Download Hindu Women: The Rites of Passage

Hindu Women: The Rites of Passage
by Penelope Stickney
REL 600
Professor Brian Wilson
April 19, 2000
Hindu Women: The Rites of Passage
To the casual observer, the countryside of India is barren with dull flat green fields or
brown dust or mud. Amidst the sun drenched scenery are small clumps of trees, slow
muddy rivers, the dull white of humped cattle, or tiny homes and shops all drab with dust,
rust, and water stains. Within the old cities the streets are paths labyrinthed among rainbrowned official buildings. People are jammed into the streets and half-naked children,
suffering from extreme poverty and hunger, share space with the ambling sacred cows.
Without homes, whole families live and die in the open. The malnourished elderly with
deeply lined faces from toil and hard work endure beside emaciated children and animals.
Silhouetted in nature, the country moves through extreme natural crises of famine, flood,
and drought.
This face of India takes a new look when its life is understood through different eyes.
It is then that the daily activity, though apparently subdued and quiet, exhibits energetic
vitality and the extremes of humanity are not ignored but respected as part of natural,
cyclical living. Women in many-hued saris and men in pants and pastel shirts splash
color on the dignity of labor and work. Rather than apathetic, India explores the
vicissitude of life. The caste system, once established as a means to govern life, has
mutated, and although a disparity of privilege is still evoked by pervasive attitudes
toward some, women are considered equal to men in education, marriage, property rights,
and law. Women in India have gained in status and control of their personal lives, yet the
ideal symbolic nature of womanhood, first taught through the classical literature and
worship of female gods remains intricately woven into the patterns of social order and the
infinite within the self. However, this ideal paved the way for the breakdown of the
Indian caste system and the result of women's independence.
Tracing the origins of India as a nation enables an understanding of the roots of
Hinduism, yet traditional Indian point of view differs from the Western historians'
standard
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view. Western historians teach an Aryan invasion theory stating that the highly
organized
cultures of the Indus Valley and the villages in other parts of the subcontinent were
gradually overrun by nomadic invaders from outside India. The original civilization,
extending from about 2500 BCE to the Indio-European migrations at around 2000-1500
BCE, show remnants of technologically advanced cities, the plumbing and aqueducts
equaled only by the ancient Romans and the Mesopotamians of the modern world. While
these early cities contained no obvious temples, an elaborate bathing system uncovered
by archeologists suggests ritual purification. "Enigmatic religious motifs appear on many
of the seals and small art objects that have been found; these suggest a mother goddess...,
phallic gods, sacred bulls, and...a deity in perhaps a yogic meditation posture" ( Ellwood
and McGraw 61). But by 1900-1500 BCE, the Indus Valley civilization experienced its
decline and the cities fell into ruins at the hands of the Aryan cow herders who have been
ascribed with the early roots of Hinduism, and through the Laws of Manu (c. 100 CE),
helped to establish the system of caste.
Conversely, the Hindu nationalists reject this theory as they refuse to believe that their
religion is foreign-born, but rather the product of an indigenous people, who first
received the Vedas in the oral tradition c.8000-6000 BCE (Fisher 82-83). The extent of
this debate rests in the fact that "[b]efore the first millennium CE there is no
historiography in the south Asian cultural region and texts are not dated" (Flood 20).
This leaves dating of the found texts problematic, as ones with prior reference must be
placed in sequential order, but precise dating remains impossible. Also, "[o]ne of the
clichés about Hinduism has been that it is ahistorical and sees time as cyclical rather
than lineal, which has militated against the keeping of historical records....The earliest
writing of history
chronicles
in the South Asian region occurs in the fourth century CE with the
written by Sri Lankan Buddhist monks. Myths and genealogies have been
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recorded primarily in the Hindu Epics and texts called Puranas, reaching their
present form in the mid first millennium CE." (20-21)
In spite of the vagueness of its origins and antiquity, the sacred hymns of the Vedas
can be examined. These were written in four parts that appear to have been developed
over time. The earliest is the Samhitas, hymns of praise in worship of deities. These
were followed by the Brahmanas which include directions about performances of the
ritual sacrifices to the deities. The third part of the Vedas, the Aranyakas or "forest
treatises," include reclusive meditations, and the latest of the Vedas, the Upanishads,
contain the teachings from highly spiritualized masters and explain the experience of
personal transformation from participating in the rituals. Each of the Vedas are thought
to be god-breathed and recorded by the sages who first heard their messages, although
they were not initially committed to writing but transferred through careful study in the
oral tradition.
In the earliest Vedic scripture, the Rig Veda, the establishment of the family as the
central component of religious worship is found. In this text women are highly revered in
the social structure as wives and mothers and are brought into the center of worship.
Believing that the family is blessed as a collective, many families, even in the current era,
keep their worship out of the temple and at home, where the mother remains attentive to
the family ritual of meditation.
With the appearance of the Brahmanas, the purity of the Vedas was kept by the
Brahmins or priests, who became established as a peculiar class of people assigned to
keeping the sacrificial rites. The focus of their study was on Brahma as the god of
creation, whose words and sacrifice made the world, and they came to believe that by
their words and sacrifices the gods could be controlled. "Thus, the sacrifices controlled
the
gods, and the brahmin priests controlled the sacrifice, becoming like higher gods
themselves....For the sacrifice was nothing less than "making the world" and
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calling into life the gods who rule over it; the purpose then was to meditate on
what the cosmos is like and to make adjustments to it in such a way as to keep it
on course or direct its power in desired destinations." (Ellwood and McGraw
65-66)
The Brahmins retained the authority of class as those who became priests were born
into that service. "It is a characteristic of class-organized societies that rights of
ownership are the prerogative of minority groups which form privileged elite. The
capacity of the upper-class minority to 'exploit' the services of the lower-class majority is
critically dependent upon the fact that the members of the underprivileged group must
compete among themselves for the favors of the elite" (Leach 5-6). The Brahmins then
became the highest class and maintained superiority of the caste leadership even though
those they served were from the wealthy caste. Because it was expected of the Brahmins
to become well educated in the techniques and rituals, especially in public worship,
gender and purpose became the focus of education. Most women of the upper caste lost
their privilege to become educated, and some significant focus of family worship shifted
from mother leadership.
For centuries the teachings of the Vedas were kept from the lower or working caste,
and a great majority of the Indians, illiterate and provincial, were restricted from hearing
the teachings directly. Eventually it was the teaching of the fourth part of the Vedas that
opened opportunity for all to hear the message. The Upanishads tells that a person who
finds his true Self, OM or AUM, experiences a sense of oneness with the universe-home
and becomes a complete human being, understanding the inner delights and occult power
of the inner world while living and working in the outer world. With this knowledge, a
new mission becomes his, that of walking the world as a "holy man" and spreading his
wisdom to the inhabitants of the other villages. Among these early teachers from the
sixth
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century BCE was the founder of the Jain religion, still practiced in India today, and
Siddhartha Gautama, called Buddha.
In conjecture, Rudolf Otto wrote, "the liberation and salvation motif...was paralleled
in Indian thought, when the Sankhya doctrine became detached from the Upanishad
atmosphere. It propounded liberative 'knowledge', the spirit withdrawing from the realm
of nature into serenity and inaction" (455). Here Otto describes the technique of spiritual
concentration in the practice of Yoga, as it permits its users to receive balance, purity,
wisdom, and peacefulness of mind. The practice of the Upanishads brought "[r]eligious
emotion and the experience of salvation, liberation, the sense of ultimate release, [and]
the continuance in a state of religious experience...into being" (452). These life attitudes
encouraged recognition in the commonality of existence, especially among the lower
caste, who found it necessary to share working responsibilities for the purpose of
survival. They also paved the way for women to receive individual equality, when
society became influenced by Gandhian thinking.
"[I]n India,...the oldest teachings held that human beings were destined to live
without hope in a world that passed through immense cycles of decay and decline
until it was finally destroyed and again remade. The reaction to this deeply
pessimistic view eventually came in the form of the classic Eastern version of
eternal return--the doctrine of rebirth, or reincarnation. We find it chiefly in the
famous Hindu Upanishads....Seeing humanity as hopelessly enslaved by these
endless cycles of nature, these teachers insisted that a path could be found to a
purely spiritual release from history's triviality and terrors. They announced that
the soul, or true self, could free itself from the body, which is its main tie to
history, by struggling patiently through a long series of rebirths until finally a
purely spiritual escape was achieved. [This is] the doctrine of moksha, the soul's
final release from nature and history." (Pals 180)
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Within the classical Hindu tradition, wives worshipped their husbands as personal
gods and believed that through sacrificially bringing comfort and beauty to the life of the
spouse, the cyclical pattern for their own lives might be broken. The hope of the dutiful
wife was that she would either spend her next life as a man or else be blessed with
moksha. This was the pure focus of living out her worshipful duty.
The Laws of Manu initially systematized the Hindu society, beginning with the
brahmins (priest-scholars), kshatriyas (rulers or warriors), vaishyas (merchants and
craftsmen) and shudras (peasants). Metaphorically, each of these groups represent a part
of the body: brahmins form the head, kshatriyas the arms, vaishyas represent the thighs,
and shudras the feet. Those not included in this system, the harijans or untouchables,
make up about twenty percent of the current population of India and rank among the
poorest members of society. Gough suggests that the caste system outlines occupations.
"Castes in Hindu India are ranked, birth-status groups. The caste...tends to be associated
with an occupation. A caste is not a localized group, but comprises small local
communities, often several miles apart. Local communities of different castes form
administration units as multi-caste villages or towns" (11). Varying degree of caste
within same caste communities forms itself superficially, but actually the real division of
caste finds its basis in the principle of purity and impurity. One is made impure by
contact with another from a lower caste, resulting in the need for ritual purification. This
significant, innate attitude maintains separateness, even though the caste system has been
legally abolished in modern India.
Edmund Leach, in his approach to the structure of a society, defines caste this way:
"In a formal sense, the word 'caste'...should always be taken to have its ethnographic
Hindu meaning" (1).
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"Caste conforms to the following criteria:
(1) A caste is endogamous.
(2) There are restrictions on commensality between members of different castes.
(3) There is a hierarchical grading of castes, the best recognized position being
that of the Brahman at the top.
(4) In various kinds of context, especially those concerned with food, sex and
ritual, a member of a 'high' caste is liable to be 'polluted' by either direct or indirect
contact with a member of a 'low' caste.
(5) Castes are very commonly associated with traditional occupations.
(6) A man's caste status is finally determined by the circumstances of his birth,
unless he comes to be expelled from his caste for some ritual offense.
(7) The system as a whole is always focused around the prestige accorded to the
Brahmans" (Leach 2-3). Although each level meets the criteria for this study, what is
most appropriate here is Leach's explanation of support in number four. In food, sex and
ritual, a member of one caste may be polluted by a member of a lower caste.
From her work in a Tanjore Hindu village, Kathleen Gough maintains, "The formal
ranking of castes is defined in terms of the belief in ritual purity and pollution;
rules of social distance between castes issue primarily from this belief. Whatever
the origins of these rules, their codification, recording and adaptation to local
circumstances have been primarily the work of the Brahmans, who from their
origin in the Vedic kingdoms of the North Indian river valleys spread throughout
the subcontinent as the highest caste of religious specialists." (11)
It cannot be ignored that the Brahmanic ritualism influenced the caste system and did
so until after the control of the British (1857-1947). According to Max Weber, the
Brahmin priests "claimed high rank and...were intellectual officers and landowners who
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stood close to the center of state power....[Weber] outlines the social structure of
India, noting that the social and ritual demarcation of the castes was largely based
on magical beliefs and that the spread of Hinduism not only involved the incorporation of tribal communities into the caste system through conquest, but that
changes in rank status were also related to the process of Hinduization." (qtd.
in Morris 80-81)
With the complication of religious practice, religious education became a necessity and
the upper castes found fewer women in the halls of education, filled with many of its new
devout progeny. And, as the sacred involvement of women in the ritual declined, men
chose to follow the Laws of Manu that dictated the ways to govern women by severely
limiting their lives:
In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband,
when her lord is dead to her sons: a woman must never be independent....
Though destitute of virtue, or seeking pleasure (elsewhere), or devoid of good
qualities, (yet) a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful
wife....
Day and night, woman must be kept in dependency by the males (of) their
(families), and if they attach themselves to sensual enjoyments, they must be kept
under one's control....
Through their passion for men, through their mutable temper, through their
natural heartlessness, they become disloyal towards their husbands, however
carefully they are guarded in this (world).
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Knowing their disposition, which the Lord of creatures laid in them at the
creation to be such, (every) man should most strenuously exert himself to guard
them. (qtd. in Ellwood and McGraw 101-102)
This perceived need to control women was founded in the story of the "Goddess
Shakti--the universal power, both creative and destructive, from which all things derive.
[A]s Shakti became...devoted wife of Shiva, so women should be transformed....'[I]f the
goddess were not controlled by her male consort, her energy would go to excess and
produce chaos'" (102).
The influences from this illustration produced the classic image of the Hindu woman.
She is married with at least one son; chaste, humble, devoted to the point of sacrifice to
her family and especially her husband, whom she reveres as god. She bathes, sleeps, eats
only after he is finished; provides sexual pleasure and personal and cultural pleasure to
the home; fasts, makes vows, and sacrifices to the gods for the well-being of the family;
performs her husbands funerary rights to ensure his safe passage to the next life. In all
ways, she upholds the social and cosmic order and in return she hopes to have gained
sufficiently good karma to be reborn as a man in her next life (102). The Hindu tradition
suggests that the woman chooses to live this apparent attitude of servitude in order to
gain victory in the next life. Undoubtedly some women were coerced into accepting this
ritualism as their best course of life.
Other responses to the Laws of Manu included child marriage and the practice of
isolating the wife from society by confining her to the home. To remain pure and
"pollution-free," women were not allowed to divorce, or upon widowhood, was refused
permission to remarry. Also, the widow was scorned in Hindu society. She was
considered unlucky, had to keep her head shaved and wear course garments, and was
forced to remove the red dot from her forehead, the symbol of wifehood and her only
source of status. Her only alternative to this life was to commit Sati, the ritual where she
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was burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre. It is recorded that a few women chose
this self-sacrificial devotion in order to receive exaltation, but it appears that most women
who performed Sati did so under physical or emotional duress.
A balance to the apparent male dominance of Indian society comes in the form of
Mother worship. As contributors and sustainers of the earth through reproduction,
women are highly revered, and often women without children are respectfully referred to
as Mother. This reverence has taken form in many goddesses who constitute manifold
attributes of female strength, and is memorialized in the sacredness of the Hindu cows,
but ultimately find incarnation in the form of One goddess, the active power Devi, the
shakti that manifests as the universe. "She is the mother of everything but she is not
merely a soft, maternal figure. She is an embodiment of both creative and destructive
power. She can be depicted as Lakshmi, the goddess of good fortune, offering bounty, or
as Kali, the dark goddess of the battlefield, who drinks the blood of her enemies"
(Shattuck 49). "[T]he Mother Goddess...is a deity a living original divine figure, in
whom the unmeasurable inexpressible essence of the world manifests itself" (
"Theophania" 632). She gathers all to her and all is in her; yet, many of the deities are
worshipped individually.
"Two of the most popular goddesses are Sarasvati and Lakshmi. Sarasvati is
known as the goddess of learning and is also a patroness of music. Dressed in
white and riding a swan, she plays on a stringed instrument called a vina and
carries a manuscript and string of beads. The manuscript ties her to scripture and
in some traditions she has to have created devanagari, the 'divine script' in which
Sanskrit is written. Lakshmi is often depicted as standing on a lotus flanked by
elephants while gold coins shower from her hands. She is the goddess of good
fortune who brings prosperity to her worshippers. Her image adorns modern
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coins...." (Shattuck 50-51)
A brief summation of the female attributes of these deities reveals they are alike in the
strengths of female beauty and grace. In a classical sense, they are lovely to look at and
their energy and restraint bear great attraction. Sarasvati enables the cultural
intelligences and promotes literacy of the most sacred. According to some traditions, she
is the source of pure language, the mother tongue. In contrast, Lakshmi symbolizes
freedom from the concerns of life. Her lotus flower represents pleasure and luxury. She
is upheld by the available strength and patience of the waiting elephants and from her
hands drips the satisfaction of life and the promise of prosperity. The festival of lights,
Divali, is held annually to encourage her aid. Together these goddesses hold the promise
that personal discipline can lead to a worry-free life.
Of all the goddesses, one of the most individually revered is Kali, the Divine Mother,
who appears to have a growing number of followers among both Indians and Westerners
who study her teachings in the Shakta Tantras, called the Chandi. She is often depicted
as a dark mother devi, one who creates and destroys; a man-maker and a man-hater, yet
she was created from the blinding anger of Vishnu, Brahma, Indra and other mighty gods
who simultaneously sent out piercing rays of light that joined at one point and took the
shape of a woman. Energized, she quickly vindicated the anger against the demons that
caused her appearance and out-witted even the most impervious presence, until she had
conquered all and all the gods were fearful. It took her husband, Shiva, to contrive a way
to stop her.
As an allegory, Kali presents herself as a representation of the constant war going on
within each of us--between our divine and demonic natures. In the great Mother Goddess
legend, every dominant passion and vice has its special demon representative and in
punishing the demons, she brings balance to the world. Also, the Shaktas (Shakti
worshippers) believe that stories about fierce Goddesses stimulate imagination and are
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supposed to horrify and shock, so that pretensions may be stripped away and Cosmic
Truth is confronted.
"What is truth? According to the Shakta, the truth is that we are all deluded,
attached to finite things, and incapable of comprehending the absolute, infinite
Truth. And the cause of this illusion is Maya, which is the Divine Mother.
Whoever seeks freedom from this dilemma must worship the Mother. By her
grace alone one can uncover and regain the Truth. All prosperity comes to the
person who worships Shakti--energy." (Harding xxxi).
The poet penned these observations of Kali: The Divine Mother's magic / is ancient
as life itself. / She existed before gods and mortals, / and she will still exist even after the
/ great dissolution. / Mother is pure energy in subtle form, / but in times of need / or just
out of a desire to play, she manifests." Her devotees believe that Kali is the source of
pure energy. She is in all and through all, and those who seek her find Truth. Kali
requires the worshipper to acknowledge the dark side of the personality, to come to
accept it and understand it. It is only then that feminine strength is understood in its
entirety.
Even when wives were found in extreme isolation from society or taken into child
marriage, practices considered abuse to the Westerner, the Hindu people found dignity by
living beyond presupposed physical appearances and concentrating on the spiritual realm
of existence set forth in the Upanishads. In this perspective the body is merely a vessel, a
lifetime of transportation for the spirit waiting to move into the next world. Thoughts and
imaginings placed into unceasing meditation need not concern itself with the apparent
needs of those others found near by. Needs are only temporal and each person is left to
follow a specific path. This spiritual mindset readied itself for the reforms initiated by
Mahatma Gandhi and his experiments with truth.
When Gandhi assumed India's leadership, the average life span of an Indian was only
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27 years. Child marriage was common and babies and pregnant women ranked among
the highest statistics of mortality. Only 2% of the women had any education, and women
did not have personal identity. Women were not permitted outside the house without
male accompaniment, and in northern India women were only seen veiled. In this
context, Gandhi raised his claim that women are completely equal to men economically,
socially, and politically. "He believed that the difference between men and women was
only physical and has expressed several times in his writings that in many matters
especially those of tolerance, patience, and sacrifice that the Indian woman is superior to
the male" (Kamat 1)
Perhaps because Mahatma Gandhi was not focused on women as the center of his
reforms that so much ready progress was made in that area. Rather, Gandhi built public
support by encouraging non-violent resistance to the military-industrial oppression of
British rule, emphasizing that the people's strength lay in awareness of spiritual truth, not
in government control. His grassroots nationalism touched all aspects of life, including
political unity which gave birth to the social consciousness of reform for women. Fully
understanding the idea of self-sacrifice for others, many Hindu women joined in the
political rallies and campaigns to bring reform to India. Subsequently, British leadership
was overthrown. In 1917, the Women's Indian Association was founded, and in many
parts of India the women received the right to vote, long before the right was won in
Britain and other countries. This opened the argument that women did not need British
imperialism to protect their rights and initiated Indian independence from British rule.
After independence from Britain was won (1947) a new constitution was written in
which women were promised equal pay for equal work, polygamy was outlawed, the
marriage age was raised to 18 (21 for men), divorce was permitted, maternity leaves from
work could be taken, and women were protected from sexual harassment. In 1954,
India's
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first prime minister, Jawaharkak Nehru called on women to work with men in the
development of a new India. But still, in spite of progress, problems continue, especially
in the rural areas that are not aware of reforms. Also, literacy rates continue to be lower
than men's as traditional attitudes are difficult to change. "The notion of the ideal Hindu
wife is well imbedded in Hindu culture; and the practices and attitudes associated with
widows [has] never...been eradicated completely" (Ellwood and McGraw 108). Even so,
women are helping women in India and women's movements remain active. "Today if
Gandhi's agenda has fallen apart, it is due to Indian politics. The continued exploitation
of women can be attributed to the degradation in moral values of the society and utter
poverty" (Kamat 3).
Gandhi created opportunity for women in leadership, although the concept was
already understood through goddess symbology and ancient practicality. In South India,
inscriptions, literary sources, and sculptures from medieval times suggest that some
women enjoyed political and intellectual freedom, and Kamat records that historical
sources of the period are filled with stories of accomplished women of the era.
"Kanataka had women who administered villages, towns, divisions, and
heralded social and religious institutions. Piriyaketaladevi, a queen of Chalukya
Vikramaditya VI ruled three villages. According to an inscripture of 1148 AD
Lakkadevi was a village headman. Jakkiabbe ably administered seventy villages
after the premature death of her husband. Mailalladevi, a senior queen of
Someshwara-I ruled the important province of Banavasi comprising 12000
villages....There were female trustees, priestesses, philanthropists, musicians, and
scholars." ("Status" 1)
A return to the Vedas and Upanishads reveal that women were educated in the Vedic lore
just like men, and education for both men and women is a necessary basis for society.
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This philosophy continues to this modern era, although there are more opportunities
for women than there had once been. One of the important changes in modern Hinduism
is the visibility of women as gurus and temple priests. Cybelle Shattuck records that
Sarada Math is a women's monastic community that offers women a chance to live in a
monastic community run solely by women where they combine spiritual practices with
social outreach through their schools and hospitals. Also, a number of male gurus have
named women as their successors and a few women have been recognized as gurus on
their own. Sarala Chakabarty, a Calcutta grandmother, has undertaken spiritual studies
with a guru. She states, "I have a very powerful guru, a swami of the Ramakrishna
Mission, who has passed on. He gave me a mantra, and it gives me very much peace"
(Fisher 103). Other women have been formally trained to carry out the duties of temple
priests, especially in Hindu communities outside India where traditional specialists are
unavailable (Shattuck 112-113).
Choice in marriage by the woman is permitted, and property rights of women are
protected under the law so that any inheritance or dowry is recovered by her family upon
her death, rather than acquired by the husband and his family. Many women have
established independence in the workforce by operating their own businesses, and
although a dichotomy between law and practice still exists, especially in the rural Indian
areas, inheritors of the reform movement are working to let the uneducated village
women learn their rights.
Opportunities for research and work in the Untied States for the Indian and available
media merge India with Western culture, transforming the face of the Indian but not the
essence of Hinduism. "Hinduism teaches the value of life. We can be westernized but
still be a Hindu at heart. Nothing prevents that....All we need to understand is that we
value
every life on Earth and we should respect, forgive and forget and not hurt anyone
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intentionally. That determines whether or not we are true Hindus" (Lakshmi 4).
Hindu women respect their traditions and teach them to their children, and Westerners
incorporate the Hindu views of balance and spirituality into daily lives. In the United
States and Canada, Hindu temples have been built for worship, and traditional Hindu
music and videos preserve traditions. Film and television have made the knowledge of
pilgrimage sites available, and those traveling to visit them no longer need to do so on
foot. Many fear that technology and public transportation will alter the true spiritual
account of the experience, but others believe that regional traditions can be mixed with
new methods without losing value.
Certainly these questions of technological influence are currently being raised and
analyzed in every modern society. What of the old traditions will be preserved in its pure
form, and what traditions will be left to the interpretation of the media? The transfer of
tradition from the mothers to the daughters, as historically, will maintain the sense of
cosmic purity. The teaching passed to the next generation lends itself to cultural
interpretation, but the value placed on the experience determines its beauty. Arts, skills,
creation, and inspiration are the beauty of woman, and she is the beauty of man. That
changeless axiom is significant to the Hindu. Although the image changes, the inner
remains.
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Works Cited
Ellwood, Robert S. and Barbara A. McGraw. Many Peoples, Many Faiths:Women and
Men in the World Religions, 6th ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1999.
Fisher, Mary Pat.Living Religions, 4th ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1999.
Flood, Gavin. An introduction to Hinduism. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1996.
Gough, E. Kathleen. Caste in a Tanjore Village." Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon
and North-West Pakistan. Leach, E.R., ed. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1960.
Harding, Elizabeth U. Kali: the Black Goddess of Dakshineswar. Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass Pub., 1998.
Kamat, Jyotsna. Gandhiji and the Status of Women in India. Kamat's Potpourri (27 Mar
2000) 3pgs. 3 Apr 2000. Available: http://www.kamat.com/mmgandhi/gwomen.htm
---. Status of Women in Medieval Karnataka. Kamat's Potpourri (20 Jan 2000) 6pgs.
3 Apr 2000. Available: http://www.kamat.com/jyotsna/women.htm
Lakshmi. E-mail to Yashodadd. 3 Aug. 1998. 13 pgs. 9 Apr. 2000 available:
www.hindunet.org/forum/discus/messages/38/120.html.
Leach, E.R., ed. Introduction. Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon and North-West
Pakistan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1960.
Morris, Brian. Anthropological Studies of Religion. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1987.
Otto, Rudolf. "Religious history (from Religious essays)." Classical Approaches to the
Study of Religion. Jacques Waardenburg, ed. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.,
1999.
---. "Theophania." Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion. Jacques Waardenburg,
ed. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co., 1999.
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Works Cited, cont.
Pals, Daniel L. Seven Theories of Religion New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Shattuck, Cybelle. Hinduism. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1999.