Interlude C: The Role of Women - Voices Amplified and Edited Out

This chapter is part of the book The Sacred Editors: Hinduism.

"What the canon includes reveals what the culture values. What it omits reveals even more."

The Saint Who Nearly Vanished

In the thirteenth century, in a village outside Pandharpur, a young woman named Janābāī ground grain in the household of the saint Nāmdev. As she worked the heavy stone quern, she composed songs to Viṭṭhal—verses that flowed with the rhythm of her labor, mixing devotion with the daily struggles of a Śūdra woman. "My arms ache from grinding," she sang, "but my heart dances with your name, O Dark One of Pandhari."¹

Janābāī's compositions spread through Maharashtra, sung by women at work and pilgrims on the road to Pandharpur. Her theological insights—about divine grace transcending caste barriers, about finding the sacred in mundane labor—influenced generations of devotees. Yet for centuries, her authorship remained uncertain. Manuscripts attributed her verses to her master Nāmdev, or labeled them simply as "traditional." Only in the twentieth century did scholars like Irawati Karve begin reconstructing her corpus, arguing that the distinctive voice speaking from women's experience could only have been authentically female.²

Janābāī's near-disappearance illustrates a broader pattern in Hindu sacred literature: women shaped the tradition even as male scribes and editors systematically obscured their contributions.

Presence Beyond the Page

Women have always occupied essential roles in Hindu religious life, but their authority operated largely outside formal textual traditions. While Vedic initiation (upanayana) remained restricted to upper-caste males, women became the primary transmitters of domestic religion—lighting the sacred lamp (dīpa), teaching children mantras, performing elaborate vrata (vow) rituals for family welfare.³ These practices carried their own theological sophistication, but rarely entered written śāstra.

The Upaniṣads preserve glimpses of women's early participation in philosophical discourse. Gārgī Vācaknavī challenges the sage Yājñavalkya in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, pressing him with questions about the ultimate ground of reality until he warns her, "Do not ask too much, Gārgī, lest your head fall off."⁴ Maitreyī, another female philosopher, appears in the same text engaging in sophisticated metaphysical inquiry. These episodes suggest that women's intellectual authority was recognized, even if rarely documented.

The medieval bhakti movements witnessed an extraordinary flowering of women's religious poetry. Āṇḍāḷ, the ninth-century Tamil poet-saint, composed the Tiruppāvai—thirty verses celebrating Kṛṣṇa that became central to Śrīvaiṣṇava liturgy.⁵ Akkamahādevī, the twelfth-century Kannada mystic, wrote passionate vacana poetry addressing Śiva as her husband and challenging social conventions.⁶ Mīrābāī, the sixteenth-century Rajasthani princess-poet, created songs of such theological depth and emotional power that they spread across North India and remain popular devotional texts today.⁷

These women's compositions—intimate, theologically rich, often composed in vernacular languages—circulated widely through oral performance. But their preservation as written scripture faced significant obstacles.

Mechanisms of Exclusion

The marginalization of women's voices in Hindu sacred texts followed several interconnected patterns. First, the restriction of formal religious education to upper-caste males created structural barriers to women's textual authority. As Vasudha Narayanan observes, "The exclusion of women from Vedic learning was not merely educational—it was ontological, defining them as inherently unsuited for the highest forms of religious knowledge."⁸

Second, manuscript preservation reflected existing power structures. Sanskrit texts composed by male Brahmins in established monastic lineages had better chances of survival than vernacular compositions by women, particularly those transmitted primarily through oral performance. As Uma Chakravarti notes, "The very mechanisms of textual preservation—scribal communities, royal patronage, monastic libraries—were dominated by men who determined what deserved to be written down and copied."⁹

Third, even when women's religious literature survived, it often underwent editorial transformations that obscured female authorship. The vrata kathās—stories associated with women's ritual observances—became anonymous folklore rather than attributed sacred texts. Women's devotional songs were frequently absorbed into the corpus of male saints or attributed to divine inspiration rather than human creativity.

Finally, when women did appear in canonical texts, they were typically framed within narratives of male spiritual authority. The Devī Bhāgavata Purāṇa, despite celebrating the goddess, was composed and transmitted by male scribes who emphasized feminine divinity while maintaining masculine interpretive control.¹⁰

What Would Have Changed?

Had women's voices been preserved more systematically in Hindu sacred literature, several aspects of the tradition might have developed differently:

Theological Development: Greater inclusion of women's religious experience could have produced more sophisticated understandings of embodied spirituality. As Rita Gross argues, "Women's poetry consistently explores the integration of family life, labor, and devotion in ways that challenge the renunciant ideal dominating much male-authored sacred literature."¹¹ Traditions might have developed more robust theologies of householder spirituality centuries earlier.

Ritual Practice: Women's detailed knowledge of domestic and vrata rituals could have generated more elaborate ritual literature. The gṛhya sūtras (household ritual texts) might have included more sophisticated understandings of seasonal observances, life-cycle ceremonies, and the theological significance of daily religious practice.

Language and Accessibility: Since women often composed in vernacular languages, greater preservation of their work might have accelerated the development of regional sacred literatures. The divide between Sanskrit śāstra and vernacular devotion might have been bridged sooner and more completely.

Social Commentary: Women's religious poetry frequently addressed issues of caste, economic hardship, and social justice—themes often muted in elite male compositions. More systematic preservation might have created stronger textual foundations for reform movements centuries before figures like Dayānanda Sarasvatī and B.R. Ambedkar.

Scholar Debate: Recovery and Authenticity

Contemporary scholars debate how to address these historical exclusions. Feminist scholars like Tracy Pintchman argue for "reading between the lines" of existing texts to recover women's agency, noting that "even in patriarchal sources, careful analysis can reveal the persistence of women's religious authority."¹² She advocates for creative hermeneutics that highlight women's voices even when they appear in subordinate textual positions.

Traditional scholars express concern about such approaches. Kapila Vatsyayan warns against "anachronistic readings that impose contemporary gender concerns on ancient texts."¹³ She argues that understanding historical contexts requires accepting that different eras had different conceptions of spiritual authority, and that feminist interpretations risk distorting original meanings.

Postcolonial feminist scholars like Gayatri Spivak offer a middle path, advocating for "strategic essentialism" that acknowledges the constructed nature of textual authority while still working to amplify marginalized voices.¹⁴ This approach recognizes that recovering women's contributions requires both rigorous historical scholarship and interpretive creativity.

Devotional communities themselves participate in this debate through contemporary practice. Many modern temples now include hymns by female saints in regular worship, effectively treating these compositions as liturgical scripture. Organizations like Bhumi Project train women in Vedic recitation, challenging traditional gender restrictions through direct engagement with sacred texts.¹⁵

Contemporary Relevance: Expanding Sacred Boundaries

These historical questions carry immediate contemporary significance. Modern Hindu communities worldwide grapple with questions of women's religious authority—from female priests officiating at weddings to women's roles in temple governance to debates about access to traditionally male religious practices.

The digital age has created new possibilities for recovering and circulating women's sacred literature. Websites like the Tata Institute's digital library now preserve thousands of manuscripts, including many by female authors previously known only through oral tradition.¹⁶ Social media platforms allow contemporary women religious teachers to reach global audiences without traditional institutional gatekeepers.

Yet challenges remain. As Archana Venkatesan observes, "Simply adding women's voices to existing canons without addressing structural questions of religious authority reproduces the same hierarchical patterns that marginalized them initially."¹⁷ The question becomes not just which texts to include, but how communities define scriptural authority itself.

The editorial future of Hinduism may depend on whether it can expand its understanding of sacred voice beyond the traditional boundaries of male, Sanskrit, and Brahminical authorship—while maintaining the theological depth and devotional power that have sustained the tradition for millennia.

Notes

Eleanor Zelliot, "The Medieval Bhakti Movement in History: An Essay on the Literature in English," in Hinduism: New Essays in the History of Religions, ed. Bardwell L. Smith (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 143.
Irawati Karve, "The Social Dynamics of a Growing Town and Its Surrounding Area," in Maharashtra in Transition(Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1968), 89-92.
Tracy Pintchman, Women's Lives, Women's Rituals in the Hindu Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 23-45.
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.8.12, trans. Patrick Olivelle, The Early Upanishads (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 87.
Vasudha Narayanan, "Āṇḍāḷ: She Who Rules," in Devi: Goddesses of India, ed. John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 183-208.
A.K. Ramanujan, trans., Speaking of Śiva (London: Penguin Classics, 1973), 111-142.
Parita Mukta, Upholding the Common Life: The Community of Mirabai (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 67-89.
Vasudha Narayanan, "Brimming with Bhakti, Embodiments of Shakti: Devotees, Deities, Performers, Reformers, and Other Women of Power in the Hindu Tradition," in Feminism and World Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), 34.
Uma Chakravarti, "Conceptualising Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India," Economic and Political Weekly 28, no. 14 (1993): 579-585.
Cheever Mackenzie Brown, The Triumph of the Goddess: The Canonical Models and Theological Visions of the Devī-Bhāgavata Purāṇa (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 234-267.
Rita M. Gross, "Hindu Female Deities as a Resource for the Contemporary Rediscovery of the Goddess," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 46, no. 3 (1978): 269-291.
Tracy Pintchman, "Gender Complementarity and Gender Hierarchy in Puranic Accounts of Creation," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 64, no. 2 (1996): 349-370.
Kapila Vatsyayan, "Women in Indian Classical Dance," in Women in Indian Society, ed. Rehana Ghadially (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1988), 193.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271-313.
Bhumi Project, "Women and Dharma," accessed November 15, 2024, https://www.bhumiproject.org/women-dharma.
Digital Library of India, "Manuscript Collections," Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, accessed November 15, 2024, https://dli.iiit.ac.in.
Archana Venkatesan, "In Praise of the Goddess: The Devīmāhātmya and Its Meaning for Today," in Is the Goddess a Feminist?, ed. Alf Hiltebeitel and Kathleen M. Erndl (New York: NYU Press, 2000), 175.