Chapter 10: Patrons and Performers - Hindu Women's Sacred Labor
In a stone temple courtyard in Tamil Nadu, the air trembles with music. The bronze lamps flicker as a lone woman sings, her voice rising in raga (melodic framework), her anklets echoing each verse. She sings not from a manuscript but from memory—passed down through generations. Her bhajan (devotional song), a musical offering to Vishnu, weaves together scripture, myth, and longing. Around her, the gathered villagers listen not as spectators but as participants. The story she chants is sacred. So is her performance.
Her name is unknown, but her words are rooted in the tradition of Andal, the 8th-century poet-saint who composed verses now embedded in daily temple liturgies (ritual worship practices) across southern India. Andal was a girl when she began writing. She claimed mystical marriage to the god Vishnu and composed her Tiruppavai—thirty lyrical verses of devotion—as both personal longing and collective ritual. Her words were preserved not by scribes, but by singers; not by brahmins, but by women in temple kitchens and wedding halls.¹
This is how sacred knowledge traveled among Hindu women: not always through texts, but through rhythm, memory, ritual, and gift.
In Hinduism, especially in its devotional (bhakti) and ritual dimensions, women have long held central roles as transmitters and preservers of sacred narratives. Their methods differed from the male-dominated scholarly traditions of the Vedas and śāstra (scriptural law). Instead, women taught through song, dance, temple patronage, household rites, and embodied practice. This sacred labor, often deemed peripheral in classical theology, was foundational to the continuity of Hindu religious life.
Historical inscriptions from the Chola and Vijayanagara empires attest to royal women who sponsored temples, copied manuscripts, and commissioned scriptural commentaries. Queens like Sembiyan Mahadevi (10th century) donated bronze icons and funded renovations of Shiva temples, ensuring the preservation of liturgical traditions.² In North India, queens of the Mughal courts, such as Gulbadan Begum, patronized translations of Sanskrit texts into Persian, facilitating cross-cultural religious dialogue.
But most Hindu women were not royalty. Their sacred work unfolded in domestic spaces: decorating altars, reciting epics, preparing food as offering (naivedya), telling stories during festivals. These acts were not mere tradition. They were religious interpretation through practice.
The intersection of gender and caste created complex dynamics in women's roles as religious transmitters. Upper-caste women often had access to Sanskrit texts and could participate in household rituals that paralleled Vedic practices. Lower-caste women, excluded from orthodox traditions, developed alternative forms of sacred expression through folk songs, local goddess worship, and community festivals. Dalit women, in particular, created devotional traditions that challenged brahmanical authority while preserving ancient religious practices.³
One of the most enduring forms of women's scriptural engagement was ritual storytelling. In Maharashtra and Bengal, women gathered during fasts and festivals to retell versions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata tailored for their communities.⁴ These were not passive retellings: women added commentary, modified characters, emphasized female voices. In some regions, Sita's obedience was downplayed in favor of her suffering and endurance. In others, Draupadi was portrayed not only as a wife of five husbands but as a woman of fiery justice and divine authority.
The oral Ramayanas of rural women diverged sharply from the Sanskrit epic attributed to Valmiki. As literary scholar Paula Richman has shown, these "alternative tellings" reframe sacred narrative from a gendered lens—emphasizing not duty, but grief, survival, and resistance.⁵ In some Telugu folk variants, Sita questions Rama's authority and refuses reconciliation. These versions circulated orally and were often performed during women's gatherings, without any need for textual approval.
Another form of sacred labor was bhakti poetry. Women saints like Mirabai (16th century Rajasthan), Akka Mahadevi (12th century Karnataka), and Lalleshwari (14th century Kashmir) composed devotional verses that combined deep theological insight with personal emotional intensity. They challenged caste boundaries, rejected male authority, and saw themselves in direct relationship with the divine.
Mirabai's poems survive in dozens of regional dialects. She sang to Krishna as her only beloved, rejecting the royal life she was born into. Her verses—recorded by disciples, temple singers, and eventually missionaries—blur the line between scripture and song. They are performed in temples, remembered in homes, quoted in textbooks.⁶ Her work demonstrates how North Indian women's devotional traditions paralleled those of South Indian poet-saints like Andal, creating a pan-Indian pattern of female religious expression.
In contrast, Akka Mahadevi's Kannada vachanas (short devotional poems) employed radical metaphors of nakedness and divine marriage that challenged social conventions. Her poetry was preserved within the Lingayat community, which historically granted women greater religious authority than orthodox Hindu traditions.⁷
Yet despite their spiritual richness, these women were often excluded from formal religious commentary. Their work was preserved, but not canonized. Revered, but not cited in scholarly treatises. The brahmanical tradition maintained control over what counted as authoritative scripture, even as popular devotion sustained these women's voices.
Today, the echoes of their sacred labor remain. Women continue to preserve and transmit Hindu tradition through kolams (ritual floor drawings), vratas (fasting rituals), kathas (narrative performances), and songs sung at dawn. In many rural communities, the only surviving versions of ancient texts are those kept alive in the melodies and memory of women.
Contemporary scholars like Vasudha Narayanan and Tracy Pintchman have worked to document and analyze these continuing traditions, showing how women's religious practices constitute a parallel form of scriptural authority that complements rather than competes with textual traditions.⁸
"I have found my beloved, and I will not let him go.
Let the world call me fallen—
I will not abandon the one who lifted me."
—Mirabai, Bhajans, oral tradition, multiple manuscripts
They were not called theologians, but they shaped theology. They had no commentaries, but their songs interpreted scripture. Through their offerings, chants, and quiet narrative defiance, Hindu women carried sacred knowledge in forms that text alone could not contain. Their bodies moved the rhythm, their voices bore the memory, and their hands lit the lamps that still flicker before the gods.
Also Remembered
Andal (8th century, Tamil Nadu): Poet-saint whose hymns are still sung in daily liturgies of Vishnu temples. Her Tiruppavai represents one of the few examples of women's devotional poetry that achieved canonical status within orthodox tradition.
Akka Mahadevi (12th century, Karnataka): Bhakti poet and mystic known for her radical renunciation and spiritual poetry to Shiva. Her vachanas challenged both gender and caste conventions within the emerging Lingayat movement.
Sembiyan Mahadevi (10th century, Chola dynasty): Queen and temple patron who commissioned inscriptions and icons still in use today. Her patronage demonstrates how royal women shaped religious architecture and ritual practice.
Lalleshwari (14th century, Kashmir): Mystic and poet whose vakhs (sayings) blend Shaivism and folk spirituality, transmitted orally across generations. Her work bridges Sanskrit learning and vernacular expression.
Mirabai (16th century, Rajasthan): Princess-turned-devotee whose Krishna bhajans represent North Indian women's devotional traditions. Her rejection of royal duty for divine love inspired countless later poets.
Unrecorded Village Storytellers (ongoing): Women who retell epics, modify theological themes, and pass on sacred narratives orally. They represent the vast anonymous tradition of female religious transmission that continues today.
Notes
- This opening scene represents a plausible reconstruction based on documented practices of women's devotional singing in South Indian temples and the continuing tradition of Andal's verses in daily worship. While specific details are constructed for narrative purposes, the elements described—temple courtyard performances, memorial transmission, and women's roles as preservers of devotional poetry—are historically attested. See Archana Venkatesan, The Secret Garland: Andal's Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli (Oxford University Press, 2010), 3–7.
- Padma Kaimal, Scattered Goddesses: Travels with the Yoginis (University of Michigan Press, 2012), 45–50.
- On caste and gender intersections, see Uma Chakravarti, Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens (Stree, 2003), 45–78; Sharmila Rege, Writing Caste/Writing Gender: Narrating Dalit Women's Testimonios (Zubaan, 2006), 89–112.
- Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger, In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India (Indiana University Press, 2006), 26–30.
- Paula Richman, ed., Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia (University of California Press, 1991), 55–72.
- John Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India (Oxford University Press, 2004), 90–103.
- A. K. Ramanujan, trans., Speaking of Śiva (Penguin Classics, 1973), 111–141.
- Vasudha Narayanan, "The Vernacular Veda: Revelation, Recitation, and Ritual" (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1978); Tracy Pintchman, Women's Lives, Women's Rituals in the Hindu Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2007), 156–189.
Further Reading
Paula Richman, ed., Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia (University of California Press, 1991). Comprehensive analysis of how different communities, including women, have retold and reinterpreted the Ramayana epic.
Archana Venkatesan, The Secret Garland: Andal's Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli (Oxford University Press, 2010). Detailed study of the Tamil poet-saint's devotional poetry and its continuing influence.
John Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer, Songs of the Saints of India (Oxford University Press, 2004). Collection of bhakti poetry including works by Mirabai and other women saints.
Tracy Pintchman, Women's Lives, Women's Rituals in the Hindu Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2007). Analysis of how women's religious practices constitute a form of scriptural authority.
Uma Chakravarti, Gendering Caste: Through a Feminist Lens (Stree, 2003). Examination of how caste and gender intersect in Hindu religious traditions.
Vasudha Narayanan, "Brimming with Bhakti, Embodiments of Shakti," in Feminism and World Religions, ed. Arvind Sharma and Katherine K. Young (SUNY Press, 1999). Survey of women's spiritual authority across Hindu history.