Donors, devotees and the daughters of God: temple women in medieval Tamilnadu

318 Pages·1999·20.66 MB·English

by  Orr, Leslie C

DONORS, DEVOTEES, AND
DAUGHTERS OF GOD
SOUTH ASIA RESEARCH
Series Editor
Richard Lariviere
A Publication Series of
The University of Texas Center for Asian Studies
and Oxford University Press
THE EARLY UPANISADS
Scholar's Edition
Texts, Translations, and Notes by
Patrick Olivelle
INDIAN EPIGRAPHY
A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit,
Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages
Richard Salomon
A DICTIONARY OF OLD MARATHI
Anne Feldhaus
DONORS, DEVOTEES, AND DAUGHTERS OF GOD
Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu
Leslie C. Orr
DONORS, DEVOTEES, AND
DAUGHTERS OF GOD
Temple Women in Medieval Tamilnadu
Leslie C. Orr
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
2000
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 2000 by Leslie C. Orr
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Orr, Leslie C., 1948-
Donors, devotees, and daughters of God : temple women in medieval
Tarnilnadu / Leslie C. Orr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-509962-1
i. Devadasls—India—Tamil Nadu. 2. Tamil Nadu (India)—Religious
life and customs. I. Title.
BL1237.58.048077 2000
30543'2945'095482—dc2i 98-7533
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 42
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Preface
As a preface to her book, Women on the Margins, Natalie Zemon Davis
engages in an imagined conversation with her subjects, three seventeenth-
century European women. Davis, displaying considerable courage, confronts
the fact that the women she is writing about would not have appreciated or
even recognized her description and analysis of their lives. I am in a simi-
lar, and perhaps even more dire, predicament with the women who are the
subject of this book—the temple women of medieval South India. Being so
far removed from them in time and space and hampered by the fact that they
have left no personal accounts of their experiences, I can hardly conceive
of what my conversation with them might be like. Yet I do feel that I have
come to have at least a nodding acquaintance with these women. This ac-
quaintance has been for me an immensely rewarding relationship—if at times
a demanding and discomfiting one—which has gradually transformed my
way of thinking about the women of India and has challenged my ideas about
the location and significance of "women on the margins."
My knowledge of the temple women of medieval Tamilnadu rests on the
fact that their activities have been recorded in inscriptions. Thus it is pos-
sible to glimpse the actuality of their lives—the details of their relationships
with the temple and the down-to-earth realities of where they lived and what
they owned and even, if they shared in the food prepared in the temple, what
they ate. The information yielded by inscriptional sources is extremely valu-
able for our understanding of India's social and religious history; it is par-
ticularly precious for what it can tell us about women's lives. These sources
afford us the opportunity to examine the arrangements and activities with
which real human women were involved, opening up a perspective that is
quite different from that provided by the mythic and idealized imaging of
"the feminine" in Indian literature and religious texts. The inscriptions also
allow us to leap-frog backward over postcolonial, colonial, and late pre-
colonial delineations and interpretations of the events and structures of the
past and find the traces of a particular historical moment represented in its
own terms. This book is an exploration of one part of the historical space to
which the inscriptions admit us; as so much more remains to be discovered,
I hope that my study may encourage other researchers to make further use
of inscriptions in the study of Indian history. I also hope that this book will
contribute to the ongoing reexamination and reevaluation of "women's
place" in religion and society by showing the complexity, multiplicity, and
dynamic character of women's identities and activities.
Although it is difficult for me to imagine talking with the temple women
who are the subject of this book, I have engaged in much talk about them,
and it is a pleasure to acknowledge a few of the many people who have shared
in these conversations. To K. Koppedrayer goes the credit for starting the
whole thing over fifteen years ago, with her casual suggestion that it might
be interesting for me to find out more about the history of the devadasls.
To S. S. Janaki I am grateful for persuading me that it was much better to
try to do so by using Tamil inscriptions rather than Sanskrit texts. To M. L.
Varadpande I owe thanks for opening many doors, including the one that
led me for the first time into an office of the Archaeological Survey of India.
To Katherine Young I am deeply indebted for her guidance as my thesis
supervisor throughout the long years of my work on this topic, but even more
for her extraordinary support as an exemplar, colleague, and friend. She has
read many earlier versions of this book—and a great deal more, as well—
and her criticism and encouragement have been and continue to be indis-
pensable. To James Heitzman, George Spencer, and Cynthia Talbot go heart-
felt thanks for their great generosity—for sharing materials and ideas that
have made my labors much easier and more enjoyable and for providing
inspiration and detailed suggestions that made possible the transformation
of a gigantic dissertation into a book.
My colleagues and students in the Department of Religion at Concordia
University have, with patience and interest, borne witness to this process
and have particularly contributed to the development of my thinking about
women and religion; conversations with and comments on my work by
Rosemary Drage Hale, Norma Joseph, Sheila McDonough, and Michael
Oppenheim have been especially useful. The length of my bibliography and
the number of my notes give an indication of the extent to which this work
relies on the foundation of scholarship laid down by others. It is with grate-
ful appreciation that I also acknowledge the help of those who have ex-
tended themselves personally to me and have shared with me ideas and
information that have been important in the gradual corning into being of
this book: John Cort, Richard Davis, Ginni Ishimatsu, Padma Kaimal,
Noboru Karashima, Saskia Kersenboom, Mohan Khokar, Anne Monius,
Usha Narayanan, Vasudha Narayanan, Indira Peterson, Pamela Price,
Vi PREFACE
Nandini Ramani, Paula Richman, T. Sankaran, S. P. Tewari, Tom Trautmann,
K. K. A. Venkatachari, P. Venkatesan, Lakshmi Viswanathan, Joanne Wag-
horne, Philip Wagoner, and Paul Younger. Many thanks are due also to Steven
Collins, for his parrainage of this book, and to the editors Richard Lariviere
and Patrick Olivelle at the University of Texas and Cynthia Read at Oxford
for their remarkable and sympathetic forbearance.
My work would not have been possible without the cooperation of the
Office of the Chief Epigraphist of the Archaeological Survey of India, in
Mysore, where I have been graciously granted permission to read the tran-
scripts of unpublished inscriptions. I am greatly indebted to Dr. K. V.
Ramesh, who was the Director at the time I first undertook my research,
and to his successors, Dr. Madhav N. Katti and Dr. M. D. Sampath, for the
access they have allowed me to the precious resources in their keeping. In
my work I have also relied heavily on the help and knowledge of librarians;
I wish especially to acknowledge the assistance of the librarians of the Of-
fice of the Chief Epigraphist in Mysore, the Sangeet Natak Akademi in New
Delhi, the Institut francais d'Indologie in Pondicherry, the Adyar Library
in Madras, the library of the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill Univer-
sity, and the Concordia University Library. I am grateful for the financial
support I have enjoyed during the long period of research and writing lead-
ing up to the appearance of this book, in the form of fellowships and re-
search grants received from McGill University, Concordia University, the
Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, the Ponds pour la Formation de Chercheurs
et 1'Aide a la Recherche du Quebec, and the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada. Thanks are due to Linda Cardella Cournoyer
for her excellent work on the index. I would also like to thank the graduate
students who have acted as my research assistants—Steven Engler, Michelle
Folk, Paul Hammett, Daphne Lazar, Grant Martin, Philip Moscovitch and
Tanisha Ramachaudran—for all their help.
My friends and family have long had to endure my preoccupation with
this project; I deeply appreciate their patience and encouragement. I espe-
cially thank my husband, Jon Kalina, and my daughter, Nathalie, for ac-
commodating me and sustaining me throughout my work. Their confidence
in me, their interest and support, have not only gladdened me but have been
essential to the very existence of this book.
PREFACE vii
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Contents
Methods of Transliteration, Abbreviation, and Citation xi
ONE
Introduction 3
DevadasTs and Dancing-girls 3
In a Different Landscape 18
TWO
Discerning and Delineating the Figure
of the Temple Woman 37
Definitions and Locations 37
Devotees and Daughters of God 48
THREE
Temple Women as Temple Patrons 65
Property and Piety: Women and the Temple 65
Patterns of Patronage of Temple Women 75
FOUR
Temple Women as Temple Servants 89
The Design of Temple Life in Medieval Tamilnadu 89
Reputation, Recognition, and Responsibility 98