Woman and Goddess in Hinduism by Tracy Pintchman & Rita D. Sherma

Author:Tracy Pintchman & Rita D. Sherma
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2011-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

P A R T III

The Feminine Principle in

Hindu Thought and Practice:

Problems and Possibilities

C H A P T E R 7

Hindu Rituals on Behalf of Women:

Notes on First Principles

Laurie L. Patton

In recent research I came across a young woman who told me how she recited the Rma-raksa, or “protection of Rma” mantra, during childbirth. I was struck by the integration of Sanskrit, and this small ritual, into her everyday life. Her Hindu world, and her performance of Sanskrit, included the labor and delivery room in a major city in India. While this was not a properly “Vedic” ritual, it was still modeled on the gyatr mantra and understood by many as Vedic. The baby was a girl, welcomed by all in the family. When I discussed this practice with another colleague, also a woman Sanskritist, I further commented that Sanskrit seemed to be a language of the heart as well as the head. She replied, “It is artha that matters—one’s goal in life and in ritual. Everything should be subject to artha, and analyzed accordingly.”

I was struck by the comment as a kind of practical philosophy—a sense of how one might best organize a life, both in terms of the appropriate mantra recitation as well as the appropriate rituals to follow as one confronts the stages of life. One might view my friend’s comment even as a kind of metapractical philosophy—an inquiry into why rituals work the way they do (see Kasulis, 1992). In other words, in my colleague’s view, the mantra became part of the larger goals of safe childbirth and flourishing of life. The following is a small meditation on the possibility of artha and the hierarchy of knowledge (prama, or “direct knowledge”; anumna, or “inferential knowledge”; smti, or “remembered knowledge”; and sadcara, or “customary practice”) in traditional Indian philosophy for present-day feminist purposes. By feminist purposes, I mean very simply thinking philosophically with the concerns of women in mind, such as safe childbirth and the prevention of female infanticide. These ideas will be the focus of the rest of this essay.

Recently, at the end of an article on the various usages of words and rites for miscarriage, stillbirth, and abortion (Patton, 2002: 51– 69),1 I suggested the possibility of using basic prama sources, such as Veda itself, as mantras to restore and protect women’s health. Within a Mms worldview, we might well argue for a continued form of ritual action performed for the health of women in contemporary India, not unlike the Rma-raka stotra with which I began this essay.

This task is, if we do it well, neither an attempt to legitimize ancient myths in order to valorize the current situation for women in India nor an attempt to raid ancient myths for equally problematic fem i n i st pu r pose s. We m ight i n stead b e fem i n is t M m msakas, or traditional interpreters of Vedic ritual. Mary McGee (2002: 32–51)2 has discussed the ways in which particular arguments of Jaimini might be useful for contemporary women.

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