Roles and Rituals for Hindu Women.
Author | Sutherland, Sally J. |
By Julia Leslie. Madison, Wis.: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1991. Pp. 267, 19 plates and 4 figures. $38.50.
This collection of ten articles, edited by Julia Leslie, grows out of a conference, "Women and Indian Religion," organized by the editor in 1987. The articles, for the most part originally delivered at this conference, are subsumed under four categories which form the four sections of the book: "The Ritual Wife," "Power in the Home," "The Ritual of Dance," and "The Pursuit of Salvation." The articles span the historical range of Hinduism and address the diversity, both traditional and "modern," of the religious practices and expectations of Hindu women. In general the articles are well researched and informative. However, the authors have not taken advantage of the current
innovative and exciting work in South Asian cultural studies and seem to have little, if any, knowledge of feminist theoretical materials.
In her opening statement Leslie throws down a gauntlet, citing "the need to see women not merely as passive victims of an oppressive ideology but also (perhaps primarily) as the active agents of their own positive constructs" (p. 1). As academics this attitude, according to Leslie, needs to inform "our interpretation of religious and ritual texts" and "our evaluation of the religious experiences of women" (p. 1). This appears to be an admirable aim, but one that I am not so certain that her contributors shared. My hesitation comes from my own experiences with and understanding of traditional attitudes, where, in general, I would be more inclined to see women as victims, although not necessarily passive, who struggle with and develop strategies to survive oppression, in a manner similar to the ways in which other marginalized groups develop mechanisms for survival. Moreover, I am always hesitant about lumping all women into a group. Not all women are subjected to one social construct. Issues of class as well as social and economic position are clearly at work. For it is from such attitudes that we see projections of what Hindu women should be, rather than what they were or are. On the other hand, we should not forget, as researchers, despite our best intentions and attempts, that we do approach our work with a bias. No one can be truly "objective." So perhaps it is best, as Leslie has done, to acknowledge that bias as the point from which one's scholarship begins.
The opening section, "The Ritual Wife," has two articles: "Indra's Curse, Varuna's Noose, and the Suppression of the Woman in the Vedic Srauta Ritual," by Frederick M. Smith, and "Marital Expectation as Dramatized in Hindu Marriage Rituals," by Werner F. Menski. Both articles draw on early textual materials that themselves can be said to represent only an extremely restricted and elite segment of ancient Indian society. These materials are, to the best of our knowledge, composed by men within the confines of a tradition that not only excludes women but virtually all other segments of society. This is not to deny the importance or significance of those materials but to put them in perspective.
Smiths article, in terms of the present collection, is somewhat problematic in that it tells us less about the roles and rituals of women in vedic times than about the restricted role of women in the vedic sacrifice. Smith himself acknowledges, "It is unlikely, therefore, that the Vedic ritual is the proper place to look in order to rescue the true pulse of women's religious activity in ancient India" (p. 44). In footnote seventy-eight, he suggests some other options for such inquiry, like the grhya sutras, certainly a more practical place to look. Neither Leslie or Smith, however, seem to recognize that one of the best sources for evidence of the roles and rituals performed by women is the epic and early puranic tradition. Granted, the materials are still composed and transmitted largely by males and inculcate patriarchal attitudes; however, they do allow us more, though admittedly limited, access to the daily life of late vedic India. Not one article in the entire book looks at these influential early texts.
Smith's article, like many of the articles in the collection, is descriptive, leading us step-by-step through important segments of the vedic srauta sacrifices in which the sacrificer's wife is involved. He draws from the mythic material to explain many of the symbolic features of her participation...
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