as high nearly as those given to men’.118

105
Travels of Thevenot and Careri, 107 and 109.
106
Add. 27,255, f. 304b (illustration) and f. 306a.
107
Ibid., f. 123b (illustration), f. 124a.
108
Ibid., f. 141a.
109
Ibid.
110
Meer Hasan Ali, Observations on the Mussulmans of India, Vol. II (London, 1832), 43.
111
Add. 27,255, ff. 138a–141b.
112
Badauni, Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, 186.
113
Or. 12988, ff. 20b and 22a, Plate 44;
114
Chester Beaty Library Ms No. 3 ff. 142b and 143b; Geeti Sen, Paintings from the Akbarnama (Calcutta, 1984),
Plates 56 and 57.
115
W. G. Archer, Visions of Courtly India—the Archer Collection of Pahari Miniatures (London, 1976), Plate 27.
116
Meer Hasan Ali, Observations on the Mussulmans of India, 143–44.
117
Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, 436, Plate 239.
118
Buchanan, Patna–Gaya Report, Vol. I, 287.
322 SHIREEN MOOSVI

ELITE PROFESSIONS
Women’s occupations do not seem to have been confined to manual labour and arts alone.
There are at least a few references to women pursuing trade and controlling agricultural
land and urban property. In the seventeenth century, a Surat merchant left to his wife his
merchandise and the conduct of his trade at Surat when he went to Mecca as the agent of
another merchant. When he died there, the widow went to the court of a qāẓī to claim her
right to manage her deceased husband’s affairs.119
In the territory of the present state of Uttar Pradesh, a Khatri woman, Sabhanu, was found
selling her village land, c. 1680. There is evidence of other brahman as well as Muslim
women in the same region, who were proprietresses of village lands.120 They also formed
an important class of recipients of land grants from the imperial Mughal government.121
Jahangir appointed a woman to process and recommend such grants.122 Shāhjahān followed
the practice and the head of department came to be designated as the Œadru-n Nisa.123
Sale deeds from Gujarat towns such as Surat, Cambay and Broach show that during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries women owned urban property which they themselves
purchased, sold or mortgaged.124
It was, perhaps, possible for women to fulfil responsibilities of such positions, whether
by inherited ownership or grant or appointment, because among higher classes it was not
uncommon for women to be lettered. The illustration depicting a school scene in the Miftāh-ul
Fuẓala shows a young girl sitting with a boy learning to write the alphabet.125
Mughal court artists depict women reading letters and books.126 From the Deccan School
too comes similar pictorial evidence. Mughal royal ladies were learned enough to maintain
their personal libraries and to compose poetry.127 There are notices of accomplished Persian
poetesses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.128 We know that some women worked
as artists as well. Among Jahāngīr’s (1605–27) court painters, there is mention of at least
three women artists. The signed painting of one of them, Nādira Banū, survives in the

119
Blochet, Supp. Pers. 482 ff. 185a–6b. For full translation of the document see my ‘Travails of a Merchantile
Community—Aspects of Social Life at the Port of Surat’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 52nd Session
(Delhi, 1991–92), 408–09.
120
For full references see ASMI, 191–92, f.n. 95.
121
Ibid., 352–53 and n.
122
S. Ahmad, ed., Tuzuk-i Jahāngīrī (Ghazipur, 1863), 21.
123
Shāhnawās Khān, Ma'āsir-ul-Umarā, ed. Abdur Rahim and Ashraf Ali (Calcutta, 1881), 241.
124
National Archives of India, Acquired Documents.
125
British Library Or. 3299, f. 278b.
126
Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, 386; M. C. Beach, Mughal and Rajput Paintings (Cambridge, 1992), Plate
68, 95.
127
Gulbadan Bāno Begum (Emperor Bābur’s daughter) wrote her memoirs, A History of Humayun, ed. A. S. Beveridge
(London, 1902). A reference to her library is made in Bāyazīd Biyāt, Tazkira-i Humāyūn-o-Bābur, ed. M. Hidayat
Hosaim (Calcutta, 1941).
128
Badauni (Muntakhab-ut-Tawārīkh, Vol. III, ed. Ahmad Ali [Calcutta, 1869], 360–61) mentions a poetess, Nihānī,
of the sixteenth century. From the seventeenth century, we have names of a number of poetesses, most of them royal
princesses. See S. M. Jafar, Education in Muslim India (Delhi, 1972), 194–98.
 Chapter 21  Work and Gender in Mughal India 323

Gulshan Album (Imperial Library, Tehran). The ascription on the painting describes her as
daughter of Mīr Taqī, a well-known calligrapher at Jahāngīr’s court; she was herself a pupil
of Aqā Raẓā, a master painter of Jahāngīr’s atelier.129 There are also pictorial depictions of
women doing painting.130

WOMEN IN ARISTOCRATIC DOMESTIC ESTABLISHMENTS

Service in aristocratic households was not an inconsiderable source of employment for
women during the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries. Women were appointed to perform a
variety of tasks, high and low, skilled and unskilled. Writing about Emperor Akbar’s house-
hold Abū'l Faẓl gives the number of harem inmates as 5,000.131 The number of royal ladies,
out of 5,000 total harem inmates, could then not have been more than 500; and there was,
therefore, a female labour force of 4,500 in the imperial household establishment alone. The
establishments of the nobles were replicas of the imperial establishment in nearly all respects
except in size; the latter naturally varied in proportion to the rank and status of the noble.
Pelsaert goes on to say that Mughal nobles usually had three to four wives, and each wife
was allowed 10 or 20 or 100 female attendants.132 The contemporary paintings bear witness
to this, by invariably showing large retinues of women attendants, waiting upon royal or
noble ladies.133 Eighteenth-century miniatures from different regional schools suggest that
the same conditions prevailed among the regional aristocracies.134
In these pictorial depictions, we can often clearly identify the kinds of work they per-
formed. On ceremonial occasions such as celebrations of births135 or weddings136 they
are shown looking after the entire domestic arrangements except for the cooking of food,
which seems to have remained largely men’s work in the great establishments.137 Abū'l Faẓl
says that the meals in Akbar’s entire harem establishment were distributed from one main
kitchen, though some very high ranking royal ladies had kitchens of their own.138 Pelsaert
describes a similar distribution of cooked meals among the ladies of a noble’s household
from a single kitchen.139
Women attendants are shown fanning their mistress, massaging her feet and legs at
bedtime, doing her bed, helping her walk, and serving meals, eatables and wines. The

129
I am grateful to Professor S. P. Verma for this information. See also Das, Mughal Paintings, 235.
130
Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, 531 and Ivan Stchoukine, La Peinture Indienne, A L’Epoque Des Grands
Moghuls (Paris, 1929), Plate LXXV (Rajput School).
131
Blochmann,Ā'īn, Vol. I, 40.
132
Pelsaert, ‘Remonstrantie’, c. 1626, trans. W. H. Moreland and P. Geyl, Jahangir’s India (Cambridge, 1925), 64.
133
Falk and Digby, Paintings from Mughal India, Plates 31–40.
134
Archer, Visions of Courtly India, Plates 12, 19, 29; Beach, Mughal and Rajput Paintings, Plate J.
135
Sen, Paintings from Akbarnama, Plates 17, 18.
136
Amina Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters (Paris, 1992), Plate 102, 98.
137
M. S. Randhwa, Paintings of the Babur Nama (New Delhi, 1983), Plate XI.
138
Blochmann, Ā'īn, 40.
139
Pelsaert, ‘Remonstrantie’, 64.
324 SHIREEN MOOSVI

attendants also entertained their mistress by singing and dancing or by narrating fables and
stories.140 Another very popular theme with the artists was that of a lady at her toilet, where
she is shown attended by a large number of servants, doing her hair, holding the mirror to
her, pouring out water, etc.141
The attire of the women servants, particularly those employed in the imperial establish-
ment, seems to indicate a distinct hierarchy. In illustrations showing the celebrations at the
birth of Emperor Akbar’s son, a woman in a highly dignified dress is shown standing before
a group of religious men (a pandit and mullahs) and appears to be a matron or housekeep-
er.142 Even among singers and dancers, there seems to be a very clear distinction of rank.
These appear to belong to two classes. One may be classified as that of artistes. These are
usually shown dancing alone in classical styles or singing with the accompaniment of musi-
cal instruments or playing musical instruments themselves.143 Others of the more ordinary
class sang and danced in the popular fashion with drums and in rather ordinary dresses.144
In Akbar’s household establishment, women employees were divided into two grades.
Those in grade I received a monthly stipend ranging from ` 20 to 51 and those in grade II,
from ` 2 to ` 40.145 The lowest wage of unskilled women servant was ` 1.5 a month (2 dams
a day); the women employed in the imperial harem appear to have been much better paid.
Pre-colonial India was not a uniform mass, though the caste system did further a uniformity
amidst much social diversity. But we can recognize throughout a tendency to assign certain
jobs or stages in the labour process to women. The general exclusive attribution of spinning
to women can be attributed to the expectation that their smaller and nimbler fingers suited
the operation better. Spinning seems to have been allotted to women in the same manner in
practically all civilizations. Certain jobs fell to the women’s lot because with childbearing
and rearing, pure domestic duties, like cooking food, were undertaken by them, and not by
men (a feature perhaps as universal as spinning). Women’s restricted participation in certain
other jobs seems to have been determined by the fact that they could only work part-time,
or that the work required a momentary application of such heavy muscular power as they
did not generally possess. Thus, they do not appear to have worked on the plough, or as
weavers or blacksmiths, but assumed only supplementary roles in these spheres. Finally,
male dominance, sanctified by faith and culture, determined that women should work as
harem attendants, and as singers and dancers, and often combine the latter profession with
prostitution.

140
Stchoukine, La Peinture Indienne, Plates LXXXV, LXXXI, LXXXIV; Archer, Visions of Courtly India, Plates
20, 25, 29, 46, 52, 73, 74.
141
Okada, Imperial Mughal Painters, Plate V; Welch, Imperial Mughal Painting, Plate 16; Archer, Visions of Courtly
India, Plates 46, 56, 61.
142
Welch, Imperial Mughal Painting, Plate 16.
143
Stchoukine, La Peinture Indienne Plates IX, XXI, LVII; Sen, Paintings from Akbarnama, Plate 19; Beach, Mughal
and Rajput Paintings, 132; Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, Plate 7.
144
Sen, Paintings from Akbarnama, Plate 3; Beach, Mughal and Rajput Paintings, Plate 86, 116, Plate 98, 132; Falk
and Archer, Indian Miniatures, Plate 7.
145
Blochmann, Å’ðn, Vol. I, 40.
 Chapter 21  Work and Gender in Mughal India 325

Women were an important component of the labour force, and among the labouring
poor, an asset rather than liability. The insistence on remarrying a widow to the husband’s
brother, or alternatively the parents-in-law’s right to marry a widow off to someone else,
found in many castes,146 implied this perception, which also meant the currency of bride-
price, as against the pervasive dowry system of today’s India. Women, as labourers, were
not, however, mere extensions of their husband’s persons. We have seen that they received
wages themselves for their work, and often sold or hawked wares and goods produced by
themselves or in conjunction with their menfolk. This suggested a certain amount of inde-
pendence for the women of the lower orders in traditional India. This independence often
was sharply curtailed and seclusion and the veil enforced among both Hindus and Muslims
in the case of higher class women.
Even among higher classes, women were legal persons in both Hindu and Muslim law.
As such, they could hold and, therefore, manage property. In the Mughal royalty and nobil-
ity, they received education, and some of them even took to literary and artistic professions,
while others were assigned semi-bureaucratic or supervisory functions.
The colonial subjugation of the Indian economy, especially ‘de-industrialisation’ during
the nineteenth century, brought about considerable change in the conditions we have summed
up above. Certain professions of women, notably spinning, were practically eliminated;
others like work in plantations, mines and factories (few and small as these still were) were
created. The same women could not, of course, shift from the old sectors to the other new
ones, and the process had therefore a most wrenching effect on women. A recognition of
this made the Indian National Movement adopt the women’s spinning wheel for its symbol,
both as token of protest and declaration of intent. The fulfilment of the intention is, however,
still a distant goal.

146
See, for example, Tashrīh ul-Aqwām, British Museum Add. 37,255, f. 138a–41b.
Devaradiya: Hand-maidens of
God or Sex-workers?

Section V
 Chapter 22 Courtesans†

VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

ONE: DECIDING ON A FRIEND, AN ELIGIBLE LOVER, AND AN

INELIGIBLE LOVER
1
Courtesans find sexual pleasure and a natural way of making a living in their sexual relations
with men. 2Doing it for sexual pleasure is natural, and for gain is artificial, 3but she makes
the artificial, too, appear natural, 4because men trust women who are driven by desire. 5In
order to demonstrate that it is natural, she betrays no greed. 6And in order to make the future
secure, she do†t get money from him by objectionable methods.
7
She is always well dressed as she looks out on the main street, easily seen but not too
much exposed, because she is just like something for sale. 8She makes friends with people
through whom she can attract the man, cut him off from other women, ward off losses and
rebound from them, get money, and avoid being treated with contempt by her lovers. 9These
friends are policemen, officers of the courts, fortune-tellers, bold men, heroes, men who
know the same things as she knows, men who have a grasp of the arts,* libertines, panders,
clowns, garland-makers, perfumers, wine-merchants, washermen, barbers, beggars, and

†
Reproduced with Permission from Sudhir Kakar. Previously published as ‘Book 6: Courtesans’ in Vatsyayana
Mallanaga’s Kamasutra, Sudhir Kakar (ed.), pp. 131–59. The note cues and note explanations have been kept intact
as per the original publication.
4
Men become attached to a woman who lets them think, ‘She is in love with me’, but not to women who are driven
by money.
9
Policemen and officers of the courts ward off her losses and get money for her. Fortune-tellers bring men to her
and urge them on by saying, ‘If you make love with this woman, your fortunes will flourish.’ Bold men and heroes
ward off her losses and get money for her. Men who know the same things love her and get money for her. Men who
have a grasp of the arts learn the arts from the woman and publicise them, which brings lovers to her. The panders
and the others bring in money through their own work and bring lovers to her through their free access to the houses
of other men.

329
330 VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

whichever other men can be used to accomplish her goals. 10Lovers who are eligible just for
the sake of money are these: an independent man, a man who has just come of age, a rich
man, a man whose source of income is transparent, an official, a man who obtains wealth
without difficulty, a jealous rival, a man with a steady income, a man who believes he is
lucky in love, a braggart, an impotent man, a man who wants to be known as a real man, a
man who competes with his equals, a man generous by nature, a man who has influence with
a king or a minister of state, a fatalist,* a man who despises wealth, a man who transgresses
the instructions of his elders, a man who sets an example for his siblings, a rich only son, a
man who wears the sign of a religious order, a man who conceals his sexual desire, a hero,
and a doctor.
11
But men who are rich only in love and fame are eligible lovers because of their good
qualities. 12The man’s good qualities are these: he is born of a great family, learned, know
ledgeable about all customs, a poet, a skilled storyteller, eloquent, resolute, skilled in the
various crafts, concerned for his elders. He has ambition, great endurance, and loyalty, is
generous but not envious, and loving to his friends. He is fond of crowds, salons, theatrical
performances, parties, and all kinds of games. He is free of disease, sound of limb, full of

10
These livers are for money and not for love, but their money can be used for sexual pleasure and fame. An indepen-
dent man is not dependent on his elders. A man who has just come of age is not too old. When she wants something
from a man whose source of income is not in public view, because it comes from some other region, even when he
gives her money, it is a useless gift. An official can five her money derived from whatever money he officiates over
A man whose wealth comes easily, either through an inheritance or by finding some treasure or through a favour
from the king, fives it away easily, too. A jealous rival gives her a lot of money in competition with another lover.
A tax-collector or usurer has steady income. A man who believes he is lucky in love, although he is unlucky in love,
does not want people to think that he is unlucky in love, and so he gives the woman a lot of money in the course of
getting her away from another man. An impotent man, a non-man, gives her a lot of money in order to proclaim his
virility. A man who wants people to think he is a real man gives her a lot of money when she asks for it. When two
men equal in family, knowledge, wealth or age are rivals, each thinks, ‘That man who is my equal gave a lot to that
courtesan; I will give her more her more Such a lover keeps spending more like a mare who always wants to be in
front. If a man has the ear of a king or minister of state, even if he himself does not give her anything, he can get
the king or minister to give her something, by saying, ‘This is the woman I love.’ A fatalist thinks, ‘My fortune is
drying up because my good luck is drying up, not because it is spent on pleasures and so he gives her a lot of money
A man who transgresses his gurus’ words gives her a lot even though he is doing wrong A rich only son is never
restrained by his parents even if he gives her a lot, because they do not want him to go anywhere else. A man whose
sexual desire is concealed thinks, People must not find out’ but since he is tormented by desire, he gives her a lot.
A hero makes friends and makes money. A doctor, even if he does not give the courtesan money, gives in fact by
healing her when she is ill.
12
The man’s good qualities are described here in keeping with the statement above [at 1.5.28]: ‘We will explain the
good qualities and lack of good qualities in both [kinds of lovers] in the discussion of courtesans.’ V calls him ‘the man’
here, and not ‘the lover’, to apply more generally; he also gives him other names, such as ‘suitor’ in his relationship
to a virgin, ‘successful suitor’ in his relationship to a second-hand woman, ‘paramour’ in his relationship to the wife
of another man, and ‘lover’ in his relationship to a courtesan. The man is learned, in logic and so forth. He knows all
customs, even the customs of heretics. He composes poems in Sanskrit and other languages. He is skilled in crafts
such as sketching. He does services for those who are mature in knowledge or in years. It is said: ‘The qualities of
a man of endurance are heroism, indignation, speed, and cleverness.’ A Brahmin who does not drink makes a lot of
profits. A ‘bull’ is sexually potent. The man flirts by glossing over the flaws in the condition of the women’s bodies.
 Chapter 22  Courtesans 331

the breath of life, like a bull, friendly. He does not drink wine. He attracts women and flirts
with them but is not in their power. He has an independent income, is not coarse, prone to
anger, or nervous.
13
The woman’s qualities, on the other hand, are these: the woman is beautiful, young,
with auspicious marks, sweet, in love with good qualities but not with money, by nature
inclined to love and sex, with a steady mind, true to one type,* a seeker of special things,
never living in a greedy way, and fond of salons and the arts. 14The following are the common
qualities that the woman has, in addition: intelligence, good character, good behaviour,
honesty, gratitude, the ability to see far and long, no habit of interrupting or contradicting,
a knowledge of the right time and place, and urbanity.* And she is free from depression,
excessive laughter, malignant gossip, verbal abuse, anger, greed, dullness, and fickleness.
She speaks only when spoken to and is skilled in the Kamasutra and its ancillary sciences.
15
The inverses of these qualities are the faults. 16These are not eligible lovers: A man
wasting away, sick, with worms in his faeces* or ‘crow’s-mouth’, in love with his wife,
coarse in speech, miserly, or pitiless; a man whom the elders have thrown out, a thief, or a
hypocrite; a man who is addicted to love-sorcery done with roots, who does not care about
honour or dishonour, who can be bought for money even by people he hates, or is shameless.
17
Scholars say: ‘The reasons for taking a lover are passion, fear, gain, rivalry, revenge against
an act of hostility, curiosity, partially, exhaustion, religion, fame, compassion, the words of
a friend, diffidence, resemblance to someone loved, wealth allaying passion, a shared caste,
living in a house together, continuity, and the future’. 18Vatsyayana says: Gain, warding off

13
Here, too, V says ‘the woman’, not ‘the courtesan’. Auspicious marks indicate that she will have the good fortune
to be loved. A woman inclined to love and sex is fond of both external foreplay and the sexual act. When a woman
with a steady mind decides, ‘This has to be done’, she does it. A woman true to one type has one consistent form,
not a deceptive one.
15
The inverse of the common qualities are such faults as birth from a bad family and so forth, ugliness and so forth,
stupidity and so forth.* And if he has these, a lover is not a lover.
16
A man wasting away is suffering from tuberculosis (‘the royal sickness’). Worms in the faeces is a condition
generally called ‘faeces-flies’, in which worms appear in the opening from which faeces are excreted; when semen
infected with the disease through contact with the faeces enters a woman, she gets a fever. Crow’s-mouth is a foul-
smelling mouth; or else it means that, just as a crow puts things both pure and impure into his mouth, so this man
desires women without reflecting about it, and becomes ineligible for sex. A man who loves his wife does not give
the courtesan money because he never becomes attached to anyone else. A man who can be bought even by people
he hates is so greedy that he surely will not give her money.
17
These are the reasons: passion, which sometimes arises naturally, by itself, fear of death, like the fear that afflicted
Rambha because of Ravana, who said to her, ‘If you do not satisfy my desire, I will kill you’; gain, getting land and
so forth; rivalry, like that between the two women, Devadatta and Anangasena, who fought over Muladeva; curiosity,
which arises when one hears that a man is debauched and wonders, ‘Is he, really?’; exhaustion, for sex revivifies;
religion, which is served by sex with a learned Brahmin who has nothing; compassion, taking pity on someone who
says, ‘I will die if you will not make love with me’; the words of a friend, who says, ‘Someone to whom I owe a
favour has arrived; do, please, sleep with him tonight’: diffidence toward someone who has the status of an elder;
allaying passion, for an excessive volume of semen* is dispelled by sex with any man.
18
The author here is saying: This is a matter either of practical calculation or of abstract theory. Healing, friendship,
dispelling sorrow, and cultivating the arts are matters of practical calculation; while gain warding off losses, and
love are theoretical, for everything can be subsumed under them. The category of gain includes rivalry, curiosity,
332 VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

losses, and love are the reasons. 19Gain, however, should not be thwarted by love, since gain is
the chief concern. 20But the relative weight of fear and so forth* should be tested. That is how
to decide on a friend, an eligible lover, an ineligible lover, and the reasons for taking a lover.

Getting a Lover
21
Even when a lover propositions her, she does not accept him immediately, for men scorn
what is easy to get. 22In order to find out the lover’s true feelings she sends him servants with
masseurs, singers, and clowns, or people devoted to him. 23If they are not available, she sends
the libertine and so forth. From them she finds out if the man is pure or impure, passionate
or not passionate, attached to her or not attached, generous or not generous. 24And when
she has found out about him, she offers him her love through the mediation of the pander.
25
Under the pretext of a quail-fight, cock-fight, or ram-fight, or of hearing a parrot or a mynah
talk, or of a theatrical spectacle or some art, the libertine brings the man to her home, 26or her
to his. 27When the man arrives, she gives him a love-gift, something that will arouse his love
or erotic curiosity, saying, ‘This is for you alone, and no one else, to enjoy.’ 28She charms
him through whatever sort of conversation pleases him and through courtesies. 29When he has
gone, she immediately sends after him a servant girl to joke with him and to give him a small
gift. 30Or she herself goes, with the libertine, under some pretext. That is how to get a lover.
31
And there are verses about this:

When a man comes to her

she gives him, with love,
betel and garlands and carefully prepared fragrant oils,
and she engages him in conversation about the arts.
32
She gives him things out of affection
and exchanges things with him;
and of her own accord
she lets him know that she wants to make love.
33
Through love-gifts, hints,
and courtesies with just one meaning,
she becomes intimate with her lover, and after that
She gets him to love her.

partiality, exhaustion, religion, fame, the words of a friend, and allaying passion. The category of warding off losses
includes fear, hostility, and compassion. All the rest [passion, diffidence, resemblance to someone loved, a shared
caste, living in a house together, continuity, and the future] are subsumed under love.
21
And so there is a common saying:
He scorns the woman easy to get,
and desires the woman hard to get.
But when he has propositioned her over and over, she may accept him.
25
The art might be singing.
28
The conversation could be about poetry or about art. Giving him liquor, betel, and so forth are courtesies.
33
The pander and the others drop hints by saying, ‘Why don’t you sleep here?’ These courtesies make direct sug-
gestions about nothing but sex.
 Chapter 22  Courtesans 333

TWO: GIVING THE BELOVED WHAT HE WANTS

1
Once united with the man, she behaves like an only wife in order to make him love her.
2
A brief saying sums it up:
She makes him love her but does not become attached to him, though she acts as if she
were attached.
3
And she represents herself as dependent upon a mother who is cruel by nature and
cares about nothing but money, 4or if she does not have a mother, upon a woman who is
like a mother. 5This other woman, however, is not too fond of the lover, 6and tries to take
her daughter away by force. 7At this prospect, however, the woman continually exhibits
displeasure, loathing, shame, and fear, 8though she does not disobey the other woman’s
command. 9She announces that she has a unique disease that has no apparent cause, is not
disgusting, cannot be perceived with the eye, and is intermittent. 10She makes this excuse
when she has a reason not to go to the lover. 11But she sends a servant girl for his leftover
garlands* and betel.
12
When making love, she expresses wonder at what he does for her. 13She learns the sixty-
four arts of love,* 14and when he has taught her these methods, she practises them on him in
return, with constant repetition. 15When they are alone together she does what suits his indi-
vidual personality. 16She tells him her desires. 17She conceals any imperfections of her hidden
places. 18In bed, she does not ignore him when he turns toward her. 19She responds when he
touches her hidden places. 20She kisses and embraces him when he is asleep. 21She watches
him when his mind is elsewhere, and when she is standing on the rooftop porch of her house
and he recognises her there from the main street, she becomes shy and no longer cunning.

1
As it was said earlier [at 4.1.48], ‘An only wife... even a courtesan’. But if she is not the only one, then V tells her
how to give the man she loves what he wants, for when he is making love with her, she loves him.
3
She implies that she must do what her mother says.
6
She tries to take her daughter away to another lover.
7
She exhibits these feelings towards the man she goes to.
9
It is unique because it is artificial, a disease such as headache or stomach ache.
10
When she wants to make love with another lover, she uses her disease as her excuse.
11
The woman, who is not her mother, collects these things as if the courtesan wanted to say, ‘Even with this I will
find a kind of happiness’.
13
When she becomes aware of the sixty-four erotic techniques of Babhravya of Panchala, she says, ‘Teach me how
to do it’.
14
She uses them afterwards again and again on this very lover, so that he understands. ‘She has made such an effort
just for my pleasure!’
16
When they are alone, she says, ‘My desires were to make love and laugh with you all night long.’
17
She does not let him see or touch anything flawed in her armpits, thighs, or sexual organ, for fear that it might
dampen his ardour.
18
To proclaim her affection, she sleeps facing him.
21
She also watches him when he is on the main street, even when she is on the rooftop porch of her house. When
he sees her, she thinks, ‘My lover is looking’, and she becomes shy, and that is what destroys her cunning. If she did
not show her shyness, he would imagine that she was cunning, for he would think, ‘Her affection is artificial, since
she looks right at me all the time.
334 VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

22
She hates anyone he hates, and likes anyone he likes. She takes her pleasure in what
gives him pleasure, and rejoices and sorrows as he does. She wants to know about his
women. And her anger does not last long. 23She worries that some other woman has left
the marks of nails and teeth or him, even when she herself has made them. 24She does
not speak of her passion for him, 25but shows it by her signals. 26And when she is drunk,
asleep, or ill, she talks about it* 27and about the man’s good deeds. 28When he is talking,
she grasps the point of what he is saying, and when she has considered it, and there is
an opportunity to praise him, she speaks; she makes a reply to what he has said, if he is
devoted to her. 29She is attentive to all his stories, except when they are about another
wife. 30When he sighs, yawns, stumbles, or falls, she wishes him health; 31when he sneezes,
cries out, or is startled, she exclaims, ‘Live!’* 32If she becomes depressed, she pretends
to be ill or to have the morbid longings that pregnant women have. 33She does not praise
another man for his good qualities, 34nor blame another man for the flaws that he has in
common with her man.
35
She keeps anything he has given her. 36When there has been a false* accusation of infi-
delity or some misfortune has occurred, she wears no jewellery and refuses to eat. 37And she
grieves in unity with him. 38She chooses to leave the region with him and to be ransomed
from the king. 39She can live a long life only because she has him. 40When he gets money,
or achieves something he wants, or improves his physical strength, she makes an offering
to her personal deity as she had promised in advance. 41She always takes care to dress well
and wear jewellery, and takes little food. 42She mentions his name and his lineage in her

22
She sends spies to find out if he loves other women.
24
She does not say, ‘I feel very passionate; make love with me!’
25
She does this so that he knows she is tormented by desire.
26
She feigns intoxication, feigns sleep and pretends she has become ill as a result of his failure to make love with
her; she says, ‘I have become ill from lack of sex.’
27
If he has done something to get religious merit, such as building a temple for the gods or a pool, she says, ‘well done!’
28
She says, ‘How well that was said! who else knows how to speak like that?’ Responding to the speech of a man
in whom affection has not yet arisen would be, on the other hand, an embarrassment.
29
In order to express her jealousy and anger, she does not respond to a story about another wife.
32
When she is depressed because she has heard something unpleasant about the man and he ask s her the cause of
her depression, she says, ‘I have had this illness for a long time; it is an old enemy that afflicts me.’
33
Or else he will think, ‘She is attached to another man’
36
As long as he thinks, ‘She has veen unfaithful’ for that entire period in order to prove him wrong, she demonstrates
the torment of her body by acting exhausted, anointing her limbs with oil fasting, and so forth. A misfortune might
be the death of the man’s son or brother and so forth, or his falling ill or getting a fever.
37
She laments, saying, ‘How can this have happened to you when you have done nothing wrong’ In this way she
shows him, ‘I too am miserable because of this misery.’
38
She says, ‘My mother is truly perverse. Take me away from her and bring me to another country, where I Can live
independently.’ And if she is bound to the king, she gets him to like this idea: ‘Ransom me from the hands of the
king, or else he will have me brought back when I have run away.’
39
‘Otherwise I will die at any moment’, she says.
40
He gets back his physical strength after an illness. She says, ‘Formerly, I asked the Goddess to fulfill my hopes for
getting money and so forth, and that is why these wishes have been fulfilled; now I must make the offering to her.’
 Chapter 22  Courtesans 335

songs; when she is weary, she lays his hand on her breast and forehead, and she falls asleep
in the pleasure that she experiences in that. 43She sits on his lap and goes to sleep there, and
when he gets up and moves away from her, she goes after him. 44She wants to have a child
by him, and does not want to live longer than he.
45
When they are alone together, she does not speak of things that he does not know. 46She
restrains him from making a vow or fasting, by saying, ‘It is my fault.’ But if this is not
possible, then she too takes on that role. 47If there is a quarrel, she says, ‘Even he cannot
decide the matter.’* 48She herself looks upon what is his and what is hers as indistinguish-
able. 49She does not go to parties and so forth without him.
50
She is proud of wearing leftover garlands and eating leftover food. 51She admires his
lineage, character, artistic skill, caste, knowledge, class, wealth, homeland, friends, good
qualities, age, and sweetness. 52She urges him to sing, and so forth, if he knows how. 53She
goes to him with no regard for danger, cold, heat, or rain. 54On the occasion of making funeral
offerings for reincarnation in other bodies she says, ‘And let him alone be mine!’* 55She
does what he wants with regard to his wishes, tastes, feelings, and character. 56She is suspi-
cious of love-sorcery worked with roots. 57She always argues with her mother about going
to him, 58and if her mother forces her to go elsewhere, then she longs for poison, fasting to
death, a sword, or a rope. 59And she convinces the man of this, through her secret agents,
or she herself makes him grasp her situation. 60But she does not argue about money, 61and
she does nothing without her mother.
62
When he goes on a journey, she makes him swear to return quickly. 63And when he is
away, she makes a yow to abstain from washing and she refuses to wear jeweller, except
for jewellery with religious meaning and power. Or she wears one conch-shell bangle.
64
She remembers things that happened in the past, goes to fortunetellers and oracles who
channel supernatural voices, and envies the constellations, the moon, the sun, and the

43
When he goes to a friend’s house, or to see a deity, then she thinks, ‘I cannot be separated from him for even a
moment’, and she herself follows him.
44
She says, ‘I am in my fertile period and so you should not sleep anywhere else!’ and ‘If my death comes before
his, it would be a blessing.
46
She takes the same vow.
47
If there is a quarrel with someone about a fine point of meaning in some matter, she says, ‘If anyone can do it, he
is the one.’
50
She says, ‘Give me your leftover garlands and so forth. And when you are invited somewhere and do not take me
with you always send me what you do not eat.
56
When he says, ‘You are always using love-sorcery to put me in your power, so that I will be totally submissive to
you’, she replies, ‘No! I would never do anything like that!’
58
Her mother forces her to go to another lover.
59
She convinces him that it is all her mother’s fault alone, not hers. Her position is that the lives of courtesans are
despicable, because their mothers, thirsting for money, make them abandon a man they are fond of and join them
with some other man.
61
In the end, when her mother tells her even what to eat, she does not disobey.
64
She envies them, thinking, ‘They are being rewarded for their merit, for my lover sees them; I must have no merit,
for he does not see me.’
336 VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

stars. 65When she has a dream-vision of what she longs for, she says, ‘May I be united
with him!’ 66If she is disturbed by a dream of what she does not long for, she performs the
ritual to set it at peace.
67
When he is coming home, she performs a ritual to honour the god Kama, 68makes
offerings to the deities, 69brings out a full pot* with her girlfriends, 70and performs a ritual
to honour the crows.* 71And right after he comes to her for the first time, she does this very
same thing, without the ritual to honour the crows.
72
To a man who is attached to her she says that she will follow him even beyond death.*
73
The signs of his being attached to her are that he trusts her with his true feelings, lives in
the same way as she does, carries out her plans, is without suspicion, and has no concern
for money matters.
74
All of this has been said to give an example taken from the teachings of Dattaka. What
remains unsaid is what a person learns from the experience of the world and from the nature
of men. 75And there are two verses about this:

Because of the subtlety and excessive greed of women.

and the impossibility of knowing their nature,
the signs of their desire are hard to know,
even for those who are its object.
76
Women desire and they become indifferent,
they arouse love and they abandon;
even when they are extracting all the money,
they are not really known.

65
If she sees an auspicious dream that is true, she tells her people about it in the morning. If she has a false dream,
she tells them she did not have a dream. If her lover is in another region and has some wish that is not fulfilled, she
knows of this by these various dreams.
66
If she thinks, ‘Something unwished-for has happened to him’, she summons the Brahmins.
71
She says, ‘I am fulfilling the promise I made when I said, ‘If my beloved comes back to me, I will give you a ball
of rice.
72
She says, ‘When you have gone to heaven, it will not be possible for me to live.’
 Chapter 22  Courtesans 337

THREE: WAYS TO GET MONEY FROM HIM

1
She has both natural and contrived ways of getting money from a man who is attached to
her. 2Scholars have said about this: ‘She should not use contrived means for this, if she can
obtain it naturally or get even more through inventiveness.’ 3Vatsyayana says: He will give
double the agreed amount when it is embellished through a contrived means.
4
She contrives the following pretexts to get money from him: She gets money in order
to take from merchants, on credit against future payment, such things as jewellery, cooked
food, raw ingredients, drinks, garlands, garments, and perfumes.* 5She praises his wealth
to his face. 6She pretends to need money for such things as vows, trees, parks, temples,
pools, gardens, festivals, and love-gifts. 7She says that her jewellery was stolen by guards
or thieves, as a result of her going to him, 8that her property in the house was lost through
fire, someone breaking through a wall, or carelessness, 9and so was some jewellery that the
owner has asked to have back, and the man’s jewellery. And she lets him know, through
spies, about the expenses she has incurred in order to go to him. 10She incurs debts for his
sake, and she quarrels with her mother about the expenses that he has caused her.
11
She no longer goes to parties given by friends, because she has no presents for them.
12
And the valuable present that these friends previously brought her, which she had men-
tioned previously, now must be reciprocated. 13She abruptly ceases her usual activities.
14
She engages artisans on the man’s behalf. 15She does favours for a physician and a min-
ister of state for the sake of a particular project. 16When disasters befall friends who have
done her favours, she helps them out. 17She carries out home improvements. She outfits

3
She will get double what would come to her through natural means and discussion, and without deductions.
4
He gives her the money but she does not actually get the things.
7
She says this so that he thinks, ‘She was robbed coming to my side’, and gives her other jewellery.
8
She reports to him, ‘Through carelessness, a fire broke out and burnt up my property.’ She herself must not set
a fire, however, because then through her fault many lives might be lost. Or thieves, or people who pretend to be
thieves, dig an opening in a wall to rob the house. She says, ‘Through my carelessness, or my mother’s, things were
lost in the house.’
9
Someone else had hidden jewellery there, for some reason, and now has asked to have it back; and the man had left
his own jewellery there. But now that he learns that it has been destroyed by fire, of course he gives her money, and
does not ask for his own jewellery. In front of the man, spies brought in by servants sent by the man say, ‘To come
to you, she spent these funds on rum, betel, and so forth.’
12
She says, ‘These friends brought valuable presents to me at my festival.’ She had mentioned them to him before
the friends’ party had taken place. For when she asks for them in advance he gives them at the time of the affair, and
if he does not give them, she certainly does not go to him then.
13
She abruptly ceases her daily care of her body, so that he thinks, ‘Now she is not even able to care for her body’,
and gives her money.
14
She says, ‘This excellent artisan demands a lot to do the work, and I do not have it, but if you give it, the work will
be done; if not, I will have it done when I have the money.’
16
These favours were do ne for the man, and those for whom the favours have been done will do favours for the man
if disasters—of human origin or acts of gods—befall him.
17
The pregnant woman is her girlfriend. The courtesan says to the man, ‘Because of the death of a son (or whatever)
of a friend of yours, I am so unhappy. Seeing this, you should cheer me up.’ With this sort of pretext she manages
the home improvements and so forth.
338 VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

the son of a girlfriend on a ceremonial occasion. There are the longings that a pregnant
woman has for special food. She is ill. She cheers up an unhappy friend. 18She sells a part
of her jewellery for the man’s sake. 19She shows a merchant the jewellery that she always
uses, or the household goods and cooking utensils, in order to sell them. 20When there is
a pooling of similar household goods with those of rival courtesans de luxe, she takes the
special ones. 21She does not forget former kindnesses, and she speaks warmly of them in
public. 22Through spies, she makes sure that he hears about the abundant gains made by
rival courtesans de luxe. 23Then, in the man’s presence, she describes to those women her
own even greater gains, whether or not this is so, with an air of embarrassment. 24She openly
refuses men with whom she has had former connections, when they try to get her to come
back to them again by offering her abundant gains. 25She remarks on the generosity of the
man’s rivals. 26And if she thinks, ‘He will not come back’, she begs like a child. Those are
the ways to get money.

Signs That His Passion Is Cooling

27
She always knows when his passion is cooling, from the changes in his natural feelings
and the look of his face. 28He gives her too little of too much. 29He is close with those who
are against her. 30He pretends to do one thing and does something else. 31He abruptly stops
doing what he usually does. 32He forgets his promises, or keeps them in the wrong way. 33He
speaks with his own people through signs. 34He sleeps somewhere else, making the excuse
that he has to do something for a friend. 35He talks secretly with the servant of a woman
who was previously his mistress.

19
In the presence of the lover, the woman shows the jewellery and so forth to a merchant with whom she has a prior
understanding, so that the man thinks, ‘She must have nothing left at all, if she is trying to sell the things she uses
all the time’, and so he gives her money.
20
Here V cites the teaching of Dattaka—‘When there is a pooling of similar household goods, she takes the special
ones’—and adds a phrase to clarify it: ‘with rival courtesans de luxe.’ Because the goods are similar, they accidentally
get exchanged, and so that this should not happen again, in the presence of her lover she takes from the hand of the
merchant, from time to time, some goods that are superior in both size and quality, so that the lover will give her
money to pay for it. Generally, courtesans of the same class borrow one another’s household goods as the need arises.
21
She praises them in his presence, so that he says, ‘The kindness that I did has not come to naught here’, and he
gives her money again.
23
She does this so that he too becomes ashamed, and gives her money.
24
She does this so that he hears about this, says, ‘She loves me’, and gives her money.
26
Thinking, ‘He will not come back to this house’, she gets a child to request, ‘Give this to me’. Or else it means that
she abandons her shame, like a child, and begs him.
29
He makes friends with those in the faction opposed to the woman.
31
He does not give her what he has been giving her even day.
33
He does not communicate with them with words, for he thinks, ‘She must not hear this.’
 Chapter 22  Courtesans 339

Before he realises it, she finds some pretext and gets her hands on his valuables.* 37A
36

creditor takes them from her hands by force. 38If he argues about this, he can be sued in
court. Those are the signs that his passion is cooling.

Ways to Get Rid of Him

39
If a man is attached to her and has done favours for her in the past, even if he now yields
but little fruit, she keeps him around by lying. 40But if he has nothing left at all and no
resources to do anything about it, she gets rid of him by some contrivance, without any
consideration, and gets support from another man. 41She does for him what he does not
want, and she does repeatedly what he has criticised. She curls her lip and stamps on the
ground with her foot. She talks about things he does not know about. She shows no amaze-
ment, but only contempt, for the things he does know about. She punctures his pride. She
has affairs with men who are superior to him. She ignores him. She criticises men who
have the same faults. And she stalls when they are alone together. 42She is upset by the
things he does for her when they are making love. She does not offer him her mouth. She
keeps him away from between her legs. She is disgusted by wounds made by nails or teeth.
When he tries to hug her, she repels him by making a ‘needle’ with her arms. Her limbs
remain motionless. She crosses her thighs. She wants only to sleep. When she sees that he
is exhausted, she urges him on. She laughs at him when he cannot do it, and she shows no
pleasure when he can. When she notices that he is aroused, even in the daytime, she goes
out to be with a crowd.
43
She intentionally distorts the meaning of what he says. She laughs when he has not
made a joke, and when he has made a joke, she laughs about something else. When he is
talking, she looks at her entourage with sidelong glances and slaps them. And when she
has interrupted his story, she tells other stories. She talks in public about the bad habits and
vices that he cannot give up. Through a servant girl, she insults him where he is vulnerable.

36
She does this before he realises, ‘My passion for her is cooling’.
37
She had taken the man’s money from this creditor, who had had it as a debt; and by a previous agreement, the
creditor took it back by overpowering her by force.
38
If the man argues, ‘But this is mine; why are you taking it?’ the creditor sues him in court. And if he does not
argue, the goal is achieved.
39
She deceives him, because he is still attached to her. But even if he has previously done her many favours, she
gets rid of him if he wants another woman.
40
If someone should remark, ‘How can she just throw him out, when he has given her sexual pleasure and profit?’
V replies, ‘She gets support from another man’, and this man gives her both pleasure and profit.
42
She crosses her two arms, places her hands on her own shoulders, and puts her two arms together to make a needle.
When he tries to make love, with some difficulty, and she sees that he is exhausted, she urges him to go on, but does
not help him out by offering to play the part of the man [2.8.1]. There actually is a kind of sexual donkey who makes
love in the daytime even though it is forbidden. When she realises, from his gestures and signals, that he wants to
make love, she goes out.
340 VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

44
She does not see him when he comes to her. She asks for things that should not be asked
for. And at the end, the release* happens of itself. That is Dattaka’s view of the liaison.
45
And there are two verses about this:

The work of a courtesan is to test lovers and then join with them,
to enchant the man she joins,
to get money from the man she has enchanted,
and at the end to release him.
46
A Courtesan who manages a liaison
according to this method
is not cheated by her lovers
but makes piles of money.

44
It was Dattaka who set forth the rules for the relationship between the lover and the courtesan, up to this point; I
did not invent it. For it was he who decided, through the commission of the courtesans, to make this condensation.
But it was Babhravya who set forth in a useful form what I am going to tell now, about getting back together with
an ex-lover and so forth.
 Chapter 22  Courtesans 341

FOUR: GETTING BACK TOGETHER WITH AN EX-LOVER

When she is getting rid of her present lover after she has squeezed all the money out of him,
1

she may get together with a man who was previously her lover. 2If he still has money or has
made money, and still loves her, she can get together with him. 3If he has gone elsewhere,
she must find out about him; he may belong in any of the six possible categories, according
to the circumstances:
4
[a] He left her of his own accord and he left the other woman, too, of his own accord.
5
[b] He left both her and the other woman because they got rid of him.
6
[c] He left her of his own accord and he left the other woman because she got rid of him.
7
[d] He left her of his own accord and stayed with the other woman.
8
[e] He left her because she got rid of him and he left the other woman of his own accord.
9
[f] He left her because she got rid of him and he stayed with the other woman.
10
[a] If a man who left both her and the other woman of his own accord tries to talk her
into taking him back, she should not take him back, because he has a fickle mind and has
scorned the qualities of both women.
11
[b] A man who left both her and the other woman because they got rid of him has a
constant mind. If the other woman got rid of him, even though he has money, because she
could get a lot of money from another man, the courtesan may take him back, thinking,
‘Since that woman insulted him, he will give me a lot of money out of spite.’ 12But if she
rejected him because he has no money or is stingy, he is not a good prospect.*
13
[c] If he left her of his own accord and left the other woman because she got rid of him,
and if he gives her more than he did the first time, then he is fit for a liaison.
14
[d] If a man who left her of his own accord, and stayed with the other woman, tries to
talk her into taking him back, she must find out about him. 15She may think, ‘He went away
because he was looking for something special, and now he wants to come back from her to
me because he did not see that special something; and if he comes back because he wants
to know me better, he will give me a lot of money, because of his love for me. or, because
he has seen her faults and now sees that I have most of the good qualities being a man who
recognises good qualities, he will give me the most money.’ 16But if she realises, ‘He is a
child, whose gaze never rests in a single place, or a man who generally breaks agreements, or
someone who Joes anything he can do, as fickle in his passion as turmeric is in its colour’,*
then she either will or will not get back together with him.
17
[e] If a man who left her because she got rid of him, and left the other woman of his own
accord, tries to talk her into taking him back, she: must find out about him: 18If he comes
back because he loves me, he will give me a lot of money. Since that other woman did not
please him, my good qualities will win him over. 19Or since, in the past, I got rid of him for
no cause, now he wants to cultivate me and vent his hatred on me. Or he wants to get my
confidence and get back, in retaliation, the wealth that I look away from him when he was
courting me. Or he wants to get revenge by breaking me away from my present lover and

15
‘He was looking for some special kind of sex, which he did not see in that woman, because she lacked sophistica-
tion. He wants to come back from her to me, because he has seen that special something in me.’
342 VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

then abandoning me.’ A man that has such unpleasant ways of thinking is not one to get
back together with. 20Time will reveal if he changes his way of thinking.
21
[f] A man who left her because she got rid of him, and stayed with the other woman,
and tries to talk her into taking him back, has been covered by this last case. 22Among those
who try to talk her into taking them back, the one who stayed with the other woman is the
one that she herself tries to talk herself into taking back: 23‘I got rid of this man for a false
reason, and he went elsewhere, and now I should make an effort to bring him back.’ 24Or,
‘Once he hears from me, he will break away from her 25and he will stop her income.’ 26Or,
‘He has now come into some money; he is living in a bigger house; he has an administrative
job. He has separated from his wives. He has freed himself from those on whom he was
dependent. He has split with his father or brother.’ 27Or, ‘If I get together with him, I will
get the wealthy lover whom he is now keeping away from me.’ 28Or, ‘His wife has treated
me with contempt; I will get him to leave her.’* 29Or, ‘His friendis in love with my co-wife,
who hates me: I will use him to get his friend to break away from her.’ 30Or, ‘I will make
trouble for him by making him appear light-minded, because of his fickleness.’
31
The libertine and the others explain to him that the woman got rid of him before because
her mother was so evil-minded, and she herself was powerless, even though she was in love
with him; 32and that, although she sleeps with her present lover, she has no desire, and she
hates him. 33They try to get him back by playing upon his memories of her and his former
love for her, 34and they say, ‘She vividly remembers what you did for her.’ That is how to
get back together with an ex-lover.
35
Scholars say: ‘Between two lovers, one who had an affair with her in the past and one
who did not, the one who had an affair with her in the past is better. For she knows his
character and has seen his passion, and he serves her well. 36Vatsyayana says: A man who
had an affair with her in the past does not give her very much money, because all the money
has aiready been squeezed out of him, and it is hard to get his trust again; but a man who
did not have an affair-with her in the past easily falls in love with her. 37Nevertheless, there
are exceptions according to the nature of the man.
38
And there are verses about this:

She may wish to get back together again

to break another woman away from the lover,

27
‘He is keeping him away from me now, because of his friendship with him.’
28
When I had broken with him, he went back to his own wife. And I will treat her with contempt because of this, and
by getting back together with him I will get him to leave her, and so I will get revenge for this insult’
29
‘The friend of my ex-lover has power and possessions, and he is in love with my present or former co-wife, who
wishes to harm me. By means of the ex-lover, I will get that friend to break away, so that she will have no profit and
will have to do favours for me.’
30
‘He left me to go elsewhere, and he also left her to go elsewhere.’
34
They mention what he did for her, by giving money or warding off losses, to show that she is grateful.
38
Breaking another woman away from the lover’ refers to the situations in which ‘his wife has treated me with con-
tempt’ [28] or ‘his friend is in love with my co-wife, who hates me’ [29]. ‘Hurting the lover who stays with another
woman’ refers to the situation in which ‘he will stop her income’ [25]. ‘Breaking the ex-lover away from another
woman’ states a reason for staying with the ex-lover.
 Chapter 22  Courtesans 343

or the lover from another woman,

and to hurt, again, the lover who stays with another woman.
39
When a man is too deeply attached to her,
he fears that she will make love with another man
and he disregards her lies.
And, because of his fear, he gives her a lot.
40
She welcomes the man who is not attached* to her
and scorns the man who is attached to her.
And if a messenger should come from another man
who is very experienced,
41
a woman stalls for time with her former lover,
when he is trying to talk her into taking him back:
she makes sure that the connection is unbroken,
and does not give up the man who is attached to her.
42
But a woman may talk with a man who is attached to her
and in her power and then, nevertheless, go elsewhere.
And when she has taken the money from him, too,
she enchants just the man who is attached to her.
43
A clever woman gets back together with an ex-lover
only after she has tested, at the start,
the future outlook, the gain,
the abundant love, and the friendship.

40
The man who is not attached to her is an ex-lover who is still very much in love with her; she welcomes him
because his feelings for her are known. The man who is attached to her is not in love with her, and so she treats him
with contempt. Another man, who is very clever, gives her a great deal of money, saying, ‘Do not make a connec-
tion with another man.’
41
Although he uses the more general term, ‘a woman’, he is referring only to a courtesan in this section. She does
not make love with the man right then, or else there might be a break from her present, attached, profitable lover.
And the previously intimate ex-lover is willing to wait for another time, because he loves her so much and has hope.
42
She enchants just the man who is attached to her because she loves him for having stayed; she does not make any
connection with the other man.
344 VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

FIVE: WEIGHING DIFFERENT KINDS OF PROFITS

1
If she has a multitude of lovers and can make a lot of money every day, she need not
confine herself to a single lover. 2Taking into account the place, the time, and the condi-
tions, and her own qualities and luck in love, and whether she is charging more or less
than other women, she establishes the price of a night. 3She also sends messengers to her
lover, and she herself summons men with whom he has some connection. 4She may go
two, three, or even four times to a single lover in order to take extraordinary profits, and
then she establishes a liaison.
5
Scholars say: ‘When she has several lovers at once, however, who offer equal opportuni-
ties for profit, the obvious choice is the one who gives her whatever she-wants.* 6Vatsyayana
says: The one who gives gold is best, because gold cannot be taken back again and can buy
everything that is needed. 7Of gold, silver, copper, bronze, iron, furniture, utensils, bedding,
blankets, special clothing, perfumed articles, sharp spices, dishes, ghee, sesame oil, grain,
and the species of cattle, each should be chosen rather than the one that follows. 8When
the things are the same, or of the same quality, the choice should be made on the basis of a
friend’s advice, temporary needs, future needs, the lover’s qualities, and love.
9
Scholars say: ‘Between a lover who is in love and another who is generous, the obvious
choice is the generous one.’ 10Vatsyayana says: But it is possible to cultivate generosity in
a man who is in love. 11For even a greedy man, if he is in love, spends generously, but a
generous man cannot be made to fall in love through mere persistence.
12
Scholars say: ‘In this case [of a man in love versus a generous man], too, between a
wealthy man and one who is not wealthy, the choice is the wealthy man; and between a
generous man and a man who does what she needs to have done at the moment, the clear
choice is the man who does what she needs to have.’ 13Vatsyayana says: But the man who
does what she needs to have done, when he has done it once, thinks that he has given satis-
faction. A generous man, however, has no regard for the past. 14In this case [of a generous
man versus a man who does what she needs], too, the choice is for the man who takes care
of future needs.
15
Scholars say: ‘Between a grateful man and a generous man, the clear choice is the
generous man.’ 16But even when she has pleased a generous man for a long time, when
he sees one false move or believes unjust slander by a rival courtesan de luxe, he has no
regard for the trouble she went to in the past. 17For in general, generous men are dignified,
straightforward, and thoughtless. 18Vatsyayana says: A grateful man has regard for the
trouble she has taken in the past and his passion does not’ suddenly cool toward her. And

8
The woman chooses on the basis of her own love and the man’s love for her.
13
Because he is generous, he does not consider the past and say, ‘I already gave money to her, and I will not give
it again.’
16
A false move is an infidelity committed by the woman.
17
Because they are dignified, they do not disregard a false move. Because they are straightforward, they accept unjust
slander, such as, ‘That woman is always making false moves.’ Because they are thoughtless, they have no regard for
the pains a woman takes on their behalf.
18
He does not accept unjust slander.
 Chapter 22  Courtesans 345

since his character has been tested and proven, he is not susceptible to unjust slander.*
19
In this case [of a generous man versus a grateful man], too, the choice is for the man who
takes care of future needs.
20
Scholars say: ‘Between a friend’s advice and getting money, the clear choice is for get-
ting money.’ 21Vatsyayana says: Money will be gained in the future, too; but a friend whose
advice is once disregarded may become offended. 22In this case [of a friend’s advice versus
getting money], too, the choice is for the man who takes care of temporary needs. 23In this
case, she brings the friend around by showing what she needs to have done, saying, ‘I will
take your advice for what is going to happen tomorrow’, and then she still keeps the money
for her temporary needs.
24
Scholars say: ‘Between getting money and warding off losses, the clear choice is
getting money.’ 25Vatsyayana says: Money gained has a limit; loss, however, once it
breaks out, continues to move in directions that no one can predict. 26In this case [of get-
ting money versus warding off losses], too, the choice must be made with regard to the
relative weight of each factor. 27This means that the choice is for a loss warded off rather
than a doubtful gain.
28
The top courtesans de luxe spend their excess profits by building temples, pools, and
gardens; setting up raised mounds and fire altars; giving thousands of cows to Brahmins
through the mediation of people worthy to receive them; bringing and offering articles of
worship to the gods, or providing money sufficient to spend on that worship. 29Those who
live on their beauty spend their excess profits by getting jewellery for all their limbs, deco-
rating their houses elegantly, and glorifying the furnishings of their houses with expensive
household goods and servants. 30Servant women who carry pots of water spend their excess
profits by having spotless clothes to wear all the time, buying food and drink to stave off
hunger, using perfumed things and betel all the time, and wearing jewellery that is partly
to made of gold. 31Scholars say: ‘This example of the top courtesans de luxe also applies to
the excess profit of all of them, even the middle and lowest ones.’ 32Vatsyayana says: This
is not a real livelihood, because the profit is not constant, depending as it does on place,
time, ability, power, love, and people’s customs.
33
If she desires to keep a lover from going elsewhere, or if she desires to get a man away
from some woman to whom he is attached, or if she wants to separate another woman from
her gains, or if she thinks that by taking up with a man who is not eligible she will improve
her own position, prosperity, future, and her sex appeal; or if she desires to get the man
to help her ward off a loss; or if she wishes to betray another man who is attached to her,
because she regards his former favours as if they had never been done; or if she simply
wants love; then she will even take just a very small profit from a man of good intentions.
34
She will not, however, take anything at all if she is thinking of the future and seeks refuge
with him in the hope of warding off a loss.

26
A heavy gain outweighs a light loss, and a heavy loss outweighs a light gain.
28
Mediation is given through the hand of another person, since a Brahmin cannot receive a gift from a courtesan.
29
Those who live on their beauty do not know the arts.
31
The middle and lowest are the women who live on their beauty and the women who carry water pots.
346 VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

35
But if she thinks, ‘I will abandon him and take up a liaison with someone else’; ‘He
will go’; ‘He will get together with his wives’; or, ‘He will lose his money’; ‘His supervisor
or his master or father will come and work on him like an elephant goad’; or, ‘He will lose
his position’; or, ‘He is fickle’, then she wants to make her profits from him in the present
moment. 36If she thinks, ‘He will get the favour that the ruler promised him’; ‘He will obtain
an administrative post or position’; or, ‘The time for him to get his livelihood is coming near;
his ship will come in; his landholding or grain will ripen’; ‘What is done for him is not lost;
he always keeps his word’, then she wants him for the future, or she engages him in a liaison.
37
And there are verses about this:

For both future and present purposes,

she should avoid, at a great distance,
men who have amassed their wealth with difficulty
and men who are the cruel favourites of the king.
38
She should make every effort to captivate
men whom it is disastrous to avoid
and prosperous to seek,
and she should use every pretext to get close to them
39
And she should seek out, even by spending her own money
those who think on a large scale and have great energy,
those who, in a good mood, will give her money
even for some small matter, and without counting it.
 Chapter 22  Courtesans 347

SIX: CALCULATING GAINS AND LOSSES,

CONSEQUENCES AND DOUBTS
1
Losses result even from gains that are being amassed, and so do other consequences and
doubts. 2All of these come from weakness of mind; from excesses of passion, of self-
importance, of duplicity, of honesty, of confidence, and of anger; and from carelessness,
recklessness, and the workings of fate. 3Their results are the failure to reap the fruits from
expenditures that have been made; lack of a future; blockage of money that is supposed
to come in; disappearance of what has been gained; development of a harsh temperament;
sexual vulnerability; injury to the body; hair-loss; collapse; and mutilation of the limbs.
4
Therefore, from the very start one should try to root out these causes and pay attention to
the factors that increase gains.
5
The three gains are money, religious merit, and pleasure,* 6and the three losses are loss
of money, loss of religious merit, and hatred. 7The production of something from something
else, when these three gains are being amassed, is a consequence. 8‘Is it to be or not to be?’ is a
pure doubt about the uncertainty of achieving an object. 9‘Will this happen or that?’ is a mixed
doubt. 10Two goals achieved when a single goal was being pursued make a two-sided result,
11
and something produced by a group is a group result. We will be referring to these. 12The
form of the three gains has been discussed. The three losses are precisely the opposite of them.*
13
A gain that has the consequence of further gain occurs when she has a lover of the high-
est class and openly gets money from him but also becomes acceptable, sexually accessible,
and sought after by other men and gets a future. 14A gain that has no consequence occurs
when she goes from one lover to another merely for profit.
15
A gain that has the consequence of a loss occurs when a man attached to her gives her
money from someone else, which cuts off her future and puts an end to her money; or when
she has a lover who is low or hated by everyone, which destroys her future. 16A loss that
has the consequence of a gain occurs when, by spending her own money, she takes as a
lover a hero or minister of state or a powerful man who is greedy; even though this liaison
is fruitless, it brings a future with it and is undertaken in order to prevent some disaster or
to allay some factor that might be greatly destructive of her gains.
17
A loss that has no consequences occurs when she gratifies, even by spending her own
money, a miser who thinks he is lucky in love, or an ungrateful man who by his very nature
cheats, and in the end this is fruitless. 18A loss that has the consequence of further loss occurs
when she gratifies in that very way just such a man who is a favourite of the king, rich in cruelty
and power, and in the end this is fruitless, but when she gets rid of him that also does her harm.
19
The consequences for religious merit and pleasure can be calculated in the same way,
20
and each can be combined with one of the others in the appropriate way. Those are the
consequences.

12
The gains have been discussed in the passage about the three aims of human life [1.1.2].
15
Because of his own lack of funds, the man who is attached to a woman gives her money that he took from another
man and should give back to him, so that people say, ‘She is living with a robber.’
20
There are twenty-four combinations of consequences: each of the six—gain, loss, religious merit, violation of
religion, pleasure, and hatred—coupled with four of the others.
348 VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

21
The doubt about money is, ‘Will he give it or not lower, even if he is fully satisfied?’
22
The doubt about religious merit is, ‘Will I serve religion or not, by throwing out a man
from whom no more money can be taken, once all the money has been squeezed out of him
and he is no longer fruitful?’ 23The doubt about pleasure is, ‘Will there be pleasure or not,
if I go to a servant or some other low man whom I find attractive?’
24
The doubt about loss is, ‘If I do not go to a powerful but low man, will that cause me
a loss or not?’ 25The doubt about the violation of religion is, ‘If I abandon a man who is
attached to me but is absolutely fruitless, and he goes to the world of his ancestors, does that
violate religion or not?’ 26The doubt about hatred is, ‘Will my passion cool or not toward a
man whom I do not find attractive and who hesitates even to speak of passion? Those are
the pure doubts.
27
Now for the mixed doubts. 28The doubt is: ‘Will gain or loss result from gratifying a
newcomer whose character is unknown or a newly arrived man who is powerful because he
has the protection of a favourite?’ 29The doubt is: ‘Will I serve religion or violate it if I go,
on the sympathetic advice of a friend, to a Brahmin who knows the Veda, or to a man who
is under a vow of chastity or consecrated for a sacrifice, or a man who has taken a vow or
who wears the sign of a religious order, if he has seen me and conceived a passion for me
and wants to die?’ 30The doubt is: ‘Will pleasure or hatred result if I go to a man without
knowing if he has or does not have good qualities, because people have not yet tested him?’
31
Each can be combined with one of the others. This ends the discussion of the mixed doubts.
32
These are the two-sided results, according to Auddalakr. ‘A two-sided gain occurs when
she goes to another man and gain comes, also, from the man who is attached to her, out of
rivalry.33 A two-sided loss occurs when she spends her own money on a fruitless liaison
with another man, and the man who is attached to her, unable to put up with that, takes back
the money he, had given her. 34 A two-sided doubt about gain occurs when she has gone
to another man and worries, “Will there be gain in this or not?” and “Will the man who is
attached to me also give something, out of rivalry, or not?” 35A two-sided doubt about loss
occurs when she has gone to a man at her own expense: “Will my former lover, in his frus-
tration and anger, do me harm or not?” and, “Will the man who is attached to me, unable
to put up with it, take back the money he had given me or not?”’
36
But the followers of Babhravya say: 37‘A two-sided gain occurs when gain comes both
from the man she goes to and from the man who is attached to her to whom she does not
go. 38A two-sided loss occurs when she spends her money fruitlessly on going to another
man and cannot recoup her loss of money from the man she does not go to. 39A two-sided
doubt about gain occurs when she has gone to another man, and she wonders: “Will he give
me money without my incurring expenses or not?” and “Will the man who is attached to
me and to whom I have not gone give me money or not?” 40A two-sided doubt about loss
occurs when she has gone to another man at her own expense, and she wonders: “Will my
former lover, frustrated, demonstrate his powers or not?’ and, ‘Will the one I do not go to
become angry and cause me a loss or not?”’

26
He hesitates to say, ‘There will be no pleasure’, because he is tormented by passion. But he is not even attractive to her.
27
He wants to die because he has reached the final stage of desire.
40
She does not go to the man who is attached to her.
 Chapter 22  Courtesans 349

41
Six mixed results are produced by combining these: gain on one side and loss on the
other; gain on one side and doubt about gain on the other; gain on one side and doubt about
loss on the other. 42Considering among these, together with her helpers, she acts in such a way
as to maximise gain, even when there is doubt about gain, or to cut her losses significantly,
43
She treats religious merit and pleasure in this same way: they can be combined, one with
another, and paired with their opposites. Those are the two-sided results.
44
When a group of voluptuaries keep one woman for all of them, that is a group liaison.
45
When she gets together with first one of them and then another, she gets money from them
one by one, through their rivalry. 46At occasions such as the spring festival, she announces,
through her mother: ‘My daughter “will go tonight to the man who does this or that for
me.”’ 47And from going to them in a way that causes rivalry, she targets what she needs:
48
gain from one and gain from all of them, loss from one and loss from all, gain from half
and gain from all, loss from half and loss from all. Those are the group results.
49
Doubt about gain and doubt about loss can be calculated as above. And religious merit
and pleasure can be combined with them in the same way. Those are the gains and losses,
consequences, and doubts.

NOTES
6.1.9, 13, 31 The arts here could refer either to the fine arts or to the arts of love, or to both. Y does not specify.
6.1.10 These fatalists are called Daicapramana (‘those for whom fate, or the gods are the authority’); the fatalists
mentioned at 1.2.26 are Kalakarinikas (‘those who invoke fate, or time, as the cause’).
6.1.13 Y glosses what we have translated as ‘true to one type’ (ekajatiya) as meaning that the woman does not keep
changing her appearance (losing and gaining weight, one might suppose, changing her hairdo, etc).
6.1.14 These qualities are apparently appreciated in all women, in contrast with the qualities enumerated in 6.1.13,
which are appreciated only, or specially, in courtesans.

43
Two-sided results for religious merit occur when [6.6.29] she goes to the Brahmin who is going to die, for religious
merit comes both from the fact that she is serving a Brahmin and that he is otherwise going to die of his love for her.
Two-sided results for the violation of religion occur when [29] she goes to the man under a vow of chastity, both
because he breaks his vow and because he is unwilling. Two-sided doubts about religious merit arise when [38] she
goes to another man who has no money, and she worries, ‘Will religious merit be served or not?’ and [22] the man
who is attached to her can give her nothing, because she has squeezed all the money out of him, and she worries,
‘Will religious merit come from this or not?’ Two-sided doubts about the violation of religion arise when [29] she
goes to another man from a religious order and makes him break his vow, and she wonders, ‘Will religion be violated
or not?’ and [29] the man attached to her, who has taken a vow, intends to give her a lot of money, and she wonders,
‘Will religion be violated or not?’
Two-sided results for pleasure occur when [23] she goes to another attractive man and also [32–4] satisfies her
desire with the attractive man who is attached to her. Two-sided results for hatred occur when [26] her passion cools
both form going to another unattractive man and from going to the unattractive man attached to her. Two-sided
doubts about pleasure arise when [30] she goes to another man, without knowing if he has good qualities or not, and
she wonders, ‘Will pleasure result or not?’ and [33] the man attached to her is unrequited and she wonders, ‘Will
pleasure result or not?’ Two-sided doubts about hatred arise when [26] she goes to another man and wonders, ‘Will
my passion toward this man cool or not, since he hesitates to talk about dispelling passion?’ and [26] ‘Will my pas-
sion cool or not toward the man attached to me, to whom I feel the same way?’
350 VATSYAYANA MALLANAGA

[y] 6.1.15 Y takes his examples from each of the three groups of qualities: bad family (the inverse of a great family,
the first quality in 6.1.12), ugliness (in contrast with beauty 6.1.13) and stupidity (in contrast with intelligence
6.1.14). This means that the faults apply to both men (6.1.12) and women (6.1.13−14).
6.1.16 ‘Worms in the faeces’ may offer a speculative explanation for some venereal disease.
[y] 6.1.17 Y assumes that women have semen, a belief that he and Babhravya express in the discussion of female
orgasm (at 2.1.18). Ravana raped Rambha by threatening to kill her, but she cursed him so that he could never
rape another woman again. This story is told in the Ramayana; see Doniger, Splitting the Difference. Devadatta
and Anangasena are two courtesans, and Muladeva is a muster-thief, in Somadeva’s tenth century work Ocean
of Story and Kshemendra’s eleventh century work the Kalavilasa.
6.1.20. ‘And so forth’ may refer to the twenty reasons for a courtesan to take a lover, listed in 6.1.17; though why
‘fear’ should come first and stand for the group in this case is puzzling, one would expect ‘passion’, the first
reason listed there.
6.2.11 The word for leftover garlands also means the flowers left over from an offering to the gods, whose leftover
food (called prasada) is distributed to worshippers together with the leftover flowers, or to a king, as described
in 4.2.57.
6.2.13 These techniques are discussed in 2.2.3.
6.2.26 This can mean either that she expresses her passion for him by faking drunkenness and so forth and then
blames them on her sexual deprivation, or that she uses those feigned conditions that strip away pretences as
an excuse to tell him how she feels. Y takes the first two (drunkenness and sleep) in the first sense and the third
(disease) in the second sense.
6.2.31 She says ‘Live!’ in the spirit of our ‘God bless you’, or Gesundheit and for a similar reason: the widespread folk
belief that the soul temporarily leaves the body during a sneeze (when the heart does in fact stop for a split second).
6.2.36 The word vrittha, that we have translated as ‘false’ can also mean ‘casual’ or ‘in Vain’, and the compound as a
whole can apply either to him or to her. Y takes it in the sense of ‘false’, and applies it to the woman’s infidelity;
but it could also apply to him in this sense, or it can be taken in the sense of ‘casual’, and can be applied to, either
him or her: ‘When s/he has been accused of a casual infidelity...’ Her fasting in the context of his infidelity is
well attested in Sanskrit literature, which makes it more likely that it is the man’s infidelity that V intended. The
word vyasana, that we have rendered as ‘misfortune’ may also mean ‘addiction, evil passion, vice’, presumably
his, but, again, possibly hers.
6.2.47 Or, if this quarrel is between them, and about the vow mentioned in the previous passage, she may be arguing
that it is too demanding even for him to carry out.
6.2.54 She asks that when she is reborn, he be reborn as her husband.
6.2.69 A pot full of presents is distributed to anyone who brings good news.
6.2.70 Crows are said to be auspicious omens with the power to make wishes come true.
6.2.72 To follow him beyond death means to die a natural death after his death and wait to be joined with him in
heaven or the next rebirth. Only later, and very rarely, did it come to mean mounting his funeral pyre alive to
burn to death with his corpse.
6.3.4 She gets the money ostensibly to pay for the things but actually buys them on credit and keeps the money; he
sees the things and thinks she has bought them with the money he gave her.
6.3.36 This may also mean that she does this before he realizes that she is going to take the money and run.
6.3.44. The word ‘release’ (moksha) more generally refers to a person’s spiritual release from the world of trans-
migration (as in 1.2.4); there may be an intended irony in its use here to designate the release of a man from a
courtesan’s thrall.
6.4.12 The idea seems to be that there is no more reason to take him now than there was when the other woman got
rid of him, since he still has no money.
6.4.16 ‘As tickle in his affections as turmeric is in its colour’ puns on the word ruga, which can mean either ‘colour’
or ‘passion’, and on the fact that turmeric cannot hold its colour for long.
6.4.28 There is some confusion in the editions of this passage about the person who is the object of contempt. According
to Shastri’s reading, it is the courtesan; according to Goswami’s, it is the man (treated with contempt by his wife).
And according to Y, it is the man’s wife (treated with contempt by the courtesan). We have followed Shastri here.
 Chapter 22  Courtesans 351

6.4.40 The attitude to the man who is ‘attached’, according to this verse and, even more sharply, in the commentary
on it, is far more cynical than the one expressed in earlier discussions of the attached man, as at 6.2.73. There, he
was a willing devotee; here, he seems to be either entirely besotted or simply the man with her at the moment, or
both. There, he was cherished; here he is taken for granted and scorned, explicitly contrasted with the man she
does love. This may be an example of a different origin for the prose and verse passages of the text.
6.5.5 A series of choices is made here between paired alternatives, and there is a running disagreement about them
between V and earlier scholars. In passage 5 the scholars rank at the top, the man who gives her what she seeks
or needs, a general category that will be broken down, in passage 8, into those who fulfil temporary and future
needs and that V, in passage 6, epitomizes in the man who gives gold. Passage 8 offers another set of categories,
which are debated in the passages that follow, together with yet other criteria. In passage 9, the scholars rank the
generous man over the man in love, and V disagrees in 10−11. In passage 12 (and again in 14, 19 and 22), the
scholars rank the man who does what she needs to have done over the generous man, and V disagrees in 13. In 15
the scholars rank the generous man over the grateful man, and V disagrees in 16−18. In 20 the scholars rank the
general category of getting money over a friend’s advice, and V disagrees in 21. In 24 the scholars rank getting
money over counteracting losses, and V disagrees in 25−27.
6.5.18 The text allows the reading that the man himself cannot be slandered, which is a more logical conclusion from
his own good character, but V links it to passage 16 and takes it to mean that he does not believe slander against her.
6.6.5 This triad may well be a satirical twist on the famous triad of the three aims of human life (1.1.1), which here
are reduced to three aspects of one of them: money or power—which (in Sanskrit, artha) itself also means ‘gain’.
6.6.12 This triad is, theoretically, that of losses connected with money, religious merit, and pleasure, though V spells
these out neither for gains (which he has discussed at 2.1.1) nor for losses. Significantly, V here reverses the usual
order, putting artha first. One might also see a triad in situations that result in positive gain, (6.6.13−14) mixed
gain and loss (6.6.15−16) and loss (6.6.17−18).
 Chapter 23 Temple Women as
Temple Servants*

LESLIE ORR

In the whole of the corpus of Chola period inscriptions, I have found only nine inscriptions
like this one, which name women with responsibility functions. Three of these inscriptions
date from the second subperiod, and the other six are from the last subperiod. Another 15
mention groups of people with responsibility functions, using ‘temple woman’ terms (e.g.,
tevaraṭiyār) which may refer to women (as well as to men). Inscriptions of this type are found
especially in the first subperiod. The total of 24 inscriptions that refer to temple women with
responsibility functions constitute 8 percent of all inscriptions that mention temple women,
but there is little evidence to suggest a definite chronological pattern of their increasing or
decreasing involvement in temple affairs. Mostly, they simply were not involved.
It is certainly clear that temple women were not part of the development characteristic
for men—the very sharp increase between the second and third subperiods in the number of
named individuals with responsibility functions. This increase between the early and later
Chola periods seems to be the result, at least in part, of the fact that more and more men
had the function of ‘taking in hand’ (kaikkoṇṭa) an endowment, receiving a gift on behalf
of the temple. Women, in contrast, do not seem to have performed this function; the only
case I have found is that of a temple woman (tevaraṭiyār) who ‘took in hand’ the gift that a
queen made to a temple in Kanyakumari district in the thirteenth century (KK 194= TAS 8,
34). Another important administrative function in the temple that is quite commonly men-
tioned as belonging to men, either as individuals or in groups, is that of ‘supervisor’ (kaṇk
āṇi). Here again, I have come across just one inscription in which a named woman has this
function—the preceding translation—in which four temple women (patiyilār) shared the
role of supervisor with other temple functionaries.
If these roles were extremely rare for women, what types of responsibility functions did
temple women have? Table 23.1 shows the numbers of inscriptions that mention temple

*Reproduced with permission from the author. Previously published in Donors, Devotees and Daughters by Leslie
Orr. OUP, New York, pp. 99–134.

352
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 353

women in connection with each of five types of responsibility functions, considering sepa-
rately the nine inscriptions in which temple women are named (and definitely female) and
the 15 in-scriptions that refer to groups of temple women (tevaraṭiyār, emperumāṉaṭiyār,
etc.). I have arranged these types of responsibility functions roughly in order, beginning
with those roles that seem to have involved the most decision-making powers and control
and ending with those that were more nominal and honorific in character and peripheral to
the workings of the temple.
The two functions already discussed, marked by the terms kaikkoṇṭa and kaṇkāṇi, are
classified as functions of the first sort, administrative functions, as are other kinds of active
engagement in the conduct of temple affairs. People charged with the second category of
responsibility functions, collection of taxes and fines, received property on behalf of the
temple but would not have been involved in decision making or management of the temple’s
wealth. The third category, people who ‘tended’ temple resources, are those with whom
livestock, land, or gold was invested by the temple in expectation of a certain regular return
in the form of ghee for lamps, paddy, or other supplies used by the temple. In Chola period
inscriptions, there are many examples of shepherds involved in such ‘tending’ relationships
with the temple. For example, at the great temple of Tanjavur, specific shepherds, together
with their relatives, would be assigned 96 sheep or 48 cows, in exchange for which they
would be expected to provide daily enough ghee to fuel a perpetual lamp; the shepherds,
their relatives, and their relatives’ relatives were supposed to maintain this arrangement in
perpetuity (SII 2.63, 2.64, 2.94, 2.95). Temple Brahmans also frequently entered into these
tending relationships.1
Neither the fourth nor the fifth category of responsibility functions necessarily involved
any active hand in or control over temple affairs, although people with these functions
were acknowledged to have at least some connection with and authority in the business of
the temple. The fourth category includes individuals who acted as signatories to grants and
groups that represented interests in the temple in drawing up agreements. People who were
engaged in the fifth type of responsibility function, invariably in groups, were said to ensure
the protection (rakṣai) of the grant recorded in an inscription; typically, paṉmāheśvarar or
śrīvaiṣṇavas were said to exercise this role.

Table 23.1  Types of Responsibility Functions Performed by Temple Women

Named Group Total
Administration 3 4 7
Collection of taxes and fines — 4 4
Tending 4 2 6
Party to agreement 2 2 4
Protection — 3 3
Total 9 15 24
354 LESLIE ORR

Table 23.1 shows us that temple women as individuals were not closely linked to the inner
workings of the temple. Of the responsibility functions that involved some degree of control
over temple resources, individual temple women are named as temple administrators in three
inscriptions and in the category of those who tended temple property in four inscriptions.
We find a few more references to control over temple resources, as well as to other types
of responsibility functions, in inscriptions that refer to groups of people (particularly people
termed tevaraṭiyār), who may have been temple women. Four inscriptions include such
groups among supervisory or managerial personnel, and in four others, groups of tevaraṭiyār
are given the responsibility for the collection of fines or taxes. There are three inscriptions,
all dating from the first subperiod and found in Tirupati in Chittoor district (in the northern-
most part of the Tamil country, in what is today Andhra Pradesh), in which we encounter
the expression emperu-māṉaṭiyār rakṣai. Because emperumāṉaṭiyār is one of the ‘temple
woman’ terms and was applied in other inscriptional contexts to people who were definitely
women, it is possible that it indicates the designation of temple women as ‘protectors’ of
grants. But even in the case of groups, only a very small number of inscriptions represent
temple women—or groups that might include or consist of temple women—as performing
responsibility functions.
We may contrast these small numbers not only with the much larger numbers of male
temple officials who, as individuals or in groups, engaged in responsibility functions central
to the workings of the Chola period temple but also with the numbers of temple women—
referred to as sānis—who were involved in such functions in medieval Andhra Pradesh.
In Telugu inscriptions contemporary with the Chola period inscriptions in Tamil, sānis,
very often together with male temple officials such as māṇis or sthānapatis, or as a group
termed the ‘three hundred sānis,’ frequently took charge of or supervised the administra-
tion of gifts to the temple (Talbot 1988b, 105–7; Ramaswamy 1989, 96–97). In the Tamil
country, in contrast, the responsibility for temple affairs seems to have rested solely with
men, and it is extremely rare to find managerial tasks, even of the most nominal sort, shared
with temple women.2
The almost complete lack of engagement of temple women in responsibility functions
means that they were not authorized to exercise power within the institutional structure of the
temple nor to have direct access to the economic resources of the temple. But they were also
denied the opportunity, which so many men took advantage of in the later Chola period, to use
involvement in temple affairs as a means of gaining status and public prominence. The men
whose names increasingly multiply in the records engraved on temple walls were—through
the inscription of the record itself, as well as through the encounters, transactions, and solemn
ceremonies of donation and witnessing that the record represents—accorded recognition by
the temple and the local society, in terms both of their reputations and social connections in
the short term and of their fame for posterity.3 Temple women may have realized these aims
through their activity as do nors—an avenue that temple men did not follow—but they did
not acquire or enhance their status and position by participating in temple affairs, as temple
men did. Temple women did, however, participate in temple service, and we now examine
this aspect of their identity and activity.
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 355

SERVING IN THE TEMPLE

Dancing and Singing
In the third year of the reign of Ko Māṟapaṉmar alius Tiripuvaṉacakkaravattikaḷ śrī Vikkirama
Pāṇṭiyatevar, the sacred order [of the deity] concerning the patiyilār and the tevaraṭiyār of
the temple of Lord Tiruviraṭṭanamuṭaiya Nāyaṉār [was given]: that when the [deities] Chief
(mutaliyār) Nāṭaṟkariyakūttar and Nāyakar are brought into the hundred-pillar maṇṭapam,
the patiyilār are responsible for dancing before the raising of the curtain and the tevaraṭiyār
are responsible for dancing after the raising of the curtain.—SII 8.333: this inscription was
engraved in the thirteenth century on the southern gopura at the Viraṭṭaneśvara temple in
Tiruvadi, South Arcot district.
In the ninth year of the reign of Śri Kulottuṉkacoladevar, it is agreed (this) first day of the
ninth year that gold and paddy are to be provided as they were formerly provided for the pāṇar
in this temple, at the rate of 1 kalam of paddy, measured by the ūrkkāl, per person, for the basic
living allowance (mutal kāṉipeṟṟapaṭi) for Irumuṭicoḻaṉ Pirāṉ alias Acañcalapperayaṉ—who
is to sing for the Lord of Tiruviṭaimarutu in Tiraimūrnāṭu in Uyyakoṇṭārvaḷanāṭu, who is to
cause the taḷiyillār tevaraṭiyār to sing in the temple, and who is to dwell here as the person
of this place responsible for the pāṇar—and for his descendents (vaṅśattār).
We, together with those servants of the temple (palapaṇi nivantakkārar) who are partners
in this agreement, assign, as formerly to the pāṇar, the land necessary to produce this paddy
and additional expense money—land that is part of the tevatānam of this god—as land for
the support of pāṇar (pāṇakāṇi), as their ‘livelihood’ (jīvitam).
And, as a place of residence, a house is given for dwelling here, and the terms of this
allowance (paṭi) are inscribed in stone as what is approved this ninth year and first day,
according to royal order (tirumukam).
This royal proclamation (tirumantira olai) is signed by Malaiyappiryār and Putukkaṭaiyār,
the tax accountants Neṭumaṇamuṭaiyāṉ, Ponnuḷāṉ, Paṇṇainallūruṭaiyāṉ, Veḷārkiḻ avaṉ,
Aracūruṭaiyāṉ, and Ceṟṟūruṭaiyāṉ, [and others].
[The boundaries of the land are given and the yield in paddy.] Signed: the temple accoun-
tant Kuṇṭaiyūrkiḻavaṉ, the temple servant (tevarkaṉmi) Tirucciṟṟampalapaṭṭaṉ,the temple
manager (śrīkāriyam) Mulaṅku-ṭaiyāṉ, and the śrīmāheśvara kaṇkāṇi Tiruviti Anpaṟkaracu.
[More details of the land boundaries are given, and the names of these signatories are again
inscribed].—SII 5.705: this inscription, which begins with a very long meykkīrtti, was
engraved in a.d. 1142 at the Mahāliṅgasvāmi temple in Tiruvidaimarudur, Tanjavur district.
The art of the devadāsīs, their expertise in dancing and singing, has been at the center of
much of the attention paid to these women in the last century. One frequently encounters
the idea that the entire devadāsī institution is tied to the introduction of song and dance
into rituals of worship, that the very raison d’être of the temple woman was to serve as a
performer in the temple (e.g., Sadasivan 1993, 31). Several of the scholars who have made
substantial contributions to our understanding of temple women in recent times have them-
selves been dancers, and their work conveys a vivid appreciation of the artistic tradition and
356 LESLIE ORR

professional skill of the surviving members of devadāsī communities.4 But the devadāsīs’
artistic heritage is not particularly ancient. Their traditions—including the repertoire of
particular music and dance forms and the performance of dance at specified moments in
temple ritual—seem to have been developed and codified in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries (Khokar 1979, 64; Kersenboom 1987, 43–48; Meduri 1996, 40–45). It is not really
possible to trace back to early times a continuous lineage for the devadāsī as we think of her
today, as a temple servant whose ritual expertise was dance. Songs and dances do not seem
to have been formal liturgical elements or offerings made to the temple deity in the temple
ritual of early South India, as it is reflected in the Tamil bhakti literature of the sixth to ninth
centuries, nor was the singing and dancing that was a part of early devotional life of the
same character or performed by the same types of people as the temple songs and dances of
later times (Young and Orr 1985; Orr and Young 1986). As we have seen in the analysis of
Chola period setup grants at the beginning of this chapter, hymn singing did become a more
established feature of temple liturgy in succeeding centuries, but dance seems to have been a
minor component in the ritual life of the medieval temple. The Agamic texts similarly give
the impression that dance was an optional element in temple ritual.5 And between medieval
and modern times, many factors have been at work which have altered the ritual contexts
in which temple women had a part to play, the artistic traditions that shaped the forms of
temple dance, and the associations between temple dance and temple women.
Despite the fact that temple women are so frequently referred to as ‘dancing-girls’—or,
more respectfully, ‘temple dancers’—in scholarly and popular literature, the inscriptions of
medieval India only rarely refer to them in this way. Of the 304 Chola period inscriptions
that mention temple women, only 4 use terms that mean ‘dancer.’ In two of these inscrip-
tions, both of which refer to groups of singers, as well as dancers, it is not even certain
that these performers are female. The first, an early Chola period inscription from Chittoor
district in the far north, records that kūttu-āṭiṉār (‘kūttu dancers’) and pāṭiār (‘singers’)
were to receive payment for their services, apparently on the occasion of a festival for the
god Indra (SII 8.529). The second is an eleventh-century inscription from Kolar district, in
the northwest, which mentions the provisions made for the āṭiṉār and pāṭiṉār who were to
perform at a festival (EC 10.Kl 108). These inscriptions, although separated in time, come
from the same general geographical area, and the use of the term aṭiṉār for ‘dancers’ seems
restricted to this region. In two other inscriptions that record arrangements for temple dance,
and refer to the performers as dancers, there is much more certainty that these are women.
Both are mid-twelfth century inscriptions from Tiruvengavasal in Tiruchirappalli district,
which name the women who were commissioned to dance at temple festivals. In one of
these inscriptions (IPS 139), the woman is referred to as a cāntikkūtti. Kūtti is the feminine
form for ‘dancer,’ derived from kūttu (‘dance, dancing’). A cāntikkūtti is a woman who
performs the cānti dance; cānti (from Skt. śānti, ‘peace’) is perhaps best translated in this
context as ‘festival’ (MTL, 1370).6 The other inscription (IPS 128) names a woman who
is to act as an āṭuvāḷ (‘female dancer’), and specifies that she is to perform the cāntikkūttu.
Very few temple women are referred to as dancers, and it is equally the case that all female
dancers were not temple women. Four Chola period inscriptions refer to kūttis or cāntikkūttis
who do not appear to have had any connection with the temple. Two are eleventh-century
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 357

inscriptions with references to a ‘dancer-tax’ (kūtti kāl) (EI 22.34; SII 7.467).7 And two
thirteenth-century inscriptions (IPS 219 and SII 17.463) record the donations of women
said to be cāntikkūttis ‘of our town’ or ‘in this place’—not ‘of the temple.’ One of these
(IPS 219) describes the donor as the daughter of a man named (or titled) Periyanāṭṭācāriyaṉ,
‘great teacher (ācāriyaṉ) of the district (nāṭu),’ a name that indicates high professional
standing. This man is not identified as a cāntikkūttaṉ, but there are several inscriptions in
which male dancers are referred to by this term. In one (SII 2.67H), the cāntikkūttaṉ—who
was employed to perform a play or a dance called the ‘Rājarājeśvara-nāṭakam’ at the big
temple of Tanjavur—also has ācāriyaṉ (‘teacher’) as part of his name. In another (IPS 275),
a cāntikkūttaṉ ‘of this district (nāṭu)’ is said to have received land from the same temple
of Tiruvengavasal that employed the two female dancers (the cāntikkūtti and the āṭuvāḷ)
already mentioned.
Although all the inscriptions that refer to men as cāntikkūttar do so in connection with
support from or performance in a temple, it seems to me that there are a number of indications
that cāntikkūttar were professional dancers who were independent of the temple, in family-
based occupational groups in which both men and women were involved in performances
in various contexts. The constellation of features shown by the inscriptions that reter to
cāntikkūttar—their identification as being of the town or district rather than of the temple;
the word ācāriyaṉ as part of the names of several ot the men; the employment of cāntikkūttar
in the temple specifically for dance performances; the mention of a father-daughter kinship
relation—suggest that the cāntikkūttar were an occupational group not primarily identified
with temple service but employed by the temple as performers, especially during festivals.8
Among those—cāntikkūttar and others—who danced in the temple, men were more
prominent than women, particularly in the earlier Chola period. Table 23.2 shows the numbers
of inscriptions that refer to temple dancers or performers of drama (nāṭakam) in each of the
four subperiods, indicating whether we can identify them as women, men, or neither. The
first thing we notice in this table is how small these numbers are. That my careful scrutiny of
the entire corpus of Chola period inscriptions has uncovered only 38 inscriptions that refer
to temple dancers underscores the minor and inessential character of dance as an element
of medieval temple ritual. In 12 of the inscriptions, it is not possible to ascertain the sex of
the performer; I have nonetheless taken these inscriptions to refer to temple women in my
overall tabulation because it seems quite possible that some of these anonymous dancers
were women. When we turn to a comparison of the two groups of inscriptions in which the
dancers are clearly male or female, we see that in the earlier Chola period men were much
more frequently given the task of dancing in the temple than were women: nine inscriptions

Table 23.2  Temple Dancers in Chola Period Inscriptions

Chola 1 Chola 2 Chola 3 Chola 4 Total
Women 1 1 6 4 12
? 2 2 5 3 12
Men 3 6 3 2 14
Total 6 9 14 9 38
358 LESLIE ORR

refer to male dancers and only two to female dancers. In the later Chola period, however,
the situation is reversed: twice as many temple dancers are identified as women than as men.
We see a similar and even more dramatic reversal in comparing male and female dancers
with respect to the contexts of their performances. In the first two subperiods, six inscrip-
tions assign men to the function of dancing at festivals, and only one assigns women to this
function; in the last two subperiods, just 1 inscription designates men as festival dancers,
whereas seven designate women. In the later Chola period, then, women became increas-
ingly visible as temple dancers, and although they did not entirely monopolize temple dance,
women seem to have effectively displaced men from a role that had formerly been largely
a male preserve—dancing at festivals.
The seven inscriptions that describe temple women as festival dancers represent a small
fraction of the total number of inscriptions that refer to temple women and their activities
and an even tinier fraction of all the Chola period inscriptions that refer to temple ritual in
general and to arrangements for festivals in particular. In other words, dancing at festivals
was a relatively unimportant aspect of temple women’s lives, and having temple women
dance was not at all necessary for the conduct of temple festivals. Nonetheless, the pattern
of displacement that these inscriptions reveal, in however minor a way, may be significant
for our understanding of changes in both the circumstances of temple women and the orga-
nization of temple life. As temple women in the later Chola period were taking over from
men the responsibility for performing festival dances, they were moving into a specialization
that was to become in later centuries central to their identity and their place in the structure
of temple service.9
But the way—or one of the ways—in which Chola period temple women accomplished
this move sets them apart from their counterparts of a later age and from their male coun-
terparts in their own times. In at least two of the seven inscriptions from the later Chola
period that describe women performing festival dances, these women purchased from the
temple the right to perform this service, as well as the right to sing the Tamil devotional song
Tiruvempāvai (ARE 160 and 161 of 1940–41). These temple women were not inheriting the
right to perform dance but were, instead, acquiring it by making a deal with the temple.10
Thus, along with the shift in the identity of festival dancers from male to female, there was
also a shift from the employment of members of a professional community, who were not
necessarily associated with a particular temple, to the employment of temple women who
regarded dancing at festivals more as a privilege and mark of status than a duty for which
they would be remunerated. The first of the two inscriptions translated at the beginning of this
section, fixing the order in which the patiyilār and tevaraṭiyar were to perform dance in the
course of daily worship, provides another indication of the concern for rank and ritual rights
that seems to characterize temple women’s involvement with dance in the later Chola period.
Temple women were not, of course, the only people who regarded temple service in
this light, and the structuring of temple life around concepts of privilege and honor was
to become more and more important for all types of tasks and positions in the post-Chola
period. But during the Chola period itself, we find a kind of patchwork in which some of the
roles associated with the functioning of the temple seem to have had an honorary character,
some were more in the nature of ‘jobs’ of either a menial or professional nature, and others
were a mixture of these two types or were transitional from one type to another—tending in
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 359

most cases toward becoming increasingly honorary. The complexity of this pattern becomes
even greater when we take into account not only the different kinds of tasks there were to
perform in the context of the temple but also the variety of people who might perform them
and the possibility of competition among them. In the case we are considering here, I have
suggested that the role of dancer, and particularly festival dancer, was in the early Chola
period filled largely by members—mostly but not exclusively male—of a professional,
family-based occupational group, the cāntikkūttar. In the later Chola period, the cāntikkūttar
lost ground to women who were temple-rather than family-based and who regarded this
role as a privilege rather than a profession. This is not to say that these women lacked skill
in dance, but they differed dramatically from the cāntikkūttar in that their primary identity
was not that of dancer.
Yet another group is associated with temple dance: the naṭṭuvar, or ‘dance masters.’11
They are different from the cāntikkūttar because they were not displaced from their role in
the temple by temple women, and they are different from the temple women because their
role continued throughout the Chola period to be a professional and family-based right rather
than a matter of personal privilege. Naṭṭuvar are mentioned in 13 Chola period inscriptions
that I have located. In every case, the naṭṭuvaṉ is male and is described as receiving support
from the temple for his services, and in two of the inscriptions, the naṭṭuvaṉ’s service rights
are transferred to male relatives. The naṭṭuvar are not linked explicitly to temple women
in the inscriptions,12 but in several cases naṭṭuvar are associated with drummers (uvaccar)
or other musicians. An eleventh-century inscription (SII 8.644) records that a naṭṭuvar was
assigned an uvacca-kāṇi, ‘drummer’s service right,’ and a thirteenth-century inscription (EC
10.Bp38a) describes a naṭṭuvaṉ as the head of a group of uvaccar. We have seen, earlier in
this chapter, how important drummers were in the ritual life of the temple. References to
uvaccar, as key ritual specialists, are particularly abundant in the early Chola period, but by
the early twentieth century, members of this community—who became known as Ōcchar—
had suffered a marked decline in social status and had a much more marginal ritual status
as drummers and priests who served village goddesses (Thurston and Rangachari 1909, 5:
419–20; Pillay 1953, 248).13
The inscriptions of the later Chola period that show naṭṭuvar as supervisors of groups of
uvaccar or as possessors of uvaccar’s service rights may provide a clue to how the uvaccar
lost their ritual status. As the naṭṭuvar maintained and strengthened their position within the
temple structure, they may, in the later Chola period, have begun to compete with the uvaccar
and take over some of their functions. Eventually, the uvaccar were entirely displaced as
ritual specialists within the great temples. Another function with which the naṭṭuvar might
have increasingly been involved, and which is related to drumming, was that of dance teacher:
the Chola period temple women who were not members of cāntikkūttar families perhaps
received instruction from naṭṭuvar—just as, in recent South Indian history, devadāsīs have
been taught by naṭṭuvaṉār.14
When we consider the roles of temple women and other temple servants as singers in
Chola period temples, we see a pattern of competition and displacement similar to that for
dance but with the opposite result: whereas temple women appear to have been increasingly
implicated in dance, particularly festival dance, they were progressively excluded from the
role of hymn singer.
360 LESLIE ORR

Just as temple women were rarely referred to as dancers, so, too, were terms that mean
“singer” scarcely ever applied to them. Temple women were very different from male temple
servants in this regard. In the Chola period inscrip-tions, two types of terms are used for
‘singers’: general terms, including those based on the Tamil verb pāṭu ‘to sing,’ and those
derived from the Sanskrit gandharva (the term forthe celestial musicians who are, in myth,
the companions of the apsarās); and technical terms, like viṇṇappan̄ ceyvār, those who
“sing sacred hymns in the presence of the deity” (MTL, 3664). The general terms may be
found in combination with expressions that provide somewhat more ritual specificity, with
respect to the kind of song to be performed; for example, tiruppatiyam pāṭuvar are “those
who sing (Tamil) hymns.” In many cases, the plural form of these terms and the anonym-
ity of the singers obscure their sex, but when we can ascertain whether those identified as
singers are female or male, they are almost invariably the latter.
The technical terms are never applied to women,15 and there are only two inscriptions
in which women are referred to as singers, using the general terms. One of these, a tenth-
century inscription from Travancore, in southern Kerala, records an agreement between the
Chera king and the authorities of a Śiva temple about the payments to be made for vari-
ous temple services and temple servants, including the naṅkaimār kāntarpikaḷ, the “lady
singers” (TAS 8,43). The term used here for “singer,” kāntarpikaḷ, has its male equivalent
in the terms gāndharvar or kāntarppar, which are found elsewhere in Tamil inscriptions
of the Chola period (e.g., SII 23.264 and SII 4.867). The second inscription comes from
Kanchipuram in Chingleput district and records the gift of villages by a Telugu Choda chief
to support the “women who sing (pāṭum peṇṭukaḷ) before the Lord”—who is in this case
a form of Viṣṇu, Śrī Varadarājasvāmi (SITI 393). In contrast to this single inscription that
applies terms derived from pāṭu to women,16 I have found eight inscriptions in which they
are applied to men. The term pāṭuvar, “singer,” is used to refer to men in five inscriptions,
but there are no cases in which it definitely refers to women.
Not only is there a preponderance of men among those who are identified as singers in
Chola period inscriptions, but also the task of singing in the temple is assigned much more
frequently to men than to women. The predominance of men as hymn singers has made
me decide to handle the inscriptions in which the sex of the singers is unclear in a different
way than I have for dancers: I have included in the category of temple women only those
singers who are definitely female. Table 23.3 indicates the numbers of inscriptions that refer
to singers in the temple, as women, as men, or as people whose sex cannot be ascertained.
Men are more numerous as temple singers in all subperiods except the third, when an equal
number of inscriptions describe women as filling this function. All six of the inscriptions
in this subperiod that describe women as temple singers are from a single temple in Nallur,

Table 23.3  Temple Singers in Chola Period Inscriptions

Chola 1 Chola 2 Chola 3 Chola 4 Total
Women 2 2 6 2 12
? 14 15 5 8 42
Men 4 13 6 5 28
Total 20 30 17 15 82
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 361

in South Arcot district, and they are all records of deals made by individual tevaraṭiyār:
each of these women, having made a gift of gold to the temple, received the right to sing
a particular portion of the hymn Tiruvempāvai and, in several cases—as we have already
seen in the discussion of temple women’s involvement in festival dance—to perform certain
dances or to be otherwise involved in the conduct of festivals (ARE 143, 144, 149, 160,
161, and 176 of 1940–41).
Tiruvempāvai, a composition of the Śaiva poet-saint Māṇikkavācakar, is referred to not
only in this set of inscriptions but also in an eleventh-century record from Tiruvorriyur in
Chingleput district, in which 16tevaraṭiyār are given the responsibility for its performance
(ARE 128 of 1912). It is striking that this is the only specific hymn mentioned by name as
part of the temple liturgy to be performed by female singers. It may be that this particular
devotional work, which is cast in the feminine voice, was regarded as being particularly
appropriate for women to sing—as it continues to be in contemporary Tamilnadu (Orr and
Young 1986; Young 1993). But other compositions—for example, Tiruvāymoḻi, part of the
Vaiṣṇava canon of devotional hymns in Tamil—seem to have been considered as suitable
only for male performers.17
Chola period inscriptions indicate that until the thirteenth century, many different types of
people filled the role of hymn singer: in the early period, this task was assigned, on the one
hand, to a woman who was a slave (ARE 149 of 1936–37), and, on the other hand, to high-
status men, such as Brahmans (including those bearing the title paṭṭar, from Skt. bhaṭṭar)
and aṭikaḷmār (ascetics or “honored devotees”). In the third subperiod, there continue to
be hymn singers of various types and status: apart from the temple women who negotiated
for the privilege of singing Tiruvempāvai, there are references to men who were uvaccar
or pāṇar and who served as singers in this period. One of the inscriptions translated at the
beginning of this section (SII 5.705) shows how members of this latter community were
associated with hymn singing at a temple in Tiruvidaimarudur, in Tanjavur district, in the
twelfth century.
The pāṇar are known to us from early Cankam literature as itinerant bards who sang
and played the stringed yāḻ, but there are very few references to this group in Chola period
inscriptions—not enough to shed light on the way in which, in Chola and post-Chola times,
their social situation changed dramatically as they shifted in occupation from being musicians
to being tailors and came to be considered of low caste (Kailasapathy 1968; Young and Orr
1985 and 1988). In the previous translation; a pāṇaṉ (or a man who is taking up the temple
service rights of the pāṇar) is an active participant in temple life: he is to receive support
from the temple, to sing for the temple deity, to oversee the singing of the tevaraṭiyār in
the temple, and to be responsible for the group of pāṇar associated with the temple. But a
century later, there are indications that the status of the pāṇar had declined18 and that their
eligibility to serve as singers in the temple was being more strictly defined.
In the thirteenth century, hymn singing was increasingly dominated by people of high
status—Brahmans and others—and by members of new professional or temple service
categories. Already in the eleventh century, in the middle of the Chola period, we begin
to encounter the term viṇṇappan̄ ceyvār, which was to become one of the technical terms
for hymn singer in the Śrīvaiṣṇ tradition (Jagadeesan 1967), and in the thirteenth century
we find the earliest inscriptional references to otuvār, the hymn singers in the later South
362 LESLIE ORR

Indian Śaiva tradition (ARE 203 of 1908; SII 23.92; TAS 6.14; Peterson 1989, 56–75). It
appears that a relatively open and fluid notion of who might sing hymns in the temple had
given way by the end of the Chola period to more restrictive ideas about the ritual quali-
fications and rights associated with this role. This development may have been tied to the
canonization of the two bodies of devotional poems—composed by the Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva
poet-saints—and their adaptation and entrenchment in temple liturgy, which took place
during the Chola period.19 Ritual chanting and singing were part of the traditional expertise
of Brahmans, and as the Tamil hymns came to be acknowledged as equal in importance
to the sacred Vedic texts, the definition of who was eligible to be a hymn singer may have
been subject to increasing regulation and definition. In this atmosphere of competition and
professionalization, temple women—as well, perhaps, as members of traditional performing
communities, like the pāṇar—seem to have had little opportunity to further their activities
and identities as singers in the temple.
It is clear that the temple women of medieval Tamilnadu were not primarily or originally
dancers and singers. They did, nonetheless, occasionally perform songs and dances in the
temple—in several cases actually paying for the privilege of doing so—and participated
in the processes that were ongoing throughout the Chola period in which different kinds
of individuals and groups laid claim to the task or the honor of performing for the deity.
The rights to these temple service roles were not, even by the end of the Chola period,
exclusively or permanently assigned to particular types of temple personnel, but certain
patterns that would persist into later times were beginning to be established. Several groups
that had been prominent as singers, musicians, or dancers in the pre-Chola or early Chola
period—the pāṇar, the uvaccar, and the cāntikkūttar—had decreasing access to the ritual
roles they once played in the life of the temple. The eclipse of these figures is not, however,
attributable to a single cause; if, for the pāṇar, it was a case of displacement by Brahmans
and new categories of professional temple servants, the cāntikkūttar may have had temple
women to blame for their marginalization.
The increasing involvement of temple women with festival dance may have been possible
because this was a service that was not ritually neces-sary but occasional and optional. We
may contrast the role of festival dancing with hymn singing, which was becoming increas-
ingly part of the formal liturgical structure of daily worship; dancing at festivals was an
activity in which individual initiative, rather than membership in a particular community or
professional group, might have provided the opportunity for participation. If temple women
began to take advantage of this opportunity in the late Chola period, they did so only in
small numbers. Their dancing at temple festivals was not central either to the definition of
what they were or to what constituted a proper temple festival. It is only in retrospect that
we can see that temple women’s engagement with festival dance in this period was of great
significance for their future roles as temple servants.

Temple Women as God’s Attendants

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Śrī Uttamacoḻadevar Ko Parakesarivarmaṉ, [an
image of] Śrībalidevar, eight trumpets, and fly whisk handles for the 24 fly whisk
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 363

women (kavarippiṇākaḷ) were made out of gold and given to Mahādevar (the Great
God) of Tiruvoṟṟiyūr, as graciously commanded by Uttamacoḻa and arranged by Ceṉṉiy
Eṟipaṭaiccoḻaṉ Uttamacoḻaṉ. . . . [The rest of the inscription is broken off.]—SII 3.143: this
inscription was engraved in a.d. 985 on a slab that is now built into the floor of the verandah
around the central shrine of the Ādhipurīśvara temple in Tiruvorriyur, Chingleput district.
On the 116th day in the thirteethth year of the reign of Tribhuvuṉaviradevar, the emperor
of the three worlds who seized Maturai, Īḻam, Caruvūr, and the crowned head of the Pandya
king, and who performed the consecration (abhiṣekam) of victory and the consecration of
the hero, the tāṉattār (temple trustees) and the ūrār (village assembly) met to determine the
order of hymn singing (tirup pāṭṭaṭaivu), carrying the sacred lamps (tiruvālatti), and the order
of personal attendance (meykkāṭṭaṭaivu) [on the deity] of the temple women (teva aṭiyār) of
the temple of Lord Cuntaracoḻīśvaramuṭaiyār in Kūḻaikuḷattūr; this determination of rank
(muṟai) before [Śiva’s] sacred trident was conveyed to Vllavatāy.
[In] the first family (kuṭi).... rank are Māṇikkam and Tiruvampalam pirīyāti alias
Catturukāla-māṇikkam.
[In] the second rank (muṟai) are Ammaiyāḻvi alias Aṟputakkūtta-māṇik kam and
Nācciyāḻvi alias Villavatāy-māṇikkam.
[In] the third rank are Cuntara.... ṉuktavaḷate.... māṇikkam and her daughter Kaṇavati
alias Kulottunkacoḻa-māṇikkam and Pollātapiḷḷai alias Tirun̄āṉacampanta-māṇikkam and
Ciṟuval. . . . yāṟkoyil-māṇikkam.
[In] the fourth rank are Valli alias Irājakempira-māṇikkam and Pollātapiḷḷai alias
Coḻakoṉ-māṇikkam.
[In| the fifth rank are Āṭko. . .. ra-māṇikkam and Ciṟupa. . . . alias. . . . Tiruciṟṟampala-māṇikkam.
[In] the sixth rank are Ammaiyāḻvi alias Tiruveṇṇāval-māṇikkam and....
Tirukaḷiṟṟupaṭi-māṇikkam.
[In] the seventh rank are Poṟṟu . . . . liviṭṭa . . . . ṟṟucoḻa-māṇzikkam and Kūttāṭinācci alias
Tirunaṭampuṟinta-māṇikkam.
For the sacred lamps on festival days (tirunāḷ)..... and for carrying.... on festival days,
today. . . . [The rest of the inscription is defaced.]—IPS 162: this inscription was engraved in
a.d. 1207 on the south side of the wall of the ruined Śiva temple in Kulattur, Tiruchirappalli
district (Pudukkottai State).
Seventeen Chola period inscriptions refer to temple women as attendants in temple
­rituals. There are four types of attendance functions that temple women performed: bearing
flywhisks (­mentioned in eight inscriptions), being present at festivals (in four inscriptions),
­bearing lamps (in three inscriptions), and acting as a personal attendant on the deity (in two
­inscriptions). These tasks are similar to singing and dancing in their connotations of special
privilege, entailing as they do participation in ritual and proximity to the temple deity, but
they are rather different from singing and dancing in that they are entirely unskilled functions.
The most frequently mentioned type of attendance is bearing a flywhisk—the yaktail fan or
“chowrie” (Ta. kavari or cāmarai, from Skt. cāmarā). To be fanned with the flywhisk is a mark
of distinction particularly associated with kings and deities, who have frequently been depicted in
the literature and art of North India, since the early centuries b.c., as flanked by beautiful, female
flywhisk bearers (Tewari 1987, 52–70). The association of the flywhisk with both religious and
royal contexts is attested to in South India at least since the ninth century a.d.20 The inscriptional
364 LESLIE ORR

evidence of the Chola period indicates that temple flywhisk bearers were most often women
but not exclusively so; at the Srirangam temple, for example, a man was appointed, in the late
eleventh century, to do flywhisk service (SII 24.66).21
Of the eight inscriptions that refer to temple women as performing this service, three are
from the early Chola period, and all three—including the first, the previous translation—use
the term kavarippina, “flywhisk woman,” for the temple women involved.22 Even though
a specific term is applied to these women, it does not appear to) entail any particular ritual
qualifications or status. In one case, slave women, who have been donated to the temple
by a local notable, perform this attendance function: “I have given, with pouring of water,
my slave (aṭiyāḷ) Uṟaṉ Colai, her daughter Veḷāṉ Pirāṭṭi, and her daughter Aṟamaiyiṇtaṉ
Kaṇṭi to sing hymns (tiruppatiyam) and [act as] kavarippiṇāvarkaḷ for the Supreme Lord
of the temple . . .” (ARE 149 of 1936–37). This tenth-century record clearly spells out their
status as chattel but also indicates the privileged character of the role these women are to
fulfill by using an honorific double plural for the term “fly whisk women.” The honor of
attending the deity as a fly whisk bearer is also evident in the five inscriptions of the later
Chola period that refer to temple women in this role. They are all thirteenth-century inscrip-
tions from temples in Chingleput district that describe individual temple women as making
deals—offering substantial donations to the temple in exchange for the privilege of being
a flywhisk bearer (ARE 172, 180, 183, 210, and 211 of 1923).
The fact that these deals were made by temple women suggests that the task itself was
not so much a critical ritual function as an incidental adjunct to temple ceremony, whose
significance lay primarily in the fact that considerable honor was attached to this role. At
the same time, inasmuch as it was a service of attendance borrowed from or shared with
the royal context, flywhisk hearing did not need to be performed by a specially qualified or
ritually pure person. This activity was an ornamental one, just as in a royal court, where it
would be performed by female servants or palace women; the function in the temple was
thus perhaps ideally carried out by women, and their identity or status—whether they were
slaves or wealthy patrons—was not an issue.23
Four Chola period inscriptions refer to temple women’s involvement in temple festi-
vals, without specifying any particular function such as singing and dancing. In three of
these inscriptions, this involvement means taking part in festival processions, and all three
describe the temple woman’s right to participate as the consequence of her donation to the
temple—once again, a deal. It is clear that what was involved in these deals was the acquisi-
tion of a position of honor, of precedence and proximity to the deity in the procession. The
fourth inscription mentions in rather vague terms the responsibility of temple women to be
present at temple festivals. Chola period temple women seem not to have been extensively
involved in festival rituals.24 When they were involved, their participation had the same
character as that of the temple women who bore flywhisks—that is, it was less a matter of
performing a ritual function than of (literally) parading the status that had been accorded
to them by the temple.
Three of the Chola period inscriptions that refer to temple women as attendants describe
them as bearing lamps. In two cases, both from the far south, the task of carrying lamps
(vilakku) was assigned to temple women (tevaraṭiyār or tevaṭiccis) along with menial
tasks—weaving garlands or pounding paddy (SII 14.132; TAS 5.24—translations of both
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 365

follow). In these cases, it is not at all obvious that bearing lamps was actually a ritual duty
that involved proximity to the deity; it is possible, for example, that the lamps in question
were simply for illumination. But a more formal ritual function for temple women is evident
in the third inscription, which is translated at the beginning of this section. In this record,
seven tevaraṭiyār are each assigned a turn (muṟai) to sing, wave the lamp (ālatti) before the
god, and attend on him (IPS 162). The term ālatti that is used for “lamp” in this inscription
is derived from the Sanskrit word ārati, and we find in this inscription the technical usage
tiruvālattiyeṭu, “to wave light, etc., before an idol or important personage” (MTL, 246). The
careful specification of the order of precedence for the temple women to perform this service
indicates the honor associated with this role. But waving and bearing lamps was not a task
assigned exclusively to female temple servants, and we find—at least in inscriptions of the
early Chola period—men who performed this function, including Brahman men charged
with waving the ālatti lamp (e.g., SII 3.149). Bearing or waving lamps does not seem to
have been a very important role for temple women in the Chola period—in contrast to its
apparent significance for South Indian temple women in more recent times25—nor does it
seem to have been a function that was of particular importance in Chola period temple rituals.
Two thirteenth-century inscriptions refer to temple women who were personal attendants
for the image of the deity. One of them has just been discussed, in which the duties assigned
in rotation to the temple women of Kulattur included attendance on the god (meykkāṭṭu),
in addition to waving the ālatti lamp before him and singing hymns (IPS 162). The other
inscription is another thirteenth-century record, from Tirunelveli district in the far south of
Tamilnadu, which assigns a series of roles to various temple women, including cleaning and
decorating temple floors, as well as a task that I classify as personal attendance—applying
kāppu (substances such as sandal paste for ritual protection or adornment) to the images of
the deities in the temple (ARE 374 of 1972–73). In both of these inscriptions, in which the
names of the temple women are given and their duties and ranks carefully specified, it is
clear that personal attendance on the deities was a coveted honor.
This service, like the other attendance functions with which temple women were involved,
could be, from the point of view of the person who performed it, a special privilege and, at
the same time, from the point of view of the deity or the coordinator or sponsor of temple
worship, an optional service, which could be done by a variety of people—or not done at all.
Attendance functions do not loom large in the central patterns of ritual life of the medieval
South Indian temple or in the range of roles with which temple women were engaged None of
these attendance functions—bearing flywhisks, participating in festivals, bearing or waving
lamps or personally attending the temple deity—was performed exclusively by women. Yet
something may be said to be peculiarly feminine about these tasks: close to half of the 17
inscriptions that refer to temple women’s involvement with these duties describe the acquisi-
tion of the right to perform these services as the result of a deal. Men may, on occasion, have
been involved in the same tasks, but men never arrived at this involvement through these
means. The fact that temple women made deals in order to serve in these roles—and that, in
other cases, the exact nature of their right to perform these functions was carefully spelled
out in the inscription—indicates that what was at stake was not the temple’s effort to find
someone to fill a job but rather the temple woman’s effort to acquire recognition and status
in the temple. The indications of the honorary character of these functions are particularly
366 LESLIE ORR

in evidence in the later Chola period; this was also the period of increasing involvement by
temple women in these roles—13 of the 17 inscriptions date from the later Chola period.
It is also possible that the temple considered such roles suitable for women. It may be,
for example, that the character of these attendance ser-vices as marginal or incidental to the
basic temple ritual was significant in this regard; women could be allowed to participate
in temple ceremony in a capacity that would not aggravate competition for more ritually
central roles. Or it may be that women’s engagement in these attendance functions was seen
as bringing a special quality to the atmosphere of the temple that resonated either with the
ornamental character of women’s roles in the palace or the auspicious character of women’s
roles in the home.
Bearing fly whisks—the attendance function of temple women mentioned most fre-
quently—was a “traditionally” feminine occupation that was connected particularly with
the royal context. Having women adorn one’s court, as part of one’s entourage, as personal
attendants, or in processions, was a feature of the display and ceremonial associated with
the king.26 Although parallels and mutual borrowings between the temple and the royal
palace appear to be more characteristic of the post-Chola period than of the period under
study here, it may be that the increasing involvement of temple women with ornamental
attendance functions in the later Chola period reflected an early stage in the transfer of
aspects of the royal idiom to the temple.27 It is also possible that some of the attendance
functions performed by women in the temple—such as bearing lamps or decorating shrines
and images—reflected tasks characteristically performed by women as part of domestic or
votive religious observances.28 Because of these domestic associations, such tasks may have
been regarded as auspicious, and because they were performed by women in the home, they
may have been considered particularly appropriate activities for temple women.

Preparing Garlands for the Lord

In the fourth year of the reign of Ko Caṭayapaṉmar alias śrī Cuntaraco- ḻapāṇṭiyadevar,
we the mahāsabhaiyār (Brahman assembly) of the brah-madeyam Srī Rājarājac-
caturvvetimarikalam in Muḷḷināṭu, Muṭikoṇṭa- coḻavaḷanāṭu, Irācarācappāṇṭināṭu, met
together in the hall (ampalam) to make a binding agreement.
We grant land for gardens and houses for the uvaccakaḷ (drummers) who are garden
laborers (nanāṉvdnak kuṭikaḷ), for the potters (kucavakaḷ), for the temple women (tevaraṭiyār
pṇṭtukaḷ) who carry sacred lamps (tiruviḷakku) and weave garlands (tirupaḷḷittāmam), for
laborer-herdsmen (veṭṭikkuṭikaḷ iṭaiyar) who supply ghee for the lamps, and for other expenses
of whatever kind for Lord (āḻvar) Śrī Rājendracoḻa-viṇṇakar. [The inscription goes on to
describe the boundaries of the land granted; the end of the inscription is missing.]—SII
14.132: this inscription was engraved in a.d. 1025 on the north wall of the Gopālasvāmi
temple in Mannarkoyil, Tirunelveli district.
The tasks associated with providing flowers for the temple—gardening and weaving
garlands—present a kind of mirror image to attendance functions. Attendance func-
tions were inessential and optional but brought high honor to their performers, whereas
providing flowers was absolutely necessary for the conduct of temple ritual but was
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 367

considered to be menial labor. Although this task, essential to worship from the earliest
bhakti times, was viewed as a lowly one, in the “lowlier than thou” ethos of devotion
that developed in the bhakti period, it was a task that the highest-born devotees felt
honored to perform.29 Something of this same spirit may have been carried forward or
revived in the Chola period.
In Chola period inscriptions, most of the work of gardening, picking flowers, and making
garlands seems to have been done by men. In only five inscriptions do women perform these
functions, and in all of them women are responsible only for picking flowers and making
garlands rather than tending the temple gardens. The previous translation illustrates this divi-
sion of labor: men (in this case, interestingly, uvaccar, “drummer”) are charged with taking
care of the gardens and women (tevaraṭiyār) with making the garlands. This inscription
is also typical of the handful of records that refer to women in this capacity in that it dates
from the second subperiod, when three of the five inscriptions were engraved. In this early
Chola period, the other people, apart from temple women, who were assigned to the task of
gardening or garland making are, when they are identifiable, invariably men of relatively
low status. They are not mentioned by name and are anonymous members of groups; often
they are referred to, as in the case of the previous inscription, as kuṭikaḷ, “laborers.”
In the later Chola period, however, the positions of gardener and garland maker were
increasingly assigned to high-status people, including tavaciyar (“ascetics”) and various
categories of “honored devotees,” such as āṇṭār, nampis, and śrīvaiṣṇavas.30 In a number
of the later Chola period inscriptions, including a thirteenth-century record that assigns a
temple woman the task of weaving garlands (ARE 374 of 1973), those who acquired the
responsibility for gardening or garland making are named. The designation of a particular
individual usually indicates that some value or prestige was attached to the right to fulfill
that role. Although they were essentially unskilled and menial forms of work, gardening
and picking and plaiting flowers were forms of service that in the course of the Chola period
increasingly involved high-status people interested in securing—in their own names—the
right to perform these tasks. It is likely, then, that there was increasing competition for and
more and more restricted access to these service roles. This increasing competition and
restriction may account for the decline in the engagement of temple women with these
tasks, although women had, in any case, never been more than marginally involved with
these functions.

Menial Servants and Slaves

According to an earlier royal order, in the nineteenth year of the reign of
Tribhuvaṉacakkaravattikaḷ Śrī Rājarājatevar, in the fifth month, on the third tithi of
the bright fortnight, in the 26th nakṣatra, I, Vayalūr-kiḻavaṉ Tiruve-kampamuṭaiyaṉ
Centāmaraik Kaṇṇaṉ alias Vayirātarāyaṉ of Virukaṉpakkam alias Ceṉṉinallūr in Poṟūrnāṭu
in Puliyūrkkoṭṭam alias Kulottuṅkacoḻavaḷanāṭu, in Jayaṅkoṇṭacoḻamaṇṭalam, gave to [the
deity] Lord Tiruvoṟṟiyūr-uṭaiya nāyaṉār five persons—Periyanācci, her daughter Māri, her
younger sister Kavuttāḻvi, her younger sister Tiruvāṇṭi, and her younger sister Vaṭukāḻvi—
to husk paddy for the feeding hall (cālai).
368 LESLIE ORR

They are to husk paddy for the feeding hall of the god and those who are their descen-
dents (vaḻi) are to continue this paddy husking for as long as the sun and moon shall shine.
I, Vayalūr-kiḻavaṉ Tiruvekampamuṭaiyaṉ Centāmaraik Kaṇṇaṉ alias Vayi-rātarāyaṉ, have
had this inscribed in stone.—SII 4.558: this inscription was engraved in a.d. 1235 on the north
wall of the second prakara of the Ādhipurīśvara temple in Tiruvorriyur, Chingleput district.
Paḻuvūr Nakkaṉ, having given the village of Nctuvāyil and the hamlets surrounding Neṭuvāyil
to this deity, and taking responsibility for paying all taxes due from this holy temple and the
village, now does obeisance and makes a further undertaking that paddy be measured out in
the temple courtyard (tirumuṟṟam).... to the amount of 1,000 kalam, and that 100 kaḻañcu
of fine quality gold be weighed out. . . . providing for the expenses of cloth, oil, taxes. ...
the expenses [for feeding] 30 śivayogi Brahmans and 20 Brahmans—altogether 50 people.
[The inscription goes on to give an account of the amount to be fed to each person per
day—of rice, ghee, kaṟi (curry), puḷiṅkaṟi (tamarind or sour curry), salt, betel, and areca-
nut—and how much paddy is required for each of these expenses, resulting in a total of
1,605 kalam, 2 tūṇi, 3 kuṟuṇi, and 2 nāḻi of paddy annually.]
For one man to bring firewood (viṟakiṭuvāṉ), I kuṟuṇi of paddy daily, and for one cook
(aṭnvan), I kuṟuṇi of paddy daily—amounting, for the two men, to 60 kalam annually—and
for each man an allowance for cloth of 1 kācu (money) and 10 kalam paddy—totaling 2
kācu and 20 kalam paddy.
For oil at the time of the solstices and of Saturn for the 30 śivayogi Brahmans and the
20 Brahmans—altogether 50 people... [a total of 54 kalam of paddy is required annually].
[The inscription continues with a detailed account of the amount of paddy required
to meet the expenses of providing dal (payaṟu), black pepper, and asafoetida on a daily
basis—totaling 155 kalam and, in money, 15 kācu, excluding the money required for
“garden duty.”)
For one woman to gather and smear and apply powder in the feeding hall (cālai), 2 nāḻi
of paddy daily is required—amounting to 7 kalam, 1 tūni, and 1 patakku annually.
For one woman to remove the leavings and [clean] the eating place with earth and put
ashes in the pot, 4 nāḻi of paddy daily is required, plus an allowance for cloth—amounting
to 10 kalam annually.
For two hymn singers (tiruppatiyam viṇṇappañ ceyvār), 1 patakku and 4 nāḻi of paddy
daily is required—amounting to 75 kalam annually. and going, the placement and eviction,
of those wishing to eat in the feeding hall, 1 kuṟuṇi and 2 nāḻi of paddy daily is required,
plus an allowance for cloth—amounting to 37 kalam, 1 tūṇi, and 1 patakku annually.
For a potter (kucavaṉ) who makes pots for the feeding hall, 2 nāḻi of paddy daily is
required—amounting to 7 kalam, 1 tūṇi, and 1 patakku annually.
For a proclaimer (cotivi colluvaṉ) for 27 days of proclamation from the gopuram, 1 kuṟuṇi
of paddy daily is required—amounting to 30 kalam annually.
For one Brahman man who performs recitation (adhyayyaṉam) while the Brahmans are
dining (uttamāgrattil uṇṇum), 1 kuṟuṇi of paddy daily is required—amounting to 30 kalam
annually, plus 5 kalam, or 31/2 kācu cloth money.
For sandal [paste] for the śivayogi Brahmans and the Brahmans who are dining, 1/2 kācu
or 5 kalam of paddy is required.
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 369

[The inscription next provides details of the daily and annual expenses for offerings at
the nighttime śrībali ritual—including rice, sugar, fruit, and tamarind.]
I, Irājarājapallavaraiyaṉ [= Paḻuvūr Nakkaṉ] made this gift as a tax-free “inner sanctum
endowment” (tiruvuṇṇāḻikaippuṟam), in the 7th year of the reign of SrāIrājarajatevar, to
this [god] Śrī Vijayamaṅkalatevar, the Great Lord of this brahmadeyam, whose temple I
constructed in stone, and a record of these arrangements has been here engraved in stone.
[There follows a detailed account of the requirements for thrice daily offerings (to the
deity), including rice, ghee, poṟikkaṟi (fried curry), areca nut, betel, and curds. Provisions
are also made for five perpetual lamps and . . .]
For a cook, 2 nāḻi and 1 aḻakku of paddy daily, and for the writer of accounts, 4 nāḻi of
paddy daily; for 2 lamps for the nighttime śrībali, [a certain amount of oil required daily—the
total annual expense is 365 kalam, 7 kuṟuṇi, and 4 nāḻi]
Between religious acts and evil deeds there is no comparison. May this grant be protected
by the paṉmāheśvarur.—SII 19.357 (lines 41–83): this inscription was engraved in a.d. 992
on the north and west walls of the central shrine of Guṅgājaṭādhura temple in Govindaputtur,
Tiruchirappalli district. It is written in continuation of an inscription, dated eight years
earlier, that records the gift by the same donor of the village mentioned at the beginning of
this record. 18 Chola period inscriptions record the assignment of temple women to menial
functions associated with cleaning and food preparation. In half, the women can he identified
as slaves, having been sold or—as in the first of the two preceding inscriptions—given to the
temple. Such cases are an exception to the rule that the specification of a temple servant’s
name is a mark of the honor attached to the service: slave women’s names are recorded in
inscriptions for the same reason that the boundaries of land sold or granted to the temple
are indicated in detan—to pioviuw, a—property possessed by the temple.
In only one of the 18 inscriptions referring to temple women’s involvement in menial
tasks is there the slightest hint that the task is regarded as a privilege. In the thirteenth-century
inscription already discussed (ARE 374 of 1972–73), 10 temple women were assigned to vari-
ous duties, including applying kāppu (protective substances or adornments) to the deities—a
task that I classified as an attendance function—as well as making decorations (kolams) in
the great hall (mahāmandapa) of the temple and cleaning and applying kāppu in the first
and second prākāras (surrounding courtyards). This is the only Chola period inscription
that specifies that women performed the service of cleaning temple floors, although other
people—men or anonymous groups—were often assigned to this task, and as we shall see,
women were frequently charged with cleaning the floors of eating halls. Both Tamil and
Sanskrit bhakti literature exhorts devotees to serve the Lord by cleaning the floors of his
shrine,31 but this is the only inscription that suggests through its careful assignment of duties
to specific women—that cleaning the floors of the temple was considered an honored task in
the Chola period. It is also the only inscription that indicates that making auspicious designs
(kōlams) had a place in the Chola period temple or that this was a distinctively feminine
task, as it is in contemporary South India.
For most of the temple women whose duties found them squatting or kneeling on floors,
their work was more in the nature of drudgery than auspicious ritual activity. The preceding
translation above outlines the specific duties that were required of two women employed by
370 LESLIE ORR

the temple to serve in a feeding hall: one was to smear the floor (probably with cow dung, as
a means of purification) to prepare it before a group of Brahmans and śivayogis ate, and the
other woman was to clear away the leavings and clean up afterward. Altogether 11 Chola
period inscriptions refer to temple women acting as servants in feeding houses—Cālais or
maṭhas—and although the women’s precise tasks are rarely described, it is likely that they
were similar to those in the preceding inscription, and that these tasks were normally assigned
to women; men who worked in Cālais or maṭ has were typically artisans (especially potters),
cooks, or watchmen. In seven of the 11 inscriptions, the women are said to he slaves, which
was rarely the case for their male counterparts. It is clear that the type of service performed
by temple women in feeding houses was of extremely low status.
In six inscriptions, temple women are involved in the preparation of food that was offered
to human or divine recipients. One, an eleventh-century inscription from Chidambaram,
specifies that a married woman (vāḻvacci) was to bring the water vessel as part of the arrange-
ments made to feed Brahmans (SII 4.223; this inscription is translated at the beginning of the
fol-lowing section). In five inscriptions, all from the later Chola period, temple women had
the duty of pounding or husking paddy or dal; two of these. including me first record trans-
lated at the beginning of this section, identify the women involved with this work as slaves.
Food preparation tasks of this type were not carried out exclusively by women. But two
related types of preparatory functions in the temple were monopolized by men. Both tasks
seem to have had more honor attached to them than the work performed by women. The first
is the preparation of offerings other than food. For example, while there is one inscription
in which a woman fetches water to be used in cooking for Brahmans, numerous inscriptions
describe Brahmans with the task of bringing water to bathe the image of the deity. And if
temple women pounded paddy to prepare rice for cooking, when the substance pounded was
sandalwood or turmeric, used to adorn the image of the deity, the people employed were
invariably men—and, again, frequently Brahmans.32
The second kind of preparatory function from which women were excluded was the
role of cook. The terms used to designate the person who cooked food for the deities or
for human recipients in Chola period inscriptions—aṭuvāṉ, as in the preceding translation,
which describes the arrangements for feeding śivayogis and Brahmans, or maṭaiyaṉ, as in
the following inscription—are clearly masculine forms. It is surprising that the inscriptions
contain so little information about the identities of temple cooks; most inscriptions that
mention cooks do so in the same breath as potters or the men who were to fetch firewood,
without indicating that their ritual status qualified them to prepare food of the requisite purity
for gods and Brahmans (Orr 1994b). But the inscriptions do indicate clearly enough that
temple cooks were men. Temple cooks and the men involved in the preparation of nonfood
offerings may have been engaged in menial tasks, but the ritual location of these tasks was
a good deal closer to the divine presence at the center of the temple than were the activities
of the temple women. The rice husked by a slave woman in the temple courtyard had a long
way to travel before it was transformed into food for the gods.
There are not very many references in Chola period inscriptions to the buying and sell-
ing of human beings or to the transfer of people as chattel, and such references are virtually
nonexistent in the early Chola period. But almost all references to slavery involve women.
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 371

I have located 21 inscriptions that refer to slavery, and in only one (ARE 280 of 1927–28)
are the slaves—“drummer slaves” (uvacca aṭimai)—exclusively male. All of the other 21
inscriptions refer to slave women attached to the temple. Slave men are almost invariably
identified as the children of slave women....
It is not surprising that virtually all the slaves mentioned in Chola period inscriptions
were owned by the temple, given that the inscriptional sources are predominantly focused
on temple affairs. Some slaves had a brand or mark (ilaicciṉai—from Skt. lakṣanā) on
their bodies, which indicated their status.33 As we have seen, the work of slaves that is
mentioned most frequently is service in a feeding house attached fo a temple; there are also
two inscriptions in which female slaves husked paddy for the temple, and one inscription,
which we have encountered several times earlier in this chapter, in which the tasks of slave
women were to sing hymns and bear fly whisks. It is likely that in the later Chola period,
female slaves were owned not only by the temple but also by certain wealthy members of
society, and these women performed domestic functions similar to those they carried out
in the temple. This may have occured particularly in the core Chola region, where we have
the most evidence for temple slaves and where the Chola court may have set a certain royal
style for domestic arrangements, and perhaps for temple arrangements as well.34
Temple women’s involvement with the menial work of cleaning and food preparation
is mentioned with increasing frequency in the course of the Chola period: in the first sub-
period, just a single inscription refers to these tasks, but by the last subperiod there are 10
such inscriptions. Most of these identify the women as slaves. The rise in this type of female
temple service represents the dark underside of the increasing visibility of temple women
and their increasingly well-defined status and specialized roles. If, on the one hand, some
temple women in the later Chola period were mobilizing their energies and resources to
secure special relationships with the temple and to acquire positions of honor, on the other
hand, there were those whose connections with the temple were not of their own making and
whose work underscored their debased status. Yet in some ways the woman who had the
privilege of standing or dancing beside the processional image of the deity and the woman
who swept and smeared the floor of the feeding hall may have been regarded in the same
light: both might have been referred to as tevaraṭiyār and both might have been seen as
considered to be carrying out typically feminine functions.

The Overlapping and Obscure Outlines of Female Temple

Service
In the twenty-fourth year [of the reign of] Ko Virāca Kecaripaṉmār alias Lord Śrī
Rāḻentiracoḻatevar, through the agreement here drawn up, [to last] as long as the moon and
sun shall endure, Nakkaṉ Paravai, the “intimate” (aṇukki) of Lord Rājentiracojatevar, [gave]
that part [specified herein] of Parākramacoḷanallūr, in Kiṭāraṅkoṇṭacoḻap-periḷamaināṭu,
an eastern suburb of the taṇiyūr Perumpaṟṟappuliyūr of Rājentiraciṅkavaḷanāṭu, for the
expenses on the festival day in [the month of] Āṇi when the Lord—who is the master of
Tirucciṟṟampalam—graciously goes forth [in procession], for rice offerings for the Lord,
for the distribution of a 1000 pots of rice for the śrīmāheśvaras at the time when the rice
372 LESLIE ORR

offering is graciously [accepted by the Lord], for the oil necessary lor the festival, for the
gold which is graciously distributed [by] the Lord, and for the expenses including [provi-
sion of] the sacred cloth (paricaṭṭam)—totaling 20 kācu. A true copy of the deed of sale [of
this land] was taken from the people of the town (nagaram) who reside in the place called
Kuṇa meṅ kaipuram [and this deed of sale is recorded here].
[The following lines describe the boundaries of the land bought and donated by Nakkaṉ
Paravai and her defrayal of the taxes due (in paddy) through a payment of gold. The
inscription goes on to describe a further donation of gold by Paravai...] to provide for what
is necessary for the Tiruvātirai festival in Mārkaḻi, including the cloths (paricaṭṭam) to be
distributed—amounting to an expense of 120 kacu; for the rice offerings at the Tiruvāṉi
festival, and for the cloths to be distributed, and for expenses including (provision of) 4 nāḻi
(of paddy) for lamp oil—180 kācu; for reciters of Tiruttoṇṭuttokai at the Tirumāci festival—5
kācu—altogether 305 kācu were received and this agreement was drawn up.
The communities (kuṭikaḷ) who reside in Kuṇamehkaipuram, including merchants,
veḷḷāḷar, oil sellers (caṅkarappāṭiyār), weavers (cāliyar), and paṭṭiṉavar (fish sellers?),
and the artisan groups (? kiḻkalaṉaikaḷ) including carpenters, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, and
weavers (koliyar) accept the terms of this agreement, and undertake to maintain it for as
long as the moon and sun endure.
The inhabitants of this ūr (village) gave a part of the land of their ūr, called Caṅkoṭiyaṉ
Paravainaṅkainallūr [named after the donor Paravai], to cover the expenses of feeding 20
Brahmans in the Ciṅkalāntakaṉ cālai.
[The following lines specify the amount of paddy this land will produce, how taxes are to
be paid from part of this produce, and how the rest is to be spent to feed the 20 Brahmans: to
provide rice, curry, and spices—black pepper, tamarind, salt, turmeric—ghee, curds, betel,
arecanut, firewood, plantain, and oil, and to support several servants.]
For one cook for the cālai (cālai-maṭaiyaṇ) 6 nāḻi of paddy, and as clothing allowance
for the aforementioned... [break in the inscription]... 8 kalam of paddy, for one potter
(kucavaṉ) 4 nāḻi of paddy, for one married woman (vāḻvacci) who brings the water vessel
4 nāḻi of paddy, for five women doing service (paṇiceyya peṇṭukaḷ) 1 kuṟuṇi, and as cloth-
ing allowance for the aforementioned 10 kalams of paddy, and as clothing allowance for
one honored (overseer of the cālai?) 10 kalams of paddy—altogether 3 kalam and 3 kuṟuṇi
of paddy per day or 1,226 kalam, 7 kuṟuṇi, and 4 nāḻi of paddy per year, including all the
expenses here specified.
[This] agreement shall remain in force, having been engraved in stone, from this twenty-
seventh year [of the king’s reign] henceforth, as long as the moon and the sun endure.—SII
4.223: this inscription, which begins with a very long meykkīrtti, was inscribed outside the
first prākāra of the Nāṭarāja temple at Chidambaram, South Arcot district. in a.d. 1039.
[This section of the inscription begins with an account of the quantities of paddy available
for the temple, the produce of various lands, amounting to a total of 1,080 paṟa of paddy
annually.]
Of this total of 1,080 paṟa of paddy, 3 paṟa are to be taken daily, to produce 48 nāḻi of
rice, as measured by the god’s iraṭṭamaṭai, and portions distributed in the following manner:
for the meṟccānti (priest) 4 nāḻi and 1 uri, for one kiḻccānti (assistant priest) 3 nāḻi and 1
uri, for another kiḻccānti 3 nāḻi, for the sacred parasol [bearer] 2 nāḻi, for the feeding of the
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 373

vaiśvadeva (“all gods”) at the daily śrībali ritual 3 nāḻi and 1 uri, for the sacred offerings
(tiru amartu) at dawn 5 nāḻi, for the sacred offerings at noon 21 nāḻi and 1 uri, and for the
sacred offerings in the evening 5 nāḻi—amounting to a total of 48 nāḻi of rice.
This 31 nāḻi and 1 uri of rice used for sacred offerings [at the daily dawn, noon, and
evening services] should be taken and given as follows: 5 nāḻi of cooked rice to the super-
visor (vārivaṉ), 4 nāḻi of cooked rice to feed the garland [supplier], 3 nāḻi of cooked rice
to the temple watchman who guards the gate, 2 nāḻi of cooked rice to the temple woman
(tevaṭicci) who pounds the paddy for the sacred offerings and carries the hand-lamps,
and 2 nāḻi and 1 uri of cooked rice for each of the seven drummers (uvaccakaḷ) who beat
the seven instruments for śrībali—totaling, for the seven, 17 nāḻi and 1 uri of cooked
rice.—TAS 5.24 (lines 14–26): this inscription was engraved on copper plates in a.d.
1168; it records a series of endowments to and arrangements made by the Tirupāṟkkaḍal-
bhaṭṭāraka temple in Kilimanur, Travancore (Kerala). 11 of the Chola period inscriptions
thai describe temple women as temple servants provide only a vague and general notion
of the nature of their roles. Two of these inscriptions date from the second subperiod,
one from the third, and eight from the last subperiod. Several of the inscriptions of this
type—one of which (SII 4.223) is translated here—use the phrase “women who do service”
(paṇiceyya peṇṭukaḷ) without any further specification of the type of service required.35
Although this kind of expression is found also in references to male temple service, it is
usually obvious from the terms used for the men (e.g., “priest” or “drummer”) what the
nature of the service was.
In general, in fact, whereas the services to be performed by men are often spelled out
in some detail—the names of the hymns to be sung or texts to be recited; the exact ritual
occasions when the drummers are to perform and what instruments they are to play—this is
relatively rare in the case of temple women, as we have seen. The precise description of the
forms of temple service to be rendered by women is found most frequently in inscriptions
that record their deals. And detailed specifications for women’s services most often concern
ranking and order of precedence rather than ritual content. It is evident that the particulars
of these arrangements are of much greater concern to the individual temple women involved
than they are to the temple.
Out of the 67 inscriptions describing temple women’s service functions, seven indicate
that they performed more than one type of task, of the four types of service that I have
described—song and dance, attendance, garland making, and menial tasks. Four of the
seven involve a combination of song and dance duties along with attendance functions; we
have seen, for example, that temple women might serve as hymn singers and at the same
time bear lamps and attend on the deity (IPS 162) or that slave women could be assigned
both the task of hymn singing and bearing fly whisks (ARE 149 of 1936–37). One of the
translations at the beginning of this section (TAS 5.24) shows that bearing lamps, which I
have labeled an attendance function, might be combined with the menial task of pounding
paddy. In another inscription translated earlier in this chapter (SII 14.132), lamp bearing
is combined with garland making. And finally, in the thirteenth-century inscription from
Tirunelvelt district, we have seen a group of temple women assigned tasks of all four types:
dancing, applying pastes to the images of the deities, making garlands, and cleaning the
floors of the temple compound (ARE 374 of 1972–73).36
374 LESLIE ORR

The total of seven inscriptions that show temple women with multiple roles is not very
many—only a tenth of the inscriptions that indicate that temple women had service ­functions
in the temple—but the fact that we find even a small number of such inscriptions is of inter-
est when we consider that there is nothing that parallels them in the case of temple men: we
do not encounter Chola period inscriptions that describe men’s activity in the temple with
reference to a variety of diverse service functions. Men’s employment in the temple seems
to have been based on a more clearly established and specific professional foundation than
was women’s.
The vague and diffuse definition of the roles of temple women presents a contrast not only
with the specification of distinct functions for many male temple servants but also with the
image of the temple woman as a ritual specialist that has been formulated in recent ­scholarship.
Saskia Kersenboom, for example, maintains that the devadāsī of South India has been at all
times and at all levels of culture and of society a “ritual” person who deals effectively with
the divine which is considered dangerously ambivalent. This female r­ itualist... renders her
special power effective in three ways:

1. through her female sexuality that is identified with that of the goddess;
2. through a number of implements of ritual value like the pot, the lamp, coloured water,
certain flowers, fruits and unguents;
3. through her art.

Her special qualification is her auspiciousness which earns her the epithet nityasumaṅgalī.
(1987, 67) Certainly such nityasumaṅgalīs have existed in South Indian history—­particularly,
perhaps, in recent times—but if their defining feature is their role as “ritualists,” Chola
period temple women should not, it seems to me, be included in their number. The pres-
ent investigation has shown us, first, that the temple women of the Chola period were not
primarily recognized or identified with reference to ritual functions and that, when they did
perform services in the temple, their engagement with these tasks—in contrast to men’s—
frequently seems to have been optional, incidental, and individual. Female temple service
in the Chola period was not very organized or well defined, nor was it integrated into the
pattern of temple ritual as a whole. Second, there is a lack of fit between the elements of
ritual efficacy Kersenboom enumerates and the character of temple women’s service in the
Chola period temple. We have seen that there is no insistence that the performers of various
temple services be female. We have seen very little evidence of temple women’s ritual use
of pots, lamps, unguents, and so on; the few cases in which such use is in evidence, which
we have considered mainly under the category of attendance functions, were less the result
of ritual necessity than of the personal efforts of temple women to gain honor and recogni-
tion from the temple. And finally, we have seen that the identity of the temple woman was
not bound up with the role of singing and dancing; only at the end of the Chola period does
she begin to establish a claim to particular rights over or expertise in dance, especially in
the context of festivals.
I have suggested that temple women’s activities and acquisition of position in the temple
occurred in a climate of competition. Temple women’s increasing involvement with festival
dance seems to have taken place at the expense of men, who had formerly provided this
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 375

service. Meanwhile, temple women may have been displaced by men in making garlands
for the deity and in singing. It appears that in many cases temple service functions were
subject to a trend toward greater professionalization and increasingly narrow definitions
of eligibility. Temple women’s access to various service positions, and the extent of their
participation, was from the beginning of the Chola period much more limited than men’s,
and the changes that occurred in the course of the Chola period in some ways brought about
further restrictions on their involvement.
Temple women’s roles in the temple were such that their situation was quite different
from that of temple men. They were vastly outnumbered by their male counterparts and
were entirely or virtually excluded from many of the roles that men fulfilled, including those
concerned with the administration of temple affairs. And while there were numerous tasks
in the temple and terms for temple functionaries that were exclusively male, the terms and
roles assigned to temple women were not exclusively female. We can point to only two sorts
of temple service in which women were predominant and in which they became increasingly
involved—menial service associated with food preparation and cleaning, and attendance
functions. In the former, the tasks were of extremely low status, and in the latter, they were
nonessential, occasional, optional, incidental—and perhaps ornamental.
In fact, one or the other of these two characterizations—menial or incidental—can be
applied to virtually all of the tasks that were assigned to temple women, most of them of
the second type. These activities were not at all central to the ritual life of the temple. With
the apparent exception of dance, the services that temple women performed were unskilled
and nonprofessional. In many cases, they had more significance in the honor associated
with their performance than in the provision of a needed service to the temple. Thus temple
women’s work had a very different character than that performed by men.

SERVICE, SUPPORT, AND STATUS

In the fifth year of the reign of Tribhuvaṉaccakkaravattikaḷ Śrī Irācātirājadevar, I, Araiyaṉ
Catiraṉ Irācaṉ alias Kulottuṅkacoḷakkiṭāraiyaṉ of Peruvāyilnāṭu in Jayaciṅkakulakālavaḷanāṭu,
bought land [which is briefly described] from the Brahman assembly (sabhaiyār) of
Tirveṅkaivāyil to be a kāṇi (property) to support the dancing of kūttu on festival days,
including the Tiruvātirai festival in the month Vaikāci, for [the deity] Catiraviṭaṅka Nāyakar
whom I established in the temple of Tiruveṅkaivāyilāṇṭār.
[The following lines give a detailed description of the boundaries of the land.]
This land is to be enjoyed by the dancer (cānti kūtti) Nācci Umaiyāḻvi Catiraviṭankanankai,
who is to perform six dances (kūttu).
[The next few lines are damaged but indicate that arrangements about the land were made
with the māheśvarar and the...(?) and that a specified amount of paddy was guaranteed for
the person responsible for performing the six dances.]
Thus I, Catiraṉ Irācaṉ alias Kulottuṅkacoḻakkiṭāraiyaṉ, give this [land, as an endowment]
to last as long as the moon and sun shall shine. May the paṉmāheśvarar protect this [endow-
ment].—IPS 139: this inscription was engraved in a.d. 1168 at the Vyāghrapuṟīśvaram
temple in Tiruvengavasal, Tiruchirappalli district (Pudukkottai). Among the advantages of
376 LESLIE ORR

securing a temple position was the possibility that there would be some kind of remunera-
tion. Earlier in this chapter, I have suggested that the performance of responsibility functions
might result, indirectly, in obtaining support from the temple, especially in the case of tend-
ing arrangements. But many temple servants, including temple women, received support of
various kinds directly from the temple. 32, or about half, of the 67 inscriptions that mention
women’s temple service functions indicate that they received some kind of support. The
following table shows that the proportion of female temple servants who received support
from the temple was considerably higher in the early Chola period than in the later period.

Chola 1 Chola 2 Chola 3 Chola 4 Total

5/8 7/9 6/19 14/31 32/67
63% 78% 32% 45% 48%

Between the second and third subperiods there was a major change: although in absolute
terms the number of inscriptions that refer to women as temple servants more than doubled,
the number that describe them as receiving support from the temple actually declined. In the
second subperiod service functions were quite securely linked to support, but in the third
subperiod this was no longer the case. This detachment of function from support is in part the
result of the fact that temple women in this period began to negotiate deals with the temple
that did not involve any remuneration: none of the six deals that temple women made in the
third subperiod that resulted in temple service roles included arrangements for their support.
In the fourth subperiod, when the absolute number of female temple servants again rose,
the proportion who received support from the temple remained below 50 percent. This low
percentage is in part due to a continuation of the practice of making deals for service func-
tions without pay, but even more to the increase in the numbers of female slaves assigned
service functions—almost none of whom were given any property or regular income.37
When temple women were given support, a variety of arrangements were made by
the temple, ranging from the most well-defined, official, and permanent arrangements—­
associated with the granting of kāṇi—to more ad hoc and informal forms of support.
Kāṇi usually denoted rights over that part of the produce of a piece of land that was not
due to be paid in tax. Kāni was the form of ownership of agricultural land that was most
prevalent in the Chola period and that, to a large extent, continued to prevail in Tamilnadu
up until the early nineteenth century under the Persian term mirās, the land-grants them-
selves being termed māṉiyams or inārm in more recent history (see Fuller 1984, 81 and 91;
Karashima 1984, 26–31,165–80; Heitzman 1985, 123–47, 163–73). Kāṇi implied not only
rights but also duties and privileges: kāṇis, particularly those linked to responsibilities in the
temple, were “positions, around which rights and duties remained balanced” and to which
“various perquisites were ancillary” (Heitzman 1985, 140; also 135–37).38 In the present
analysis. I am concerned only with kāṇis that were bestowed by the temple or connected to
temple tasks. Also, I am categorizing as kāṇi other sorts of rights to property, which may
not have been identical to kāṇi but shared its formal, publicly recognized character; these
rights are referred to in Chola period inscriptions by the terms bhogam, jīvitam or jivanam,
and vṛtti (Ta. virutti).39
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 377

Seven inscriptions refer to temple women as the holders of kāṇi. Two date from the early
Chola period, one from the first and one from the second subperiod, and both are from South
Arcot district. The earlier inscription (SII 26.391) is a record of the granting of a bhogam to
a woman and her vaṟkattār to dance at the time of festivals; this is the only reference to kāṇi
for temple women that indicates that the rights and responsibilities involved were hereditary.
In the other early reference, a person, who seems to be a woman, is given as a slave (aṭiyāḷ)
to the temple and she (or her son) is provided with a jivanam for picking flowers in the
temple garden (SII 22.141). One inscription of the third subperiod from Tiruvengavasal in
Tiruchirappalli district refers to temple women’s kāṇi and is translated at the beginning of
this section; it records the grant of land as kaāṇi to a woman for performing festival dances
(IPS 139). Four of the seven inscriptions that mention temple women as holders of kāṇi
date from the last subperiod. Two record the purchase of kāṇi rights from the temple by
tevaraṭiyār (IPS 367; SI TI 1009), and the other two are grants of kāṇi to women (ARE 232
of 1971—72; SII 23.428). In contrast to the three earlier inscriptions, none of these four
link the acquisition of kāṇi by a temple woman to the performance of any specific function
in the temple.
Only a small fraction of temple women had kāṇi arrangements, but a somewhat larger
number received support from the temple in the form of what I have termed “kāṇi-like”
arrangements. These are arrangements that are not referred to in the inscriptions by the
terms kāṇi, jivitam, bhogam, or vṛtti but that involve, like kāṇi, the assignment of land to
a particular individual. 25 inscriptions mention kāṇi-like arrangements for temple women,
and 17, or two-thirds, date from the last subperiod. As in the case of kāṇi arrangements,
most of the references to kāṇi-like arrangements appear in inscriptions from the very end
of the Chola period.
Kāṇi and kāni-like arrangements for temple women involved the acquisition and posses-
sion of property rights by a particular individual. These arrangements are especially charac-
teristic of the last century of the Chola period, when individual identities were increasingly
highlighted and when temple women were more and more engaged in making deals with
the temple. Another method by which the temple provided support to temple women was
by allocating temple resources according to “shares” or “days.”40 While kāṇi and kāṇi-like
arrangements typically concerned single, named individuals, share arrangements most
often involved several different kinds of temple servants, who were frequently referred to
as anonymous groups.41 26 inscriptions mention temple women as being involved in share
arrangements, spread throughout the four subperiods, with somewhat more frequent occur-
rence in the second and third subperiods. Since the second subperiod is the one in which we
find the smallest number of inscriptions that refer to temple women, the eight inscriptions
describing share arrangements in this subperiod represent a relatively high proportion—close
to half—of all types of support arrangements for temple women.
A comparison of the patterns of support provided to temple women that were typical
of the second and of the fourth subperiods indicates that there was a shift in the kinds of
relationships that linked temple women to the temple and that connected service, support,
and status. In the second subperiod, women were incorporated into temple life as part of
a corps of temple servants, who belonged to various groups and were supported by shares
in the resources of the temple. But by the last subperiod, the impersonal institutionalized
378 LESLIE ORR

relationship of the share system was much less important for women. Instead, kāṇi and kāṇi
-like arrangements predominated, in which temples and particular temple women entered
into well-defined and formal agreements: the temple would provide support for the temple
woman, and the temple woman might—or might not—have to perform services in the
temple. In the thirteenth century, unlike the eleventh, women were only rarely integrated
into the temple establishment as members of groups; instead they negotiated individual
relationships with the temple.
In 53 Chola period inscriptions it is possible to determine the form of support provided
to temple women by the temple. Half of these date from the last subperiod, which suggests
that the arrangements made by temple women were being increasingly well defined in terms
of the details of their support; at the same time, they were less and less specific about the
nature of the services to be performed. The forms of support provided to temple women
were similar to those given to other temple servants, and consisted primarily of rice or
land. The rice used to pay temple servants was almost always in the form of paddy and was
only rarely cooked rice.42 Agricultural lands were granted to temple servants as a source of
regular revenue, usually in the form of paddy, or a temple servant might receive a plot of
land as a house site. These two forms of support—grants of rice or of land—are represented
approximately equally in the inscriptions that indicate support for temple women throughout
the whole of the Chola period.
Some of the inscriptions detail the precise amounts of paddy, rice, or land that temple
women received. But because the worth and the units of measure of land and of various
commodities varied considerably in different times and places.43 I have considered the
value of grants made to temple women in relative rather than absolute terms, by comparing
them to those received by other temple servants mentioned in the same inscription or in
other inscriptions of the same period and locale. The types of temple personnel who most
frequently received support well above the average level are hymn singers and priests,
although other types of personnel are also mentioned. Among the lowest paid are drum-
mers, people charged with the task of cleaning and smearing floors, and those responsible
for making garlands. Very generally, menial tasks are least well paid, whereas those of ritual
importance and those typically held by Brahmans are most well paid, but this pattern is
subject to considerable variation. There are several inscriptions, on the one hand, in which
the priest’s assistants (māṇis) receive support well below the standard; drummers, on the
other hand, are in some cases among the best paid temple servants. Temple women, for the
most part, are on the lower end of the pay scale. 22 inscriptions provide enough information
about the support of temple women to allow us to arrive at a rough estimate of its relative
value.44 In only three do temple women receive support at an above-average level. These
include a tenth-century inscription from Malabar district (TAS 8,43), which describes the
provision of paddy for female singers (naṅkaimār kāntarpikaḷ); a twelfth-century inscription
from Travancore district which records the provision of paddy for four tevaṭiccis, whose
functions are not specified (TAS 2.3); and a thirteenth-century record from Kolar district,
indicating that land was given to several taḷiyilār who were “to serve” (cevikka) the deity
(EC 1o.kl 121). Of these three inscriptions, only the first provides any clue to the kinds of
duties that might have been required of these temple women, and none records the assign-
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 379

ment of specific tasks. All three inscriptions are from regions on the periphery of the Tamil
country—two from the Kerala region and one from Kolar district in the west. Thus, what
we may consider the highest paying jobs for temple women are not very much like actual
“jobs” because they are not associated with particular functions; nor are they either very
common or at all typical of the central Tamil country.
This pattern holds even for the middle range of support. Only six of the 22 inscriptions
can be classified as providing support for temple women at this level. And just one gives
the impression that pay was provided in exchange for specific services: this is the thirteenth-
century inscription from Tirunelveli district in the far south, which I have referred to several
times earlier in ihis chapter and which records the particular tasks—adorning the images
of the deities, cleaning and decorating the temple floors, dancing, and making garlands
—and precise amounts of paddy assigned to each of 10 temple women. Two inscriptions
describing temple women who received an average level of support are from the second
subperiod—one (SII 2.66), front the Rājarājeśvara temple in Tanjavur, records the grant of
shares to the taḷicceri peṇṭukaḷ, and the other (SII 4.223, translated earlier in this chapter),
from Chidambaram in South Arcot district, describes the support arranged for a woman who
is to bring ihe water vessel and for five women doing service (paṇiceyya peṇṭukaḷ). Three
other inscriptions date from the thirteenth century and record deals negotiated by temple
women at Uttaramerur in Chingle-put district (ALB 8,177; ARE 180 and 183 of 1923). In
these three inscriptions, there is an indication that the temple women who had made dona-
tions to the temple were entitled to perform certain attendance functions, in addition to
receiving support, but these tasks have more the air of privileges than of duties for which
the temple women were being paid.
From this discussion, it would appear that the amount of support granted to most temple
women was below the level received by the average male temple servant. But it is virtually
impossible to demonstrate that temple women received lower pay than men did for equivalent
work, for several reasons. First, Chola period inscriptions only infrequently provide infor-
mation about the tasks performed by temple women—and still less frequently refer also to
the amount of support given for the performance of these tasks. Second, temple women did
not usually perform the same kinds of tasks that men did.45 This fact in itself would tend to
bring down the level of support that the average temple woman enjoyed, given the exclusion
of women from those functions, such as hymn singing or serving as priest, that were most
highly remunerated. Even in the realm of menial service, tasks with greater honor—and
greater pay—were assigned to men rather than women; this is demonstrated, for example,
in the inscription from Chidambaram (SII 4.223), in which the woman assigned to fetch
water received two-thirds and each of the five “women who serve” received a quarter of the
amount of paddy granted to the male cook.
Temple women, like other temple servants, on occasion received house sites from the
temple. I have found 22 references that refer, directly or indirectly, to the housing of temple
women. These references include inscriptions that mention in passing the “temple women’s
street” or that identify temple women in terms of their association with the area around the
temple. Seventeen, or over three-quarters, of these inscriptions date from the later Chola
period. Most of the 22 references mention the temple women’s residence either in the “temple
380 LESLIE ORR

quarter” (tirumaṭaiviḷākam) or in the temple streets (vīti, teru, etc.). Three inscriptions, all
from the early Chola period, associate temple women with the temple ceri, or “district.”46
In the few cases in which the exact locations of temple women’s residences are specified,
there are various arrangements: for example, the taḷicceri peṇṭukaḷ of Rājarājeśvara temple in
Tanjavur were housed in the streets to the north and south of the temple (SII 2.66), a temple
woman of Tiruvarur lived on the south side of the “holy street” (tiruvīti) (SII 17.600), and a
temple woman of Tiruvannamalai was a resident of the west street (ARE 232 of 1971–72).
In recent times, the assignment of areas around the temple to various groups of temple ser-
vants became more fixed, with temple women often housed in the “best” areas, defined by
proximity to the deity—directly across the street from the temple walls and close to the main
gate of the temple, which was typically on the east side.47 Such a systematic assignment of
residences was evidently not a feature of the Chola period temple community.
Another contrast between Chola period temple women and their modern counterparts
is related to the issue of whether temple women—or other types of temple servants—were
normally provided with places of residence by the temple. This seems to have become a
standard feature of the support of female temple servants by the nineteenth century but is
relatively rarely found in the Chola period records. In fact, in the Chola period, the excep-
tional, negotiable, and honorary character of the assignment of houses is indicated by the fact
that the most precise specifications of their locations (the “first house” or “corner house”)
were made in the case of deals (ARE 29 of 1940–41; ARE 471 of 1962–63). It appears that
temple women took advantage of the fact that the assignment of places of residence around
the temple was not highly formalized in the Chola period, claiming residence in the vicinity
of the temple as a mark of status. That such a privileged association with the temple was
increasingly acquired by temple women is indicated by the fact that the greatest proportion
of references to the housing of temple women comes from the later Chola period.
A final aspect of the support of temple women to be considered is related to the original
source of the property that was granted to them. It has been frequently said that, histori-
cally, kings have had a special role in the sponsorship of devadāsīs and that, in general,
kāṇis and other temple “service tenures” were originally rights granted by the king.48 But
the evidence of the Chola period inscriptions supports neither of these views. Some of
the links between temple women and the temple were established or sanctioned by royal
authority, but most came into being by other means: some were created by temple or village
officials, some were the result of gifts made by local notables or residents, and some were
established through deals—in consequence of a gift made by the temple woman herself.
This diversity of sources is demonstrated by the origins of the kāṇis held by temple women.
Of the seven kāṇis acquired by temple women, three were the consequence of gifts made by
local residents, two came into being because of deals made by temple women themselves,
one was established by the local Brahman assembly (sabhai), and only one was the result
of a royal order. There was somewhat more royal interest in the creation of kāṇis for male
temple servants, but even for men the majority derived from sources other than the king.49
There were a variety of different kinds of arrangements through which temple women
secured support from the temple, and at no time in the course of the Chola period is there
evidence that temple women acquired positions through a particular procedure carried out
by the temple or that they were predominantly sponsored by a particular type of patron.50
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 381

Although temple women resembled their male counterparts in receiving support from diverse
sources, they were unique among all other types of temple servants in that they, through
their deals, became partners with members of the temple establishment in defining the roles
they would fulfill in the temple and the remuneration they would receive.
The Chola period temple, dedicated to providing worship for the deities enshrined within,
was a focal point for the mobilization of resources, the performance of a wide range of
activities, and the participation of many kinds of people. In addition to those who made
links to the temple as patrons, many people were employed in the temple in various ways.
The patterns of administrative, ritual, and maintenance functions that constituted the life
of the temple and defined the temple community were far from fixed; these patterns varied
from temple to temple and from region to region and underwent change over time. In this
chapter, I have tried to give an idea of the general framework within which these patterns
unfolded and of the factors that may have affected the processes of change in order to posi-
tion temple women within these patterns and processes.
In examining the roles that temple women played in the temple and comparing these
with those of their male counterparts, I have attached attributes to the various managerial
and service functions that women and men performed and have indicated how the attributes
associated with certain functions have shifted over time as different types of people took
up these functions. Figure 23.1 gives a schematic view of some of these attributes, repre-
senting them as pairs of opposites. Each role in the temple, as fulfilled by a particular type
of temple servant at a particular time and place, could in principle be characterized by its
location on each of the horizontal lines that join the opposing attributes. The role of temple
priest, for example, as it is described in most Chola period inscriptions, would be classified
as more “professional” than “honorary,” that is, more a job than a privilege, and would also
lean toward the left side of the scales in being relatively skilled, well paid, and associated
with specification of function; and would be on the far left end of the scales in terms of the
essential character of the role and its association with ritual proximity to the temple deity.
The role of the women who purchased the rights to dance and sing Tiruvempāvai at festivals
from the temple at Nallur (ARE 160 and 161 of 1940–41) would be located differently:
toward the left, perhaps, with regard to the skill of the role, ritual proximity, and degree of
specification; fairly far to the right in the role’s being honorary and optional; and all the
way to the right for pay, given that these temple women paid the temple to perform these
functions rather than vice versa.
I would like to suggest that although temple
Professional <—> honorary men’s roles might have a wide range of pat-
essential <—> optional
terns of attributes—including the clustering of
attributes on the left side of the scales, as in the
skilled <—> unskilled
case of the temple priest—the variety of temple
ritual proximity <—> ritual distance
women’s roles would be much more restricted,
specification of function <—> vagueness of function
would scarcely ever resemble the pattern of
high pay <—> low pay the male priest’s role, and would instead tend
no pay toward the clustering of attributes on the right
negative pay (deal) side of the scales. Men’s roles, certainly, might
Figure 23.1 Attributes of Roles and Functions in slide to the right as well—many men with
the Chola Period Temple responsibility functions were engaged in temple
382 LESLIE ORR

functions that were honorary, optional, not particularly skilled (except, perhaps, in the case
of temple accountants), unpaid, and more or less ­neutral in ritual proximity and specificity
of function—but such roles were, typically, not ones that women played.
The attributes on the right side of the chart cannot all be reconciled with one another—it
is unlikely, for example, that a role could be regarded as having an honorary character and at
the same time involve ritual distance from the divine presence in the temple—but in virtually
every type of role that Chola temple women played, it appears that several, if not many, of
the right-hand attributes are relevant.51 The fact that the cluster of characteristics of temple
women’s roles tend to be located on the right side of this chart does not mean that these
roles were, by definition, inferior to the roles played by men. Temple women’s roles were,
perhaps, more marginal than central to temple life, but we must not assume that those women
whose roles were honorary, optional, unpaid, unskilled, and vaguely defined were people
who had tried and failed to become highly paid and skilled professional temple servants.
Underlying temple women’s associations with the temple was a different kind of rationale.
Most temple women acquired functions in or support from the temple as a way to enhance
a status that was already theirs. A woman’s role in the temple was not primarily viewed as a
source of livelihood, nor was her role what defined her identity and status—unless, perhaps,
she was a slave acquired by the temple specifically to perform menial services. The temple
woman’s role was, instead, an adjunct or marker of her status.
The identity of the temple woman of the early twentieth century, understood in the context
of hereditary, specialized, professional female temple service, seems to be based equally on
three carefully defined and interconnected features: ritual tasks and privileges, entitlement
to support from the temple, and temple woman status—acquired by birth or adoption into
the devadāsī community and by a ceremony of dedication to the temple. For Chola period
temple woman, we see an entirely different picture. It is the temple woman status that is
central to her identity, and temple service roles or support from the temple are accessories to
this status. There are only four Chola period inscriptions in which the three aspects—temple
service function, support by the temple, and status as denoted by the use of “temple woman”
terms—appear in conjunction with one another.52 If it is the status of being a temple woman
that is at the core of her identity—and if, as we begin to suspect rather strongly, this status
was acquired and defined very differently for her than it was for the temple woman of the
early twentieth century—we must turn now to an examination of its nature.
identifiers add up to more than the figure given for the hometown total because some of the
inscriptions name several different types of men using different kinds of identifiers.

NOTES
1. The tending relationship that temple Brahmans entered into was similar to that of temple women, although
Brahmans are much more frequently described in this role—being charged with providing a regular return on
temple resources entrusted to them (e.g., Heitzman 1985, 137–38; 177, n. 32). The extent to which they may
themselves have profited from such arrangements is not clear, but it is possible that both Brahmans and temple
women were being provided with support by the temple through this system. The tending relationships of shepherds
are of a somewhat different character because these people were not temple men but had simply entered into an
investment contract with the temple. It has been suggested, however, that at Tanjavur and elsewhere in South
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 383

India this kind of arrangement made shepherds (or agriculturalists) into temple servants, who may in some cases
have eventually taken on other temple duties (Spencer 1968, 279 and 292; Talbot 1988b, 184–85, 284; 1991, 331).
2. In the Jain context in medieval Tamilnadu, we find a parallel situation. Of the 104 inscriptions that refer to Jain
‘religious men,’ 13 (12%) describe them as being in charge of the administration of endowments or of institutions,
such as Jain paḷḷis. None of the 29 inscriptions that refer to Jain ‘religious women’ mention their involvement in
such responsibility functions (Orr 1998).
3. Although here I am primarily concerned with how temple men—the male counterparts of temple women—
secured status through their involvement in responsibility functions, men who had more secular identities were
also engaged in temple business, evidently with similar interests in the positive effect on their reputation that
this activity might have. In his study of intermediate authorities, or ‘lords,’ in the Chola period, James Heitzman
argues that ‘the most important means for determining the relative power or influence of different titled lords was
the holding of public ceremonies that become “political contests” for demonstrating the extent and commitment
of each lord’s following, his gentility and his generosity. The typical style of “administration” in this system was
the public meeting or court where resource transfers took place according to stylized ritual prescriptions’ (1997,
225). Heitzman (1997, 206−16) provides several concrete examples of individual men whose public activity,
‘multidimensional’ exercise of influence and ‘ramified contacts’ included extensive involvement in temple affairs.
4. Saskia Kersenboom’s work is particularly noteworthy in this regard. The interest of Frédérique Marglin, of Anne-
Marie Gaston and of Avanthi Meduri in the study of devadāsīs was inspired by their own experience and training
in Indian classical dance. Amrit Srinivasan—although she does not consider the devadāsī’s dance in terms of its
ritual importance, as do Kersenboom and Marglin—focuses her analysis of temple women in recent South Indian
history, and the organization of their community, on their professional status as dancers. Khokar (1983), Srinivasan
(1983) and Meduri (1996) have documented the evolution of the dance traditions of the devadāsī after the advent,
early in the twentieth century, of the campaign to prevent the dedication of temple women.
5. Song and dance are occasionally included by the Āgamas and other ritual handbooks among the 6, 16, 21, or 32
upacāras (‘ways of service’ or ‘rites of adoration’) offered in daily ritual to the deity (Kane 1930−62, 2: 729−30;
Brunner-Lachaux 1963, App. VII; Appadurai and Breckenridge 1976, 193; R. Davis 1986, 265−74, 317−18). But
none of these sources gives the impression that the performance of song and dance is a ritual necessity; these texts
characteristically present a number of different options for the conduct of daily worship, and if song and dance
are mentioned at all, it is in the context of worship done in the most elaborate fashion. Most of the references to
dance in the Āgamas appear in descriptions of festival celebrations rather than of daily ritual, but even at festivals,
dance is not represented as a ritual necessity. Furthermore, the Āgamas provide very little specification of ‘what’
dances were to be performed, in either daily or festival worship (cf. V. Subramaniam 1980, 36; Viswanathan
n.d.). Were dance performances regarded as ritually significant, they would have been given more detailed treat-
ment; instead, the Āgamas usually refer to dance in only the vaguest terms—as nṛttagītavādya (‘dance, song and
instrumental music’) or śuddhanṛtta (‘pure dance’). (See Orr 1994c; Gorringe 1998.)
6. In discussing the temple arts of the Chola period, Kersenboom mentions the term cāntikkūttu but spells it with
a short a and gives a derivation from Sanskrit sandhi; she speculates that this may be a variant of navasandhi
kautvam, a dance performed by the devadāsīs of Tamilnadu in more recent times which honours the deities of
the nine cardinal points (sandhis) (1987, 29; see also Janaki 1988, 167−175; Meduri 1996, 41−42; Viswanathan
n.d.). Although we frequently encounter the word canti (with a short a) in the Chola period inscriptions, usually
designating the three times of day (sandhyas)—morning, noon and evening—when worship was offered to the
deity, the word cānti when combined with kūttu is consistently spelled with a long a.
7. The interpretation of kūtti kāl to mean ‘prostitute tax’ may be argued on the basis of the fact that the word kūtti
has the meaning of ‘prostitute’ in later Tamil usage (MTL, 1071) and the hypothesis that a tax on prostitutes
existed in medieval South Indian society. It is, however, difficult to support the idea that in the Chola period
inscriptions kūtti means ‘prostitute.’ On the one hand, kūtti did not have this meaning in the Cankam and bhakti
literature of preceding periods, and in inscriptional usage, kūtti and the parallel male term kūttaṉ appear in con-
texts in which the meaning of ‘dancer’ is quite clear. Kūttaṉ, one of the names of Śiva in Tamilnadu, is also very
common as a male given name. The idea that there was, in medieval South India, a tax on prostitutes is suggested
by T. N. Subramaniam in his glossary in South Indian Temple Inscriptions, Volume 3, in reference to the terms
384 LESLIE ORR

mukampārvai and kaṇṇāṭi, which both mean ‘looking glass’ (1957, xxiv, xxxix; cf. Gopalan and Subbarayalu
1967, 432, who define mukampārvai as a ‘customary present at the time of seeing a superior person’). Even
if Subramaniam’s interpretation of these terms is correct, they do not appear in Tamil inscriptions before the
fourteenth century, fully three centuries after the references to kūtti kāl that are being considered here. A tax on
dancers, on the other hand, is quite conceivable: we find parallels in three thirteenth century inscriptions (SII
1.78; SII 17.564; SII 17.568) that refer to taxes on drummers (uvaccaṉ kāl or uvaccaṉ perkkaṭamai).
8. It is possible that cāntikkūttar as professional dancers may have been inheritors of an older bardic or indigenous
Tamil tradition (Kersenboom 1987, 57, 151). But professional singers and dancers, male or female, were not
generally referred to as kūttar or kūttikaḷ in the literature of the early Cankam period. The masculine forms kūttaṉ
and kūttar are used in the Poruḷ section of the Tamil grammar Tolkāppiyam (which may date from around the
fifth century a.d.) to refer to bards and minstrels as characters in literature (e.g., Tolkāppiyam 88, 148, 191, 491).
In Cilappatikāram and Maṇimēkalai (probably of a still later date), the term kūttu is used to refer to the art of
dance (e.g., Cilappatikāram 3.12,13 and 19), and masculine kūttar and feminine kūttikal are frequently used to
designate dancers, singers, or actors (e.g., Cilappatikāram 5.50; 14.156; 26.106 and 228; 28.165; Maṇimēkalai
12.51; 18.6 and 35; 28.47). In the devotional poems of the Āḻvārs and Nāyaṉmārs (sixth to ninth centuries), kūttu
mostly refers to the dance of a god—Kṛṣṇa or, especially, Śiva (Orr and Young 1986, 50−54).
Another theory is that the term cāntikkūttu refers to classical as opposed to popular dance (Khokar 1979,
64; Kothari 1979, 23). In this case, the Chola period cāntikkūttar may have been developing new dance forms,
perhaps under the influence of northern Indian classical dance and drama traditions. That these influences were
present in Tamilnadu in this period is clear from the fact that there are so many reflections of the Nāṭya Śāstra
in the descriptions of dance in Cilappatikāram, a Tamil work composed before Chola times.
Cāntikkūttu was performed at temple festivals. Other festival dances mentioned in Chola period inscrip-
tions include cākkaikkūttu, which was performed by both men and women (ARE 65 of 1914; ARE 120 of
1925; ARE 8 of 1929; ARE 160 of 1941; SII 19.171) and āriyakkūttu, performed by men (ARE 120 of
1925; SII 3.202).
9. Singing and dancing at festivals, along with other forms of participation in festival observances, are also the
most prominent ritual roles for women sanctioned by the Agamic texts (Orr 1994c). These roles are mentioned
with particular frequency in the Pāñcarātra texts Śrīpraśna Saṃhitā and Iśvara Saṃhitā, both of which reflect
practices particular to medieval South India (such as the use of Tamil hymns as part of temple liturgy). I sus-
pect, therefore, that the Agamic imaging of the temple woman as a festival performer has been, at least in part,
influenced by the actual increase in the middle of the Chola period in women’s involvement with festival dance.
10. These temple women of the later Chola period may be contrasted with a woman mentioned in an earlier (tenth
century) inscription (SII 26.391), who did have the capacity to transfer her rights hereditarily. She was granted
land by the temple to support her as a festival dancer, and her descendentś (vaṟkattār) were to continue to serve
as dancers and to use the land.
11. Only one of the 13 Chola period references to naṭṭuvar that I have found (SII 23.306) explicitly mentions the
naṭṭuvaṉ’s connection with dance, but the term is clearly derived from Sanskrit nāṭ, ‘to dance’ (MTL 2136−37;
MW 525). Terms like this one, related to Sanskrit naṭa, nāṭya, or nṛṭ, are not at all common in Tamil inscrip-
tions. Apart from naṭṭuvaṉ, the only other term of this type that I have found is naṭṭiyāṭṭar, which is probably a
compound of Tamil naṭṭiyam (‘dancing, acting,’ from Sanskrit nāṭya) and āṭṭar (‘dancers,’ from Tamil āṭu). Two
early Chola period inscriptions from Tiruchirappalli district (SII 8.659 and 698) mention naṭṭiyāṭṭar as owners
of land. Terms of this type were much more widely used to refer to dancers outside of Tamilnadu. I have found
the terms naṭa, nartaka, nartakī, nṛtyantī or nṛttānganā in 10 non-Tamil inscriptions, dating before a.d. 1300,
from various parts of India including Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In 7 of the 10 references, the dancers
were women. None of the female performers of dance in Chola period inscriptions is referred to by such terms.
That we find in the Tamil inscriptions kūttu-based terminology for ‘dancers’ and naṭa-based language for
‘dance masters’ may indicate the presence of two different dance traditions—an indigenous kūttu tradition, per-
formed by professionals not linked to the temple and a northern-influenced nāṭya tradition (see note 14). Each
of these two traditions may have had its own group of professional specialists; if cāntikkūttu skills belonged to
both women and men (although, as we have seen, cāntikkūttar with the title ācāriya, ‘teacher,’ were all men),
nāṭya expertise seems to have been monopolized by men, by the naṭṭuvar.
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 385

12. In 6 of the 13 inscriptions that refer to naṭṭuvar, they are listed together with temple women and other temple
servants and described as receiving support from or acting as functionaries in the temple. But there is no indica-
tion of any special connection between naṭṭuvar and temple women, unless we consider significant the fact that
naṭṭuvar and temple women are frequently in close proximity in the lists given in the inscriptions.
13. The renowned Tamil poet Kampaṉ, who lived during the later Chola period, was a member of the uvaccar com-
munity. His pre-eminent status as the author of the Tamil Rāmāyaṇa contrasts with the obscure and peripheral
position of the later Ōcchar.
Another community of drummers, the paṟaiyar—whose anglicized name ‘pariah’ is synonymous with
‘outcaste’—also experienced a drastic decline in status. The paṟai (the drum)—which features prominently in
Cankam and bhakti literature—is frequently mentioned in Chola period inscriptions as an element in temple
performances. But paṟaiyar did not serve as temple drummers. There are three contexts in which we find
references to paṟaiyar: (a) in inscriptions, particularly from Tanjavur district, where there is the mention of
paṟaicceris, which were evidently separate areas within villages where paṟaiyar resided; (b) in the imprecations
of later Chola period inscriptions, which sometimes warn that those who overturn the terms of an endowment
will have sunk to the level of a man who gives his wife to a paṟaiyar; and (c) in at least a handful of inscrip-
tions (all from outside Tanjavur district) in which paṟaiyar appear as temple patrons and thus as people with
economic resources and a legitimate public presence. I disagree with Heitzman, who considers that in the Chola
period paṟaiyar ‘were practically if not legally attached to the lands and wills of the landowners and cultivators
who controlled the land’ (1985, 160; see also Jha 1974 and Hanumanthan 1980). Paṟaiyar in the Chola period
ceased playing the ritual and professional roles they had in an earlier age—having been, perhaps, displaced
by the uvaccar—but they were not yet entirely identified with the degraded and serflike status they were to
acquire in later times (see also Appadorai 1936, 23−24, 313−18; Nilakanta Sastri 1955, 555−57; Arokiaswami
1956−57; K. Swaminathan 1978).
14. Naṭṭuvar may have competed with uvaccar, as well as with cāntikkūttar, for the role of dance teacher in the
temple. That drummers and the uvaccar themselves, were connected as teachers to temple women is suggested
by Thurston’s report that in Chingleput district, in the early twentieth century, the Ōcchar ‘act as dancing-masters
to Devadāsīs, and are sometimes called Naṭṭuvaṉ’ (Thurston and Rangachari 1909, 5; 419). In Tamilnadu in
the last hundred years, most temple women have been trained in dance by naṭṭuvaṉār, men who belonged to
the ciṉṉamēḷam, the male wing of the devadāsī community. The ciṉṉamēḷam is one section of the mēḷakkāraṉ
‘caste’ group, which also includes the periyamēḷam (nagaswarant-players). Male members of the ciṉṉamēḷam
might remain in their sisters’ households and serve as musical accompanists (especially drummers) for the
devadāsīs or establish themselves as dance teachers to the devadāsīs (naṭṭuvaṉār) (Thurston and Rangachari
1909, 2: 127−28; 5:59−60; Pillay 1953, 248; A. Srinivasan 1984, 198−226; cf. the naṭṭuvaṉār interviewed by
Milton Singer 1972,177, who emphatically denied any connection with devadāsīs).
The earliest inscriptional reference to mēḷakkārar, ciṉṉamēḷam or periyamēḷam that I have encountered is an
inscription of a.d. 1603 from South Arcot district that mentions tevaraṭiyār and mēḷakkārar (SIOT 31).
15. Out of the 13 inscriptions that mention viṇṇappañ ceyvār that I have located, 6 apply the term to men and none
to women.
16. In the preceding discussion of dance, I have considered two inscriptions that refer to groups of ‘dancers’ (āṭiṉār)
and ‘singers’ (pāṭiṉār). The term used for ‘singers’ is based on the Tamil verb pāṭu. We cannot, however, deter-
mine whether these singers were male or female.
17. In the 12 inscriptions I have found that referred to the singing of Tiruvāymoḻi, this responsibility was assigned
to men in four cases, to groups of singers whose sex was not apparent in eight cases, but in no case to singers
who were clearly women.
18. On the one hand, we find in a thirteenth century record (SII 7.118) from North Arcot district a list of communities
swearing loyalty to their ruler: pāṇar are grouped with low-status groups like paṟaiyar, veṭar (hunters) and iṟuḷar
(tribals) at the end of the list (uvaccar, interestingly, are listed toward the beginning, together with shepherds
and śivabrāhmaṇas). On the other hand, in the same period—but much to the south, in Madurai district—we
find an inscription (ARE 476 of 1963) that confirms the land rights, (kārāṇmai) of a pāṇaṉ who is mentioned by
name, which suggests a relatively high social and economic standing for this individual. The only other reference
to pāṇar that I have found is from the second subperiod, in the long inscription from the Rājarājeśvara temple
386 LESLIE ORR

at Tanjavur (SII 2.66), where three (or perhaps four) pāṇar are mentioned by name and were assigned shares
as support from the temple. It is impossible to know what roles these pāṇar were meant to play in the temple,
but it is perhaps significant that they are listed with artisans (carpenters, goldsmiths, etc.) rather than with the
musicians mentioned earlier in the inscription. There is no indication of a connection between the pāṇar of the
Tanjavur temple and the large group of temple women—taḷicceri peṇṭukal—named in this inscription.
19. The stories of the recovery, setting to music, and establishment of a professional group for the performance of
the hymns are very similar in the Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava traditions, and both refer to events that are supposed to
have taken place in the tenth or eleventh century (see Cutler 1987, 44−50). The Śaiva tale is found in Umāpati’s
Tirumuṟaikaṇṭa Purāṇam (fourteenth century), and the story of the Vaiṣṇava canon is told in Kyil Oḻuku (which
was compiled between the twelfth and the eighteenth centuries). In both traditions, a particular community or
family is given the special responsibility of performing the hymns. It seems likely that these stories were used
to legitimize the rights of those people who had succeeded in acquiring the role of singing hymns in the course
of the Chola period.
20. In the first stanza of the Tamil poem Tiruppoṟcurṇṇam, by the ninth century Śaiva poet Māṇikkavācakar, women
are called to the temple to make offerings, beautify the temple, sing praises, and take up fly whisks (kavaris)
(Tiruvācakam 9.1; see Orr and Young 1986). In an early Chola pweriod inscription from Tanjavur district, the
cāmarai is mentioned as one of the marks of nobility bestowed by the king on a feudatory, along with a hereditary
title, an army of elephants, palanquin (civikai), and so on (SII 3.89).
21. In the only passage in the Āgamas that I have found which specifically refers to the bearing of flywhisks, men
perform this activity (Īśvara Saṃhita 11.308−9). In the chronicle of the Srirangam temple, Kyil Oḻuku, bear-
ing flywhisks is described as a task performed both by male temple servants (kaikkḷar) and by temple women
(emperumāṉaṭiyār) (Kyil Oḻuku, 94).
22. In addition to the three inscriptions considered here that use the term kava-rippiṇā for women who perform
flywhisk service, four other inscriptions use this term in other contexts (e.g., identifying a female donor as a
kavarippiṇā or indicating support from the temple for kavarippiṇās). All seven inscriptions date from the mid-
tenth to the mid-eleventh century; the term falls out of use in the later Chola period.
23. Tewari, in his study of royal attendants, says of chauri (cāmarā) bearers, as they are depicted in Sanskrit lit-
erature, ‘in comparison to the chauris they were holding and waving over the kings, specific references to them
are few and far between’—whereas in artistic representations, ‘there is hardly an illustration of a chauri bearer
in Indian art which does not present her as elegant, seductive and full of youth’ (1987, 54−55).
24. There is more emphasis in Agamic texts than in Chola period inscriptions on women’s involvement in temple
festivals. But frequently the texts describe women as only one type of festival participant, out of several pos-
sible candidates. For instance, the Sanatkumāra Saṃhitā says that either a devadāsī or an ācārya (‘teacher’)
should act as leader in the offerings to the directions during the bhūtabali ritual preparatory to the celebration
of a festival (Sanatkumāra Saṃhitā Śivarātra 2.9.42). And in a number of Agamic references, devadāsīs are
listed with other sorts of people, suggesting that the point of the text is to be inclusive of, rather than insistent
on, the participation of such women along with other members of the temple or village community. In a festival
procession described by Īśvara Saṃhitā (11.207), for example, the participants include not only gaṇikādevadāsīs
but also townspeople, Brahmans, and so on. The Parama Saṃhitā (22.18−19) says that gaṇikādevadāsikās,
artisans (śilpins) and servants (sevakas) should be brought together for a festival procession. It seems that func-
tions associated with festival celebrations need not necessarily be performed by women or by a special class of
female temple servants (see Orr 1994c).
25. On the basis of her interviews with South Indian informants and her study of recent commentaries on ritual texts,
Kersenboom has concluded that ‘the most important task of the devadasi ... was to remove evil influences from
the deity [through her participation in the daily dīpārādhanā (“lamp-worship”) ritual]. Her special qualification
of being ever-auspicious (nityasumaṅgalī) made her more suited to this task than any of the ritual personnel’
(1987, 119; see also 60−61 and 112−13).
There is, however, little textual or inscriptional evidence to support the idea that this interpretation is relevant
to premodern South India. Although the Āgamas contain more references, than Chola period inscriptions, to
temple women’s involvement with lamp service, these references are not extremely abundant, nor do they insist
that temple women are pre-eminently qualified to perform this ritual function. I have found 8 references in the
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 387

Āgamas to temple women performing this function (out of a total of 53 references in the Āgamas to women’s
involvement in temple ritual), and 3 of these references clearly indicate that the employment of a woman in this
ritual task was optional. For instance, the Śaiva text Ajitāgama (3.23.6) says that either the temple women of
Śiva (rudrayātanayoṣit) or male assistants (paricāraka) might bring plates for lamps in the daily lamp offering
service. We find very similar mentions of alternative ritual performers—to bear lamps in procession or to par-
ticipate in the daily lamp waving (nīrājana) ceremony—in two Vaikhānasa texts, the Vaikhānasāgama (29.5)
and Bhṛgu Prakīrṇādhikāra (Goudriaan 1970, 202; see Orr 1994c).
26. There are many references in the Sanskrit Epics and in Indian Buddhist literature, to enormous numbers of women
in the train of kings (Chanana 1960, 123−28). Although this aspect of the kingly persona is not particularly
pronounced for kings in the Chola period in South India—less so, I would argue, than Shulman (1985, 303−39)
has led us to believe—there is no question that the courts of Chola period kings included many palace women.
That some of these women were, at least nominally, associated with personal attendance to the king, is suggested
by their identification as belonging in some cases to the mañcaṉattār veḷam, the ‘palace of the ceremonial bath’
(e.g., SII 8.678; SII 22.27).
27. It is tempting to consider that the term kambhada suḷeyār, ‘pillar prostitutes,’ applied to temple women in medi-
eval inscriptions from Karnataka, may reflect a similar, ornamental function for these temple women, whose
roles, in addition to bearing flywhisks on occasion, were unspecified (Parasher and Naik 1986, 67), In a Tamil
text of the post-Chola period—Kyil Oḻuku, the chronicle of the temple of Srirangam—there is a suggestion of
the ornamental character of temple women’s services. The first of the duties assigned to temple women (emper
umāṉaṭiyār) in this text seems to involve no ritual action at all but simply standing in the presence of the deity:
‘One [of the emperumāṉaṭiyār] would bathe herself, at dawn, and adorning herself, go to the temple and stand
well in sight of the God.’ The text goes on to specify other tasks assigned to temple women, which involved
bringing plates of incense and pots and dancing (Kyil Oḻuku, 95−96).
Marglin (1985b) and Kersenboom (1987) have analyzed in detail the significance of temple women’s roles as
attendants in temple and palace ceremonies in more recent history. In their view, temple women who performed
these services were not merely ornamental but served a critical function as representatives of auspiciousness,
whose ritual actions were necessary for the protection and prosperity of temple and palace affairs. Given that in
the Chola period temple women were engaged in attendance in the temple only occasionally—and in the king’s
palace, not at all—it does not seem that this interpretation of their ritual functions is very useful here.
The ornamental may, of course, be auspicious, but the question is whether this ornamental auspiciousness
should be considered a ritual necessity or not.
28. The inscriptions do not provide any direct evidence of the character of women’s domestic ritual, but there are
some hints in Tamil literature. Hardy cites several references to the use of lamps in the worship performed by
women in Cankam poems (Neṭunalvāṭai and Maturaikkāñici) which he dates to the second to fourth centuries
a.d.: ‘Girls... light the wicks immersed in oil of the “lights made of iron,” scatter rice and flowers, and worship’;
‘carrying many things, holding bright lamps in front and boiled rice ... women undergoing a difficult pregnancy
worship with devotion’ (1983, 140). The ninth century work by the Vaiṣṇava poet-saint Aṇṭāḷ, Nācciyar Tirumoḻi,
describes women’s creation of auspicious designs and other preparations that were part of the performance of
a vow (Nācciyār Tirumoḻi 1.1; see Orr and Young 1986).
29. In the Śaiva devotional poems, there are references to the plaiting of garlands as one of the tasks of the devo-
tees (Tiruvācakam 5.14) or of the Brahmans who worship Śiva (Tēvāram 7.30.3). The Vaiṣṇava poet-saints
Toṇṭaraṭippoṭi and Periyāḻvār, both of whom were Brahmans, tended gardens and supplied garlands to the Lord,
according to hagiographical accounts (Govindacharya 1982, 3, 22). Since there appears to be no evidence of
their engagement in these activities in the poems themselves, it may be that the hagiographers of these two
Āḻvārs were inspired by developments of the late Chola and post-Chola periods.
30. At the Vaiṣṇava temple of Srirangam, where a large number of inscriptions concern arrangements for the provi-
sion of flowers to the temple, we find in later Chola period inscriptions the responsibility for gardening assigned
not only to labourers (āḷs) but also very frequently to nampis and dāsanampis, śrīvaiṣṇavas and even jīyar (Orr
1995c). These figures, who are very often referred to by name, were individuals with high status in the corps
of temple personnel or the sectarian community. At some temples, however, gardening and garland making
continued to be treated as tasks for menial labourers even in the later Chola period. We can see this pattern at the
388 LESLIE ORR

great Śaiva temple of Chidambaram, where the gardeners mentioned in inscriptions of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries are all anonymous groups of kuṭikaḷ (Orr 1995a).
31. The Bhāgavata Parāṇa (XI.11.39) exhorts the devotees of Kṛṣṇa to sweep, wash, plaster and decorate the
floor of his shrine. We find references in the early Tamil Śaiva text Tirumantiram (1444, 1447) to the duty of
the devotees to erect temples and to clean them (Narayana Ayyar 1974, 253−54). There are many passages in
the Tamil poems of both Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava poet-saints that describe the cleaning of the floor of the temple
as an act of worship appropriate to the ideal devotees (see, e.g., Tiruvācakam 5.14; Tiruvāymoḻi 10.2.7; Dorai
Rangaswamy 1958, 1070; Orr and Young 1986).
32. It is interesting that there is no inscriptional evidence from the Chola period for women’s involvement in pounding
powders and pastes for adorning images, despite the several textual references to women’s participation in this
activity as part of festival observances. There are two such references in the Sanskrit Āgamas of the Vaiṣṇava
Pāñcarātra tradition (Śrīpraśna Saṃhitā 34.74−75 and Aniruddha Saṃhitā 21.63). In Tamil devotional literature,
an entire poem is built around the description of women pounding powder for a festival, the Tiruppoṟcuṇṇam
(‘Gold-dust Song’) in Tiruvācakam, composed by the ninth century Śaiva poet-saint Māṇikkavācakar (see Orr
and Young 1986). K. K. Pillay describes the involvement of temple women in this activity at the Suchindram
temple, in the far south, in recent times: as part of festival observances, the ceremonial powdering of gold dust
along with turmeric, to be smeared over the images, is done ‘by the Otuvar (chorist) and the Devadasi (of the 1st
Kudi) together.... The pestle is held both by the Otuvar and the Devadasi during the pounding process... [and]
both the persons sing a particular hymn from Manikkavacaga’s Tiruvacagam’ (1953, 228).
33. Five inscriptions refer to temple women who bear marks (in four cases the triśūla, Śiva’s trident) indicating that
they belong to a temple or a god. In four of the inscriptions (ARE 230 of 1921; ARE 141 of 1922; ARE 94 of
1926; EZ 4.24), these women appear to have been slaves; and in the fifth (ARE 537 of 1922), ‘those marked with
the trident’ seem to be temple servants or devotees in general, rather than temple slaves (ARE para. 19 of 1922;
Nilakanta Sastri 1955, 556, 564, n. 43; Balasubrahmanyam 1975, 76; 1979, 53). In three inscriptions, we are able
to learn the identity of the person who marked the temple women: in two cases, the person who gave women
to the temple, and in one case—in which slaves were purchased to work in a maṭha—the temple authorities.
Because of its association with the status of being, literally, a slave and because of the apparent lack of a
ritual context in which the marking or branding ocurred, it is doubtful whether this practice is connected either
with the South Indian bhakti and the Agamic sectarian traditions of marking, sometimes associated with rites of
initiation (Hardy 1978, 134; Kingsbury and Phillips 1921, 39; Jaiswal 1967, 143−44), or with the ceremony of
dedication performed by South Indian temple women in recent times, which was called ‘branding’ (Ta. muttirai,
from Skt. mudrā) and which involved the impression of a sectarian mark on the body of the dedicated devadāsí
(Kersenboom 1987, 188; Viswanathan n.d., 57−58).
34. 15 of the 22 inscriptions that refer to slaves are from Tanjavur district.
35. The term used for ‘work’ or ‘service’ in this expression is paṇi, a word with very strong devotional connota-
tions in the earlier Tamil bhakti literature. In the poems of both the Āḻvārs and Nāyaṉmārs, we frequently come
across descriptions of the ideal devotee as one who performs service (paṇicey) for god (e.g., Māṇikkavācakar’s
Tiruvācakam 7.9, 10.12, 13.9, 27.5, 40.10, etc.; Cuntarar’s Tēvāram 7.77.4; Nammāḻvār’s Tiruvāymoḻi 1.10.11;
Periyāḻvār’s Tirumoḻi 5.3.3).
36. A much later record, dating from a.d. 1867, from the Suchindram temple at the southern tip of Tamilnadu, men-
tions three types of roles in outlining the duties of temple women: they were responsible for dancing and singing
on various occasions; for the attendance functions of bearing lamps and flywhisks; and for the menial tasks of
sweeping and cleaning the temple courtyard and shrines, washing the vessels used in worship and clearing up
after the offering of food to Brahmans (Pillay 1953, 283−85).
37. Of the seven inscriptions in the fourth subperiod that record deals made by temple women which resulted in
temple service positions, three mention that support was provided by the temple. Of eight inscriptions from this
subperiod that mention female slaves with temple service functions, only one describes arrangements for support.
38. The idea that all forms of kāṇi involved position, as well as property, is emphasized by Heitzman (1986, 11),
who puts forward the notion of the ‘conditional nature of all property, dependent on the performance of public,
social obligations’; by Karashima (1984, 26−27, 175, 196, n. 33), who stresses the idea that kāṇi and mirāsi were
not only rights to land but also rights to privilege and power; and by Granda (1984, 122, 184), whose analysis
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 389

of property relations in the post-Chola period leads him to say that land rights ‘adhered to individuals like some
personality trait,’ involving status as much as property.
39. In my analysis of religious kāṇis I am not distinguishing between village service kāṇis connected with temple
duties (e.g., the grant of a kāṇi to a dancer or an artisan for service to the temple) and eleemosynary kāṇis
(brahmadeyas and devadānas) that benefited temple servants. The distinction between the service tenure and the
eleemosynary tenure was perhaps first made in Anglo-Indian law and does not seem to reflect any real functional
division between types of temple service (Presler 1987, 77, 87). In the scholarly literature, Appadorai (1936, 164)
and Nilakanta Sastri (1955, 570) make this distinction, and their lead is followed by later historians (Heitzinan
1985, 135−37; Dirks 1987, 426−32).
Heitzman (personal communication) has suggested that jivanam, understood as a revenue grant allocated
from public funds ordinarily collected as taxes (the ‘upper’ share of produce from a piece of land), is different
in source from kāṇi or bhogam (rights to the ‘lower’ share). He distinguishes brahmadeyas and devadānas from
kāṇis on the same basis.
Peter Granda (1984, 89−110, 219−23) provides a very comprehensive discussion of kāṇi and of the transmis-
sion of temple rights and land rights in the post-Chola period.
40. The notion of a share was in some instances closely linked to the concept of kāṇi. At times the term paṅku
(‘share’) seems synonymous with kāṇi (e.g., SII 8.644); in other cases a specific service kāṇi might be divided
into shares or days, distributed through the course of a month. In the present analysis, share arrangements are
those in which various temple servants and temple expenses were assigned fixed amounts of income (in paddy
or gold) out of the total revenues of the temple. A good example is provided by the long Tanjavur inscription
(SII 2.66), in which each of the 400 taḷicceri peṇṭukal was assigned one share (paṅku), defined as the amount
of paddy (100 kalam) that 1 veli of land would produce; other temple servants were also assigned one share
(e.g., the supervisor of the taḷicceri peṇṭukaḷ, the conch blower and the goldsmith) or variously assigned a half
or three-quarter share (some of the uvaccar, singers, carpenters and barbers), two shares (naṭṭuvar and temple
accountants), and so forth.
41. Every one of the seven inscriptions that refer to the kāṇi of a temple woman gives her name, and not one mentions
arrangements for the support of other temple servants. Of the 25 inscriptions in which kāṇi-like arrangements
are made for temple women, only 4 mention arrangements, made with other temple servants and all but 9 refer
to the temple women by name. In contrast, 23 of the 26 inscriptions that describe share arrangements for temple
women also specify allotments for other temple servants, and 20 of these inscriptions refer to temple women as
members of an anonymous group (e.g., as tevaraṭiyār, or singing women).
42. In a few cases, temple women and other temple servants were paid with cooked rice (coṟu). Although payment
in consecrated food (prasāda) and honours based on the distribution of consecrated food may have become
very important in the post-Chola period, this does not seem to have been the case in the Chola period. See note
24 in chapter 3.
43. In my calculations of the value of the various kinds of property referred to in Chola period inscriptions, I have
relied on the analyses of economics and mensuration undertaken by Appadorai (1936, 258−64, 701−32, 769f,
782−85, 796−810), K. Chatterjee (1940, 160−61), Nilakanta Sastri (1955, 557−62, 585−88, 613−24), Pandeya
(1984, 144−45) and Heitzman (1985, 241−42, 510−12).
44. Of these 22 inscriptions, 2 are dated in the first subperiod, 6 in the second subperiod, 4 in the third subperiod,
and 10 in the fourth subperiod.
45. Ramaswamy (1989, 92, 94, 98) cites several Chola period inscriptions as evidence for her conclusion, that in
general women in early South India were paid less than men for domestic and agricultural labour. I have not
found such a discrepancy in the case of temple service because women and men were not assigned to the same
tasks within a single inscription or within a group of inscriptions from the same locale and period.
46. The term cēri has a wide range of meanings in Tamil literary and inscriptional usage. It may mean village, hamlet,
suburb, district or street, and it frequently denotes the quarter where a particular caste or professional group,
resides (MTL, 1636; SII 2.4 and 2.5; Gros 1968, 204, n. 38; Sethu Pillai 1974, 55; Karashima 1984, 46−48).
47. Amrit Srinivasan (1984, 148−56) describes the spatial organization of the area around the South Indian temple in
recent history, highlighting the way in which the assignment of houses to temple women and allied groups near
the east side of the temple and near the residences of the temple Brahmans served to demonstrate and enhance
390 LESLIE ORR

their ‘pure’ or ‘high’ status. Studies of the temples at Suchindram and Uttaramerur bear out Srinivasan’s account
to some degree (Pillay 1953, 10 and plan 2 ‘Sucindram in the time of Balamartanda Varma, 1729−1758 a.d.’;
Gros and Nagaswamy 1970, 124−27 and the map ‘Uttaramērūr: la ville moderne’). In the Chola period, however,
we see different patterns of habitation and land use around temples: residences were not densely clustered around
the temple and much of the agrarian landscape was preserved in the process of ‘temple urbanization’ (Heitzman
1987b). It appears that it is primarily in the post-Chola period—particularly at a few major temples that were
renovated in this period (e.g., the Mīnākṣī temple at Madurai)—that we see the systematic application of the ideal
model of the mandate, prescribed in Śilpaśāstra texts, to the organization of the streets and residences around
the temple; in these cases there is a more orderly pattern of hierarchy ‘from the center outward’ (J. Smith 1976,
31−36; see also B. Dutt 1925, 142−64; Reiniche 1985, 77−81, 85−91, 109, 112).
There are frequent references in inscriptions from Karnataka, dated in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries,
to the housing of temple women, apparently in the vicinity of the temple; these districts are called sūḷegeris.
48. For the notion of a close connection between temple women and kings, see note 9 in chapter 3. The idea that kāṇis
(or in more recent times, ināms and māṉiyams) have their ultimate source in royal largesse has been argued—or
simply assumed—by British administrators, temple personnel and many historians. Karashima (1984, 179−80),
for example, has suggested that the mirāsi rights that the British attempted to deal with in the nineteenth century
had their genesis in royal grants in the Chola period. Stein takes issue with the notion put forward by Nilakanta
Sastri and other historians that rights to land rested ultimately in the state and he traces this concept to colonial
British interests rather than early South Indian practice: ‘Assuming the politic fiction that the government was
landlord, the British claimed the right to a substantial portion of produce’ (1980,192). Heitzman (1985, 118−19,
144)—although he, like Stein, notes the vested interest of the British in the concept of universal royal possession
of land—seems to support the idea that in fact in the Chola period kāṇi was understood as having its source in
the universal lordship of the ruler, at least ‘conceptually,’ however irrelevant this ‘concept’ might have been at
the local level (1985, 141−42, 144, 164). Dirks (1987, 125−26, 128−29, 410−11) emphasizes strongly the idea
that ināms and kāṇis were, at least ‘in cultural terms’ or ‘ideally,’ grants from the king—just as temple honours
ultimately depended on royal prestige and largesse (Dirks 1976, 152; 1987, 289).
I am not persuaded that in the Chola period kāṇis ‘conceptually’ or ‘ideally’ derived from the king. It is
true that in the colonial and modern periods, South Indian temple servants have upheld the view that their
rights originated in royal grants (Fuller 1984, 91−92). This claim may not so much reflect ancient historical
circumstances (or even ‘concepts’), however, as it does more recent changes: it has, for instance, been argued
that profound alterations in the definition of ināms and in the relations between temple servants and the temple
were the consequence of the policies of nineteenth century British administrators (especially those in the Board
of Revenue), who took, too literally, the idea that the state was the source of ināms (Appadurai 1981, 140−41;
Fuller 1984, 94; Presler 1987, 77−81).
49. Neither royal sponsorship nor hereditary temple service arrangements were typical of the Chola period, but there
seems to be a correlation between arrangements of support that were established by royal authority and those
that were hereditary. This is not the case for temple women—there being so few instances of royal involvement
with their support arrangements and, in addition, so few instances when their relationship with the temple were
hereditary—but among temple men, it appears that a substantial proportion of royally sanctioned arrangements
were hereditary and that a substantial proportion of hereditary arrangements were authorized by the king.
50. The arrangements for the support for temple women in medieval Tamilnadu may be compared with those in the
same period in Karnataka, where, according to Parasher and Naik (1986, 70−77), temple women were largely
patronized by members of the ruling family and of the top levels of the feudal hierarchy. The analysis of the
types of donors responsible for establishing temple women in the temples of Karnataka serves as the starting
point for the argument that these temples found both their material and their ideological basis in the feudal,
hierarchical political order of the period. The power relations and ethos that were thus absorbed into the temple
milieu had, according to Parasher and Naik, its effect on temple women, in their ritual tasks (modeled on royal
ceremony), their standing in the hierarchy of temple servants, and the expectation that they were available for the
 Chapter 23  Temple Women as Temple Servants 391

‘enjoyment’ of those who held positions at the top of the various power structures—gods, Brahmans, kings or
members of the elite. If Parasher and Naik are correct about the sources of support for temple women in medieval
Karnataka, the differences from the situation in Tamilnadu are very striking: it would appear that temple women
in Tamilnadu depended to a much greater degree on local support—and on their own initiative—in securing
their positions as temple servants.
51. The only possible exception that I can discover is that of the female singers (naṅkaimār kāntarpikaḷ) mentioned
in a tenth century inscription from Malabar district (TAS 8,43), whose role was (presumably) relatively profes-
sional, essential, skilled and associated with proximity to the deity, in addition to being well paid. The only
right-hand attribute in this case is the inscription’s complete lack of specifications of the actual tasks of these
singers—an omission that may put in doubt some of the left-hand characteristics we have assumed.
52. These four inscriptions include three from the second subperiod (ARE 128 and 153 of 1912; SII 14.132) and
one from the late thirteenth century (ARE 26 of 1928−29). In two of these inscriptions, it is not even entirely
clear that the temple women involved did have functions in the temple.
 Chapter 24 In the Business of
Kama: Prostitution in
the Classical Sanskrit
Literature from
the Seventh to the
Thirteenth Centuries*

SHALINI SHAH

Like all other social institutions of our time, prostitution also has to be studied in the context
of the overarching patriarchy with which it was intimately linked. The terms vesya, ganika
or any other synonym for it,1 in the classical literature of the period analysed in this article,
are all gendered or gender-specific—they specifically refer to women prostitutes. In none
of our sources do we find any term referring to male prostitution.
In Yasodhara’s Jayamangala, an eleventh century commentary on the Kamasutra,2 we
can find references to nine types of prostitutes,3 viz.

kumbhadasi: A slave woman who was assigned the duty of fetching water
paricarika: Female attendant
kulata: Unchaste woman
svairini: Sexually promiscuous woman
nati: A dancing girl, an actress (rangayosita) as Yasodhara describes her.
silpakarika: A female artisan. Yasodhara describes them as wives of dyers and
weavers. They too must have worked as such.

* Reproduced with permission from the author. Previously published as ‘In the Business of Kama: Prostitution in the
Classical Sanskrit Literature from the Seventh to the Thirteenth Centuries’ in Medieval History Journal.
1
Ludwick Sternbach, Vesya: Synonyms and Aphorisms, Bharatiya Vidya, vols 4 and 5, Bombay, 1942, 1945.
2
Jayamangala Commentary on Kamasutra, (ed. and tr.) Madhavacharya, 2 vols, Bombay, 1995.
3
Ibid., 6.6.50.

392
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 393

prakasavinasta: A woman who leaves her family, says Yasodhara, either when the
husband dies or even in his lifetime, to become someone’s mistress.
rupajiva: A woman living on her beauty.
ganika: Regular courtesan.

A mere glance at this list shows that women workers were included in the category of
prostitutes. This would reinforce the view that under patriarchy, in historical times, it was
not possible for women to enter any profession or work for wages and thereby earn a liveli-
hood, and at the same time maintain the integrity of her body. Not only did women workers
get classified as prostitutes, many a prostitute upon the end of her earning phase ended up
as a beggar woman who had to perform lowly jobs to subsist. It was thus a two-way traffic.
In Ksemendra’s Samayamatrka,4 an eleventh century satirical tract on prostitutes, we can
observe a significant statement that unlike men who can live on their knowledge and expe-
rience, old courtesans (yauvananase vesya) can live only on charity (bhiksa). The career
of bawd Kankali in this text amply illustrates this aphorism. The cycle of the prostitute’s
existence in this social setup in historical times is also very pithily summed up in a verse
from an anthology5 which says ‘courtesans are first servants (purvam ceti), then courtesans
(tato beti), afterwards old procuresses (paschata bhavati kuttani) and at the end when they
are completely without funds (sarvopayapariksina) they end up as ascetic nuns (vrddha
vesya tapasvint)’
Although the sources of our period put all kinds of women under the category of pros-
titutes, women who were forced to be sexually available to their masters like kumbhadasi
and paricarika or women who were generous with their sexual favours out of their own
free will such as svairinis, kulatas and prakasavinasta, are not objects of analysis in this
article. For the sake of clarity we will restrict the definition of the prostitute to those who
accept payment in exchange for sexual favours. Otis6 describes prostitution as an institution
in which ‘socially identified groups of women earn their living principally or exclusively
from the commerce of their bodies’.

I
In classical Sanskrit literature a prostitute is one of the nayika type and is discussed as such in
all the works of poetics from the time of Bharata’s Natyasastra7 onwards (i.e., from the third
and fourth centuries). She is variously described as a bahya in Natyasastra, as samanya in
Rudraka’s Srngaratilaka and srngaraprakasa of Bhoja. Dhananjaya in Dasarupaka describes

4
Samayamatrka, (ed. and tr.) Ramshankar Tripathi, Varanasi, 1967: 8.103.
5
Ludwick Sternbach, Ganika Vrtta Samgrha: Texts on Courtesans in Classical Sanskrit, Hoshiarpur, 1953: 63.
6
Leah Otis, Prostitutes in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc, Chicago, 1987: 2–3.
7
Natyasastra: A Treatise on Ancient Indian Dramaturgy and Histrionics, (tr.) Manomohan Ghosh, Calcutta, 1967:
ch. XXIV.
394 SHALINI SHAH

her as sadharana stri. Since she was a nayika who was not exclusive8 she could not, even if
she was genuinely in love (rakta), be shown with a king or a noble as a nayaka opposite her.9
In the sources of our period we find her presiding mainly over forms of plays that are called
prahasana and bhana. Here she is depicted stereotypically as bold, cunning and mercenary.10 In
the prakarana she did not have to be depraved as in the stereotype, for instance, Vasantasena’s
character in Sudraka’s Mrcchakatikam. In the period of our study there is a specific class of
works such as Rupa Gosvamin’s Ujjvalanilamani, datable to 1150 ad in which samanya
as a nayika type did not figure at all. Ujjvalanilamani was a leading text on the rhetoric of
divine srngara which dealt with love towards Krsna as a supreme nayaka. According to Rupa
Gosvamin there was no samanya nayika in Krsnarati. Even a low class woman like sairandhri
was subsumed within the parakiya (others’ woman) and within Krsnabhakti parakiya as a
nayika was considered superior.11 The logic in dropping samanya as a nayika in these rhetorical
texts was that anyone in love with Krsna (and no one can love God falsely) was automatically
transformed into being uncommon and unique.
Three conclusions can be drawn from the above discussion; First, vesya nayika is one
who feigns love and sells her sexual favours for material gain. Second, she could be occa-
sionally shown genuinely in love but then she does not remain a prostitute; she either dies
(Harlata in Damodaragupta’s Kuttanimatam) or she gets royal permission to marry her
nayaka (Vasantasena in Mrcchakatikam). Third, if any woman (even if a prostitute) loves
God, she could no longer have an appellation of being a common woman.

II
Beyond the routine textual description of the samanya nayika, which has been discussed
above, we have to examine the social institution of prostitution as depicted in our sources.
Was prostitution a ‘safety valve’ of a patriarchal social life, a mere adjunct that preserved the
stability of its family life? We get an interesting verse in Damodaragupta’s Kuttanimatam12
which states that ‘sex with the wife is necessary for the sake of progeny and intercourse
with a prostitute for avoiding sickness (vyadht), i.e. excessive sexual desire’. We see in
this verse a reiteration of the patriarchal view that treats a prostitute as a ‘necessary evil’. It
also shows how the prostitutes’ sexuality was treated as non-marital and non-procreative,
and hence dangerous. We also notice here the patriarchal ideology at work which divided
women into virtuous women and whores. Even in Mrcchakatikam where vesya Vasantasena

8
In Mrcchakatikam, (ed. and tr.), M.R. Kale, Bombay, 1962, vita says to vesya Vasantasena (Act 1.31) that you are
as common as the creeper that grows beside the road (margajata lateva).
9
Natyasastra: 24.153–54.
10
Dasarupaka, (ed. and tr.) Srinivas Shastri, Meerut, 1969: 2.23: 150.
11
V.R. Raghavan, Srngaramanjari of Saint Akbar Shah, Hyderabad, 1951: 27–28.
12
Kuttanimatam, (ed. and tr.) Atrideva Vidyalankara, Varanasi, 1961: verse 789.
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 395

is an object of romantic love rather than a mere erotic object13 the nayaka Carudatta14 feels
shame in admitting that a courtesan is his friend (mitra). He finally qualifies his admission
of friendship with Vasantasena by saying that it is his youth (yauvana) which is at fault
and not his character (caritra). In the same play15 we find vita (see below) describing a
courtesan’s profession as one ‘which is the birthplace (janmabhume) of hypocrisy, deceit,
treachery and falsehood, and one which consists of perfidy’.
Not only is there a need to loosen the prostitutes from this castigating and judgemental
language in which they are embedded within the hegemonic patriarchal discourse, but also
to rescue her from a certain kind of feminist counter-discourse which, too, is a negative
construction and reproduction of the prostitute’s body and which focuses on the undesirable
suffering and oppression bound up with prostitution through the centuries. This approach
which tends to view the prostitute as a ‘victim’ is best illustrated in Bhattacharji’s historical
survey of prostitution in ancient India.16 Simone de Beauvoir17 notwithstanding her percep-
tive comment that ‘of all women they (prostitutes) are the most submissive to the male and
yet more able to escape him; this it is that makes them take on so many varied meanings’,
was unable to pursue this insight further and simply ended up with the ‘prostitute as victim’
approach. This is evident when she says that ‘the greatest misfortune of the hetaira is not
only that her independence is the deceptive obverse of a thousand dependencies, but also
that this liberty is itself negative’.18
A more recent approach to the study of prostitutes/prostitution is represented by schol-
ars like Oldenburg19 and Shannon Bell.20 Bell resorts to ‘reverse discourse’ (which is the
discourse of the subjugated subject of the hegemonic discourse) to study the prostitute. In
this reverse discourse the meaning and power of the dominant discourse are to some extent
challenged. Like Bell, Oldenburg too tends to see prostitutes as social agents acting with
relative autonomy within the confines of the male body politic. In fact, Oldenburg21 on the
basis of her survey of the nineteenth century Lucknow courtesans, talks of the ‘self-perception
of prostitutes’ as powerful. Not only do they view themselves as an experienced lot but
they even manage to create a counter culture/ideology of their own which both subverts
and mocks the existing positions and roles of the patriarchal culture. Oldenburg, therefore,
concludes that courtesan tradition far from reinforcing patriarchy represents a circumvention
of it. With this approach as a starting point, scholars have tried to recover a prostitute history

13
Carudatta often addresses her as beloved (priya) and not by appellations which describe her physical allure.
14
Mrcchakatikam, Act IX.
15
Ibid.: Act V.36.
16
Sukumari Bhattacharji, ‘Prostitution in Ancient India’, in Kumkum Roy (ed.), Women in Early Indian Societies,
Delhi, 1999: 196–228.
17
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, London, 1988: 266.
18
Ibid.: 585.
19
Veena Oldenburg, ‘Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow’, in D. Haynes and G. Prakash
(eds), Contesting Power: Resistance and Everyday Social Relations in South Asia, Delhi, 1991: 23–61.
20
Shannon Bell, Reading, Writing and Rewriting the Prostitute Body, Bloomington, 1994: 11.
21
Oldenburg, Lifestyle as Resistance: 23.
396 SHALINI SHAH

which is ‘herstory’. Wells22 argues that the courtesans functioned outside the restrictions that
the male state (Greco-Roman antiquity) imposed on its women (i.e., wives and daughters).
The hetairae could inhabit the public space, exchanging conversation and sexual interac-
tion for payment. They had the most freedom. They were intelligent, witty, articulate and
educated and they were the only women who were allowed to manage their own financial
affairs. They were accomplished conversationalists and intellectual equals of the men they ∼
entertained. They were poets, artists and herbalists, a truly talented lot. Even de Beauvoir23
grudgingly acknowledges that

[P]aradoxically enough those women (hetairae) who exploit their femininity to the hilt, create for
themselves a situation almost equivalent to that of a man; beginning with that sex which gives them
over to the males as objects, they came to be subjects. Not only do they make their own living like
men, b\It they exist in a circle that is almost exclusively masculine, free in behaviour and conversa-
tion, and they can attain the rarest intellectual liberty.

III
In order to recover such a prostitute history from our sources we need to first of all analyse
the prostitute household organised along lines which were distinct from patriarchal house-
holds. The study of the household in writing the history of any social institution is immense,
for it is a truism that the household is the arena in which gender relations are structured and
maintained. Unlike the patriarchal households surrounding it, the prostitute households were
rigorously matrifocal institutions. Our sources allow us to recover some of the characteristics
of such households. The gender equation in these households was very different. For one,
daughters were highly prized over sons. A bawd says in Kuttanimatam24 that ‘the birth of a
daughter is desirable (duhita eva slaghya) and to be satisfied with the birth of a son is worthy
of criticism’. This disregard for sons in the prostitute household is strikingly brought out in
the Mrcchakatikam. In this play when Maitreya on his visit to a vesya household asks his
escort bandhulas who they are,25 they respond by saying that ‘we are bandhulas, that sport
about like the cubs of elephants, being reared in other peoples’ houses (paragrhalalita),
fed on others’ food (parannapusta), begotten by other men upon stranger women (parapu-
rusearjanita paranganasu), enjoying other’s riches (paradhananirata), and possessing no
merit to speak of (gunesvacya)’.26

22
Jess Wells, A Herstory of Prostitution in Western Europe, Berkeley, 1982: 6–7.
23
de Beauvoir, The Second Sex: 581.
24
Kuttanimatam, verse 146.
25
Mrcchakatikam, Act IV.28.
26
Amrit Srinivasan, ‘Reform or Conformity? Temple Prostitution and the Community in the Madras Presidency’,
in Bina Agarwal (ed.), Structures of Patriarchy, Delhi, 1988: 187. In his sociological survey of the devadasi house-
hold, Srinivasan points out that men in the’ devadasi household stayed as appendages of their sister’s or mother’s
household only on sufferance.
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 397

Yet again when Maitreya is introduced to Vasantasena’s brother, he remarks:27 ‘I must

not (think highly of him) for although he is gaily dressed, gentle and well-perfumed, still
he is to be shunned by the people just like a champaka tree growing in the enclosure of a
cremation ground, although it may be bright, attractive and sweet-smelling’. In fact children
in the prostitute household, unlike the patriarchal household where they belonged to the
father’s lineage, were completely under their mother’s control.28 This was the reason why
lawgivers ignore them completely. Medhatithi,29 in his commentary on the Manusmrti, while
describing samkara (the progeny of miscegenation) who would have no right to perform
udakakriya, that is, the ritual offering of water to dead persons, includes the offspring of
the vesya in it. Evidently, then, such children were not claimed by fathers for ritual needs.
There was also a greater fluidity of domestic arrangements within such households.
Srinivasan30 in her study of the devadasi household points out that girls who were dedicated
to the deity, i.e. devadasis, were not permitted to cook or perform mundane domestic tasks31
either for the men of their own households or for their gums. Oldenburg’s32 data on courtesans
also confirms that prostitutes take pride in being able to avoid the drudgery of housework
which was the lot of ‘respectable’ household women. The household division of labour
(the sexual division of labour) has an important bearing on the status of women in society/
community. Familial relations shape women’s access to work and other resources, and also
play a key role in producing and maintaining gender ideologies.33 Within the set-up of the
prostitute household their labour/work was not subsumed within the category of housework
and, therefore, was not marginalised; in fact, it can be designated as ‘the work’.
Within the prostitute household not only was her work ‘the work’, but also the ‘space’ was
her own. Patriarchy relegated the wives and daughters solely to the sphere of the private which
was also a space controlled and regulated by men. In this universe their very identities were
defined by their ties to men—mother, wife, daughter and so on. Even if there was some dispersal
of power to the suitable age group and category of women, it was according to male-defined
rules. So while there could be room for women at every level there was no ‘room of her own’.
The prostitute, on the other hand, was defined by a space of her own. She had her own place
(vesavasa) over which she had complete command. It is interesting to note that when Maitreya

27
Mrcchakatikam, Act IV.29.
28
Srinivasan, (Reform or Conformity?: 180), points out that in the devadasi’s household the young woman did not
owe her paramour either any household service or her offspring.
29
Manubhasya, (tr.) Ganganath Jha, vols. 1–5, Calcutta, 1920–26: 5.88.
30
A. Srinivasan, Reform or Conformity?: 186.
31
Devadasis in the sources of our period are essentially treated as vesyas or courtesans of God, and it is their sexual
service which is emphasised. As Parasher and Naik, ‘Temple Girls of Medieval Karnataka’, Indian Economic and
Social History Review, 23(1), 1986: 63–91 have shown from their study of inscriptions from ad 700 to ad 1200 from
Karnataka, there was a blurring of the devadasi/vesya divide, if at all one existed in the first place. This is also appar-
ent from the story of Rupinika in the Kathasaritsagara, (ed. and tr.) Penzer and c.H. Tawney, 10 vols, Delhi, 1968.
It refers to vesya Rupinika ‘who went at the time of worship to the temple to perform her duty’. Ibid. vol. 1: 139.
32
Oldenburg, Lifestyle as Resistance: 40–41.
33
Henrietta Moore, Feminism and Anthropology, Minneapolis, 1988: 42.
398 SHALINI SHAH

visits ganika Vasantasena’s house34 her maid introduces Vasantasena’s mother and brother in
relation to mistress (arya) Vasantasena. In Kathasaritsagara35 we read the tale of the vesya
Kumudika who gives refuge to even a defeated King Vikramasimha. It was this autonomy of the
vesya household and her subversive potential which made her house be perceived as ­dangerous.
The Smrti literature which represents the patriarchal Brahmanical viewpoint underlines this.
Manu as well as his commentator Medhatithi36 agree on the threat that they represent.
It would not be an exaggeration to state that vesavasa culture was considered dangerous
enough by the patriarchal household and the patriarchal state would not allow any transgres-
sion of the boundaries separating the patriarchal domain from that of the prostitute household.
Prostitutes as far as patriarchy was concerned were located in the space of the erotic and were
denied any familial spaces. The patriarchal household used the mechanism of purity and
pollution to achieve this. In Mrcchakatikam, ganika Vasantasena visits Carudatta’s house
twice but never gains entry into his inner apartments or meets his wife. Carudatta himself37
says that even Vasantasena’s ornaments cannot be taken inside the inner apartments for safe
keeping since they have been worn by a prostitute (prakasanari).
From prakasanari to a kulavadhu of the inner apartment was a Rubicon that could not
be crossed over with ease. In Buddhasvamin’s Brhatkathaslokasamgraha38 it is said for
a prostitute that the blemish of her appellation as a courtesan (ganikasabdadosastu) does
not leave her even now. Sarvilaka tells Madanika39 that the title of a bride (vadhu) is hard
(durlabha) to obtain. The prostitute tradition with its evidently subversive potential required
the permission of the state which was the upholder of a patriarchal ideology, if an individual
prostitute was to achieve a change in her status to that of a wife. In both Mrcchakatikam40
and Brhatkathaslokasamgraha41 the permission for a ganika to become a kulastri was given
by the king himself (rajadesa). In Bhoja’s Srngaramanjarikatha42 again it is the king who
gives vesya Asokavati permission to become the wife of Caddalaka who was a feudatory
of the king. In bhana Padmaprabhrtaka43 for a particularly loyal vesya it is hoped that she
soon earns a veil (avagunthanabhagini) at the hands of the queen (mahisi). It is of course
obvious that all these instances of royal permission44 came after it was made sure that the
vesya in question had internalised the pativrata ideology of the patriarchal household. In

34
Mrcchakatikam, Act IV.
35
Kathasaritsagara, vol. V: 16.
36
Manubhasya, 4.85.
37
Mrcchakatikam, Act III.7.
38
Brhatkathaslokasamgraha, (ed. and tr.) R. P. Poddar, Varanasi, 1986: Canto XI.86.
39
Mrcchakatikam, Act IV.24.
40
Ibid., Act X.
41
Brhatkathaslokasamgraha, canto XII.83, canto XIII.1–2.
42
Srngaramanjarikatha, (tr.) Kalpana Munshi, Singhijain Series No. 30, Bombay, 1959: 78.
43
Srngarahata: Caturbhani, A Collection of Four Sanskrit Bhanas, (ed. and tr.) Morichandra and V.S. Agrawal,
Bombay, 1960: 41.
44
In the sixth tale of Srngaramanjarikatha we find a kulastri – lavanyasundari – taking to the life of a vesya of her
own accord in order to make money to free her imprisoned husband. And when her objective of getting 100 elephants
was realised she left the life of a uesya to once again become the wife of her husband. This is the only exceptional
instance in our sources of a crossover twice by a woman at her own initiative of the kulastri-varastri divide.
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 399

Yasodhara’s commentary45 we are told that a vesyii could be given in marriage to one who
could provide special musical assistance to the establishment, for such a marriage leads to
greater prosperity. The marriage bond here was not governed by patriarchal ideology and
marital ties were only notional.
The obverse side of this shutting out of the vesya46 from patriarchal domesticity was that
prostitutes could create their own counter-culture with their own value system against the
ethics of the dominant patriarchal culture. Their ostracism within this patriarchal universe
simultaneously ensured their greater independence and autonomy within their own space.
Prostitutes led an independent life (svadhina) and though they took others’ money they did
not become slaves. On the contrary they were clever enough to overpower men (vasikartum
naram). They had the whole world under their control and were, therefore, proverbial as
persons who did not suffer under anybody’s authority.47

IV
Within the boundary of the prostitute household it was the mother figure who reigned
supreme. Her will was law. Yasodhara48 states that a vesya should never disagree with the
mother, who could be either real or adopted, and she should seek her advice on everything.
Jalhana’s Mugdhopadesa underlines this advisory role of the bawd (mantri jaratkuttani).49
In Dandin’s Dasakumaracarita50 prostitute Kamamanjari’s mother talks of ganikamatu-
radhikara. Even if the younger daughters were the earning stars of the family it was the old
bawd/mother, referred to as kuttani in the sources, who was the real authority and manager
of the vesya household. So crucial and indispensable was her role that in her absence51 it is
said that the house becomes a happy hunting ground of all kinds of rogues and penniless men
who become difficult to dislodge, and the vesyagets no peace by day or night. In Dhurta-vita
Samvada52 a vesya protected by her mother is described as a river filled by crocodiles from
which it is best to stay away. It would not be wrong to conclude that it was the presence of
the kuttani which prevented the vesya from becoming an object of exchange between the
pimp and the clients. It was the kuttani who ensured wealth for the prostitutes. Thus, we
find in the Samayamatrka that the bawd Kankali was adopted as mother by vesya Kalavati.

45
Jayamangala Commentary: 7.1.22–23.
46
Not only were vesyas living in their own household variously described as ganikakutumba, vesyagrha (Sternbach,
Vesya: Synonyms and Aphorisms, 1945: 135–38), but in most cases were in separate areas of the town. We get a
reference to vesyavithi (Srngarahata: Caturbhani: 32) in our sources. Manasollasa refers to vesya houses on the
outskirts of the town [cited in Kumkum Roy (ed), Women in Early Indian Societies: 215].
47
Sternbach, Ganikavrttasamgraha: 64.
48
Jayamangala Commentary: 6.2.3–4, 8; 6.2.60–61.
49
Sternbach, Ganikavrttasamgraha: 17
50
Dasakumaracarita, (ed. and tr.) K.N. Sharma, Varanasi, 1965: 132–34.
51
Samayamatrka, (ed. and tr.) Ramashankar Tripathi, Varanasi, 1967: 1.40–49.
52
Srngarahata: Caturbhani: 100.
400 SHALINI SHAH

Sociological data from the colonial period would also support this analysis. Srinivsan53
referring to the devadasi household says that

The person in charge in the dasi establishment—the taikkizhavi (old mother)—was the seniormost
female member…the strict discipline of this old lady over both the private and the professional lives
of her relatives, her control over income, its pooling and expenditure, provided the fundamental source
of unity for the dasi household. The critical role that she thereby played in the status and prestige of
an establishment was appreciable…. Most homes had photographs on the walls, of previous such
leading lights of the family, before whom daily worship was offered.

The authority of the mother figure within the vesyii household can be appreciated better if
we analyse the standing and nature of kuttani’s relations with different men who populated
the courtesan’s universe. Apart from the clients (bhujangas) there were certain hangers-on
and vita was perhaps the most important of them. He was a cultured man in the prosti-
tute’s gathering. Bharata54 describes vita as ‘one who is skilled in pleasuring the prostitute
(vesyopacharakusalo), sweet (madhuro), courteous (daksina), poet (kavi), proficient in
argumentation (uhapohksamo vagmi) and is shrewd (caturasca), he is vita’ (vito bhaveta).
Bhoja in his text Sarasvatikanthabharana55 calls vita accomplished (gunavana). In Rudraka’s
Srngaratilaka56 he is described as a master of one art (ekavidyovita) while still others like
Bhanudatta in his Rasamanjari57 described vita as the master of the science of erotics
(kamatantrakalakovidavita). Although Ksemendra in his satirical works like Samayamatrka58
and Desopadesa59 is dismissive of the vitas:

sinaya gunahinaya sadosaya kalabhrte

vitaya krsnapaksendukutilaya namo namab

This criticism has to be placed in its historical context. The time in which Ksemendra was
writing (the eleventh century ad in Kashmir), saw the shrinkage of urban centres and the
urban economy in many parts of the country. It is only to be expected that those institutions
which drew their sustenance from a flourishing urban nagaraka culture were also showing
signs of degeneration.
Vatsyayana60 defines a vita as a man who has exhausted his wealth in enjoyment (bhukta-
vibhavastu), is endowed with good qualities (gunavana), is married and is respected among
vesyas and in gosthis, and earns his livelihood thereby. In fact, Yasodhara61 explains that by
stating that he draws his very sustenance from vesyas and nagarakas (vrttimanyamnichan

53
Srinivasan, Reform or Conformity?: 188.
54
Natyasastra: 35.55.
55
Cited in Srngaramanjarikatha: 52.
56
Ibid.
57
Ibid.
58
Samayamatrka: 8.18, 24, 25.
59
Cited in Srngaramanjarikatha: 52.
60
Kamasutra, (ed. and tf.) Madhavacharya: 2 vols, Bombay, 1995: 1.4.32.
61
Jayamangala Commentary: 1.4.32.
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 401

vesyajana nagarakajana chopajivati). It is thus clear that the vita was no male centre of
authority in the prostitute’s universe. He was only an intimate and cultured hanger-on. He
was an indispensable part of the cultured gathering which higher class prostitutes like ganikas
were forever having. He also performed the functions of a trusted messenger between the
hetaira and her clients62 and sometimes he acted as an escort.63 He could also be called upon
to mediate between vesyas and their clients in quarrels relating to fees etc.64 No doubt the
vitas performed a useful function for the vesya household, but within the household itself
it was the kuttani or mother who presided. Neither were the vitas male challengers nor did
they emerge as alternative centres of authority in the household.
In the Kuttanimatam65 we get a reference to one Sula-Pala (keeper of prostitutes). He
looked after the arrangements of the theatrical performances given by vesyas belonging to
his establishment. A verse also refers to him not allowing a vesya on stage for she was in her
monthly period. An eleventh century ad inscription from Rajasthan66 also refers to Sula-Pala
accompanying courtesans to give music and dance performances on religious and festive
occasions. However, these descriptions do not give the impression that Sula-Pala was in a
position of control over the prostitutes. He seems more like a male escort of the prostitute
establishment (in a serving capacity) who went with the courtesans whenever they stepped
outside their establishment.
Dindikas who were represented as low, vulgar characters in Syamalaka’s bhana
Padataditaka are another set of men referred to in association with prostitutes. Dindikas
are here described as ugly like monkeys and in their actions they are the devils (pisaca)
themselves.67 In Bhoja’s Srngaramanjarikatha68 kuttani Visamsila is compared to a group
of dindikas who accumulate wealth by ‘draining the purses of others’. It seems, says,
Munshi,69 that these dindikas were pickpockets who were adept at taking away money by
sleight of hand. To the class of dindikas also belonged the khala or rogue. In Ksemendra’s
Desopadesa70 as also in Kuttanimatam71 he is described as a dishonest man without any
principles. It is thus obvious that while the more cultured vitas were part and parcel of the
ganika’s household, scum like dindikas, khalas and dhurtas (cheats) also surrounded them,
particularly the lower level prostitutes like rupajivas. This must have certainly contributed
to the brutalisation of the vesya s environment.
In spite of the presence of these men around vesyas, the kuttani never allowed them to
get the better of her. Bhoja in Srngaramanjarikatha72 while delineating the character of kut-
tani Visamsila, mother of vesya Srngaramanjari, states that ‘she is never cheated by vitas;

62
Kuttanimatam: 339–40.
63
Mrcchakatikam, Act V.
64
Kuttanimatam, verse 342, Srngarahata: Caturbhani: 158.
65
Kuttanimatam, verses 68, 796.
66
Ajay Mitra Shastri, India as seen in the Kuttanimatam of Damodargupta, Delhi, 1975: 119.
67
Srngarahata: Caturbhani: 184, 196.
68
Srngaramanjarikatha: 53.
69
Ibid.
70
Ibid.
71
Kuttanimatam, verse 114.
72
Srngaramanjarikatha: 20–21.
402 SHALINI SHAH

she is requested by dhurtas for deceiving others but is never troubled; she deceives others
but is never deceived herself; she stupefies others but does not get stupefied herself’. He
further states that ‘she is an expert in subduing paramours…she deceives even the clever,
unsettles even the steady, makes a fool even of the wise, dances about even the dhurtas,
makes the clever foolish, renders weak even the daring’. In spite of the exaggerated nature
of the description, in Visamsila we get the picture of the power and strength of the kutta-
nis. It was the kuttani who had the ‘agency’, she was never at the command of the others,
and could not be manipulated by the various kinds of men who frequented the prostitute
household. As Bhoja73 says for Visamsila ‘she has brought the fall of many beast-like men
into her various snares like maya’.
It was precisely this power of the kuttani which made her a figure of dread and also of
caricature in the male sources. In all the texts of our period, the kuttanis such as Vikrala
of Kuttanimatam, Kankali of Samayamatrka and Visamsila of Srngaramanjarikatha are
described in identical terms as hideous in physical form, cruel in mind and unscrupu-
lous in their dealings. Their very names like Yamajihva, Vikrala, Bhujangavagura and
Makaradamstra invoke a sense of fear and dread in which they were held by the paramours
of the vesyas.

V
Given the reality of the prostitute’s existence in an essentially hostile patriarchal social
world outside, with which it was inextricably linked,74 there was a need to consolidate
the position of the vesyii household. This consolidation was achieved through an intricate
system which, seen from a male perspective, was based on falsehood, deception and deceit.
Damodaragupta says in Kuttanimatam75 vesyas are deceitful and this is a slander current
among people (vancakavrtta vesya ityapvado janesu yo ruda). The prostitute functioning
is derisively76 called Vaisika Tantra in overwhelmingly male sources. Yasodhara77 in his
Jayamangala commentary refers to Svetaketu’s treatise on this subject which was condensed
into seven chapters, ‘Vaisika’ of Pancalabhabhravya being one of them. Then at the request
of the ganika of Pataliputra, one Dattaka undertook to write about the courtesans and their
lives. It is indeed surprising that women, who as a class were the only literate group of
women in the society, needed male writers to record their lives. Bhoja78 mentions Dattaka
who made the secret knowledge about prostitutes known to others. Yasodhara79 also refers

73
Ibid.: 23.
74
In Mrcchakatikam (Act 1.31) vita tells Vasantasena that the courtesan quarter is dependent on young men for help
(tarunajanasahaya).
75
Kuttanimatam, verse 485.
76
Ksemendra in Kalavilasa satirises the prostitute strategies as their practice of sixty four arts (cited in
Ganikavrttasamgraha: 45–47).
77
Jayamangala Commentary: 1.1.9–11.
78
Srgaramanjarikatha: 47–48.
79
Jayamangala Commentary: 6.3.44.
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 403

to Dattaka’s efforts. Perhaps this organised male attempt to write on the secrets of prosti-
tutes’ lives was part of a concentrated attempt to disseminate knowledge about prostitutes
from their own standpoint.
In order to study this ‘hegemonic discourse’ we need to adopt the strategy of ‘reverse
discourse’80 and thus critique the hegemonic patriarchal interpretation of the prostitute’s
functioning. There is a need to recover the prostitute strategy as one which was self-affirming
and empowering for the practitioners. In fact, if one views prostitute strategies as the way
she organised and conceptualised the rules she invented, it may indicate a pattern of life-
choices and values which would suggest an alternative female culture that both subverted
and mocked the dominant patriarchal one.
Ksemendra’s Samayamatrka81 begins with a salutation to the god Kama and goddess Kali,
an unusual combination in the classical sources of our period. But perhaps there is a logic
here, while Kama is the presiding deity of love, Karns the fearsome goddess who drinks
blood. Ksemendra in this work was aiming at warning men against the wiles or strategies of
the prostitutes82 who used all kinds of methods, even false love, to bleed their paramours of
their wealth. However, unintentionally Ksemendra’s satire on the prostitute’s wiles ends in
a documentary on the triumph of the vesya. Kalavati’s adopted mother kuttani Kankali, who
through her manifold brilliant strategies,83 was able to secure the maximum gain for Kalavati.
The prostitute strategies were also subversive of the values and norms of the patriarchal
social system. The prostitute association was particularly subversive of parental authority. In
Isvardatta’s Dhurtavitasamvada84 a young man given to keeping a prostitute’s company tells
the vita that fathers are a headache personified (murtimanasiraroga) and he even expresses
the wish that as Parasurama cleared the earth of all Ksatriyas he would like to make the
world free of all fathers. This statement85 of pater lese majeste is virtually unique in the
classical Sanskrit sources. The vesya’s subversion of parental authority was also a topic of
lament in Damodargupta’s Kuttanimatam.86 Another interesting example which illustrates
this analysis comes from the fourth tale of Srngaramanjarikatha.87 The clever courtesan
Devadatta had an extraordinary capacity to plan strategy and get results. Through her clever
ploys she was able to get her paramour Suradharman to yield his secret. Suradharman, was
in the habit of hiding it by always saying that his ‘mother’ alone knows everything. After
Devadatta was successful she asked Suradharman ‘Ah, does your mother know or do I
know?’ Folding his hands Suradharman said ‘Mother does not know anything, you know
everything’. Devadatta then crisply replied ‘If I know everything then out with you’, and
she kicked him out of her house.

80
Bell, Reading, Writing and Rewriting the Prostitute Body: 14.
81
Samayamatrka: 1.1–2.
82
Ibid.: 1.3 and 8.128.
83
Ibid.: 8.127
84
Srngarahata: Caturbhani: 71–73.
85
Ibid.: 71
86
Kuttanimatam, verses 411–24.
87
Srngaramanjarikatha: 40.
404 SHALINI SHAH

Fritz Blackwell88 notes about the prostitute strategy that ‘perhaps most dangerous about
her is the fact that, her dharma is not passive, built upon devotion to husband and family like
the wife’s; it is quite active, designed by its very nature to destroy the man, at least finan-
cially, and even his family if necessary’.89 It was this dangerous and subversive potential of
the prostitute strategy which made men warn ‘respectable’ women of patriarchy against it.
Yasodhara90 quoting Katyayana in his Jayamangala commentary talks of acts (vesa) which
are fit for prostitutes (vesya) but not for the women of the household (kulayosita). Because of
these acts the former are called vesyas. It is thus obvious that men feared the self-affirming
power of these strategies and were eager to ensure that at least they were not practised by
their household women so as to keep the patriarchal authority within the grha intact.
Prostitute strategies also militated against many other cherished values of patriarchy.
For instance, the prostitute view of pregnancy and childbirth (although it emerged from the
prostitute strategy to remain physically attractive for male clients) was completely opposed
to the patriarchal view. In K∼emendra’s Samayamatrkii91 the bawd expresses the view that
giving birth (prasava) is a curse (srapa) for a woman’s youth (yauvana) and the beauty of
her body parts like breasts. But if she is condemnatory of one of the most cherished goals of
patriarchy it is because she sees this as something that completely circumscribes woman’s
personal growth. In fact the bawd contrasts92 the attractiveness of the vesya who knows the
art of dressing up and of enlivening the gathering by her smiling (satatasmitasu) demeanour.
The kulavadhu on the other hand are seen as constantly pregnant (nityaprasuti) with their
youth (yauvana) destroyed (hata). They have no taste for the pleasures of cultured gatherings
(gosthivilasasarasakeli niradaresu). Although this different socialisation of the prostitutes
did not radicalise their status in the wider society, it did provide a space and platform from
which to mock the existing positions, roles and ideologies of patriarchy.
If prostitutes were castigated for their wiles the ‘normal’ women under patriarchy were
not spared either. They were at the receiving end of the male vitriol for their stri-sva bhava.
The entire range of patriarchal Brahmanical literature has condemned women for being sinful,
dishonest, heartless and the root of all evils.93 This campaign of misogyny against triya caritra
or womanly character was used by the patriarchs to keep women psychologically subjugated.
The prostitutes on the other hand used opprobrium against them to their own advantage to create
greater space for themselves. They had little incentive to obey the ethics of the dominant culture
to which they were only liminally connected. So they invented their own standards and lived
by their own directives to achieve greater economic and social independence for themselves.

88
Fritz Blackwell, ‘Misogyny and Philogyny: Bifurcation and Ambivalence of the Stereotypes of the Courtesan and
the Mother in Literary Tradition’, Joumal of South Asian Literature, vol. XII, nos. 3–4, 1977: 39.
89
Ibid.
90
Jayamangala Commentry, 6.3.45.
91
Samayamatrka, 8.101.
92
Ibid.: 8.93–94.
93
Sternbach, Ganikavrttasamgraha: 74–75.
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 405

VI
In the hierarchy of ‘trivarga’ (i.e., dharma, artha, kama) for the prostitutes, artha was the
highest goal94 and this was a goal that they shared with the king of the realm. In Dandin’s
Dasakumaracarita95 it is said that the kuladharma of the vesya was to assiduously accumulate
riches. In the play Mrcchakatikam96 there is a fairly detailed description of the courtesan
Vasantasena’s household which was run on a lavish scale. Maitreya while admiring it did
not quite know whether to call it ganikagrha or Kuberabhavana. In the eyes of the contem-
porary observers, the prostitute’s command over her own resources ‘masculinised’ her. As
Carudatta observes in Mrcchakatikam97 ‘through (the absence of) money a man becomes a
woman; and she who is a woman becomes a man also through (the possession of) money’
(arthata puruso nari ya nari sarthatah pumana). It was this recognition of the prostitute’s
status and ownership of wealth that resulted in their acknowledgement as autonomous sub-
jects for the purpose of taxation as well as discipline and punishment. This acknowledgement
was also a recognition of the fact that prostitutes had ‘agency’. Prostitutes in antiquity were
virtually the only group of women who by themselves were dealing with the state without
any male mediation. Nammayasundarikatha,98 a twelfth century text, refers to the state
receiving 25–30 per cent of the prostitute’s income as tax. Since the state was a beneficiary
of tax income from to-e prostitute, it had a vested interest in perpetuating the matriarchal
feature of the prostitute household.99 Narada Smrti100 also states that the ornaments of the
prostitute cannot be confiscated (they are like the tools of the trade).
If the ownership of resources ‘masculinised’ the prostitute vis-à-vis the state and ensured
her recognition as an autonomous subject, even within the household itself prostitutes were
recognised as the breadwinners of the family. Thus, in the absence of the earning of the vesya
Kamamanjari her entire family (kutumba), said her mother in Dasakumarcarita101 would be
without support and sustenance. In Bhoja’s Srngaramanjarikatha102 Makaradamstra says,
‘You (i.e., paramour) have killed my daughter, by whose favour will this family live now?
How will I live? You have destroyed the head of the family’. Dominance of women (apart
from the fact that sisters/daughters alone inherited) within the prostitute household was in a
large measure due to the very nature of its economic base. Household property was largely

94
Jayamangala Commentary: 6.6.5.
95
Dasakunaracarita: 174.
96
Mrcchakatikam, Act IV.
97
Ibid., Act III.27.
98
Cited in Kumkum Roy, Women in Early Indian Societies: 203.
99
Thus, we are told in the Arthasastra, (ed. and tr.) R.P. Kangle, pt. 2, Delhi, 1992, that a courtesan’s establishment
could not be inherited by her son. On her death or retirement her daughter or sister alone could take her place. Ibid.:
2.27.2–3. The Arthasastra (2.27.11) also says that a prostitute cannot give her ornaments, which was the main form
in which the prostitutes owned wealth, to anyone but her mother.
100
Narada Smrti, (tr.) J. Jolly, Bharatiya Publishing House, 1978: XVIII.10.
101
Dasakumaracarita: 137.
102
Srngaramanjarikatha: 40.
406 SHALINI SHAH

earned income acquired in the form of cash, goods and more importantly jewellery, and it
was through women that the prostitute household acquired these.
In the Jayamangala commentary Yasodhara103 defined prostitute as always bejewelled
(sadalamkrta). In Mrcchakatikam Vasantasena is depicted as well-ornamented. In the
same play Dhiita the pativrata wife of Carudatta on the other hand proudly claims104
that ‘my husband alone is my ornament’ (aryaputra eva mamabharana). This statement
is significant not because it tells us about the wife’s loyalty to her husband, but because
it draws attention to the wife’s lack of economic rights. Even their stridhana had to be
shelled out to the husband in need (Dhuta gives her own precious jewel necklace to her
husband in need). Interestingly enough, since the play Mrcchakatikam aimed at depicting
the transformation of ganika Vasantasena into a kulavadhu, we see the metamorphosis
occurring with Vasantasena giving up her ornaments (i.e., her pride in her ownership of
wealth). In the play105 her lover Carudatta’s son refuses to recognise her as ‘mother’ because
his mother does not wear ornaments. Vasantasena not only takes off her jewels, she also
fills the toy clay cart of the little boy with them. In that moment of maternal generosity
Vasantasena transgresses the kula dharma of ganika. This act transforms her psychologi-
cally and symbolically thus preparing for her entry into the patriarchal household as wife.
The significance of this event in the play is evident from the fact that it gives the play its
title Mrcchakatikam (‘the little clay cart’).
In Damodaragupta’s Kuttanimatam106 vesya is described as ratisilpajivika (‘one who has
made a craft of sex and as a form of livelihood’). But In this process of commodifying her
desire (kama) she, unlike the kulavadhus, managed to acquire control over her own dharma
and artha. It is ironical that women whose socio-sexual status was not legitimate were more
easily recognisable as economically independent actors. Both textual and epigraphic records
attest to the status of a vesya as independent owners of resources and this gives them the
autonomy to make religious donations in their own capacity. An eighth century epigraph of
the Chalukyas of Badami refers to a vesya making donations to a temple.107 In Yasodhara’s
commentary108 we get a reference to the vesya initiating similar donations.

VII
There is a tendency to view a prostitute merely as an erotic being. But there is more to her
than a body on sale-pa1Jyabhutam sariram, as vita alleges in the Mrcchakatikam.109 The
courtesan class (Le., ga1Jikas) among the prostitutes were more famous for their cultural

103
Jayamangala Commentary: 6.1.7.
104
Mrcchakatikam, Act VI.
105
Ibid., Act VI.
106
Kuttanimatam, verse 637.
107
Cited in L.K. Tripathi (ed.), Position and Status of Women in Ancient India, Varanasi, 1988: 339.
108
Jayamangala Commentary: 6.6.22.
109
Mrcchakatikam, Act 1.31
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 407

accomplishments than for their erotic appeal. It was intellectual and artistic accomplishments
(the proficiency in 64 arts) which made a common prostitute into a courtesan (ganika). She
became, says Yasodhara in her commentary,110 worthy of respect from even the king (rag-
yapujita). The connoisseurs showered praise on her (gunavadina samstuta kalakausalamiti
prasansita) and she even became a teacher and was idolised by those who wanted to learn
from her (prathaniya kalopadesarthina). On the other hand a common vesya like rupajiva
was described by Yasodhara111 as one who was distinguished only by beauty (rupasya prad-
hana) and not by her skills (kala); obviously she was no more than an ordinary streetwalker.
In antiquity prostitutes were those women who played an important role as creators and
sustainers of culture. This association of prostitutes with an educated, cultured dispensation
was a longstanding one. Rajasekhara in his Kavyamimamsa112 explicitly states that ganikas are
among those women who are proficient in sastra and poetry. Bhoja in Srngaramanjarikatha113
while describing vesyd Srngaramanjari states that ‘she is faultless in local dialects, civilized
in talks, . . . bold in questioning and answering different kinds of riddles… unrivalled in
composing stanzas, well-enlightened in essays and treatises, excellent in composing poetry;
foremost in composing gathas’. Undoubtedly prostitutes were the presiding divas of the
cultured world and this fact is acknowledged in Bharata’s Natyasastra114 as well, who states
that ‘one excelling (visesayet) in all the arts (kalii) is called a gallant (vaisika)’. Or he is so
called because of his dealings with the courtesans (vesyopacara). This association of cultured
men with the courtesans is significant. He is vaisika for he is cultured, but he is also a cul-
tured one for he keeps the company of courtesans, who by implication were themselves the
epitome of culture. Srinivasan’s115 sociological study of the devadasi household in southern
India reveals that devadasis were permitted to read and write and pursue vocational skills
traditionally denied to all other women in India. And what was most important was that their
knowledge was not for private consumption but had a public platform. A fact which gave
them both money and prestige. As Devangana Desai116 also notes, it was to give a public
platform to the art of the devadasis that structures such as dance halls (natyamandapas)
and music halls (sabhamandapas) were added to the temples in the early medieval period.
Unlike the kulastri who had to have a low voice117 or be altogether silent, the prostitute
is marked by an articulate voice. In most works of poetics belonging to our period, in the
delineation of the character of sadharana stri there is emphasis on her articulate tongue.
Dasarupaka of Dhananjaya118 describes her as a ganika whose attributes are knowledge
and accomplishments (kala), chutzpah and eloquence (pragalbhata) and a crafty cleverness
(dhurtata). Although in the sub-classification of the astanayikas in the text on the poetics

110
Jayamangala Commentary: 1.3.17–18.
111
Ibid: 6.5.29.
112
Kavyamimamsa, (ed. and tr) Gangasagar Rai, Varanasi, 1977: ch. 10, 138.
113
Srngaramanjarikatha: 15.
114
Natyasastra: 25.1
115
Amrit Srinivasan, Reforms or Conformity?: 190.
116
Devangana Desai, Erotic Sculptures of India: A Socio-cultural Study, Bombay, 1975: 155.
117
Kuttanimatam, verse 848.
118
Dasarupaka, (ed. and tr.) Srinivas Sastry, Meerut, 1969: 2.21: 148.
408 SHALINI SHAH

we get a pragalbha type even among the non-samanya nayikas, the logic of her delineation
is different. This pragalbha is one who is at the full development of youth and is, therefore,
no longer marked by the restraining force of bashfulness,119 which is the inherent trait of
girls of good families. Eloquence of speech is not her inherent trait, which is that of the
ganikas. This is evident from the fact that in literary works, the ‘clever speech’ of the cour-
tesans has a proverbial status even if non-prostitutes were resorting to it. This was how the
speech of princess VegavatI was described in Buddhasvamin’s Brhatkathaslokasamgraha120
Sternbach121 also quotes a Sanskrit verse which illustrates this analysis. It says ‘In the pres-
ence of a sovereign, among scholars and on meeting with the courtesans even an eloquent
man is embarrassed for fear intimidates his heart’.
Not only were the prostitutes articulate as a rule, they were in many cases grouped among
those women in the classical Sanskrit literature who were entitled to speak the ‘masculine
language’, that is, Sanskrit. In the classical dramas courtesans are those rare female charac-
ters who made use of Sanskrit. In Sudraka’s Mrcchakatikam ganika Vasantasena speaks in
Sanskrit. Although in Act III of the play we find Brahmana Maitreya making fun of women
who read Sanskrit, in Act IV we get a specific reference to Vasantasena speaking in Sanskrit
(samskrtmasritya) with Maitreya. Thus, Bharata122 underlines that ‘for the pleasure of all
kinds of people, and in connection with the practice of arts, the courtesans are to be assigned
Sanskritic recitation which can be easily managed’.
Bhoja in Sarasvatikanthabharana123 described a ganika as ubhaya catuhsastikalavida. In
Srngaramanjarikatha124 the vesya Srgaramanjari is described as distinguished in 64 arts. In
Kuttanimatam125 we are told about a prostitute’s proficiency in 64 arts (catuhsastikarmak-
usalanam). Yasodhara in his Jayamangala commentary describes both these groups of 64
arts. The first is the 64 angavidyas;126 while some among these were purely aesthetic arts
like dance, singing, painting, others were meant for intellectual development. For instance,
accomplishments127 such as Kavyasamasyapuranam (completing the verse from a given
single line) pratimala (capping verses) prahelika (riddles) duroacakyoga (expressing that
which is difficult in words or sense) pustakavacanam (book reading) malicchitvikalpa (using
synonymous words of the mlecchabhasa) desabhasavigyanam (using desya words to make
known that which is unknown) dharanamatrka (remembering heard books) kavyakripa
(composing poems) abhidhanakosa (knowledge of dictionaries) chandogyanam (knowing
the metrical works) kriyakalpa (knowing poetics) and vrksa ayurveda (arbori horticulture).
Their expertise in this branch of ayurveda shows ganikas as healing women with knowledge

119
V.R. Raghavan, Srngaramanjari of Saint Akbarshah: 22.
120
Brhatkathaslokasamgraha, canto XV.46.
121
Ludwick Sternbach, Vesya: Synonyms and Aphorisms, vol. 5: 16.
122
Natyasastra, 18.40.
123
Cited in Srngaramanjarikatha: 93–94.
124
Ibid.: 15.
125
Kuttanimatam, verse 499.
126
Jayamangala Commentary: 1.3.17–18.
127
E. Venkatasubbiah and E. Muller, ‘The Kalas’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1914: 351–67.
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 409

of the medicinal properties of various roots and plants. In Dandin’s Dasakumaracarita128

the vesya Kamamanjari’s mother while listing the subjects in which she carefully trained
her daughter from childhood refers to writing and conversation (lipigyanavacanakausala)
and to some extent in grammar, logic and philosophy. It is thus apparent that there was an
intellectual context to a prostitute’s formal training. In Hemacandra’s Prabandhacintamani,
a twelfth century text, a prostitute is described as ‘a storehouse of intellect’ and for whom the
king considered ‘a kingdom would be too small a present’129 Interestingly in Mrcchakatikam
the playwright Sudraka while introducing himself130 talks of the manifold skills in which he
has proficiency. He knows the Vedas, mathematics and kalavaisiki which was a reference
to the 64 anga vidyas. Thus, we see that even if others such as King Sudraka himself refer
to their being knowledgeable in that branch they also give it the appellation of vaisika. The
second group of 64 arts in which prostitutes were trained were the samprayogika which
Vatsyayana mentions in the second book of the Kamasutra. Prostitutes, by mastering it,
gained proficiency in the science of erotics. In fact, it is ironical that women of such learning
and accomplishment were given the appellation of samanya or sadharana stri.
This confluence of knowledge, sexuality and spirituality131 in the personality of the prostitute
in the historical period helps us recover the prostitute from the image of a mere ‘sexual body’
meant for male satisfaction. The above analysis shows that courtesans functioned outside the
restrictions which patriarchy imposed on other women (wives and daughters). The prostitutes
could function within those public spaces which were ordinarily preserved for males-teaching,
conversation and also freer sexual interaction. It was the power of this well-rounded person-
ality of the prostitutes which was acknowledged even in a rabidly anti-prostitute text like
Ksemendra’s Samayamatrka132 which states that ‘courtesans ravish men just as the sweet speech
of poets ravishes people (i.e., they speak beautifully). They are attractive creatures, possess
excellent qualities, are carefully anointed, are exciting and well-disposed, give men through
their arts the highest pleasure and satisfaction, and offer ever new enjoyment’. The attraction
of prostitutes for the paramour was thus much more than sexual; this was the attraction of her
personality in which her education played an important role. In Bhoja’s Srngaramanjarikatha133
bawd Vi∼amsl1a advises vesya Srngaramanjari thus: ‘Always be careful in propitiating the
minds of others. For it is possible to please a person only if his mind has been attracted, and he
only whose mind has been propitiated dedicates his wealth and his life’. This would question
the whole notion of prostitutes as an ‘erotic body’ meant for sexual consumption.

128
Dasakumaracarita: 132–33.
129
Cited in Kathasaritsagar, vol. III: 207, fn. 2.
130
Mrcchakatikam, Act 1
131
As devadasis, prostitutes were particularly auspicious. It is important to remember that in ancient India they were
the only class of women who were as near to the deities in the temples as the male priest. Parasher and Naik (‘The
Temple Girls of Medieval Karnataka’: 76) in the context of the early medieval temples of Karnataka point out that
an integral and necessary aspect of any ritual to be performed daily in the temples, was that pertaining to the rang-
abhoga (pleasure of entertainment) and angabhoga (physical enjoyment) of the deity. This was performed by the
patras and sulas (i.e., devadasis), respectively.
132
Samayamatrka, epilogue 1.
133
Srngaramanjarikatha: 23.
410 SHALINI SHAH

VIII
The prostitute’s sexuality is the most problematised area of scholarly investigation. When we
investigate various terms that stand for prostitutes134 we find appellations like asati, kulata,
svairini (all these meaning promiscuous women), abhisarika (women on rendezvous), dhrsta
(impudent one), lanjika (adulteress), lilavati (flirtatious woman), didhisu (twice married), ete.
It is thus obvious that patriarchal ideology was intolerant of any form of female sexuality that
denoted their ‘agency’, that is to say, strategy whereby autonomy of desire and behaviour
was asserted and maintained. Therefore, all such women under patriarchy were categorised
as prostitutes. The Manusmrti135 as also its commentator Medhatithi forbid Brahmanas to
accept food from ganas and ganikas. This homology had a logic. Historically, the gana
form of state formation was associated with women whose sexuality was not constrained
by patriarchal norms.136 The formation of a patriarchal, Brahmanical, monarchical state not
only marginalised ganas but its ‘free women’ too, who ended up as stigmatised sudras137
on the obverse side of the brahmanical social set up. The ganikas (women of ganas, by
now prostitutes) were presented in the Brahmanical-dominated sources as defiled impure
ones. In Kuttanimatam138 it is said that for a prostitute the consideration of varna (colour) is
only for cosmetic purposes (prasadhana) and it (i.e., varna/caste) is not a consideration for
sexual intercourse (ratiprasangesu). In other words, the ‘caste’ of the paramour was of no
consequence. Prostitutes were thus those women who were not only sexually promiscuous
but whose sexuality could not be harnessed towards procreation in the correct varIJa order.
For patriarchy the non-marital non-reproductive and libidinous female body was perceived
as dangerous. As against this deviant, dangerous ‘whore’, there was the virtuous woman or
sati whose sexuality was a reproductive one and it also eschewed any active sexual desire
and pleasure. Moreover, for many radical feminists, prostitute sexuality cannot be understood
as a free, liberated one. Scholars have argued139 that prostitution supports ‘objectification’
of women’s sexuality and it is linked to violence against them. Here the prostitute body is
seen as an ‘abused’ body. The sources of our study amply demonstrate violence against
prostitutes. In Mrcchakatikam, ganika Vasantasena was strangled by the king’s brother-
in-law for repulsing his overtures. On regaining consciousness Vasantasena140 perceived
her state as one that befits the profession of a prostitute (yatasadrsam vesabhavasya).
In the eleventh tale of Bhoja’s Srngaramanjarikatha, vesya Malayasundari’s paramour
Pratapasimha physically abused her, and instead of being punished by the king he got away

134
Ludwick Sternbach, Vesya: Synonyms and Aphorisms.
135
Manusmrti, (tr.) Wendy Doniger and Brian K. Smith, Penguin, 1992: 4.209.
136
Shalini Shah, ‘Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Punjab: A Case Study of the Karna Paroa in the Mahabharata’,
paper presented at the Institute of Punjab Studies, Chandigarh, November 1998: 3.
137
This is the term used for prostitutes in Kuttanimatam, verses 440, 797.
138
Kuttanimatam, verse 310.
139
S. Jackson and S. Scott, Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader, Edinburgh, 1996: 342.
140
Mrcchakatikam, Act VIII.
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 411

scot-free,141 and it was vesya Malayasundari who became an object of ridicule. Prostitutes
were also vulnerable because of their movable wealth such as ornaments. Samayamatrka142
refers to prostitutes (panyangana) being vulnerable in every city to those who covet their
jewels (bhusanalubdhe). Although women in general could be at the receiving end of male
violence, prostitutes were particularly vulnerable because they were the only women who
were visible in the public sphere. Moreover, while men in the private sphere could dominate
women’s/wife’s sexuality, the prostitute’s sexuality was only accessible on purchase in the
public sphere (i.e., the market).
If in the patriarchal discourse the deviant prostitute sexuality is not ‘normal’, for radi-
cal feminists it is a ‘dominated’ sexuality and it is therefore to be categorised as negative.
Pateman143 argues that prostitute sexuality is a public recognition of men as sexual mas-
ters; it puts submission on sale as a commodity in the market. Prostitution, she states, is
an inherently gendered practice in which women are constructed as the sexual servants of
men and the buying of sexual service is defined as a benefit for men. Luce Irigaray144 also
sees prostitution as sex which is not one’s own and is constructed according to the desire
of the other. A prostitute is, in Irigaray’s words, merely an ‘obliging prop’ for the enact-
ment of men’s fantasies. Thus, Irigaray explicitly links the prostitute body to ‘phallic’ (i.e.,
male defined) female sexuality. For Mackinnon145 since heterosexuality institutionalised
male sexual dominance and female sexual submission there can be no scope for prostitute
‘agency’ in her commercial sexual encounters. But Mackinnon in her totalising theory146
tends to ignore the existence of the multiplicity of desires some of which do not conform to
the requirements of the masculinist system. Liberal feminists like Gayle Rubin and Carol
S. Vance,147 however, argue against treating any kind of sexual practice as either ‘bad’ or
‘abnormal’. Heterosexual coitus itself cannot be taken as a mark of women’s sexual subor-
dination for even their own sexual choices are also often exercised. Both Rubin and Vance
have examined the issue of ‘pleasure’ and ‘agency’ in sex work.
A careful analysis of the literary sources of our period would reinforce the liberal feminist
view regarding prostitute sexuality. If one juxtaposes the socialisation of the kulavadhu (a
household woman) against the varavadhu (a prostitute) the latter appears far removed from
‘domination’. The notion of shame (lajja) is an important element in controlling female
sexuality under patriarchy. Here the female body is controlled and regulated both at the level
of the individual and the social body. In fact, patriarchy rests on the foundation of the con-
trolled female body. Along with purity and pollution, honour and shame are two of the most

141
While Arthasastra (2.27.14–17; 4.13.38–39) and also Narada Smrti (6.19) do provide for state action against
those who rape, disfigure or kill the prostitute, the punishment is never very heavy (mainly in the form of fines). On
the other hand, if a prostitute killed a cliem, the Arthasastra (2.27.22) states that she was to be awarded the death
sentence either by burning or being drowned alive.
142
Samayamatrka: 8.35.
143
Cited in Christine Overall, ‘What’s Wrong with Prostitution? Evaluating Sex Work’, SIGNS: Journal of Women
and Culture in Society, 17(4), 1992: 722.
144 Cited in Shannon Bell, Reading, Writing and Rewriting the Prostitute Body: 74, 88.
145
Catherine MacKinnon, ‘Feminism, Marxism, Method and State: An Agenda for Theory’, SIGNS, 7(3), 1982: 515–44.
146
Shannon Bell, Reading, Writing and Rewriting the Prostitute Body: 80.
147
Carol S. Vance, Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, London, 1984.
412 SHALINI SHAH

prominent cultural ideologies of brahmanical patriarchy, and have played an important role
in controlling women’s behaviour and the spaces that they can occupy, as also the limits of
their socio-sexual relations. In the bahya and the abhyantara (a woman of the inner apart-
ment) classification of the nayikas we see the operation of the purdah system. Sociologically
speaking148 purdah delimits the spheres that women can legitimately occupy. Kuttanimatam149
tells us that the veil (vadanavrttijalika) was what distinguished respectable (arya) ladies from
ordinary (anarya) ones. These ordinary women were usually prostitutes. In Samayamatrka,150
Ksemendra refers to a mischievous courtesan who passed herself off as the daughter of a
high-ranking royal officer by half-covering her face. In Dhurtavitasamvada,151 a kulavadhu
s veil is tellingly referred to as lajja-pata (i.e., what covers the shame). A woman of a good
family not only had to have a veil (avagunthana) on their faces but they were also required,
says Kuttanimatam,152 to have humility, a low voice and slow movements. The bahya on the
other hand was without the veil. In Mrcchakatikam, Vasantasena was without a veil till the
king’s announcement declared her to be the bride (vadhu) of Carudatta, and immediately153
upon this announcement Sarvilaka veiled her. The system of the veil also affected the way
the sexuality of women was perceived. In the Natyasastra154 it is said about the courtesan155
that when she goes out to meet her lover she decorates her body with various ornaments
and goes forth to meet him with (a display 00 passion and joy. The abhyantara nayika156 on
the other hand, walked the street covering her face with a veil, and walked timidly with her
limbs contracted, and very often she turned her face away and looked back. According to
the Natyasastra,157 a bahya nayika could be depicted displaying her love: ‘She expresses
her passion by casting side-long glances (kataksa), touching her ornaments, itching ears,
scratching the ground with her toes, revealing the breasts and the navel, cleaning the nails
and gathering her hair’, whereas in a high-born lady the signs of love are to be depicted
differently:158 ‘She looks continuously with blooming eyes, conceals her smile, speaks slowly
and with a downcast face, gives a reply with a smile, conceals her sweat and appearance,
has throbbing lips and is trembling’. Not only was a prostitute allowed greater freedom of
expression of her sentiments, but was also entitled to greater freedom as far as her bodily
gestures were concerned. Bharata notes in the Natyasastra159 that higher class women could
not be shown using cosmetics (unguents and collyrium), painting the body, coyly handling
their breasts and combing their hair. They also could not be shown dressed poorly (apavrta)
or wearing only one piece of garment (ekavastra). They could also not use colours for their

148
Hanna Papanek and Gail Minault (eds), Separate Worlds: Studies of Purdah in South Asia, Delhi, 1982.
149
Kuttanimatam, verse 895.
150
Samayamatrka: 2.54.
151
Srngarahata: Caturbhani: 74.
152
Kuttanimatam, verse 848
153
Mrcchakatikam, Act X.
154
Natyasastra: 24.225–28.
155
Ibid.: 24.226.
156
Ibid.: 24.227.
157
Ibid.: 24.163–65.
158
Ibid.: 24.166–67.
159
Ibid.: 24.240–42.
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 413

lips. This was done to distinguish them from women of inferior types who, with a view to
exposing their charms, dressed scantily and took pleasure in using cosmetics.
The entire notion of ‘shame acquired a totally different meaning for the prostitute’. In the
Kuttanimatam160 we are told that ‘for a vesya covering the lower part (jaghanavarana) is not
out of “shame” but to arouse desire in others’. Prostitutes were also quite open in discussing
their sexual experiences with all types of clients. In one such comic verse161 a vesya tells
others how when she closed her eyes in the ecstasy of sexual pleasure her inexperienced
paramour ran away from her thinking her to be dead.
The above data would lend itself to the interpretation, that as compared to the circumscribed
sexuality of the women in patriarchy, the prostitute enjoyed greater freedom of sexual expres-
sion. We get an interesting example of Madanamancuka in Brhatkathaslokasamgraha162
who was the daughter of a vesya. She took the vow of constancy and thus transformed as
an ideal pativrata; she guarded any access to her body like a Sita.
Much is said about a prostitute’s sexuality being slavishly commanded by the man, who
as client, pays for it. But if one contrasts the location of the man’s wife in the inner apart-
ment (antabpura) and that of the vesya’s life outside, we observe a binary spatial structure
where the former is completely closed and its occupants, the wife/wives, owe complete
fidelity to their husband. The husband-wife tie was one which did not necessarily depend
on the existence of an erotic relationship in order to constitute itself. The sexual relations
between the two were carried on the basis of a statutory relationship that empowered the
husband to ‘demand’ from his wife all services including sexual ones. The pativrata ideol-
ogy ensured their compliance. Within the confines of the antahpura the marital partners
were also hierarchically placed. While kulavadhus were thus relegated to a private sphere
and their status was in being asuryasprsya, the ganikas who were significantly enough
called prakasanan”163 were the women par excellence of the public sphere. Vasantasena
is appreciatively described as nagarasyabhusanam and nagarsri in Mrcchakatikam.164 In
Dasakumaracarita,165 vesya Kamamanjari was similarly described as an ornament of the
city of Campa. These ganikas and their paramours met in common and open spaces like
brothels, gardens or the temples of the God Kama. All these were spatially open areas in
which everyone moved about freely. Freedom of space also dictated the freedom of choice.
One could not in such a case exercise statutory authority. A ganika was thus free to accept
or reject any proposition. Vasantasena exercised this prerogative quite tellingly when she
rejected the king’s brother-in-law for the impoverished Carudatta. In order to secure her
consent no pativrata ideology could come to the rescue. Her favours (which many were in
a position to refuse) had to be secured by persuasion and very often this persuasion took
the form of gifts that could outshine those offered by the rivals.

160
Kuttanimatam, verse 306.
161
Ibid., verse 399.
162
Brhatkathaslokasamgraha, canto XIV.113.
163
Mrcchakatikam, Act III.7.
164
Mrcchakatikam, Act VIII.23; VIII.39.
165
Dasakumaracarita: 130.
414 SHALINI SHAH

The prostitute’s autonomy introduced an element of male anxiety in the vesya-client

relationship. It was this precariousness of the relation which was most often used by the
vesya to milk her clients. Luce Irigaray166 sees the prostitute as a ‘speaking subject’ who
actively intervenes in the male exchange economy (which had the exchange of women at its
foundation). A prostitute took herself to the market and named her price, and in so doing she
disrupted the male exchange economy (since she was breaking the silent exchange of women
and was thereby no longer a passive participant in the exchange). Although it is true that
a prostitute negotiated sexuality only as a commercial exchange inside the male exchange
economy, but she did negotiate it. Should the prostitutes then be seen as an empowered lot
(her sexuality being used as a bargaining chip), who had the power to set the terms of her
sexuality and demand substantial payment for her time and skills?
In the sources of our period the sexual life of the prostitute-the unlimited freedom and
the unbounded pleasure of intercourse with any man they like-is often portrayed in a posi-
tive light. Ksemendra in Kalavilasa,167 says that because of this independence they (i.e.,
prostitutes) are envied by some women who think sighing that ‘fortunate are courtesans
(vesya dhanyeti) who enjoy life without restrictions with many young men’ (bahuvidhata-
runanirgala sambhoga sukharthabhogini).
Prostitutes are described as proficient in providing sexual pleasures (kalakelikusala) and
this quality of theirs became proverbial.168 We find many aphorisms which state that a good
wife is one who behaves in bed like a vesya (sayane tu vesya). This notion of vesya as a
seductive woman par excellence does attribute a degree of agency to her. In fact, the free
sexual behaviour or sexual experience of the prostitutes is seen as giving greater pleasure
than consorting with wives. This is expressed very pithily in Isvardatt’s Dhurtavitasamvada169
where a young man tells vita that he is about to be married. Vita expresses surprise that the
young man wants to leave vesya mahapatha for kulavadhu kumargena. The vita further
asks how can pleasure be had from consorting with kulavadhus who are blind to sexual
pleasures (jatyandham suratesu), who talk inaudibly (antaramukhabhasini), who are so shy
that they have never seen their own lower part (jaghana), and are no better than a yoked
animal (strirupabadhampasu)? These descriptions contrast the sexuality of a sati and a
whore, and the picture that emerges is one that attributes greater agency and even an ele-
ment of pleasure to the sexuality of the whore. The prostitute sexuality is thus not so much
a ‘deviant’ sexuality; rather she has to be seen as an ‘erotic teacher’.
Far from being a mere ‘obliging prop’ for the enactment of male fantasies we find
from our sources that prostitutes were taking pleasure in their sexual encounters. In.
Brhatkathaslokasamgraha170 we are told about vesya Gangadatta who openly desires and
asks for access to the body of the hero Sannudasa. In fact the sexual encounter between
Gangadatta and Sannudasa171 is described as a mutual exchange of bodies (sariram) on

166
Cited in Shannon Bell, Reading, Writing and Rewriting the Prostitute Body: 89–91.
167
Ganikavrttasamgraha: 65.
168
Ibid.: 12.
169
Srngarahata: Caturbhani: 74.
170
Brhatkathaslok
171
Ibid.: XVIII.73–75.
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 415

equal terms. In Kuttanimatam,172 we see a vesya performing purusayita or viparitarata form

of coitus where the woman rides the man. Yasodhara in his Jayamangala Commentary173
refers to many patrons (vita) uniting with one vesya and this is referred to as gosthipari-
grha. It is important to note that one woman uniting with many men is not considered by
Vatsyayana and his commentator Yasodhara as an acceptable social practice.174 In book two
of the Kamasutra175 where Vatsyayana described various sexual practices including orgies,
he attributes such a practice as taking place in a woman’s kingdom (gramanarivisaye and
strirajya) and Vahika176 Yasodhara177 refers to the men who partner women in these orgies
as those who live like kept women of anta/:lpura and are not independent.
The above descriptions would put a question mark on the notion of prostitute sexuality as
a completely male dominated one, i.e. the view that prostitution caters to and reinforces the
idea of male desires and where macho sexual desires are given primacy. One could argue
that a feature of the paramour’s sexual activity with the prostitute is the opportunity it would
provide to men to escape conventional heterosexual roles (gosthiparigrha and purusayita are
examples of this) which places heavy emphasis on masculine prowess and domination. In
fact, vesavasa or the prostitute quarters were those liminal places where socially dominant
sexual relations and socially acceptable sexual practices could be transgressed. Prostitute
quarters became privileged spaces for experimentation with censured sexual behaviour.
Irigaray sees prostitute sexuality as ‘phallic’ (or male defined) sexuality, but ­prostitutes
could at times assert sexual autonomy. In the sources of our period we get one indi-
rect reference to prostitute linkage with lesbian love. The Mitaksara commentary on
Yajnavalkyasmrti,178 quotes the Skandapurana as saying that prostitutes constitute a separate
caste springing from the apsara Pancacuda. In the Anusasana Parva of the Mahabharata179
it is the self-same Pancacuda apsara who talks of sapphic love among women.

IX
Although most writers on poetics talk in terms of the feigned love of the prostitute, Rudrabhana
in Srngaratilaka, who like his predecessors (Bharata and Vatsyayana) accepted samanya as
one of the nayikas, makes an important observation that though some consider her (samanya)
interested only in money and not in love, he is of the view that she too as a woman has her
love without which hers will become a case of the semblance of sentiment (rasabhasa).180

172
Kuttanimatam, verses 389, 575.
173
Jayamangala Commentary: 6.6.44; 2.6.48.
174
In none of the narrative or kavya texts is this mentioned.
175
Kamasutra: 2.6.45.
176
These are the marginal areas of the brahmanical patriarchy where ‘normal’ practices are suspended. Although
sometimes (Jayamangala Commentary: 2.6.38, 48) the royal women of pracya land indulge in this practice it is done
only in secret (pracchadayanti).
177
Jayamangala Commentary: 2.6.45.
178
Manjushree, The Position of Women in the Yajnavalkyasmrti, Delhi, 1990: 52.
179
Shalini Shah, The Making of Womanhood: Gender Relations in the Mahabharata, Delhi, 1995: 56.
180
R. Raghavan, Srngaramanjari of Saint Akbarshah: 20.
416 SHALINI SHAH

Visvanatha in his Sahityadarpana181 also attributes occasional real love to a vesya (kvapi
satyanuragini).
In spite of these exceptional views a prostitute’s love in the sources is mainly depicted
as a false one. Kuttanimatam182 states that ‘Prostitutes are adroit in yielding their bodies
(sarvangarpanadaksa) but not their hearts (asamarpitahrdaya)’. It is said for vesya
Srgaramanjari in Bhoja’s Srngaramanjarikatha183 that ‘she pleases others, though not in
love herself, and comes in contact with lovelorn though not attached herself’. The prosti-
tute’s love, the sources argue, is rooted in mercenary considerations. As Kuttanimatam184
notes, ‘The wealth of the paramour is the barometer on which the prostitute’s (varastri)
attachment (raga), love (prema) and sexual desire (madanaruja) can be measured. All
these sentiments are friends of wealth which increase when wealth increases and decrease
with the decrease of wealth’.
Insofar as a prostitute herself uses her love as a strategy of material gain the expression of
this sentiment is circumscribed. The vesya codes also circumscribe it. In Kuttanimatam when
vesya Harlata feels genuine love for Sundarsena she is cautioned against it by her friends. It
is said185 that for a prostitute (panyanari) a love that originates in a sense of empathy (sadb-
havajanurakti) is not good. The vesya is advised to shower her love186 only after ascertaining
the wealth of the paramour for her beauty is a means to realising that end. A vesya187 who
is attracted only towards handsomeness (abhirama) of the paramour and neglects the factor
of gain (vividhalabhanirpeksa) becomes a laughing stock among the clever courtesans. In
Brhatkathaslokasamgraha188 a prostitute bent on constancy (sativratam) is described as a
bad woman (duracareva). In Mrcchakatikam,189 vita describes Vasantasena’s rejection of
paramours like Sakara as vesavasavirudha. In another such verse referred to in Rajasekhara’s
Kavyamimamsa,190 an old bawd tells her daughter who was bent on constancy to her lover
that ‘for us marriage means to love boys in childhood, young men in youth and old men
in advanced age. On which road you want to travel, O daughter! For in our family no one
has ever been abused of being a sati (satilanchana)’. In Bhoja’s Srngaramanjarikatha,191
another bawd tells her daughter that ‘the secret of the profession of harlotry is that one’s
own self should always be protected from love as from a tiger’.
Vesya Ragamanjari in Dandin’s Dasakumaracarita192 declares that she is gunasulka and
not dhanasulka, i.e. she is attracted to the merit and not the wealth of the paramour, and
further asserts that her sexual favours (bhogyayauvanam) will be granted only to the one who
marries her (panigrahana). This insistence by Ragamanjari is seen by her mother as acting

181
Sahitya Darpana, (ed. and tr.) Satyavrata Singh, Varanasi, 1970: III.71.
182
Kuttanimatam, verse 313.
183
Srngaramanjarikatha: 15.
184
Kuttanimatam, verse 303.
185
Ibid., verse 277.
186
Ibid., verse 278.
187
Ibid., verse 279.
188
Brhatkathaslokasamgraha: XVIII. 103.
189
Mrcchakatikam, Act 1.31.
190
Kavyamimamsa, eh. VI: 71.
191
Srngaramanjarikatha: 25.
192
Dasakumaracarita: 174.
 Chapter 24  In the Business of Kama 417

against svakuladharma, that is, vesya codes, and as a desire on the part of Ragamanjari to
enact the role of a household woman (kulastrivrta). The certitude of the bawd that ‘love’
was a sentiment fit for the household women needs to be problematised. Can one say that
kulastris were more ‘free to love’? If the vesyas love was circumscribed by the vesavasa code,
the kulavadhu s love was circumscribed by the patriarchal pativrata ideology. A wife was
not required so much to love as to show devotion to her husband. It needed that penetrating
eyes of the old bawd Visamsila in Bhoja’s Srngaramanjarikatha193 to expose this myth of
love for women. The bawd tells her daughter that love is three-fold—once born on hearing,
once on sight and the third on union. All the three, says Visamsila, ‘should be abandoned
from a distance for by these even family women are made objects of contempt’. We thus
see that love as an autonomous emotion was something which women could not or dared
not experience under patriarchy. The prostitute commodified her love for material gain, and
the kulastri erased hers or bartered it to accommodate herself in the patriarchal household.
But even if a prostitute used her love as a strategy she alone was in a position to choose
to display this emotion fearlessly. Vasantasena shows such an affection for Carudatta in
Mrcchakatikam. She knew that Carudatta was poor (daridra) yet she was in love with his
virtues (gunanuraktaganika). It is significant that in the play Vasantasena did not see her
involvement with Carudatta in the light of a prostitute–client relationship at any point of
time. In Act II when Vasantasena’s maid Madanika asked her who it was that had to be
served (by Vasantasena), Vasantasena replied that she wanted to enjoy, sport and not serve
(rantumichami na sevitum). Yet again in Act IV when Vasantasena prepared to pay a visit
to Carudatta of her own accord she again used the terms sporting and enjoying (carudattam-
abhirantum gacchava). This tie of genuine love between ganika Vasantasena and Carudatta
is also recognised by Vasantasena’s mother. In Act IX when she was called upon to give
testimony in the court and the judge asked her about the whereabouts of her daughter, she
too replied that her daughter was enjoying the pleasures of youth with her friend (mitra)
Carudatta (tatra me darika yauvanasukhanubhavatt).

X
In the classical Sanskrit sources of our period, prostitutes were one of the nayika types
referred to as the bahya or sadharanastri. They were also the central figures in the entire
business of kama. It was their conscious commodification of kama which enabled them to
gain autonomy over both artha and dharma, the other two ends of human life.
Nonetheless, the vesavasa or prostitute quarter cannot be treated as a space of complete
equality. It had its own hierarchy. A ganika was the presiding diva of these quarters in a
way a rupajiva could not be. The lesser status of the latter also made her more dependent
on the generosity of her male clients.
A close scrutiny of the textual evidence allows us to jettison the prostitute-as-victim
image and to recover the ‘prostitutes as social agents with relative autonomy within the
confines of the patriarchal system’.

193
Srngaramanjarikatha: 88.
 Chapter 25 Prostitution in Ancient
India*

SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

The earliest mention of prostitution occurs in the Ṛgveda, the most ancient literary work of
India. At first however we hear of the illicit lover, jāra and jāṙiṇī—male and female lover
of married spouses. What distinguished such an illicit lover from the professional prostitute
or her client is the regular payment for favours received. When we merely hear of an illicit
lover there may or may not have been an exchange of gift; in a case of mutual consent, gifts
must have been optional. In the remote days of barter economy when money or currency was
yet unknown, such gifts were equivalent to payment in cash. We have oblique references
to women being given gifts for their favours, but the contexts leave us guessing whether
the woman was a willing partner or whether she agreed to oblige in return for the gifts she
received. But clearly, even in the earliest Vedic age, love outside wedlock was a familiar
phenomenon and unions promoted by mere lust are mentioned in quite an uninhibited manner.
Prostitution as a profession appears in the literature of a few centuries after the Vedas
although it must have been common in society much earlier. After the earliest Vedic litera-
ture between the twelfth and the ninth centuries bc (i.e., Ṛgveda, Books II-VII), we have
a vast literature which covers the period between the eighth and the fifth centuries bc. In
this literature, too, we hear of the woman of easy virtue, of the wife’s illicit love affairs.1
Extra-marital love may have been voluntary and unpaid but there is the possibility of it
being regarded by the male partner as a form of service for which he was obliged to pay in
some form. But as long as it was confined to a particular person, it was a temporary contract
and was not regarded as a profession. The later Pali term muhuttiā (lasting for an instant),
or its Sanskrit equivalent Muhūrtikā signified such purely temporary unions with no lasting
relationship or obligation. Such affairs may have been voluntary or professional, depending
on the attitude of the partners.

*Reproduced with permission from Tanika Sarkar. Previously published in Social Scientist, V. 15, No. 165, Feb.
1987, pp. 62–97.

418
 Chapter 25  Prostitution in Ancient India 419

Gradually, there arose a section of women who, either because they could not find suit-
able husbands, or because of early widowhood, unsatisfactory married life or other social
pressures especially if they had been violated, abducted or forcibly enjoyed and so denied
an honourable status in society, or had been given away as gifts in religious or secular
events—such women were frequently forced to take up prostitution as a profession. And when
they did so, they found themselves in a unique position: they constituted the only section
of women who had to be their own bread-winners and guardians. All the others—maiden
daughters, sisters, wives, widows and maidservants—were wards of men: fathers, brothers,
husbands, masters or sons.2 So, women who took up prostitution had to be reasonably sure
of an independent livelihood; their customers had to make it a viable proposition for them.

ECONOMIC STATUS
It is easy to see that all avenues to prostitution did not offer the same kind of economic
security. A raped woman had little chance of an honourable marriage and social rehabilita-
tion; so, reduced to prostitution, she had to accept whatever came her way. This also held
true for the old maid turned prostitute. But a young widow or a pretty wanton maid or an
unhappily married attractive woman could perhaps choose her partner and name her price,
at least in the beginning of her career while she still enjoyed the protection of her father’s,
husband’s in-laws’ home. We have absolutely no way of knowing prostitution in India arose
as a recognizable profession or how much the prostitute received by way of payment. Its
emergence and recognition as a profession was presumably concomitant with the institution
of strict marriage rules, especially monandry, and the wife being regarded as the private
property of her husband. The terms sādhāraṇī or sāmānyā (common), synonyms for pros-
titute, distinguish her as a woman not possessed by one man; this is the desideratum. When
a woman does not belong to one man but obliges many, as the terms vārāṅganā, varastrī,
vāravadhū and vāramukhyā3 signify, since she is not the responsibility of any one man, she
looks after herself. She does so by accepting payment from each of the men she obliges; she
then becomes paṇyastrī, one whose favours can be bought with money.
The process of the emergence of prostitution must have been slow, varying from region
to region and from age to age. By the later Vedic age, that is, around the eighth or seventh
centuries bc, we have references to a more regularised form of prostitution recognised as
a social institution. Early Buddhist literature, especially the Jātakas, bear testimony to the
existence of different categories of prostitutes, and incidentally provides some information
about their fees as also of their financial position.
Professional prostitution presupposes an economic condition in which surplus was pro-
duced, a surplus which also earned prosperity from abroad through trade and commerce.
It also presupposes the rise of petty principalities, the breakdown of tribal society, the
rise of the joint or extended family and the social subjugation of women in general. In a
settled agricultural community, the woman gradually lost social mobility and a measure of
freedom that she had been enjoying before. She became man’s ward, possession, object of
enjoyment. Also, with the accumulation of private property, the wife was more zealously
guarded and jealously watched over. Society was now polygamous; polyandry disappeared
except in some small pockets.
420 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

Whether as an unmarried girl, a wife or a widow, she belonged to some man; as other
men could not approach her without trespassing on the owner’s property rights. Pleasure
outside the home, therefore, had to be paid for, hence prostitution had to be institutionalised
so that there was an assurance of a steady supply for ready payment. It must have been a
long and tortuous process for women of this profession to congregate in a ‘red light area’,
away from the village—and later also from towns—where men could go and seek their
company. Social ostracism on the one hand and professional solidarity of the guild type of
association on the other, ensured their security and prosperity.
Although the later Vedic literature tacitly assumes and sometimes even overtly mentions
prostitutes, it is in the Buddhist texts that we see them first as professionals. In Vedic litera-
ture, especially in the Aitareya and Ṡaṅkhāyana Āraṇyakas, the prostitute is mentioned in
an apparently obscene altercation with the neophyte (brahmacārin). In the Vrātyasūkta of
the Atharvaveda, she follows the Māgadha. These are clearly part of a fertility ritual. It is
in this role that she has persisted in ritual and literature down the ages.
There are various myths and legends regarding the origin of prostitution. The Mahābhārata
account of the destruction of the Yādavas and Vṛṣṇis4 ends with the women of these tribes
being abducted by barbarian brigands. In the Kuru and Pān̄cāla regions5 inhabited by the
Madras and the Sindhu-Sauvīras, the Brahmin sages Dālbhya Caikitāyana and Śvetaketu’s
nephew Aṣṭāvakra were said to be associated with the teaching of erotics in which pros-
titution constitutes a section. In the Mahābhārata6 and the Matsya Purāṇa7 we are given
fictitious accounts of the origin of prostitution. Kṣemendra says that wicked mothers give
their daughters, enjoyed and abandoned by men, to others.8 Vātsyāyana in his Kāmasūtra
gives detailed instructions on how a chaste girl should be seduced cleverly until she yields
to a man’s lust.9 Presumably, when such a man abandoned her she was forced to adopt
prostitution as a profession. We also hear of the jāyopajīvins or jāyājīvins, husbands who
lived on the wife’s income which she earned by selling herself. This itself was regarded
as a minor sin on the husband’s part, an upapātaka which could be expiated by taking the
comparatively mild cāndrāyaṇa vow.10 All these texts reveal to us some of the channels by
which women came to prostitution. Another old channel of the supply of prostitutes was
young virgins given away as gifts on special religious and secular occasions. The number of
such girls given away to brahmins, guests, priests, sons-in-law is staggering. In later Vedic
times we hear of dakṣiṇās, sacrificial fees to officiating priests. Such fees included horses,
cattle, gold and also women of various categories—unmarried, married without children
and married with children. One wonders what a priest did with hundreds of such women.
Some he could marry, others he would enjoy and abandon, still others he would employ
as maidservants. Many of these would later find their way to brothels or to slave markets.
Yet another source of supply was the royal palace. A king could summon pretty maids to
his palace, enjoy them for some days and then send them away. In the Vatsagulma region,
ministers’ wives had to oblige the king by paying visits (on being summoned) to the palace.
In Vidarbha, pretty maids were enjoyed by the king for a month and then sent away. When
such women came out of the palace, one obvious solution for their future life was prostitution.
Of course, courtiers would sometimes marry some of them but the rest had few alternative
courses open to them. Kauṭilya says that prostitutes were recruited from four sources: either
they were born as prostitutes’ daughters, or they were purchased,11 or captured in war,12 or
they were women who had been punished for adultery.13
 Chapter 25  Prostitution in Ancient India 421

Finally, a totally abhorrent manner of procuring women for temple prostitution was
buying women and giving them to the temples. Such donors were said to grow rich in this
life and live in heaven for a long time. We hear that he who gave a host of prostitutes to the
Sun god went to the region of the sun after death.14
Temple dancers do not appear before the last few centuries bc, and are mentioned
frequently in the early centuries ad in some regions. The Jātakas do not know them,
Greek visitors after Alexander do not mention them. Even Kauṭilya does not associate
professional dancers with temple prostitution. Evidently, the institution arose in the
troubled period of foreign invasion before and after the early centuries ad Kālidāsa, in
the fifth century ad, assumes their existence and function as an established tradition.15
From the sixth century ad onwards, literature and epigraphy bear many evidences of its
existence. As townships and cities arose along the trade routes in northern India around
the sixth century bc internal and maritime trade flourished along these, and towns and
cities became centres where courtesans plied their trade and attracted money from trav-
ellers, merchants, soldiers and men of various trades. These courtesans were trained in
many arts and if they were young and pretty they could amass a fortune, but evidently
only the exceptionally beautiful, young and accomplished among them were so fortu-
nate. Since entertainment was their primary function, they had to provide song, dance,
music and various other kinds of pleasure; they had to keep a troupe of artistes in the
different fields in readiness for the cultivated customer. To the upper class of courtesans
sometimes came men of refined aesthetic sensibilities and intellectual ability; hence they
were obliged to provide entertainment like the hostesses of the French salons of the last
century or the Japanese geisha girls. They themselves were trained in the various arts
including literature, for their training was quite lengthy and elaborate. We hear of texts
composed for such training; these are called Vaiśikatantra. But every courtesan could
not herself provide all kinds of aesthetic pleasure, so they had to make an initial and also
recurring investment for training and maintaining a troupe of artistes. Occasionally, the
royal treasury came to her aid.
Chief courtesans of prosperous cities and towns maintained their own train of singers and
dancing girls. Royal courts also patronised such singers and dancers who could be enjoyed
by the king and his favourities and who could also be employed as spies.
From the earliest times we have many different names for courtesans. The Ṛgveda knows
the hasrā, a frivolous woman the agrū,16 and the sādhāraṇī. The Atharvaveda knows the17
pumścalī, she who walks among men,18 the mahānagnī, she of great nakedness (i.e., who bares
herself to many) is mentioned in the Atharvaveda,19 atiskadvarī and apaskadvarī, women
with fancy dress and bare bosoms are mentioned in the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa.20 Rajayitrī,
she who entertains and is given to sensuality, also figures in some texts.21 Sāmānyā and
sādhāraṇī are generic terms for the common woman.22 In the Mahāvrata rite the pumścalī,
a prostitute pairs ritually with a brahmacārin.23 The kāmasūtra in the second or first century
bc mentions the Kumbhadāsī and paricārikā maidservants who could also be enjoyed at will.
Kulaṭā and svairiṇī, wanton women, naṭī, the actress, śilpakārikā, she who is engaged in
arts and crafts, prakāśavinaṣṭā, the openly defiled one, rūpājīvā and gaṇikās, are courtesans
with different social ranks.
The Jātakas mention vannadāsī, veṣī nāriyo, gāmaniyo, and nagarasobhinī itthī,24
muhuttiā25 and janapadakalyāṇī are mentioned in several Buddhist texts in the sense of the
422 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

most beautiful women who can be enjoyed, by an entire janapada. The gaṇikā must initially
have connoted a woman at the disposal of all the members of a gaṇa, a tribe, and later of
the political unit, or constituent of a confederacy. Some later names include sālabhañjikā,
who is no other than a prostitute in Jaṭādhara’s dictionary.

VARIATIONS IN STATUS AND FUNCTIONS

This profusion of synonyms cannot be explained by regional or temporal variations only,
it also signifies the social and financial status of the various categories of courtesans.26 The
numerous synonyms also testify to the widespread presence of the institution through the ages.
The rūpājīvā was not accomplished in the arts like the gaṇikā; her only stock in trade as
the name signifies was her beauty and charm. She owed the state two days’ income for a
month. If a man forcibly enjoyed her, he was fined 12 paṇas, but in times of crisis half her
monthly income could be forfeited to the state.27 She could also belong to the royal harem28
and could also be exclusively kept by one man; in which case another enjoying her was fined
48 paṇas.29 Disguised as a wife she could help a man escape and could also be employed by
the state as a spy.30 Vātsyāyana also mentions the rūpājīvā.31 Another name of the mistress of
one individual man is avaruddhā. The rūpadāsī was unaccomplished and was employed in
the personal attendance of a wealthy man. Like the vannadāsī mentioned in the Jātakas she
could entertain customers on her own or serve under some other person.32 The gaṇikādāsī
was a female slave of the gaṇikā who could also become independent and set up her own
establishment. The Sāmājataka mentions Sāmā, a courtesan of Kasi who had a retinue of
500 gaṇikādāsīs.33 Other common and late names are vārāṇganā, vārabadhū, vāramukhyā,
all of which stand for a prostitute while vṛṣalī, which originally meant a Śūdra woman later
came to mean a harlot; pāṃśulā and lañjikā are later synonyms of harlots. Kulaṭā was a
married woman who left home to become a public woman and vandhakī was a housewife
turned loose; her husband was known as vandhakīpoṣā, maintaining or being maintained
by a vandhakī. A vandhakī too had to pay part of her income to the state coffers in times of
national crisis. The raṇḍā was a low common woman, a mistress to viṭa, usually an old hag
who pretended to be engaged in penance but was actually out to catch customers.
The gaṇikā and sometimes the rūpājīvā too, received free training in the various arts
and those who teach prostitutes, female slaves and actresses arts such as singing, playing
on musical instruments, reading, dancing, acting, writing, painting, playing on instruments
such as vīṇā (lyre), pipe and drum, reading the thoughts of others, manufacture of scents
and garlands, shampooing and the art of attracting and captivating the mind of others shall
be endowed with maintenance from the state. They, the teachers shall train the sons of
prostitutes to be chief actors (raṅgopajīvin) on the stage. The wives of actors and others of
similar profession who have been taught various languages and the use of signals (saṃjñā)
shall, along with their relatives be made use of in detecting the wicked and murdering and
deluding foreign spies.34
In a sixth century Jain work we have an exhaustive list of the prostitute’s attainments—
writing, arithmetic, the arts, singing, playing on musical instruments, drums, chess, dice,
 Chapter 25  Prostitution in Ancient India 423

eight board chess, instant verse making, Prakrit and Apabhraṃśa poetry, proficiency in the
science of perfume making, jewellery, dressing up, knowledge of the signs of good or bad
men and women, horses, elephants, cocks, rams, umbrellas, rods, swords, jewels, gems
which antidote poison, architecture, camps and canopies, phalanx arrangement, fighting,
fencing, shooting arrows, ability to interpret omens, etc. Altogether seventy-two arts and
sciences were to be mastered by her.35
It is clear that the prostitute especially gaṇikā, the most accomplished among them,
offered men something which by the early centuries ad had become absolutely rare among
the women of the gentry, namely accomplishment. We read in the Manusaṃhitā: ‘The
sacrament of marriage is to a female what initiation with the sacred thread is to a male.
Serving the husband is for the wife what residence in the preceptor’s house is to the man
and household duty is to the woman, what offering sacrifices is to the man.’36 This series
of neat equations deprive the woman of education, dooming her to household chores only,
especially the service of her husband and in-laws, but also thereby indirectly doom her to
the loss of her husband’s attention. With an unaccomplished wife at home, the man who
cared for cultured female company went to the brothel for it. Manu belongs to the early
centuries ad;37 a steady deterioration in the status of the woman and the śūdra followed his
codification of the social norm and the brothel flourished because it catered to the cultured
man-about-the-town’s (nāgaraka) tastes in women.
The gaṇikā because of her youth, beauty, training and accomplishment belonged to a
superior social status. With an extensive, elaborate, and apparently expensive education
she could frequently name her price, which, as Buddhist texts testify was often prohibitive.
She was patronised by the king who visited her sometimes, as also by wealthy merchants.
Because of her high fees none but the most wealthy could approach her. She alone enjoyed
a position where as long as her youth and beauty lasted she could not be exploited.

TAXES TO THE STATE

We have seen that the gaṇikā, rūpājīvā, veśyā and vandhakī  had to pay taxes to the state but
a careful study leads to the conclusion that almost all categories had an actual or potential
obligation for paying taxes; the collection, however, depended on the degree and nature of the
organisation. Organised red light areas paid taxes regularly, at a fixed rate, while it was much
more difficult to ascertain the income of the women ‘kept’ in seclusion by a man or of the
unorganised individual women plying the trade in isolated pockets or even, like the vandhakī,
at home. Similarly, organised brothels enjoyed greater security from the state in lieu of the taxes
they paid while individuals who paid ‘hush-money’ to extortionist officers could hardly demand
any protection from injustice, manhandling, coercion and cheating. The Nammayasundarīkathā,
a twelfth century text says that the state received 25% to 30% of the prostitute’s income.
We hear of the extremely high fees of some famous gaṇikās in the Buddhist texts. Bhaṭṭi38
and parivvayam39 denote two different types of fees. Vāsadavattā of Mathura charged very
high rates per night.40 Sālāvatī of Rajagraha charged a hundred karṣāpaṇas per night while
Ambapālī’s fees led to a dispute between the cities Rajagṛha and Vaiśālī. A Jain text 41 says
424 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

that a courtesan who had a faultless body and whose attainments were complete may charge
1000 karṣāpaṇas per night. Evidently, only the richest merchants could pay such fees. The
play Mṛcchakaṭika mentions a thousand gold coins and ornaments being sent in advance to
lure a gaṇikā to a paramour’s house. The gaṇikā, says Kauṭilya, was also paid a monthly
salary from the royal treasury and the pratigaṇikā, her short-time substitute, received half
the amount. The gaṇikā, however, did not enjoy property rights. ‘There is every likelihood
that their palatial establishments and gardens were state property with life interest.’42 On
her death, her daughter inherited her property but only for use; she could not sell, mort-
gage, exchange or donate them. This, of course, is true of the ordinary prostitute living in
an organised brothel; many outstanding gaṇikās were mistresses of their own property.
Hence in Buddhist literature we have many instances where she gave away her property. A
gaṇikā could be bought out by a sympathetic customer; her redemption money (niṣkraya)
was 24,000 paṇas, a very high sum in view of the fact that her annual salary paid by the
state was between 1000 and 3000 paṇas. A rūpājīvā’s fees were 48 paṇas, she usually lived
with actors, wine-sellers, meat-sellers, people who sold cooked rice and vaiśyas generally.
It is obvious that she kept company with people who controlled ready cash.
A man who forcibly attacked a gaṇikā’s daughter paid a fine of 54 paṇas plus a fine (śulka)
of 16 times her mother’s fees, presumably to the mother herself.43 The second fine may also
be a hush-money paid to the bridegroom at the daughter’s wedding. Foreign customers
had to pay 5 paṇas extra tariff duty to the state apart from the courtesan’s regular fees. The
pumścalī (a common whore) did not have any fixed fees; she could only demand fees on
marks of cohabitation, if she tried to extort money from her customers her fees were liable to
be forfeited to the state—also if she threw temper tantrums or refused to oblige the customer
in any way. The Kuṭṭanīmmata says that the temple prostitute (tridaśālayajīvikā) got paid by
the temple authorities and that her income was fixed by tradition. Kṣemendra’s Samayamātṛkā
says that they were paid in grain as remuneration and that they were employed in rotation.
If after receiving her fees a prostitute refused to oblige her customer she paid a fine of
double her fees; if she refused him before accepting the fees she paid her fees as fine.44
Apparently it is a fair business deal where the defaulter pays. a fine but if we pause and
think that a sensible person would not ruin the prospects of gain or income unless she had
some serious reason for disobliging her customer, it becomes clear that she did not have
the option to refusing to sell herself. In other words, society refused to look upon her as a
human being; she was just a commodity, nothing more. If a price had been accepted the
commodity was the customer’s for use.
Regarding her customers Vātsyāyana is very clear. The ideal one is young, rich, without
having to earn his wealth (i.e., born to wealth), proud, a minister to the king, one who can
afford to disregard his elders’ commands, preferably an only son of a rich father. Born in an
aristocratic family, he should be learned, a poet, proficient in tales, an orator, accomplished
in the various arts, not malicious, lively, given to drinks, friendly, a ladies’ man but not
under their power, independent, not cruel, not jealous, not apprehensive.45 The courtesan
is advised not to stick to one visitor when she has offers from many. She should go to the
person who can offer the gifts she covets.46 Since money can buy everything she should
oblige him who can afford the highest sum—this, says the text, is what the teachers instruct.
When she wants to bring her paramour back from a rival she should be extra nice to him and
 Chapter 25  Prostitution in Ancient India 425

be satisfied with less payment temporarily. This is to ensure her future…she should leave
the impoverished lover and never invest in one from whom there is no hope of return.47
She should be able to read the signs of his disaffection; a long list of such signs are given.48
Above all, a courtesan should never encourage or entertain a suitor of reduced means. When
she has squeezed her customer dry, she should remorselessly leave him and search for a rich
one. Normally, a gaṇikā chose her own customer except when the king forced one on her.
Then, if she refused she was whipped with 1000 lashes or was fined 5000 paṇas. She did not
have any right over her own body where the royal wish was concerned.49 The punishment
for forcing an unwilling gaṇikā was 1000 paṇas or more. Once she admits a client into her
own house to share it with her she could not throw him out. If she did, the fine was eight
times her fees. She could only refuse if he was diseased. When the client cheated her of her
fees he had to pay eight times the fees.
The prostitute could own ornaments, money, her fees, servants, maidservants who could
be concubines. But other texts indicate that this ownership was not real or ultimate; but
merely a right of use. The concubine, however, was obliged to pay the mistress for her own
upkeep, plus one paṇa per month.
Prostitution in ancient India existed both overtly and covertly. In other words, besides
brothels or open establishments run by and for one or more prostitutes, ancient texts give a
list of many professions for girls where she could potentially be enjoyed by her employer
with impunity. She could act as a substitute for the wife. In the Jain text Vasudevahiṇḍi we
read of Bharata, a leader of his clan having another woman besides the wife. All the feuda-
tories under him sent their daughters who arrived at the same time. The queen threatened
to leave, so it was decided that they would serve him in the outer court and that later they
would be handed over to the gaṇa, the tribe, to become gaṇikās, the text thus explains the
origin of the term gaṇikā. The Mahābhārata tells us that the Pāṇḍava army was followed
by a host of prostitutes who went in the rear of the army on baggage carts.50 Yudhiṣṭhira on
the eve of the war sent his greetings to the prostitutes.51 In the train of the Paṇḍavas when
they left for the forest there were “chariots, traders’ goods and brothels”, presumably to
entertain the army.52 King Virta after his victory ordered young girls to dress well, come out53
and entertain the assembled men. Such a command could only be given to public women.
When Kṛṣṇa went on a peace mission to the Kauravas, Duryodhana’s entertainment of the
former included a rest house with women; Dhṛtarāṣṭra ordered fair harlots to go with his sons
to meet Kṛṣṇa. The later didactic interpolations of the Mahābhārata, however, are full of
imprecations and stigma against prostitutes.54 The Rāmāyaṇa mentions gaṇikās and veśyās
in the list of comforts, luxuries and status symbols. It is quite clear that prostitutes became
a symbol of the prosperity concomitant with urban civilisation. Like gold and jewellery,
like corn and cattle, a rich man desired prosperity and plenty in the number of women he
could enjoy freely.

WOMEN AS COMMODITY
The concept of women as chattel or commodity for man’s enjoyment is borne out by the
inclusion of women—pretty and young—in large numbers in any list of gifts given to a man
426 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

in return for a favour or as a mark of respect. Thus she is a part of dakṣiṇā, fees to the sacri-
ficial priest. At Yudhiṣṭhira’s horse-sacrifice women were sent by other kings as a donation
to make up a necessary part of the entertainment.55 Yudhiṣṭhira himself gives away pretty
maids to guest kings;56 he is even said to have given away hundreds of thousands of pretty
girls as did King Saśabindu of old at his horse sacrifice.57 Pretty maids as part of dakṣiṇā
are also mentioned when King Bhagīratha gave hundreds of thousands of lovely maids,
well decked out with gold ornaments.58 Even at a srāddha ceremony Brahmins received
thousands of pretty maidens as gifts.59 These girls could sometimes find husbands but pre-
sumably, since prostitution was being looked down upon more and more and maidenhood
became an essential prerequisite for marriage in the Smṛti texts, most of them were forced
to become prostitutes.
In heaven heroes are rewarded with a large number of beautiful girls.60 The same idea
is also seen in classical Sanskrit literature. In the Kumārasambhava,61 Raghuvaṃśa,62
Kirātārjunīya,63 and in Śiśupalvadha,64 in Subandhu and Bāṇa we have references to cour-
tesans as a prestigious decoration of a royal palace and an indispensable part of city life.
Bhāguri calls her puramaṇḍana an ornament of the city. Thus her status was that of an
inanimate decorative object, an object of enjoyment; it was sub-human.
Courtesans sometimes did perform several other functions. In the Mahābhārata they
participated in the victory celebrations.65 They even played a political role as spies whose
duty it was to seduce important men who were potential sources of vital political information,
to collect such information and supply it to the relevant officers through the superintendent
(gaṇikādhyakṣa). Their role as temptress is emphasised in the Vaṭṭaka Jātaka. The names
of various types of courtesans gives us an inkling of their roles. Thus the devaveśyā was the
temple dancer, something like the Greek hierodoules; the rājaveśyā served the king; while
the Brahmaveśyā or tīrthagā visited holy places or pilgrimages. In the Brahmapurāṇa we
have the description of Ekāmratīrtha, where lived many prostitutes66 presumably to cater to
the pilgrims and visitors. In the samāja public functions there used to be a separate gallery
where sat the courtesans who gave musical performance for the samāja. Kauṭilya assigns them
the duties of common maidservants at the palace. We hear of a prostitute serving Dhṛtarāṣṭra
when Gāndhārī was pregnant.67 Uddyotana Sūri in his Kuvalayamālā describes nymphs in
Indra’s heaven who carried water vessels, fans, fly-whisks, parasols, mirrors, kettledrums,
harps, ordinary drums, clothes and ornaments. In the Rāmāyāṇa and the Mahābhārata
such women followed the king in the palace and served him in his train. The Lalitavistara
mentions women who carried full pitchers, garlands, jewellery and ornaments, the throne,
the fan, jars full of perfumed water, etc. Evidently in all these instances, as also in many
references in the Purāṇas and later literature the pretty damsels giving light personal service
to the king are projected to heaven where the earthly prostitutes figure as celestial nymphs
serving the gods. Whether on earth or in heaven monarchs or wealthy potentates used such
women to enhance their glory and pleasure.
The retired temple prostitute was employed by the state for spinning cotton, wool and
flax. The nāgaraka, man-about-the-town, in his love-intrigues could have assistance from
widows, Buddhist nuns, and old courtesans who acted as go-betweens. In the palace the
courtesan held positions as the royal umbrella-bearer, masseuse in charge of the king’s (also
of the royal family’s) toilet, dress and ornaments, and as the king’s bath attendant. They
 Chapter 25  Prostitution in Ancient India 427

also had a place in the royal entourage in hunting and military expeditions, and on occasion
entertained royal guests. What is true of their function with regard to the king is also true
of the rich courtier merchants and nobles described as nāgaraka in the Kāmasūtra. In the
non-monarchical gaṇa states the chiefs gambled and indulged themselves in the company
of prostitutes. The keepers of brothels procured pretty women from their establishment for
these chiefs’ entertainment. These aged women the brothel keepers were adept in bring-
ing about and resolving quarrels between rival suitors as and when needed by them or by
political agents of the state. Courtesans belonged to kings or wealthy citizens’ trains in their
amusements and festivals, their garden parties, boat trips, musical soirées, and bathing and
drinking sprees. The Kāmasūtra describes the different sports and festivals of rich barons
to each of which courtesans were invited.
At-homes could be held in a courtesan’s salon where assembled men of the same age,
intellect, wealth who would hold discussions with courtesans. This was called goṣṭhī; there
they talked about the problems of poetry and art. They shifted the venue to the different
members’ houses where they indulged in food and various drinks. Courtesans were to be
served first, then the men should eat and drink. These men-about-the-town rode out to an
appointed place together with the courtesans in the forenoon, and having spent the day in vari-
ous kinds of sports and entertainments such as cockfights, ramfights, theatrical performances,
etc., they should return in the evening. In summer they should indulge in water-sports.68
The text goes on to name twenty different sports and festivals69 which depended on the
seasons, the moon and auspicious days or the year. ‘Villagers should learn of these sports
of the townsmen, describe and imitate them.’70
No doubt the prostitutes occasionally enjoyed themselves at such times, but whether they
spied, massaged, bathed, dressed or carried the umbrella we do not hear of any extra payment
for these additional duties to which they were certainly entitled because their main task as
prostitutes only earned them a place in the king’s or rich man’s establishment. In a sense in
the organised brothel prostitutes were better off, because normally they were not expected
to do other chores although when with their customers, they sometimes entertained them
with minor services. It all depended on the social and economic status of the prostitute. The
city’s chief courtesan was a wealthy person of a high rank who had a host of servants and
maidservants for the menial chores; she herself was too accomplished, rich and respect-
able to do the chores herself; whereas a poor and common strumpet had to cater to many
customers, also indigent and therefore, each able to pay very little. Hence she had to do
all the menial chores for herself and her customer for bare subsistence.71 The avaruddhā, a
woman ‘kept’ by a man, enjoyed freedom from manual labour only if her patron was rich;
otherwise she had to work for herself and for him. Hers was like a ‘contract marriage’ and,
as in marriage, the status of the woman depended on the man’s income.

SOCIAL STATUS
At this distance of time it is difficult to form an adequate idea of the social status of prostitutes.
We have seen that not all prostitutes belong to the same category. The accomplished young
beauty could name her price, sometimes at an apparently exorbitant rate, because she was in
428 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

great demand. Speaking of the ranks of royal attendants the Kurudhamma Jātaka says that
the lowest of the courtiers was the door-keeper, the dvārika; he occupies the last place but
one, for he is above the public woman, the gaṇikā. Every city had a chief courtesan who was
‘an ornament to the city’.72 The janapadakalyāṇī for the sādhāraṇī of the non-monarchichal
state of the Licchavis were in great demand and were often looked up to because of their
beauty and culture and so could ask any price for their favours. And they got it as many
Buddhist texts testify. The word janapadakalyāṇī literally meant the most beautiful woman
in a country. The Dīgha Nikāya,73 the Majjhima Nikāya,74 and the Saṃyutta Nikāya75 refer
to her, Buddhist texts mention many affluent and powerful courtesans who fed the Buddha
and his train and gave gifts to the order. We thus hear of Ambāpālī giving such a feast to
the Lord and his hundred thousand followers. She also gave away her big mango grove to
the order.76’Śālavatī’s daughter Sirimā received 1,000 kāhāpaṇas per night.77 We hear of
a banker’s daughter who chose to become a prostitute. Her father set too high a price; few
customers came; she reduced it to half and was called ardhakāśī.78
As looks, age and accomplishments came down the price and social prestige also came
down so that middle aged, unaccomplished or plain-looking women had to agree to mere
subsistence rales or even less. Even that they did not always get as many texts on erotics
tell us. The Kuṭṭanīmata, a major text on prostitution, describes the plight of such discarded
prostitutes who were reduced to begging, stealing, and various other tricks. They had no
guarantee of the next meal or shelter, no provision against old age, disease and penury. The
heart-rending description of an abandoned, unattractive prostitute who takes recourse to
becoming a confidence trickster and is pursued by society is occasionally rendered ludicrous
by the very comicality of her various moves and the invariable failure of each move. But
beyond this comic portrait is the tragic situation of a woman who, after having provided
pleasure to many men’s lust all through her life, has to fend for herself at a time when she is
worst equipped for such a lone battle. In many texts we hear of such retired harlots b­ egging.79
The classic example is Kaṅkālī, an inn-keeper’s daughter, sold at seven as a slave in the
market place, who started as an ordinary prostitute and in time lost her youth and whatever
charm she had earlier had. So she tried her hand at different professions but since she had no
training in any she could not earn a livelihood through them. Then she tried to seduce people
at pilgrimages, dressing up and disguising her age and loss of looks, but was eventually
caught and summarily dropped. She changed roles frequently, was even imprisoned; in a bid
to escape she murdered the warder. She then fled to a monastery where she could not stick it
for very long. Later she begged openly until there was a famine and she could not get alms.
So she became a nurse to a child whose gold chain she stole one night and escaped. When
that money was exhausted she took to selling loaded dice. Then she returned to begging
as a profession. But the strain and poor returns prompted her to steal food offered to idols.
She next became a wine-seller, a fortune-teller and an actress in turn and finally she went
about pretending to be insane. For a time she enjoyed royal hospitality because she gave
out that she could paralyse a hostile army. But quite naturally she had to take to her heels
before the actual encounter took place. Finally, she returned to her native place and became
a procuress for a pretty young prostitute, Kalāvatī.80 This tale, evidently a concatenation of
many disparate episodes epitomises the fate of old prostitutes. Their tragedy was not only
the lack of social security but also their lack of proficiency in any alternative profession
 Chapter 25  Prostitution in Ancient India 429

through which they could earn a livelihood. Besides, having known better days they could
not slick to any mean profession which did not provide comfort. Hence they flitted from
one profession to another with cunning and the ability to cheat through play-acting—arts
they had mastered as prostitutes—as the only stock-in-trade. In the Deśopadeśa we hear of a
sixty-year old woman making herself up as a young girl in the hope of catching a customer.81
Institutionalised prostitution, however, offered somewhat better prospects for old and
retired courtesans. Kauṭilya lays down the rule that gaṇikās, pratigaṇikās, (short term
substitutes for the gaṇikās), rūpājīvās, veśyās, dāsīs, devadāsīs, pumścalīs, śilpakārikās,
kauśikastrī (woman artisan) are to be given pension by the state in old age. Since Kauṭilya
was writing for a prince it is to be assumed that these women were employed by the state
and had earlier paid taxes to the state which the state regarded partially as provident fund
contributions against old age, disability, retirement and penury. We are not told what the
pension was in terms of money, whether it was adequate for sustenance. But a steady
income, however small, must have meant some measure of security to elderly women who
would otherwise be wholly destitute. But since women and their labour was exploited in
most spheres of life, we may assume that this rule was not strictly observed, because such
women were totally powerless to sue the slate for non-payment. Yet the few who actually
received some pension were lucky to have it. Retired prostitutes were employed as cooks,
store-keepers, cotton, wool and flax spinners, and in various other manual jobs, so the state
did not have to pay the pension until they were too old and weak to work anymore. In old
age some prostitutes became mātṛkās, that is, matrons-in-charge of a brothel.
We hear of prostitutes’ anvaya, family: their mothers, sisters, daughters and sons. The
mother looked after her personal possessions, like dress and ornaments; she could not deposit
her ornaments anywhere else; the daughter inherited them on her mother’s retirement or
death. But only for use. The sister could act as her substitute in a commission and the son
was trained as a musical artist or an actor. He became a property of the state, almost a slave,
and was obliged to hold musical performances for the stage for eight years. The manumission
fees for him was higher than that for the prostitute. But in the play Mṛcchakaṭika we hear
of bandhulas ‘who are begotten by unknown clients of the prostitutes’. Without any social
identity these boys lived in a brothel until they could eke out a livelihood for themselves.
The pathetic tone of the verse tells us how these hoys were looked upon as waste products,
like slag in a factory.
A prostitute was obliged to keep the brothel superintendent posted about her income and
expenses and he could stop her from being extravagant. She could not sell or mortgage her
property at will; for doing so she paid a fine: fifty and a quarter paṇas.
Occasionally a prostitute was married. Vātsyāyana lays down a provision whereby a
vcśyā could be given in marriage to one who could provide special musical assistance to
the establishment; such a marriage leads to greater prosperity.82 Otherwise we hear of a
notional sort of marriage which was more in the nature of initiation. The man did not have
any exclusive claim on her person or services. The avaruddhā belonged to her patron
exclusively and the law-givers say that his exclusive right to her should be respected.83
Nārada has no objection to a man having sexual relations with a non-Brahmin svairiṇī
veśyā, dāsī and nikāśinī (one who did not live a secluded life) of a lower caste if she was
not another’s wife.
430 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

That even a prostitute can fall in love is admitted theoretically by Vātsyāyana even
though he says that they are and should always be after money.84 A prostitute, according
to the Skandapurāṇa, belongs to a separate caste: if a man of the same or a superior caste
enjoys her he is not to be punished, provided she is not another’s concubine. If she is, then
he simply performs the prājāpatya (a light) penance85 and gets away with it. In literature
we have a few instances of the prostitute falling in love.86

VILIFICATION IN LITERATURE
Both institutionally and individually prostitutes depended upon certain categories of middle-
men and procurers. Chief among these was the kuṭṭanī or sambhalī. Now, in a brothel the
mother of the chief prostitute was the person-in-charge who watched over her daughter’s and
the other girl’s interests. Her duties included checking the payments, protecting the girl’s
health and wealth, driving away undesirable customers (i.e., those with depleted coffers),
using deceit and delay tactics to spare the girl as much as possible, bargaining for greater
emoluments by pretending that other, richer customers are making bigger offers, varying
custom, that is, to deprive an eager one for a time in order to extort better fees from him.87
No wonder she was vilified in literature. ‘She is like a blood-thirsty tigress, only where she is
absent does the client appear as a fox’. ‘The kuṭṭanī with her ear glued to the door in greedy
expectation of money becomes eager even when a blade of grass drops’.88 The Kāmasūtra
mentions these procuresses together with beggar women, cultivated women, female mendi-
cants with shaven heads, caṇḍāla women and old prostitutes.89 Apparently she is an old hag
with the nature of a vampire. But if one pauses to think, then it becomes clear that she was
the prostitute’s only guarantee of safety and fair payment. Without her, if the prostitute had to
deal with the customer directly, she could be cheated, robbed, insulted, maimed, even killed
with impunity. The basis of this surmise is offered by Kauṭilya in his Arthaśāstra where we
read that the fine for defamation of a courtesan was 24 paṇas; for assault 48 paṇas and for
lopping off her ears 51 3/4 paṇas and forced confinement. The Yājn̄avalkya Smṛti says that
the fine for molesting a prostitute is 50 paṇas; and if she is gang-raped each assailant had
to pay 24 paṇas to her.90 For the safety of her person some laws had to be framed and for
graver crimes the penalty varied between 1000 and 48,000 paṇas according to the degree
of the heinousness of the crime and the status of the injured courtesan. On the other hand,
later religious and law books have nothing but contempt for courtesans, and hold them solely
responsible for the institution. They go to the length of saying that the murder of a prostitute
is no crime.91 Manu believes that all prostitutes were thieves and swindlers.92 It is true that
the erotic text Kalāvilāsa lists 64 specified modes in which a courtesan could deceive her
customer. It also tells us the story of King Vikramāditya, who when he fell on hard days
became the prostitute Vilāsavatī’s guest. She showered her own wealth on him and when
he gave himself out to be dead, threw herself on his pyre. With her help he regained his
kingdom and made her the chief queen. Then she confessed to him her love for a young man
who was arrested as a thief. With the king’s help he was freed and the lovers were united.
Then the king remembered his minister’s warning: they are not to be trusted. This innate
deceitfulness of prostitutes is a recurring note in all literature. But in this instance the text
 Chapter 25  Prostitution in Ancient India 431

ignores her contribution: the re-instatement of the king as sovereign, and betrays only a sneer,
shared no doubt by the entire community, for, the possibility of a prostitute being in love
so deeply that she treads a dangerous and tortuous path to gain her lover appeared totally
absurd to them. The text condemns the woman for everything, and more so the prostitute,
wholly ignoring her client’s role, and her own contribution to his career.
We have just seen that their clients also maltreated and manhandled them and these
were not isolated incidents or exceptions or there would be no need to frame laws against
crimes and stipulate the exact amount of fines for the several kinds of assault. She was often
used and then cheated, robbed, thrashed, mutilated and murdered. If the institution was for
society a necessary evil, and the state had a vested interest in extracting revenue and epion
age service from this ‘evil’, then it could not afford to ignore a situation when the source of
such revenue was harmed so that she could not multiply the revenue. Hence the laws. But
the attitude of society was clearly against the prostitute and not against her client.
The procuress, the matron of the brothel or the mother of the chief courtesan sought to
safeguard her physical, social and financial well-being.
The viṭa was the middleman and/or companion of the courtesan. Because the viṭa was
a man he could procure custom for her. Technically, a viṭa was a worthy spendthrift who,
reduced to penury, takes shelter (sometimes with his wife) in a brothel or in similar plea-
sure resorts.93 The viṭas are counsellors of both the courtesans and their clients and could
bring about misunderstandings between them and also reconcile them to each other. The
pīṭhamarda, on the other hand, was a teacher of the prostitute as also an associate of the
nāgaraka, the man-about-the-town, who helped his friend achieve his ends.94 Both, but
especially, the viṭa, looked after the courtesan’s interests where she needed a man to help
her. In the Mṛcchakaṭika he escorts her in a dark night, instructs her when she goes to seek
pleasure, has no illusion about the profession but has respect for her as a person. In the four
famous Bhāṇas of the late classical period the viṭas are helpers, peace-makers, go-betweens,
procurers and counsellors of the partners. Evidently, the courtesan was also helpless against
certain situations so that she shared her income with a male go-between for protecting her
own interests. This and the services of the kuṭṭanī already signify that the courtesan was
liable to be exploited, cheated, insulted and physically injured. The viṭa, apparently a para-
site, gave valuable service to her where her sex and social position rendered her vulnerable.
What was the prostitute’s social status? Strangely enough, prostitution is recognised as
a profession with laws to regulate it because it served its specific purpose by catering to
men’s needs of extramarital sexual gratification and also the state’s needs by bringing in
considerable revenues and secret political information through espionage. As townships
sprang up along trade routes and as rich men a long away from home frequented these
brothels, these became a regular feature with the chief courtesans, beauty queens, being
regarded as ornaments of the town or city, nagaraśobhinī or nagaramaṇḍanā. Because she
was in high demand and because she would fetch a rich revenue if she was accomplished
and attractive, the state undertook to supervise her education (with quite a heavy and rig-
orous syllabus) at its own expense, provided she remitted part of her income to the state.
Not only was she obliged to pay revenue to the state, she often undertook some works for
public welfare. Thus we read in the Bṛhatkalpasūtrabhāṣya, a Jain text, of a picture gallery
set up by a courtesan. The Buddhist texts record Āmrapālī as also giving similar services.
432 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

Other courtesans fed the hungry during a famine, gave away money, land, and property for
the Buddhist cause. Many treated the Buddha and monks to sumptuous feasts. Frequently,
when the courtesans amassed wealth they set up works of public utility: they sank wells,
constructed bridges, temple gardens, caityas (sacred mounds), donated money to the needy,
gave gifts, and generally served the community through such works for public utility. yet
we read in the Mahābhārata that the prostitutes’ quarters should be situated in the south
because that is the direction of Yama, the god of death. In the Mānasollāsa, a medieval text,
we read that houses of ill-fame should be situated on the outskirts of the town. But in Greece
the courtesans had a different status; one of the most beautiful sections of any Grecian city
was where the richest of the courtesans built their houses. The lyric poem Pavanadūta of
Dhoyī describing the temple prostitutes says that it seemed that Lakṣmī, the goddess of
beauty has herself descended there. Kalhaṇa in his Rājataraṅgiṇī mentions an extremely
qualified devadāsī by the name of Kamalā. In some Purāṇas we read of the anaṅgavrata, a
rite which signified temple prostitution.95 The Kāmasūtra lays down that she should always
be decked out with jewellery and without being fully visible should streetwalk discreetly
‘because she is a commodity’.96 The same text defines her conduct: ‘without really getting
attached to her client she should act as if she were; she should submit to her cruel and men-
dacious mother and if the mother is not there she should submit to the matron of the house.
She has the right of use of her ornaments, food and drinks, garlands, perfumes, etc.’97 ‘She
should pretend the loss of her own and her client’s ornaments, should engage in a mock
quarrel with her mother on the subject of excessive expenses and having to incur debts,
should make the client pay her bills, should pretend to be obliged to sell her ornaments in
order to make both ends meet, should report about her rivals. ‘greater income, etc. etc.’98 If
this long list of deceptions is any index of how society expected her to conduct herself in
her profession, one fails to understand the bitter censure society meted out to her when she
complied. The Rājataraṅgiṇī, a poetical chronicle of Kashmir, records that King Lalitāpīḍa
gave out that anyone proficient in courtesan lore and clever at jokes would become his
friend. Later literature has no inhibition in mentioning or describing courtesans attached to
the palace, to the manor houses of the nobility, especially of merchants, and to temples as
well as those who lived in brothels. Such descriptions in Kālidāsa, Bhāravi, Daṇḍin, Bhatṭi,
Subandhu, Bāṇabhaṭṭa, Śrīharṣa (Naiṣadhacarita) are totally uninhibited and done with
great gusto and skill. Yet other didactic texts are full of imprecations against prostitutes.
The Viṣṇu Saṃhitā lays down that he who associates with a courtesan should perform the
prājāpatya penance.99 The vituperation against prostitutes begins in the didactic sections of
the Mahābhārata, the Dharmasūtras (many of which belong to the age of the Brahmanical
interpolation of the Mahābhārata), and continue through the Purāṇas and Smṛti texts. Such
texts choose to ignore the fact that courtesans are not born but made; they can only exist as
long as society has a demand for them. Therefore, since a section of society calls courtesans
into being to cater to their need, the condemnation should be shared by that section as well.
But apart from mild half-hearted penalties—more in the nature of not-too-obvious strictures
and threats of notional ostracism—the male clients go morally scot-free.
This double standard is not an isolated phenomenon, it is the product of a rooted ambiva-
lence in society’s consciousness. Since the designation of gaṇikā was the highest and had
to be earned through beauty, charm and accomplishments,100 it signified the highest social
 Chapter 25  Prostitution in Ancient India 433

class among prostitutes. Kauṭilya says that the superintendent of prostitutes conferred the
title of gaṇikā to the pretty, young and cultured hetaira;101 she drew 1000 paṇas from the
state presumably for her establishment, and her teachers in the various arts were also paid
by the state. She had a measure of social security in the sense that those who harmed her
physically, financially and socially were liable to be punished heavily by the state. Needless
to say, such a coveted position was not accorded to many; only a handful of prostitutes were
made gaṇikās whose favours were enjoyed by kings, princes and the richest of the merchants.
It can be guessed that pretty young women with real cultivated taste and accomplishments
flocked to well-governed towns and cities where they could not be molested by rakes and
ruffians with impunity and where trade and commerce thrived. Even in such townships as
well as in prosperous villages women with less beauty and culture and presumably older in
age plied their trade as rūpājīvās and veśyās depending on their age, accomplishments and
charm. The very name of the rūpājīvā clearly distinguishes her from the gaṇikā, for, while
the latter was an educated person the rūpājīvā had only her beauty as her stock-in-trade. The
veśyā may have lacked even that and relied on her clothes and jewellery (veśa) for attracting
customers. The avaruddhā as we have seen was the mistress of an individual in the role of
a concubine; the relationship was temporary but while it lasted, society respected its rights.
The pumścalī vāravilāsiṇī, svairiṇī, Kulaṭā, etc. were free agents who were out to turn
whatever charm they had to the best financial capital. Sometimes they employed middlemen
to attract custom and sometimes they hawked themselves. From all accounts they had less
to offer and, therefore, earned much less. The devadāsīs were a class by themselves who,
because they were attached to institutions (i.e., temples) governed directly or indirectly by
the state, enjoyed some degree of protection.
It is common knowledge that in most centres of ancient urban civilisation temple prostitu-
tion was a common feature. Whether in ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, Babylon in temples
of Baal and Astarte, or in Chaldea, Phoenicia or India and in the Far East, it flourished under
the dual patronage of the state and the church. Temple priests frequently got paid from the
royal treasury, the temple prostitute was an extra allowance to them. Of course, the finan-
cial and social status of the temple varied from place to place. City temples enjoying royal
patronage were entirely different from poor village temples subsisting on local contributions.
Hence the status and prosperity of the temple prostitutes too differed according to the kind
of patronage the temple received.
Just what the social background of these unfortunate girls was is far from clear. Apart
from the parents making a devotional gift of their daughters to the temple,102 there must
have been the daughters of devadāsīs, or distress sales of girls to the temple, recruitment
of local beauties under moral pressure, or girls abducted from helpless parents, girls won
as war booty or recruited through superstitious practices. However they came in, it is quite
clear that it was an all-India and age-long phenomenon. Even though the Madras Legislative
Assembly banned it by a law in 1929, it persisted there and in the rest of India and still
persists in many pockets after it was banned all over India by a legislation in 1947. The
overt duty of the devadāsīs was to dance at the time of the evening worship in the temple,
but they were also treated as concubines by the temple priests. Kālidāsa refers to them as
veśyās and describes them as enjoying the first drops of monsoon rain as a welcome relief
to their tired limbs.
434 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

Once inside the temple and under the thumb of the priests they became like slaves with
no clear definition of their rights and duties. The Kuṭṭanīmata does mention payment from
temple authorities but this evidently did not mean anything more than subsistence and clothes
and ornaments for them as temple dancers. In the Samayamātṛkā103 we hear of grains being
given to devadāsīs who danced in rotation. In the third century bc in the Jogimara inscrip-
tion we hear of Devadatta’s love for the devadāsī Sutanukā. Many other cave ­inscriptions104
mention of the music and dance provided by courtesans and devadāsīs. Since major treatises
are nearly all silent on the duties and rights of the devadāsīs, it appears that they were com-
pletely at the mercy of the temple priests, a specially privileged section in Indian society
who enjoyed immunity from the penal code and were thus free to exploit these girls as they
pleased. Evidently, here, too, the more talented beauties coming from the upper rung of
society enjoyed somewhat fairer treatment than those born to temple prostitutes or recruited
from destitute parents or as rich men’s gifts or war booty. But because the masters of these
prostitutes, the priests, enjoyed privilege both through their sacerdotal office and through
royal patronage, the devadāsīs’ position was more abject than presumably of those organised
in the brothels regarding whose rights and privileges some rules had been clearly enunciated.
The very helplessness of the devadāsīs must have led to the widespread distribution of the
institution and its prolonged continuation in the name of religion. The violent resistance
and opposition of the hieratic section, esp. in South India when its abolition was proposed,
testifies to the nature and measure of the priests’ vested interest in the institution.
What happened to the devadāsī when she grew old? Presumably not all of them enjoyed
royal patronage. Those who did were employed in the state textile factory as we find in the
solitary mention of the devadāsī in Kauṭilya.105 Dancing was the only art she had learned and
she could not practice it in old age, so that if she was one of those who did not enjoy royal
care she would be reduced to destitution. Her profession prevented her from having a family
and her long stay in the temple isolated her from society; therefore, even if she worked in
a textile factory for a time she would face penury in real old age when both the temple and
the community cast her off as wholly redundant. Thus at the end of a long career of double
exploitation—as a temple dancer and as the priests’ concubine—she faced complete destitu-
tion, for neither the state nor the temple had any obligation to look after her.
It is both rewarding and revealing to turn the pages of dictionaries on the subject of pros-
titution. Apart from older, that is, Vedic and later Vedic terms like agrū, hasrā, aliskadvarī,
and vṛṣalī, each of which emphasised one aspect of the public women, we have a host of
later synonyms which varied with time and place. The standard Sanskrit lexicon Amarakoṣa
says that veśyā, varastrī, gaṇikā and rūpājīvā are synonyms. Jaṭādhara adds Kṣudrā and
śālabhan̄jikā; the Sabdarātnabalī has a few more entries: jharjharā, śulā, vāravilāsinī
vāravanī, bhaṇḍahāsinī, while the Śabdamālā adds lan̄ jikā, vandhurā, kuntā, kāmarekhā and
varvaṭī. The standard dictionary of Hemacandra has sādhāraṇastrī, paṇyāṅganā, bhun̄jikā
and vāravadhū to which the Rājanirghanṭa (lexicon) adds bhogyā and smaravīthikā. Even
a cursory glance at these names tells us that while some signify the profession itself, others
(like kṣudrā, śūlā, kuntā, bhaṇḍahāsinī, bhun̄jikā, bhogyā or smaravīthikā) express society’s
sneer and contempt.
In the Brahmavaivarta Purāṇa we read that a woman loyal to her husband is ekapatnī
(wife to one), if she goes to another she is a kulaṭā.106 If she goes to three she is a vṛśalī,
 Chapter 25  Prostitution in Ancient India 435

a pumścalī with a fourth, a veśyā with a fifth and sixth, a yungī with a seventh and eighth.
Above that she becomes a mahāveśyā whom no one of any caste may touch.107 Although it
appears that all except the mahāveśyā may be touched that is not true. The Dharmaśāstras
generally lay down that visiting a prostitute is a crime but since they also prescribe mild
expiatory rites, it appears that society did not look upon it as either a heinous crime, or an
irremediable sin.
As we have seen, there is an evident ambivalence regarding the profession. The
Samayapradīpa, a late ritual text mentions the sight of a prostitute as an auspicious sign; a
man gains his desire if he sees her on setting out on a journey. Other such items are obviously
auspicious—like a cow with its calf, a bull, horse or a chariot, fire with its flame turning to
the right, a goddess, a full pitcher, garlands, banners, white rice, etc. The only apparently
inauspicious item in the catalogue is the prostitute; yet a sight of her is regarded as a good
omen. Similarly, soil from near a prostitute’s house is an essential item for fashioning the
image of Durgā, the goddess of cardinal importance in Bengal. The mystery is solved when
we remember the role of the prostitute in the earlier rituals where she had to copulate with
a man or engage in a mock altercation with a neophyte, the brahmacārin, in an exchange
of obscenities. In all of these instances the same incentive is noticeable, namely fertility.
Her very profession involved repeated sexual relations with many men and so potentially
symbolised fertility and the power of reproduction. For a community whose prosperity and
wealth depended on ensuring fertility of the field and of cattle, she symbolised the fertility
principle. Hence her place in rituals. This association of fertility of field and cattle with the
sexual act, especially magnified in the prostitute’s profession, is not unique to India. In all
primitive societies this ritual association can be noticed. And since this has come down from
a much older age, society did not dare to ignore it. Such beliefs die hard and in a primar-
ily agricultural country like India the need to ensure fertility was too urgent to disregard.
Besides, the unacknowledged awareness that the prostitute offered services indispensable
to the society led to this ambivalence.
But apart from this aspect society unambiguously looked down upon the profession. All
its efforts at segregation of the rest of the community from contagion through the prostitute’s
proximity, the rule of allocating an area in the south, Yama’s direction, outside the common
habitat, for the brothel, the prohibition against eating food offered by her, the rule against
touching or associating with her signify this contempt. But this is obviously a later develop-
ment, for the Kāmasūtra describes kings, courtiers, and the mercantile nobility of the cities
and towns (and also of villages) as indulging in the company of courtesans. The attitude
there is totally uninhibited. The Arthaśāstra, too, presupposes the existence of prostitution
as an institution and has no value judgement regarding them. Underlying both of these texts
is the assumption that this institution has been brought into existence not by the perversity
of certain women or by an aberration in any section but by a social need. A society which
practically forbade female education and relegated the woman to virtual subordination under
the husband and in-laws reduced her to a chattel who could serve and for a time cater to the
man’s sexual needs but after children started coming and she became sorely taxed in her
strenuous household obligations, nursing and bringing up the children, she was no ‘fun’
any more. Altekar says: ‘courtesans had a peculiar position in ancient India. As persons
who had sacrificed what was regarded as specially honourable in a woman, they were held
436 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

in low estimation. But society treated them with a certain amount of consideration as
the custodians of fine arts which had ceased to be cultivated elsewhere in society. Men
who had a liking or love for music and dancing could not delight in the company of
their own wives who ceased to possess these accomplishments from c. 400 bc. Though
despised in one sense, courtesans began to be respected for their achievements in fine
arts.’108 Apart from this man must have desired companionship in his intellectual and
aesthetic pursuits from men friends as well from women. This entirely normal and healthy
desire could in no way be satisfied by the wife who, encumbered with household duties
and children, soon lost youth and charm and whose husbands were therefore driven to
prostitutes. But evidently not all men did so, and those who did, did it in a surreptitious
manner. All that charmed a man in a prostitute was forbidden for the wife, who should
be uneducated, demure and plainly dressed except on ritual occasions. She was primar-
ily a house-wife, busy with her chores, children and in-laws which left her little leisure
for the cultivation of either her looks, dress or mental faculties. Society expected her to
be good, hard working, devoted and obedient. This was bound to make her less attrac-
tive to her husband who craved for charm and companionship in a woman. This very
need of combining sexual pleasure with intellectual-aesthetic companionship or simply
with the charm of a good-looking, youthful person tastefully decked out in clothes, and
jewellery attracted men to a prostitute. And repelled them, precisely because she could
not be exclusively possessed, for she was enjoyed by many. In a society where women
became a personal possession, a woman who could not be possessed individually pro-
voked this ambivalence.

WOMEN AS CHATTEL
Woman has been a chattel in India ever since the later Vedic times when she was included
in the list of dakṣiṇā along with items like cattle, horses, chariots, etc. Such gifts were given
to priests. Evidently they were enjoyed and then sold as slaves or prostitutes. Later in the
epics we have references to women as gifts.109 Heroes are said to be rewarded with hosts
of beautiful women in heaven; undoubtedly this is a reflection of earthly prizes given to
heroes and eminent men. In classical literature, too, we meet prostitutes as a decoration to
courts, as part of the entourage in military and hunting expeditions.110 Women also came with
victories as booty and after serving the victorious generals and eminent military personages
they would find their way to brothels. Thus Arjuna brought over the women of the enemy
as booty;111 King Virāṭa also expressed his pleasure at Arjuna’s prowess by giving him
pretty maidens.112 In the battlefield Karṇa declared that whoever pointed out Arjuna to him
would receive a hundred well-dressed maidens from him.113 A king who does not give such
gifts is branded with the epithet rājakali (a kali, i.e., evil spirit of a king).114 At Draupadi’s
wedding a hundred slave girls in the early bloom of their youth were given away.115 Krsna
entertained guests with pretty maidens.116 Also at Subhadrā’s wedding no less than a thousand
girls were offered to guests for enjoyment in the drinking and bathing sports.117 Yudhiṣṭhira
received 10,000 slave girls.118 King Śaśabindu at his horse sacrifice gave away to priests
hundreds of thousands of pretty girls,119 so did Bhagīratha.120 We also hear of thousands of
beautiful girls as gifts in śrāddhas.121 Instances can be multiplied.122 We are told that pretty
 Chapter 25  Prostitution in Ancient India 437

young girls are natural gifts to brahmins123 and that whoever gives this gift lavishly on this
earth receives plentiful fruits in heaven, that is, is rewarded with many nymphs there for his
enjoyment.124 In the Mahābhārata and in the Purāṇas we have numerous instances where
the host entertains his guest by sending his own wife to him at night and/or other pretty
women. In the Sanastujātīya section of the Mahābhārata five marks of true friendship are
enumerated; one of these is to share one’s wife with a friend. Pretty girls also formed part of
the dowry. Two things are clear from these references. First, there must have been an easily
available source of pretty young girls, a steady supply for instant enjoyment, or for giving
away. One wonders where such girls could be found. Prostitutes, daughters is a ready answer.
The Mahābhārata has an episode: King Yayāti’s daughter Mādhavī was given to Gālava;
the father lent her in lieu of money so that she could be hired out to three kings in turn for a
year each. The kings gave Gālava handsome rewards with which he paid his school-leaving
fees to his preceptor. Clearly here Mādhavī is a money-earner to her father and the latter
satisfies Gālava by prostituting her to three different kings. Apart from this kind of distress
sale in times of crisis, women as war-booty was another big source of supply. Wives caught
in certain cases of adultery were also driven out; such unwanted women drifted towards the
brothel, as also women who could be bought and kept in palaces as occasional gifts. In the
royal courts and rich households where many abducted women were kept for service and
as status symbol, these proliferated and became yet another source of supply.
The second point that strikes us is that these women were regarded as inanimate objects
of enjoyment. They figure in lists of material gifts, sacrificial fees, donations, entertainment,
prizes, rewards, and dowry. And after the temporary enjoyment the recipient or donée could
not but turn them loose; at least in most cases they did so. Thus there were hosts of women
who eventually ended up in the brothel where they catered commercially to men. All along
this dismal history we notice that women had very little initiative or choice about their
­destiny. They were pawned, lost or gained in battles, given as gifts at sacrifices and wed-
dings, were relegated to the position of slaves and chattel in palaces and rich households,
sexually enjoyed whenever their owners so desired and discarded when the desire abated.
They got paid only in brothels; in other instances they were only fed, clothed and
decked out with jewellery so that their masters would find them attractive. Even in brothels
their labour could, and frequently was, exploited, as many rules in the scriptures testify.
Vātsyāyana has a long section on how the harlots could play-act, feign, seduce, cheat and
deceive their customers with or without the help of middlemen and procuresses. So does
Dāmodaragupta teach novices how to make the best use of youth and charm and extort
money from customers by hook or by crook. Other texts also teach similar lessons. None
of these texts is authored by women. When after being trained in the art of deception, the
prostitutes practised these arts, they are given foul names by the entire community. The very
nature of the profession entailed a degree of deceit and the entire social set-up and its attitude
encouraged it. Instead of accepting responsibility for it and admitting that prostitutes act as
men force them to act and that they exist because they render a service that society needs,
the entire blame is loaded on the prostitutes themselves. The situation was very different in
Greece and Rome as Aristophanes, Menander or Terence’s plays testify. Here in India the
exploitation is redoubled because male customers frequently sought to cheat prostitutes of
their rightful wages as the law books bring out clearly. And on top of this they tried to rob
them of their rightful place in society. But when literature does not seek to be respectable
438 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

but truthful as Kauṭilya and Vātsyāyana’s works or the Bhāṇas (which decidedly belong to
a lower, less respectable genre), prostitutes come into their own. The customer looks upon
them if not with positive respect yet not with contempt and society betrays its awareness of
the necessity and significance of their role and profession. But the major, respectable literary
tradition is that which reflects the upper class reaction to the institution, a class which is not
a bit averse to use their services but is yet too respectable to regard them as human beings.
Once this attitude is fostered and becomes prevalent, depriving prostitutes of their fees,
manhandling or insulting them is condoned. But this was only true of the common harlot
with little charm and no accomplishment. The well-trained and well-preserved beauty, the
gaṇikā, who belonged to the upper class enjoyed the patronage of royalty or nobility and
was comparatively secure and comfortable.
Since the prostitute’s labour was regarded as a necessary evil—the evil being much
more magnified than the necessity—male society seemed to bear her a grudge born of its
fundamental ambivalence and this seems to have given it the right to exploit the victim, the
common prostitute.
Another proof of the double standard is that although associating with prostitutes or
accepting their food was punishable, there is no rule against accepting benefits from them.
Thus Ardhakaśī gave away her vast wealth to various charitable institutions, and laid a vast
sum at the Buddha’s feet. In the Jain text Bṛhatkalpasūtrabhāṣya125 we hear of many good
and generous courtesans. One ran a picture gallery (as did Amrapālī in Buddhist literature),
others gave vast sums to the poor and to the order. ‘When the courtesans grew rich they
often set up works of public utility such as wells, temples, tanks, gardens, groves, bridges,
chaityas and provided perfumes and rice.’126 Records in the Tiruvarriyur temple show that
the devadāsīs there made rich endowments. Evidently such works of public utility were
enjoyed by all, that is, by the community for whom it was a sin to touch a prostitute or to
eat her food. Thus society had no hesitation in using the fruits of her labour while looking
down upon her. Presumably, by enjoying such charitable institutions set up by her, society
was kindly deigning to offer her an opportunity to expiate for the sins of her profession, a
profession which could not flourish without the patronage of a section of the male ­population.
This section was punished only notionally.127­
Society thus created situations in which many women were deprived of the right to
remain respectable and be regarded so, so that such women were pushed to this profession.
And they could live as prostitutes because a steady supply of male customers was ensured.
These men found their wives dull as companions and so flocked to the prostitutes. In return
society ostracised the prostitutes, but not their customers. Whether in the palace, or in the
temples or in brothels they served men with an uncertainty regarding payment and the fear of
molestation, mutilation, torture and death. They had scant provision for old age and infirmity.
Their bodies, accomplishments, and gifts and charily were enjoyed by the community which
otherwise treated them as untouchables and showered curses and imprecation on the profes-
sion itself, as if prostitutes alone could make prostitution viable as a profession. Penalty for
maltreatment or deceit is mentioned, but one wonders how few wronged prostitutes could
actually sue the state for their flouted rights and dues. Such was the precarious existence of
prostitutes who could, with a few exceptions of really upper class or outstanding individu-
als, be exploited by men at will and with impunity.
 Chapter 25  Prostitution in Ancient India 439

NOTES
1. Cf. the sacrificer’s wife being publicly questioned by the officiating priest regarding her secret lovers at the
Varuṇapraghāsa sacrifice: ‘with whom (plural) hast thou had secret affairs?’ But though she confessed we hear
of no penalty for her transgression.
2. Cf. the terms svatantrā, independent, or svādhīnayauvanā, she who can freely enjoy her youth, as synonyms
for the prostitute. Scriptures lay down that women are wards of their fathers in childhood, of their husbands in
youth and of sons at old age.
3. A woman with whom men lake turns (vāra), that is, one who can be possessed or enjoyed by different men in turns.
4. Described in the Mauṣalaparvan.
5. Eastern Punjab and western U.P.
6. VIII: 27, 30, 57–59.
7. ch. 70.
8. Samayamātṛkā III: 18.
9. III: 5: 14–26.
10. Viṣṇupurāṇa, ch. 37; Yājn̄avalkya Smṛti 240.
11. Megasthenes also bears this out in his account.
12. Women of the vanquished side.
13. Arthaśāstra II: 27, X: 1–3.
14. Padma-Purāṇa, Sṛṣṭikhaṇḍa 52: 97.
15. Cf. the Meghadūta, verse 35.
16. IV: 19, 9: 16, 19, 30.
17. I: 167, 4; II: 13, 12, 15, 17.
18. XV: e; Also the Pan̄ caviṃśa Brāhmaṇa VIII: 1: 10: Kauṣītaki Br. XXVII: 1; Lāṭyāyana Srautasūtra IV: 3: 11;
Vājasaneyī Saṃhitā XXX: 22.
19. XIV: 1: 36; XX: 136: 5 Also Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 1: 27: 2.
20. III: 4: 11: I.
21. Vāja, Sam. XXX: 12, Tait, Br. III: 4: 7: 1.
22. Vāja Sam. XXX: 12: Tait Br. III: 4: 7.
23. Jaim. Br. II: 404 ff, Kat. Gr. S. XII: 3: 6.
24. I: 43.
25. Vinaya Piṭaka III: 138.
26. Cf. the English synonyms: courtesan, prostitute, harlot, strumpet, hetaira, whore, trollop, slut etc, bearing dif-
ferent connotations and also signifying the social strata to which they belong.
27. Artha: V: 2.
28. Ibid., I; 20.
29. Ibid., III: 20.
30. Ibid., VIII: 17.
31. Kāmasūtra VI: 6: 54.
32. Arthasastra II: 27; Jātakas mention the vannadāsī in II: 380; III: 59–63, 69–72; 475: 8.
33. Jātaka III: 59–63.
34. R. Shamasastry (ed.): Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra, Mysore, 1st edn., 1915, 6th edn. 1960, section on the gaṇikādhyakṣa,
superintendent of prostitutes.
35. Bṛhatkalpasūtrabhāṣya, (ed.) by Punyavijayaji, Bhavnayar, 1933–38. Kauṭilya includes reading and writing,
Vātsyāyana mentions reading and composing poems, and deciphering code words in her syllabus.
36. Manusaṃhitā II: 67.
37. Probably to the first century AD.
38. From Sanskrit word bhṛti, fees.
39. Sanskrit parivyayam, expenses.
440 SUKUMARI BHATTACHARJI

40. Cf. Diyāvadāna ed. by P.L. Vaidya, p. 218.

41. Jn̄ ātadharmakathā I.
42. Moti Chandra: The World of Courtesans, Vikash, 1973, p. 48.
43. Arthaśāstra IV: 12.
44. Yājn̄avalkyasaṃhitā II: 295.
45. Kāmasūtra VI: 1: 10, 12.
46. Ibid VI: 5: 1–6.
47. Ibid VI: 6: 31.
48. Ibid VI: 3: 28–31.
49. Arthaśāstra IV: 13.
50. V: 195: 18–19.
51. V: 15: 51–58.
52. III: 238 ff.
53. IV: 64: 24–29.
54. XII: 88: 14, 15; XIII: 125: 9 et al.
55. Mahābhārata XIV: 85: 18.
56. Ibid XIV: 80: 32.
57. Ibid VII: 65: 6.
58. Ibid VII: 60: 1,2, XII: 29: 65.
59. Ibid XV: 14: 4: 39: 20: XVII: 1: 4, XVIII: 6: 12, 13.
60. Mahābhārata III: 186–87, VIII: 49: 76–78, XII: 64: 17; 30; XII: 96: 18, 19, 83, 85–86, 88; 106: 6ff. Also in the
Rāmāyaṇa II: 71: 22, 25, 26; VV: 20: 13.
61. XVI: 36, 48.
62. VII: 50.
63. IX: 51.
64. XVIII: 60, 61.
65. IV: 34: 17, 18.
66. XI: 30–35.
67. Mahābhārata I: 115; 39.
68. I: 4: 34–41.
69. I: 4: 42.
70. I: 4: 49.
71. The synonyms vārāṅganā, vāravilāsinī, vārastrī, vāramukhyā, etc., for the prostitute: the word vāra, means ‘turn’.
This was true of the socially lower class of prostitutes.
72. Cf. the important drama Mṛcchakaṭika where the heroine is a beautiful courtesan, accomplished in the various
arts; she is described as ‘an ornament to the city’.
73. Rahula Sankrityayana’s Hindi tr., Benares 1936, pp. 73–88.
74. By the same translator, Benares 1964, pp. 321–325.
75. 47: 20: 23.
76. Sacred Books of the East, Vol, XVII, pp. 106–7, 171–72.
77. Dhammapada commentary, Pali Text socy. London, 1906–14, pp. 308–9.
78. Vinayapiṭaka: Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XX. pp. 360–61.
79. Cf. Samayamātṛkā VIII: 102, 103, 112, Kuṭṭanīmata 532. Śārn̄gadharapaddhati, 4052.
80. Samayamātṛkā II: 28–80.
81. III: 33.
82. Kāmasūtra VII: 23, 24.
83. Yājñavalkya Smṛti II: 290, Narada. 78, 79.
84. Kāmasūtra I: 62–65.
85. II: 290.
86. Esp. in Aśvaghoṣ a and Śūdraka’s dramas.
 Chapter 25  Prostitution in Ancient India 441

87. All this and much more are taught in the Kuṭṭanīmata of Dāmodaragupta and also in the Deśopadeśa IV: 12,
19, 30, 36.
88. Samayamātṛkā I: 40, 45. Kāmasūtra VII: I: 13–17; See also Daśarūpaka II: 34.
89. II: 4: 48.
90. II: 293.
91. Gautama, Dharmasūtra XXII: 2.
92. IX: 259–60.
93. Kāmasūtra I: 4: 5.
94. Daśarūpaka II: 8.
95. Cf. Viṣṇupurāṇa, ch. 70.
96. VI: 1: 4.
97. A woman in any case, like a child or a slave, was not allowed to own property. Mahābhārata I: 82; 22, II: 71:
1; V: 33: 64.
98. VI: 2; 3–23.
99. 103: 4; also in Atri Saṃhitā 267 Saṃvarta S. 161: Parāśara S. 10: 15, et al.
100. Kāmasūtra I: 3: 20.
101. Arthaśāstra II: 27.
102. As a mark of gratitude fo divine favours received or as a gift given in faith for favours expected from the
temple deity.
103. Ch. VIII.
104. Like those at Nasik, Kuda, Mahada, Junagad sitabenga, Ratnagiri.
105. Arthaśāstra II: 23.
106. The term may have a secondary reference to tarnishing the family’s (kula) prestige. However, the etymology
is not clear.
107. Prakṛtikhaṇda, ch. XXVI & XXVII.
108. The Position of Woman in Hindu Civilization. Motilal Banarasidas, 1st edn. 1938, pp. 181–82.
109. Cf. Rāmāyana II: 11, 22, 25, 26; IV: 20: 13: 24: 34, Mahābhārata III: 186: 7; VIII: 49: 76–78; XII: 98: 46,
XIII; 96:18: 19, 82.
110. Cf. Kumārasambhava XVI: 36, 48; Raghuvamsa VII: 50.
111. Mahābhārata III: 8: 27.
112. Ibid, IV: 34: 5.
113. Ibid, VIII: 38: 4ff.
114. Ibid, XII: 12: 366.
115. Ibid, I: 198: 16.
116. Ibid, IV: 72: 16.
117. Ibid, I: 221: 49, 50.
118. Ibid, II: 51: 8, 9; 52: 11, 29.
119. Ibid, VII: 65 6.
120. Ibid, VII: 60: 1, 2, XII: 29: 65.
121. Ibid, XV: 11: 4; 39: 20; XVII: 1: XVIII: 6; 12, 13.
122. Cf. Sagara’s gifts Brahmins: Vainya’s to the sage Atri, etc.
123. Op. cit., III: 315: 2, 6; 233; IV: 18 21; XII: 68: 33, 171: 5, 173: 16ff.
124. Op. cit., XIII: 15: 2.
125. Ed. Punyavijayaji, Bhavnagar, 1933–38.
126. Moti Chandra: The World of Courtesans. Vikash, 1973, 9.72.
127. The prājāpatya expiatory rite was seldom honoured by actual performance as is borne out by a vast amount
of literature.
 About the Editor and Contributors

EDITOR
Vijaya Ramaswamy is Professor and Chairperson, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal
Nehru University. She is an alumni of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London, and was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, California,
in 1988–1989. She was a teacher-fellow on an Indo-Canadian Fellowship at York University,
Ontario, Canada, in 1998. She was also a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study
between 1992 and 1995. She was also a Senior Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and
Library, Teen Murti House, New Delhi from 2012 to 2014.
Vijaya Ramaswamy is the author of 10 books amongst which the best known are: Textiles
and Weavers in Medieval South India (1985, 2nd ed. 2006), Divinity and Deviance: Women
in Virasaivism (1996); Walking Naked: Women, Society, Spirituality in South India (1997,
2007), Historical Dictionary of the Tamils (2007), Song of the Loom (2013) and Migrations
in Medieval and Early Colonial India (2016). Vijaya has been the President of the Medieval
India Section of the 63rd Indian History Congress Session at Mysore, 2003. She also won
the ‘Professor Hiralal Gupta Research Award’ for the Best Book by a Woman Historian for
the years 1996–2001, Indian History Congress, 60th Session, Bhopal, 2001.

CONTRIBUTORS
Aparna Basu, PhD (Cantab), was Professor of History, University of Delhi. She is the
UGC Convenor of the national subject panel on History and Archaeology. She is also the
Chairperson of the Gandhi Museum Board. She is the author of several books including
Growth of Education and Political Development in India Women’s Struggle: A History of
All India Women’s Conference, Rebel with a Cause: Biography of Mridula Srabhai, From
Independence to Freedom: Women and Fifty Years of India’s independence and A History
of Delhi University on the occasion of its Platinum Jubilee. She is on the Editorial Advisory
Board of Gender and History, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Indian Journal
of Gender Studies and Women’s History.

443
444 WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

Uma Chakravarti is a feminist historian who taught at Miranda House, University College
for Women, Delhi, from 1966 to 1998. She writes on Buddhism, early Indian social history
and on contemporary issues. She is the author of Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism
(1987); Rewriting History: The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai (1998); Gendering
Caste through a Feminist Lens (2002); and Everyday Lives, Everyday Histories: Beyond
the Kings and Brahmanas of Ancient India (2006). She has also co-authored Delhi Riots:
Three Days in the Life of a Nation (1987); Shadow Lives: Writings on Widowhood (2006)
and From Myths to Markets: Essays on Gender (1999).

Upasana Dhankhar has been engaged in understanding the nuances of ancient Indian legal
systems within the specific context of gender studies. She is also researching on the social
history of Early India and has been writing on various socio-jurisprudential questions per-
taining to socio-economic, legal and gender history. She has been teaching undergraduate
students since 2011. Presently, she is teaching at Department of History, Miranda House
(University of Delhi).

Kavita Gaur is presently an Assistant Professor in Department of History at Shyama Prasad

Mukherji College, University of Delhi. She has received her doctorate degree on the follow-
ing topic—Understanding the Household: Norms and Everyday Lives in Textual Traditions
(c. 3rd century bce to 5th century ce) from Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her research inter-
est includes social history, history of caste and class, gender relations, marriage ­practices,
sexuality and conjugal relations in early India.

Shireen Moosvi had been Professor and Dean at the Centre for Advanced Studies in History,
Aligarh Muslim University. Apart from holding a PhD in Medieval Indian History, she also
has an MSc in Math and is known for her application of the statistical method to historical
data. She is Secretary of the Aligarh Historians Society and is currently the National Fellow
of The Indian Council of Historical Research. She has authored many books and innumerable
articles. Her books include People, Taxation and Trade in Mughal India, Oxford University
Press, 2008, Economy of the Mughal Empire—A Statistical Study, Oxford University Press,
1987 and Episodes in the Life of Akbar published by the National Book Trust.

Kanakalatha Mukund is an economic historian who is now retired from the Centre for
Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad. She is the author of four books and many research
papers and reports. Her main interests are trade and merchants in early colonial south India,
textiles and handloom weaving. She has also worked on women’s traditional property rights.

Leslie Orr joined the Department of Religion at Concordia in Canada in 1991. Her research
interests include the religious and social history of medieval Tamil Nadu; women in pre-
colonial South Asia; devadasis; temple architecture, iconography and epigraphy. Her current
research project is on ‘Renovation, replication, recovery, and revival: Building temples
and building histories in South India’. She is the author of the book Donors, Devotees and
Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu (NY: Oxford University Press,
2000) and co-editor with A. Luithle-Hardenberg and J. Cort of Co-operation, Contribution
 About the Editor and Contributors 445

and Contestation: The Jaina community, British Rule and Occidental Scholarship from the
18th to early 20th century (Berlin: EB Verlag, forthcoming).

A. Padma has done post-graduation in Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology
from Osmania University. Her book Socio-cultural World of Women in Medieval Andhra
was published in 2000. Additionally she brought out another book, Women in Medieval
Times (11th to 14th Centuries a.d.). Padma joined in Mahila Samakhya programme of GoI
(Ministry of HRD) and worked as Coordinator, Resource Centre. Empowerment of Women
through Education, capacity building, advocacy and implementation of innovative initia-
tives for mainstreaming gender in development is the principal objective of the programme.

Shalini Shah teaches in the department of history, University of Delhi. She has authored
The Making of Womanhood: Gender Relations in the Mahabharata (1995; second revised
edition 2012), Mahabharata: A Book of Quotes (2014), and Love, Eroticism and Female
Sexuality in Classical Sanskrit Literature: 7th–13th Centuries (2009). She has published
widely on gender issues in prestigious journals.

Jaya Tyagi is Professor of Ancient Indian History in Delhi University. Her areas of spe-
cialisation are: Social History, Household and Society, Religion and Its Social Context and
Gender. Her major publications are: Contestation and Compliance: Retrieving Women’s
agency from Puranic Traditions, 2014, monograph published by Oxford University Press
and Engendering the Early Indian Household, Brahmanical Precepts in the Gṛhyasūtras,
2008, published by Orient Longman Publishers.

Anna Varghese has done her PhD on ‘Temple Functionaries in Medieval Kerala: A Study
of Their Evolution from the Sixth to the Sixteenth Centuries’. She has won the Award for the
best essay twice from the Indian History Congress for her contribution on temple women of
Kerala and on the service groups in Medieval Kerala. She is currently Senior PGT teacher
at the Carmel convent, Delhi.

BRIEF PROFILES OF THE PIONEERING SCHOLARS AND

CONTRIBUTORS WHO ARE NO MORE

Anant Sadashiv Altekar (1898–1960)

He was a prolific scholar, a historian, archaeologist, and numismatist from Maharashtra,
India. He was the Professor and Head of the Department of Ancient Indian History and
Culture at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India, and later the director of the Kashi
Prasad Jayaswal Research Institute and Professor of Ancient Indian History and Culture
at the University of Patna. Though he has written on varied range of issues, his book The
Position of Women in Hindu Civilization from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day (1938)
is considered as the first historical survey of the status of women in India.
446 WOMEN AND WORK IN PRECOLONIAL INDIA

Sukumari Bhattacharji (12 July 1921–30 May 2014)

Primarily a Sanskritist and Indologist, she began her career as a lecturer in English at Lady
Brabourne College in Kolkata. She joined Jadavpur University’s Comparative Literature
department in 1957 and later shifted to the Sanskrit department. Professor Bhattacharji was
known for her work on diverse range of issues related to Sanskrit language and literature,
comparative analysis of country’s mythology from Vedas to Puranas, study and analysis
of various Vedas, and women’s role in the family as defined in the ancient Indian texts
to modern-day prose. Her pioneering work includes Women and Society in Ancient India
which highlights women’s relationship with society. Professor Tanika Sarkar, the celebrated
feminist historian who retired as Professor of Modern Indian History from Jawaharlal Nehru
University is her daughter.

N. N. Bhattacharyya
Narendra Nath Bhattacharyya taught religious and social history in the department of Ancient
Indian History and Culture at Calcutta University. He was a prolific author. Some of his best
publications include Buddhism in the History of Indian Ideas which looked at Buddhism
as a part of the stream of Indian intellectual history. His Encyclopaedia of Ancient Indian
Culture attempts a panoramic survey of aspect of art and material culture. His books History
of Tantric Religion and The Indian Mother Goddess are both pioneering contributions in
the domain of religious studies.

I. B. Horner (30 March 1896–25 April 1981)

She was an English Indologist and a leading scholar of Pali literature. In 1930, she published
her first book, Women under Primitive Buddhism. In 1933, she edited her first volume of
Pali text, the third volume of the Papancasudani (Majjhima Nikaya commentary). In 1934,
Horner was awarded the title of an M.A. from Cambridge. From 1939 to 1949, she served
on Cambridge’s Governing Body.

M. A. Indra
Indra is known for her book Legal Rights of Women in Ancient India.

Julia Leslie (23 January 1948–24 September 2004)

She obtained an Oxford MPhil in Classical Indian Religions and the Oxford DPhil thesis
which later on emerged as her celebrated monograph titled The Perfect Wife: The Orthodox
Hindu Woman according to the Stridharmapaddhati of Tryambakayajvan (1989). Her famous
edited work included Roles and Rituals for Women (1991) which provides an insight to
normative images of an ideal woman in textual sources.