Water and Womanhood: Religious Meanings of Rivers in Maharashtra.

AuthorConlon, Frank F.

By ANNE FELDHAUS. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1995. Pp. xiii + 250. $49 (cloth); $18.95 (paper).

Rivers in India are the sites of meeting: where people meet each other and their gods; where "textual" and "classical" knowledge and practice meet their "contextual" and "folk" counterparts. Rivers are regarded as sources of life, plenty, and destruction. Most rivers in India are popularly regarded as female (almost all are goddesses) and feminine (exhibiting traits that are associated by convention with females). Anne Feldhaus, drawing on extensive field work and careful reading of folklore, religious texts and iconographies, has produced a stimulating analysis of the manifestations and significance of the associations of rivers and femininity in popular religious belief and practice in the western Indian region of Maharashtra.

Professor Feldhaus, already well known for her careful explorations of the Mahanubhav sect and the religious history of early medieval Maharashtra, here provides a broad and thoughtful consideration of an important and enduring theme in the cultural history of the region. She seeks to learn what the feminine divinity of rivers means to the people who see them that way, and explores the values which these beliefs (and related practices) may promote. She documents the perception of rivers as married women with husbands (suvasini), but with practically no connection with a husband. Feldhaus explores connections between river goddesses and related divinities including Siva, the Sati Asara found along river banks, and various male guardian deities, as portrayed iconographically, ritually, and in enduring mythological motifs which link rivers to fecundity, abundance, food and feeding, the getting (and loss) of children, and, conventionally, with removal of sins through bathing.

Based on mahatmyas, oral traditions, iconography, architecture, interviews, case histories, this study does not fit neatly into any single research category. The author's perspective is one of a sympathetic observer not overawed by the brahmanical textual perspective. As she comments: "'Folk religion' consists more in action than in words," noting that brahmanical traditions "are more likely to be...

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