Mother Who Is Not a Mother

In Search of the Great Indian Goddess

Kamala Ganesh The mother goddess can be interpreted as expressing ideas of power, autonomy and primacy in the widest sense of the terms. She conveys not so much the idea of physical motherhood but a world view in which the creative power of feminity is central; the goddess mediates between life and death and contains in herself the possibility of regeneration. Is there a basic unity of theme and continuity of ideas to be seen in the variety of goddesses which abound in India? This article explores the mother goddess tradition. I
GODDESSES abound in India. Varied, diverse, they sometimes contradict each other. There are those who are consorts, those who have consorts, and there is the one who is alone. She is bedecked with jewellery, or with a garland of skulls; at other times she is the nude goddess. Many-armed, wielding weapons, she sometimes disarms you with just a lotus in hand, and the abhaya and varada hastas to dispel fear and grant boons. Then there are those other goddesses, with no arms, or arms that end in stumps. Repulsive or angry or gracious, or yet again those expressionless images of the great mother, with no facial features, sometimes not even a head. Riding ferocious animals, lion, tiger and leopard, or seated in tranquil equipoise on the lotus. Portrayed in vivid anthropomorphic detail or expressed symbolically: a pot with eyes scratched on it, a cowrie shell, or a piece of stone smeared with vermilion. Sometimes abstracted into a flash of energy, colour, sound, geometry. Who can say which of these represents the 'true1 goddess tradition? Which is the 'essence* and which 'derived'? How does one invest chronology, historicity, linearity: qualities that the goddess cuts through in her many-layered presence in ritual, cult, icon, art, text and philosophy? I think it is possible to see a basic unity of theme and continuity of ideas in what for convenience I will call the 'mother-goddess tradition'.1 Mother-goddess can be interpreted as expressing ideas of power, autonomy and primacy in the widest sense of the term. She conveys not so much the idea of physical motherhood but a worldview in which the creative power of femininity is central; the goddess mediates between life and death and contains in herself the possibility of regeneration. The 'mother' aspect of the goddess is open to interpretation, and indeed has been developed in different ways at different points in time for various purposes. The modern iconography of India as mother-goddess, is a particularly interesting example of the 'use' of the goddess for the end-goal of nationalism. In this essay I am not concerned with establishing whether different goddess types are derivable from the mother-goddess, or whether they are equally and independently significant, though the question is of interest. The ideas conveyed by the mothergoddess are sometimes found in other goddesses, at other times they are muffled, at yet other times, there is a complete inversion. But, as I see it, she is always a reference point. A word about the scope of this rather exploratory essay. For me, the exercise is to understand how Ias an anthropologist familiar with feminist and iconographic scholarship, and as a woman and mother in Indiaperceive the signals coming from the goddess. It is admittedly tricky to handle material spanning across disciplines and time periods, straddling across different media of expression. One does not try to do justice to its sheer volume and richness. One cannot even be fair in terms of looking for representative material. The effort is not to dwell on the incredible variety, but to synthesise and extrapolate, without giving cavalier treatment to established facts, and hopefully without violating the spirit of the material. This essay draws primarily on iconography, occasionally using textual, ritual or cultic material to make a point. Visual traditions of the goddess are very strong in India, they stretch back in time to pre-textual levels. They are a vibrant presence in current worship as well. The icon tells a story which is sometimes at variance with the textual gloss, and it is likely to be more 'original'. There is a prolific literature on mothergoddess. But in the context of the current feminist-secularist critique of religious symbols and imagery, and a simultaneous feminist 'rediscovery' of the goddess, the theme is of continuing relevance. geographic dispersion, they convey a sense of unity in artistic intent and by extension, in belief and worship systems. Typically small (less than a foot high), made of stone, bone or mammoth's ivory, the recurring motif is that of a nude female, with vastly exaggerated breasts, hips, belly and thighs. The head, arms and legs are highly abbreviated; usually there are no toes, feet, hands or fingers, the legs and the arms ending abruptly like stumps. The facial features are blurred or missing, the head is just a featureless knob or conical appendage. Some of the ivory carvings are meant to be worn as amulets [Absolon 1949:207]. Some of the figures show traces of red ochre colouring, a surrogate of blood, implying votive or ritual function. Trre 'venuses' are widely recognised as significant markers of human aesthetic activity, but the nature of their significance is rather vaguely explored by the majority of the writing, academic and popular. Though they have been frequently seen as reflecting a fertility cult, this possibility has been typically and speculatively sandwiched between several other questions: are they 'anatomical peculiarities of some ethnic types'? Do they represent the 'sexual taste of paleolithic man'? [Agrawala 1984:6]. Are they "stone age man's pin up, his bloated idea of female beauty"? Or is the steatopygy "an adipose adaptation to winter"? [Reader's Digest 1984:11-13] Do they represent "idols, fetishes, cult figures, divinities or real women with sexual emphasis?" [Absolon 1949:204]. The first Venus' discoveries in the late 19th century created a lot of puzzled excitement, but the 'fertility cult' argument was used in a way that implied a kind of fetishistic, peripheral oddity. Campbell [1959:V.1:139] sharply chastises anthropologists who pretend they cannot imagine what functions these numerous figurines performed. The remarkable feature of this whole group of figures is the extreme stylisation, expressionist if you will, where the contrast between what is emphasised and what is minimised or dispensed with altogether suggests the underlying motive: veneration of the birth-giving powers of femaleness. Paleolithic excavations have yielded no male human figures. In cave paintings of the same period.the stylised Venus' motif dominates the composition. Male figures are quite common, but they are realistically painted, usually at the back or the periphery of the composition: a pointer to the centrality of

II
The Indian mother-goddess is more than 5,000 years old and there is a continuous tradition of imaging and worship of goddess as mother, though there are many diversities in form and material. The first iconic finds are from the Kulli and Zhob valley excavations in Baluchistan.2 In terms of content, they show linkages with mother-goddess figures from other regions and periods, and can be seen in the background of the paleolithic and neolithic discoveries in. Europe, West Asia and Anatolia. The paleolithic 'venuses' as they are called (the implicit valuation extends beyond terminology) have been excavated from across a wide stretch of territory in Europe, in sites including Spain, France, Austria, the Balkans and Siberia. 3 Despite the

the female principle in votive and ritual activity. The basic 'venus' type with elaboration and variation recurs in the settled agricultural societies of Anatolia and west Asia. 4 In particular, the goddess and the bull is a striking motif in the sites of Catat Huyak and Hacilar: the pregnant goddess, squatting as though in child birth; the goddess giving birth to a bull's head, to a ram's head; cow-headed goddess with bullheaded child in arms; the goddess riding on a lion or on the back of a bull, or sitting between the horns of a bull. Scenes of life in one wall contrast with scenes of death in the other. Rows of breasts are shown on the wall, along with heads of bulls. In some cases, the breasts incorporate the lower jaws of wild-boar, the skulls of fox, weasel or vultureall symbols of death. This early expression of the dual orientation of the goddess towards life and death, and the presence of the bull motif have links with the iconography of the Indian goddess.
LAJJAGAURI

In the profusion of iconic representations of the goddess in India, I would see the 'Lajjagauri' genre as best expressing what I think is a core idea in the paleolithic and neolithic icons. This group of sculptures excavated from across different sites in the Deccan region, date variously between first and eighth centuries AD. 5 Typically, the sculpture is of a nude woman squatting with legs spread out and bent at the knees in a birth-giving position. Usually, the head is replaced by a lotus. In some cases,as in the figure from Ter.there is no head. The body ends abruptly and intentionally at the neck [Sankalia 1960:113]. In another case, the head is replaced by a stupa [Sankalia:120]. The hands may be holding lotuses, or folded across the breasts. The structure of the Alampur sculpture indicates that it was an actual altar under worship, according to Kramrisch [1956: 259] who also notes that the tension in the muscles in the lower part of the body indicate the dynamic process of giving birth. Some of the sculptures are under worship, usually by women for progeny [Sankalia 1960:120]. Aiyar [1989: 415] notes that they are common in arid regions where their function seems to be to bring rain. In one example from Nagarjunakonda, the area below the navel is filled with the drawing of a highly decorated purnaghata (overflowing pot), which, symbolises abundance and fertility [Bhattacharya 19T7:'r38^H?]. In a fourth century terracotta plaque from Keesaragatta, the lotus-faced woman holds Siva as a lingam in her right hand and Vishnu as Narasimha in her left.The image unmistakably conveys a sense of primacy of the goddess. 6 Recent finds of Lajjagauri plaques of fourth-fifth century AD from Nagpur region show close association with a bull and a lion. 7 She is catechrestically called Lajjagauri by the local population (lajja: 'shame'); more

circumspect writing refers to her as kamalamukhi. The 'displayed goddess' motif is found in many cultures, for instance the 'Bobo' figures of Egypt. 8 Lajjagauri, the headless one, is body incarnate, the personified yoni. The artistic device is to remove the identity-giving part, the face, and portray the female principle of creation literally. There are, of course, various interpretations of the symbolism of the lotus as head, 9 but as I see it, the basic idea expressed is strikingly similar to that of the 'venuses'. In contrast to various forms of devi or goddess, which are iconically more detailed and specific, and in which diverse trends coalesce, Lajjagauri expresses an elemental idea. What happened to Lajjagauri in the vast time-space between Harappa and Deccan? There is a fairly active mother-goddess tradition in iconography starting with the terracotta busts from Kulli and Zhob, where no male figures have been found. The female figures, nude, jewelled, with hooded face, circular eyeholes, beaked nose, slit mouth, have a somewhat anonymous look and are interpreted by many as intentionally inspiring terror and awe. Hundreds of female figures (far outnumbering male figures) have been found in Harappan sites, especially in the granary area. They are nude, wearing elaborate jewellery and distinct head-dress. There is some indication of votive function. In all three, Kulli, Zhob and Indus Valley, nudity is not accentuated. The form shows some independence from the west Asian forms, though in intent it could be very close [Gajjar 1971:13].l0 The headless female figures with stumpy limbs from post-Harappan chalcolithic settlements, for instance from Inamgaon (where the figure is associated with a bull), Nevasa, Bilwali are interpreted to belong to the mother-goddess tradition. The nude, steatopygous female or the 'opulent goddess' as she is often referred to in the literature, is not uncommon in pre-Mauryan finds, for instance, the gold plaques from Lauriya Nandangarh and Piprahwa, and the finds from Kausambi, and the numerous ringstones of the Maurya and Sunga period in sites from north western to eastern India." However, the precise iconic details of Lajjagauri would seem to have no precedents, but for an example from an unexpected quarter. The hymns of the Rg veda are, in the main, addressed to male nature gods. Goddesses are few and in the vedic scheme of things, definitely secondary. Tucked away amidst the bland beauty of vedic nature goddesses is the elemental figure of Aditi, literally 'the unbound one'. Aditi is the subject of an anthropomorphic creation myth: In the first age of the gods, existence was born from non-existence. j After this the quarters of the sky were born from her who crouched with legs spread. The earth was born from her. who crouched with legs spread,

and from the earth the quarters of the sky were born. From Aditi, Daksha was born, and from Daksha, Aditi was born. [R V 10.72 tr by O'Flaherty 1981:37] To find a word-picture in Rg veda recreated in an icon after fifteen centuries12 and worshipped currently is to realise with a shock the tenacity of the goddess. Aditi does not fit into the pantheon of vedic goddesses. She is in fact an ill-defined figure 'virtually featureless physically' [Kinsley 1987:8-9] she is not portrayed as a spouse. Her salient characteristic is her motherhood. 'Mighty mother', 'protectress', 'all men are her children', 'she is the mother of gods and kings and mother of the world', 'she is all what there is, father, mother, child and begetting'.13 It is significant that though textually and iconically, she is portrayed as a birth-giver, her motherhood is an encompassing one of cosmic dimensions.She is 'unbound', not tied to specifics, to a particular husband, family or lineage. Aditi and Lajjagauri even as birth-givers, have been abstracted and universalised in a way that would have been impossible under the assumptions of patrilineal systems.
DEFINING AUTONOMY: G O D D E S S AS CONSORT

In popular Indian perceptions of divinity, the dominant image is of a male god, accompanied by his consort, who is his benevolent shakti, the actualiser of his latent power, the embodiment of his grace. Kali and Durga are, of course, a ubiquitous presence, but the safe domestic mode is represented by Lakshmi, quintessential spouse, symbol of auspiciousness and prosperity. It is tempting to connect the spheres of worship with cultural norms concerning women. There is an active genre of Writing on the divide between the powerful, 'unhusbanded' goddesses (like Kali) whose power is seen as dangerous and destructive, and goddesses who are appropriately married (like Lakshmi) whose power is positive and benevolent, and how this is echoed in social arrangements and evaluations, particularly in the obsessive cultural theme o f control and management of female sexuality [see for instance, Babb (1975), Beck (1969), Das (1976), Hart (1973), Kondos (1986), Papanek (1973), Tapper (1979) and Wadley (1975)]. I shall come back to this shortly, but a specific aspect of this idea is the concept of 'auspiciousness', Which in current understanding is almost exclusively tied up to the state of being married. Virtually every language has a specific word to denote a woman whose husband is alive (for instance suhagan, suvasini, sumangali in Hindi, Marat hi and Tamil respectively). She is the embodiment of auspiciousness.. She has a special ritual status. By extension, even the insignia of marriage that she wears are considered to have sacred power. A widow has a diametrically opposite position in the

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realm of the auspicious, as are all things associated with her. As we shall see, early iconography has a different message. The other temptation is to see in the spouselessness of a goddess like Kali or Durga, the source of her power, a blue-print for autonomy, counterposed against the domesticated Lakshmi, consort par excellence. The iconographic scenario is somewhat more complicated and the signals are mixed. It is not a simple case of spousehood conveying dependence and spouselessness, autonomy. The goddess is portrayed either by herself or with a male partner. If the latter, there are various possibilities. She could be the subservient or the dominating partner, or a balance could be attempted. A vivid example of Lakshmi as clearly secondary consort, is the icon in which she sits by the side of Vishnu, who is recumbent on the serpent adisesha on the ocean of milk. Lakshmi pressing his feet, Lakshmi offering him betel leaves: this replay of idealised domestic relations is more common in kitsch iconography. Usually, the consorthood of the goddess is shown by her small size in relation to the god, as in the case of Lakshmi sitting on the lap of Narasimha or Parvati as Sivakami watching from the wings while the dancing Nataraja dominates the composition. Sastri il916:187-89] makes the point that the goddess as consort is shown with two arms, the single goddess with four or more. The goddess may well have an independent shrine within the temple as is usual in Tamil Nadu. The philosophical and textual traditions of pancaratra and saiva siddhanta schools place Lakshmi and Parvati respectively in a position closely approximating independent status, though nominally they are the shaktis of male gods. The popular Radha-Krishna couple is typically shown in a totally non-hierarchical relationship. Roles are reversed and rereversed in delightful abandon and celebrated in icon, poetry and song. But then, Radha is not a spouse. The whole relationship is, as Marglin puts it, outside the realm of instrumentalityof marriage and birthand exists in itself, for itself [1986: 305-6]. The ardhanarisvara icon captures a concept of gender as a holistic unity. There is no hard dividing line between male and female, there is an implied interchangeability and flow. Though Kali is often an independent goddess, she is equally often portrayed with a spouse. Here the conventional relations are completely reversed. In the ultimate icon, Kali dances with abandon, her foot trampling on a prostrate, corpse-like Siva, who is not so much husband as polar opposite. Durga is perhaps the only important goddess who is portrayed alone. Though created from the combined energies of the gods, she wields weapons and battles alohe with no male support, and slays the buffalo demon Mahisha. However, even here, there is a strong underlying suggestion of a1 sexual/mariul relationship between Durga and Mahisha, as we shall discuss a little later. WS-60

Finally, there are the truly 'single' goddesses, whose iconography the male is not part of. This is the goddess who neither confronts nor subserves, she exists in herself, by herself. By her very presence and femininity, she symbolises abundance, fertility and auspiciousness. She contradicts the idea of auspiciousness being tied to marriage, as she does the idea. of spouselessness being associated with danger and anger. Chronologically, this goddess appears earlier than the consorts and spouses. She is a descendant in the mother-goddess tradition. In the latter, 'auspiciousness' is implicit; in the former, it is elaborated and explicit, a'frequent motif in temple and domestic icon. Thus we have srilakshmi and gajalakshmi, auspicious ones, whose images are put on doorways and thresholds for magical protection. River goddesses, always single, are again threshold deities. Decorating arches and pillars is salabhanjika, who makes vegetation bloom into life by a touch of hand or foot,14 and close in spirit is the yakshi of free and vegetative quality, with her body twined around tree and creeper. And there is the archetypal sakambhari, the herb-nourishing one, from whose body plants grow. The development of srilakshmi is a striking illustration of the shift from independent, auspicious goddess to spouse. She is a pre-Buddhist icon, and the earliest images do not show her with a male partner. The Kushana srilakshmi stands amidst lotuses issuing from a purnaghata, pressing her breasts to assure plenty and prosperity [Sivaramamurthi 1961:39]. Medallions from Bharhut have the motifs of both srilakshmi and the closely allied gajalakshmi, seated on a full-blown lotus, surrounded by lotus flowers, leaves and stems issuing from a mangalaghata, elephants pouring water on her head [Ray 1975:111, Kramrisch 1956:252-3]. In Srisukta, she is described as lotus-faced ( padmanana), lotus thighed (padma uru), with lotus hands (padmahasta), evoking memories of 15 Lajjagauri. The early sri has a strong association with vegetation, growth and fecundity; a teeming vitality marks her presence. In later icons, she is linked to a number of godsSoma, Dharma, Indra and Kubera, and texts refer to her unsteady, fickle nature. By about 400 AD, she settles down as the steadfast and benign consort of Vishnu, involved in the moral order, in righteous behaviour, in correct social observance [Kinsley 1987:19-26]. Colloquial phrases about the 'Lakshmi of the home', popular in many Indian languages, refer to the quality of auspiciousness of women who play the proper wifely role. The issue of spousehood is a complex one. The very goddess who is the domesticated spouse is demonstrably independent in earlier forms. The cohsorthood of the same goddess is often differently expressed in text/legend and icon. For example, in the myth, the confrontation between Kali and Siva is resolved by the ultimate taming of

the former, but the icon invariably captures the moment of confrontation, not the denouement. The popular Bengali legend about how Kali became embarrassed when she realised she had trampled on her husband (and hence the out-hanging tongue) would be a cute example of trying to make a consort out of Kali, were it not so absurd! The ashtamatrikas are nominally the female versions of eight gods, but they usually occur as an independent set. The Sthalapurana (temple legend) of the village goddess often concludes by making her into an aspect of Parvati, spouse of Siva, but the icon says otherwise. She is given pride of place in the shrine, accompanied by male attendants or servants. It is as though having paid token tribute to the married state, she is free to pursue her activities independently. 'True' consorts are very few, and even they express autonomous personality in various degrees. The power associated with the goddessof fertility, creativity, nurturance, protection does not stem from her consorthood which seems to be a later development. It is relevant to remember here that the concept of the goddess as virgin-mother is deep-rooted across cultures.lt contains a suggestion of parthenogenesisself-created, selfsupportingand is linked with the magicoreligious domain of fertility and agriculture. It forms the kernel of the autonomy of the goddess.
Two FACES OF GODDESS

Much of the current literature on the goddess is dominated by the theme of the benign versus destructive goddess or the 'good' and the 'bad' aspects of the goddess. It is virtually impossible to read a paper on the subject which does not have a reference to the 'ambivalence' of the goddess. It is treated as axiomatic. Some of the approaches grounded in psychological analysis develop the idea of a radical split in the mother image into the 'good sheltering' versus 'monstrous terrifying'. The great mother archetype is seen to reflect early childhood feelings about the primacy of mother or mother-figure. While Freudians see the goddess imagery as rooted in the experience of the personal mother, Jungians see its base in the collective unconscious [Wulff 1986: 283-97, Preston 1983: 328-41]. The intense feelings of Ramakrishna Paramahansa towards Kali as mother, and the emotionally charged poetry of Ramprasad do in fact articulate the good mother/bad mother theme. But to accept a clear relationship, one needs to understand why the mother-goddess is absent or eclipsed in some cultures.16 The ambivalence of the goddess has been linked by many writers to the cultural evaluation of female sexuality as dangerous and disruptive if not harnessed appropriately. The two faces of the goddess are both faces of power, but as properly married spouse, she is the embodiment of grace and benevolence; as the independent goddess, she threatens to destroy the very basis of the October 20-27, 1990

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social order. The concern with the control of female sexuality manifests itself in many institutions, norms and customs that are current in India. The point to note here is that the stress on female sexuality and reproduction are part of the requirements of patrilineal systems, and the particular way in which they are expressed in the Indian context have to do with the ideology and language of caste. The 'ambivalence' described in the current writing seems to be between the 'spousified' goddess under developing patriarchy, and the earlier, fiery, independent goddess. But the goddess expresses a duality (a term perhaps more appropriate than ambivalence) in her earliest iconic forms, from a phase in which caste and gender hierarchies would be at best amorphous. That this duality has been superimposed with the ambivalence of controlled versus uncontrolled sexuality is evident, but the meaning of the goddess could be read in a broader frame. What then is the duality that the goddess mediates? The cycle of festivals of the goddess is closely tied up to the agricultural cycle, and to seasons of sowing, germination and harvest. The female power to create life and the soil's power to produce crop are seen as interlinked. But the goddess has strong funerary associations as well, starting from the 'venuses'17 to the concept of smasana kali, who haunts cremation grounds, wears cut arms as girdles, children's corpses as ear-rings, uses oozings from corpses as cosmetics, and skulls as drinking vessels. The association with death runs parallel to the theme of slaying and sacrifice, but seems to have an independent aspect as well. Then, of course, there is the very strong connection with blood sacrifice, literal, ritual and metaphorical. Beginning from Frazer, much has been written on the subject, but the point to stress here is that blood sacrifice and fertilityvegetational and humanare not two separate aspects. In Tamil Nadu, the kodai (annual festival) of the amman (goddess) temple of the village has as its central event, the sacrifice of the goat (which has replaced the buffalo). Simultaneously the festival has strong vegetation/sprouting rituals. The connection is highlighted in the ritual soaking and sprouting of different types of grains in the sacrificial victim's blood, in order to be able to predict the season's successful harvest [Whitehead 1976:64-65]. The other side of fertility is the association of some festivals of the goddess with suspension of "normative sexual behaviour.18 Dramatically capturing some of these linkages is the icon of chinnamasta in which Kali stands in a cremation ground on the copulating bodies of Kama, the god of love and his wife Rati. She has severed her head with a sword which she has in one hand. In the other hand is a platter which holds her severed head. Blood spurts out from her neck in three jets, two of them are drunk by two female attendants on either side, and the third is Economic and Political Weekly

drunk by the severed head of Kali herself. As Kinsley puts it, this is a way of showing that life, sex and death are part of an interi dependent and unified system. The goddess, who represents the vital forces of the cosmos, needs nourishmentlife feeds on life, and death is a necessity for life [1987:162-63]. The other dramatic icon is the famous sakambhari seal from Harappa, in which a woman (goddess) is shown upside down, with a plant issuing out of her womb [Marshall 1931:V.1:52]. The precise form is never captured again visually, but a wordpicture in Markandeyapurana (ch 11 verse 48-49 tr by Pargiter 1904) repeats the image. Next O ye Gods, 1 shall support the whole world with the life sustaining vegetables which shall grow out of my own body during a period of heavy rain. 1 shall gain fame on earth then as sakambhari The goddess mediates between the ultimate duality of life and death: death in which is implicit regeneration and transformation. It is a world-view in which life feeds on blood; forms of life-plant, animal and h u m a n are interconnected. Fundamental perceptions of reality have been chosen to be represented through the female body, which is seen as a source of magical power. Starting with the two faces of life and death, the iconic journey proceeds, bridging dualities at multiple levels. For instance, the goddess of war reveals in herself a vegetational substratum underscoring the martial character of fertility. As the popular and ubiquitous Durga, she is the presiding deity for several martial/royal castes like Rajputs, Marathas, Mysore kings, etc. The annual worship of weaponry and of Durga as warrior to ensure success in war is a major event in these communities. The martial overlay notwithstanding, Durga has a distinct vegetational substratum, as when she says that in an earlier incarnation, she was sakambhari (quoted above). While the legend and icon are about the warrior goddess, the ritualsfor example ghatasthapana and navapatrikashow her as a vegetation goddess.19 Even the popular mahishasuramardini icon has evolved over time from the Kushana period when the battle aspect is somewhat subdued, to the later Ellora and Mahabalipuram versions which elaborate and develop the goddess as warrior [Agrawala 1958 and Viennot 1956]. A striking group of icons is that of the goddess who wears five miniature weapons or ayudhas in her headdress. There is no other sign of the martial. The cult of pancacudaas she is called, is widely prevalent from Bengal to Rupar (2nd-lst centuries BC), and Desai [1977:155] suggests that she was a fertility goddess whose symbolic marriage was celebrated for the general welfare of the community and for agricultural productivity. The martial could be interpreted as a metaphor to underscore the protective function of the goddess, who as bestower of

plant, animal and human fertility, has to be a fighter. The ideology of motherhood as developed in patrilineal systems subsumes the category of woman in that of mother, and sublimates the erotic. The goddess on the other hand, is imbued with a conscious femininity with implied or explicit eroticism. Durga as warrior is portrayed as the pinnacle of feminine beauty as is evident from the icon, but even the Sanskrit text Devi mahatmya is eloquent about the goddess' beauty that lures Mahisha, and the texts of candisataka and saundaryalahari are explicit in their description of the physical beauty of the goddess.20 In contrast, in the older stream of mother goddess, the sexual and reproductive aspects are so starkly explicit as to go beyond eroticism. By completely depersonalising the context, the icon moves from details into abstraction, and transforms the specific to the universal. Both in the erotic and universal forms, mother-goddess iconography is at variance with the ideology of motherhood as applied to real-life mothers. She is mother, but not spouse. She is mother but not often portrayed with .children. All over southern India, the village-goddess-valorised as an aspect of Durga-Parvatihas the suffix amma (mother) but rarely is she shown as a physical mother. Blessing women with offspring is one of her functions, but by no means the only or main one. The most important concern of the village goddess is protectionof hearth, field, soil, crop, boundary, foetusfrom disease, pestilence, flood, drought and famine.

HI What Does She Stand For?

Few of those interested in the goddesswriters, scholars, devotees feminists or various combinations of thesehave been able to resist the temptation of seeing in her attributes, an implied cultural evaluation of women, and of developing this into propositions on the type of society 'goddess culture* represents or is a survival from. It \% pertinent to distinguish between different genres of scholarship on the goddess. In India, it has generally been the province of historians and has formed part of the ongoing discussions on the theme of Aryan versus preAryan, and includes a spectrum of approaches that attempt broad synthesis of the subcontinent's early history (for example, the work of Basham and Kosambi). The confrontation and eventual assimilation of the autochthonous with the incoming has been pitched at several levels: belief systems with the earth goddess at the core versus vedic male-centred worship of sky gods based on contrasting systems of primitive agriculture versus nomadic pastoralism. The key element in the Indian context has been the continuity of the goddess tradition at multiple levels. Though temporarily eclipsed in vedic material, the goddess resurfaces in the puranas and at various points thereafter WS-61

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becomes a symbol for the coalescing of counter traditions. It is possible to see the developments in iconography as a dynamic process of the interaction between the substratum of goddess-centred worship, and mainstream worship which inverts, nuetralises but ultimately accommodates the former.21 The goddess has philosophical roots in the mainstream as well, for samkhya after all recognises the categories of purusha and prakriti. The latter which activates the inert purusha, is primary so far as worldprocess is concerned. This idea is developed and elaborated in tantra, The classical mainstream text of Devimahatmya, which sees the ultimate reality as feminine is based on this germinal concept from samkhya. In another genre-anthropological writing of the last century and early part of this centurythe theme of the goddess became part of the arguments marshalled in the debates around the idea of the 'matriarchate". Pitched on a grand scale, within the general framework of evolutionism, the general thrust of the argument for a universal stage of matriarchy preceding and later overtaken by patriarchy was based on the rich goddess-centred mythology of nonsemitic cultures as well as the ethnographic material on communities with simple economies.22 '; The subject at one stage, generated considerable academic discussion. But due to the serious gaps, the universal scale and the embarrassing colonial baggage that came With it, it was not taken up by subsequent anthropological scholarship . By default, it was assumed that some form of patriarchy must have been universal,23 but this also was a recogrtisably problematic assumption. The theme has therefore had an irresistible fascination, with predictable revivaldebunking cycles. if Feminist writing has raised the issue again, and archaeologists and anthropologists have been stung into trying afresh for solutions.24 Eeacock's would be one example of recent wtork which queries the notion of the universality of gender hierarchy. Based on ethnographic work among hunter-gatherers, she suggests that principles of gender structuring other than hierarchy are real possibilities in pre-class societies and that to see incipient hierarchy everywhere is to project oar own ethnocentricity on to all societies
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inquiry: what is the principle of gender structuring in pre-patriarchal cultures, how is it articulated in terms of the overall stratification? What is the relationship between female autonomy and the autonomy of the individual? Can we project contemporary definitions of words like 'autonomy' 'power' 'equality' on to a different time-scale, without thinking about issues of meaning and value? The point does not need labouring that mother-goddess does not correlate with high secular status for women in India. In fact, it is possible to argue for an inverse relationship. Campbell provocatively suggests that mother-goddess worship is prominent in cultures that polarise male and female roles, that it has an inverse relation to secular status. She suggests that mother-goddess may be a compensation for the subordinate status of women [Campbell, 1983:5-24]. A related example is that of Theravada Buddhism in Burma and Thailand which has rejected the goddess at the formal level. The women in these countries have a high secular status, which has its roots in the bilateral kinship systems of Southeast Asia [Ferguson 1983 283-304]. The actual situation of women at a given point in time reflects a complex mix of ideological and material factors. While the goddess cannot guarantee status in real life, "talk about god, goddess, gods and goddesses is talk about the (male and female) self in relation to the environment" [Yocum 1986:281]. The attributes of the goddess give us an indication of what is defined in that culture as feminine. Gross says "the goddess does impart a certain sense of dignity, selfworth, personal assertiveness and simple visibility" [1978:274]. I would qualify that, or rather extend it by saying the goddess is an untapped potential of possibilities. Tb say that goddesses in India are powerful is besides the point. They are certainly visible and worshipped, but the way in which power is articulated by different goddesses, suggests that the combination of autonomy and power is socially less acceptable than power acquired through playing a familial role. Stretching the point a little further, the nuances in the goddess may give a clue as to how individual women, provided they are materially situated, could and do exert 'power' in real life, or convert it to socially acceptable forms. The subtext in any contemporary essay on the goddess could well read 'but why such interest now, when she has always been there". And in the manner of the hymn which ends with the fruit of listening, phalasruti, one could ask, what will be its outcome? There is currently a definite revival of interest in the goddess; the impetus is broadly from the growth of feminist consciousness in the west, specifically, North America, though arguably, this too is set within the framework of Orientalism. . For women within the church, and for students of theology and religion in general, the understressed femininity of the divine in Judaeo-Christian religions has raised nag-

yiEisler (1987) writing in a different genre asfts much the same questions. Looking at ideology of gender relations as is manifested (oil such as is manifested) through icons and artefacts of early cultures, she makes the piirint that in societies where the images of dMnity are female, social structure must sorely be different from societies where worship is of the divine father who wields thalthunderbolt and sword. In such societies, gemler relations would be based on principles other than that which we are used to, ir*hich 'linking' rather than 'ranking* is the operative principle. Though freely Utopian' aint'tmillenarian in tone, the point being made opens up a constructive- line of

ging questions and created a profound dissatisfaction, a spiritual vacuum [see for example, Christ 1979]. Efforts at looking into the roots of biblical tradition [for example Patai 1967], at Mariology, at pre-Christian* fertility and earth goddesses beneath the overlay of Roman Catholicism which reinterprets them as madonnas [Moss and Cappannari 1983], efforts at reinterpreting the figures and concepts of the Bible to include androgyny [for example, Gelpi 1984] are responses to a consciousness of this vacuum. Gross argues that imagery, metaphor and personal gods are inevitable and intrinsically satisfying. The need is to move from 'God, the father' not to impersonal, abstract godhead but to an open espousal of the cause of 'God, the mother'. This may serve as a corrective to current sexism in theology and ritual [1978: 276]. What more . alluring model than Indian goddesses? Within the western feminist movement, too, there are trends indicating a shift in emphasis. Having travelled on a long journey of becoming aware of and trying to change external structures of oppression, some individuals and groups are now turning to look inwards for sources of empowerment, for the 'goddess within*. The rediscovery/reimaging/reclaiming of the goddess in her 'second coming' is a theme that has appeal to other groups working on alternativesfor example those in the ecology movement. Within mainstream academicsart history, archaeology, philosophy, comparative religionrecent writing on the goddess is informed by the large and lively feminist scholarship in general; it asks a somewhat different set of questions [see for example, Kinsley 1987, Wulff and Hawley 1982, and Gimbutas 1982]. The contrast between the "exuberant polytheistic iconoclatry" of Indian goddesses and the "single, transcendental masculine divinity" of the Christian West [Nicholas 1983] has been so sharp that the 'rediscovery' of the Indian goddess by North America has been one of uncritical enthusiasm. Within Indian feminist discourse, response to the goddess has been much more slow, cautious, and at times tinged with suspicion. The specificities of the Indian situation that feminists are trying to tackle are so intimately tied up with oppressive and restrictive traditions affecting women, that symbols and imagery with a religious association are by definition suspect. Violent and vicious cleavages along religious lines, and appropriation of traditional symbols by fundamentalist groups is part of the contemporary political reality, and the goddess is caught in the crossfire. But there is a general movement towards a more introspective phase, within feminist scholarship and activism. It is inevitable that in discussions on culture as power versus culture as oppression, the goddess will resurface. The question is, what are we to make of her? Is it possible to transplant the goddess from her native environment and 'use' her as 'resource' for filling the vacuum in a completely different setting, as a certain genre October 20-27, 1990

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of western feminist writing seems to imply. Johnson's (1989) caution that mother goddess monotheism "may leave out spinsters and lesbians and equate birth with creativity" is a case in point. One cannot 'use' the goddess for finding solutions to contemporary problems any more than one can apply a modernist yardstick of gender equality or hierarchy to measure all cultures at all times. Perhaps the goddess can only remain a source of inspiration, a vision.26 But what of India, where the goddess tradition has live roots? Even within an overall climate of extreme commodification of the female image, and even in the most intense form of kitsch, goddess iconography has resisted being objectified and completely recast in terms of the male gaze. It is part of the world of meaning for many. It is a potential source of empowerment. The challenge is how to creatively link it With the lives of ordinary women, without getting identified with sectarian and divisive interests. The goddess is a powerful symbol of linkages. She bridges realms and levels, hierarchies and schisms: between the autochthonous and alien, conquerors and conquered, between brahminised and lower ranking castes and between caste and tribe, between mainstream and protestant philosophy, between sophisticated theology and living cults, between reified ritual and the immediacy of local practice: hookswinging, fire-walking, blood, meat and liquor, between classical Sanskrit text and oral tradition, between materials: metal, stone and clay. Inverted, neutralised, absorbed, mainstreamed, she still exists as a disturbing presence; by daring to exist, she begs to differ. Notes [Acknowledgements to Chandralekha whose work opened up the conceptual possibilities of the theme, to C S Lakshmi, Prabha Krishnan, Devangana Desai and Sujata Patel for helpful comments on earlier drafts, to Heras Institute of Ancient Indian Culture for generous access to library, to Asiatic Society of Bombay for research facilities, to Indira Aiyar for sparing her unpublished manuscript, to Arvind Gupta for tracking and sending a rather inaccessible paper and to Maithreyi Krishna Raj for the insight and support.] 1 Though I have used the word 'mothergoddess' in some contexts, for convenience, I am sensitive to the fact that it is a term created by early archaeology, and evokes a certain pattern of responses. In local usage, the goddess is not usually referred to by this compound term. She could be referred to as devi or its equivalent, and addressed as devi or as ma or the equivalents. More usually, the suffix 'mother' is added after the personal name of the goddess. Thus, we have Sita maiya, Durga mata or Mariamma. But there is no implication for physical motherhood. Such a suffix is added behind personal names of women in southern

India, regardless of their age, marital status or maternity. 2 Sankalia (1978:8) reports on a small figure from Belan Valley. Mirzapur district, UP dated to the upper Paleolithic. He calls it 'India's earliest dated work 'of human origin'. Though originally regarded as a bone harpoon, he identifies it as a female figure, with a featureless triangular face and stick-like trunk with a pointed portion for the legs. The figure, with pendant breasts. and broad loins shows 'a remarkable affinity' to the European 'ven uses'. Since this is a solitary find, the Zhob and Kulli figures can be taken as a point of departure for the present. 3 For an overview, see Graziosi (1960), Gimbutas (1982) and Leroi-Gourhan (1968). 4 There is an extensive literature on the subject. For a sample, see Campbell (1959), James (1959) and Mellaart (1967). 5 Some of the sites are Alampur, Mahakut, Ter, Bhita, Jhusi, Kausambi, Vadgaon, Nevasa, Nagarjunakonda, Kunidene (Guntur), Bhavanasi, Sangameshwaram, Yellala, Praia kota and Kondapuram. See Aiyar (1989: 415), Desai (1975: 12-13, also 1989), and Sankalia (1960:113-120), for detailed description. 6 My identification is based on an unpublished photograph from the director of archaeology and museums, Hyderabad, who in a personal communication says that the piece was excavated from Medchal Taluk, Ranga Reddy district from the Vishnukundin level, along with a large number of coins and a complex of structures of the same period. See also report in The Hindu, 24-12-89. 7 Personal communication from Devangana Desai. 8 In southeast Asia, it is a common motif on the facade of houses and on dolmen graves (Sankalfa i960: 113,121).It is also found in Babylonia, New Zealand, pre-Columbian South America and Ireland (Donaldson 1975:87). 9 The multiple meanings of the lotus as head are explored at some length by Kramrisch (1956) but the fact that some figures have neither head nor a lotus as substitute suggests that the symbolism of the lotus may not be critical to the message of the icon. Dhavalikar (1987:281-93) links Lajjagauri with the well- known Harappan seal of sakambhari. Though the icons do not seem to be directly linked, the plant issuing from the womb of the female figure could be interpreted as completing what Lajjagauri is only implying. Kinsley (1987:176-77) refutes attempts to connect Lajjagauri to chinnamasta, an aspect of Kali in which she severs her own head.His point is that in the former, the emphasis is quite different, and the headlessness lacks the force of the latter. 10 For a general idea of the excavations of that period, see Fairservis (1956) and Sankalia (1962). 11 For a brief overview, see Desai (1983). 12 Kramrisch (J956:268) like O'Flaherty translates the word uttanapadzs the birth-giving position ("the world was born of her with the legs spread open"). Sankalia

(1960:113) reads Aditi's position as 'squatting with knees raised and turned outward'. The dictionary meaning (Monier-Williams 1899) of the term is "one whose legs are extended in parturition" and uttana is listed as 'stretched out, spread out..:, etc. There seems to be a strong case for identifying Aditi with Lajjagauri. 13 Th.e epithets are from Atharva veda and other vedic and post-vedic sources. See Agrawala (1984: 79). 14 Salabhanjika and Asokabhanjika festivals, involving ritual rejuvenation of trees by a girl wearing sala/asoka leaves on the ears, are known in classical literature. 15 Srisukta, considered to be a 4th century BC appendage to Rg veda, is a hymn in praise of goddess sri. 16 The nature of primary group interaction in the paleolithic and neolithic is obviously a conjectural matter. But it is fair to presume that the intensive and exlusive character of interaction with mother in early childhood ' which is implicit in the 'Great Mother' archetype is not typical of most cultures across space and time. 17 Some examples: in the Lez-Eiyzies burial, the corpses are surrounded with carefully arranged cowrie shells, some of which are coated with red ochre (Eisler 1987); at Dneiper, USSR, 'a number of mammoth skulls were found arranged in a circle, and in the centre were a number of tusks, some plaques of mammoth ivory scratched with geometric patterns, and a 'venus' (Campbell 1959:V1:327); in Quetta valley, the goddess and bull pair were found on a mud brick platform which had in its foundations, a disarticulated human skull (Ibid: V2:149). 18 An interesting example is the Bhagavati amman temple in Kerala, where on a given day men and women devotees are supposed to hurl sexual abuses at each other. 19 Navapatrika: Worship of a bundle of nine different plants.Ghatasthapana: Ritual in which leaves of different plants brought in contact with a ghata or pot of water. 20 The former is by Bana (7th century AD) and the latter attributed to Sankara (8th century AD). 21 In general art historians have been uneasy about tackling this theme head on. Sometimes, the mother goddess is completely underplayed, with the emphasis being laid on the less disturbing devi iconography. Sometimes, the whole emphasis is on 'the beauty of the female form'. Sometimes descriptions of mother-goddess figures are dismissive or bland or project her as a fetishistic oddity. 22 For an comprehensive overview, see FleuhrLobban (1979) and responses to her paper. 23 Such a position had considerable influence on feminist scholarship in the seventies. See for example Rosaldo (1974). 24 See Webster's (1975) review of the work of Leacock, Gough, de Beauvoir, Firestone and Gould Davis. 25 Another version of the same idea, but more rigidly expressed, is reflected in the dominant current of Soviet scholarship. The premise of equality of men and women in

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the early evolutionary stages of primitive society is so universally accepted in USSR that it has long since been introduced in text books (Semenov 1979). The tone of finality about societies of which we have fragile and fragmentary knowledge is worrying as is the projection of the concept and term of 'equality' into what would be completely different cultures. The 'primitive commune" idea has the same Utopian connotations that the matriarchate has. 26 Webster (1975: 156) puts it in perspective when she says that "I would not encourage women to confuse myth with history or vision for science", and that the vision of matriarchy can be used for furthering the creation of feminist theory and action.

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