Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God: Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu.

• Author: Cutler, Norman
• Position: Book Review

By LESLIE C. ORR, South Asia Research, University of Texas Center for Asian Studies. New York: OXFORD UNIV. PRESS, 2000. Pp. xii + 305. $45.

According to conventional wisdom, until the early part of the twentieth century, when legislation was passed banning the practice, the routines of worship in Hindu temples commonly included dance performances by women known as devadasis or "slaves of god." The devadasi's relationship to the deity she served, as signified by her ritual dedication to the deity, was seen as a symbolic marriage. By virtue of being "married" to god, the devadasi did not take a human husband, but this did not preclude sexual liaisons with human patrons. This commonly held image of the devadasi serves as a foil for Leslie Orr's meticulously researched study of women associated with temples in the Tamil-speaking region during the years 850-1300 A.D., a period when the Cholas dominated the political life of this region. According to Orr, discussions of the devadasi institution commonly are informed by four recurrent themes: "(1) the assumption that there is a pan-Indian and transhistorical devadasi phenomenon; (2) the idea of the degeneration of the devadasi institution; (3) the notion of the devadasi as the passive victim of social forces or elite interests; and (4) the focus on the devadasi as being defined primarily with respect to her identity as a woman, in terms either of her sexuality or of her representation of some peculiarly feminine power" (p. 9).

Orr argues that though this image may depict devadasi practices in later times with a certain degree of accuracy, it fails to illuminate the relationships women established with Hindu temples in medieval Tamilnadu. It is these "temple women" of Chola times, as they may be known from inscriptions of the period, who are the subject of Orr's study. In her reliance to the inscriptional record, which is largely concerned with donations to temples, Orr follows in the path of a distinguished lineage of historians of South India that includes such eminent figures as K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, Burton Stein, Noboru Karashima, and others. The resources available to historians of ancient and medieval South India are limited. Aside from a few travellers' accounts there are few texts from the period other than inscriptions that address the concerns of historians directly, though some scholars have mined literary and religious texts for historical evidence. Orr is unapologetic in her...