Dancers: viRali, basavi, devadasi

[N. Ganesan]

>>Comparable is the Indian sculpture of dancers,
>>yakshis, ... where they are well adorned with jewelry,
>>yet their private parts are fully revealed.

>But in fact almost all these figures are meant to be wearing diaphanous
>garments: you can only see the hems and the areas where
>the cloth is bunched up.  This is what gave rise to my suggestion above.

Thanks for the suggestion. Perhaps. Also, we
cannot neglect nakedness altogether. Victorian value systems
are not applicable in ancient India. The devadAsis were called
sULe/cULai ('light, lustre', Cf.cULAmaNi/cUDAmaNi) and
mANikam ('ruby'). Our knowledge in this area is
little, and further explorations are possible.

As recently as 1995, the ancient practice of going
naked as offerings to Goddess Ellamma continue.
Goddess Ellamma myths make her an outcaste, and to
Her, basavi devadasis are dedicated in large numbers.
"The most ancient shrine of Ellamma is at Ugargol in
Belgaum district, Karnataka. In a village named Chandra Giri,
Karnataka, devotees proceed from home to temple in a state of nudity
to worship ReNuka-Ellamma, the ancient Earth mother. Indian Antiquary
(1882), pp. 122-3" (Pupul Jayakar, The Earth mother, p.223, Harper
& Row).
"
  RENUKAMBA'S REVENGE
(Reuter's report from Bangalore, March 7, 1995)

More than 1500 policemen stood guard in a southern Indian
village on Tuesday to prevent Hindu pilgrims from carrying
out a centuries-old tradition of trekking to a hill-top
temple in the nude. Police sealed entry to the village
of Chandragutti, 400 km (260 miles) northwest of Bangalore,
where a week-long festival dedicated to the Hindu goddess
Renukamba began on Tuesday, Dist. Police Chief Chandrasekhar
said. Every year for centuries, thousands of low-caste
Hindus would strip for a holy dip in the Varada river, then
climb four km (2.5 mils) with their clothes off to offer
prayers to the goddess at the hill-top temple.

But police banned the nude pilgrimage in 1987 ....
The worshippers then attacked police and paraded 10 police
officials including two women constables naked along the
banks of the river. Until 1986, more than 100,000 women
men, and children used to make the pilgrimage every yesr."

The Times of London (March 15, 1986)
"Naked Worshippers Lay Bare Dignity of Police and Press:

Each year devotees of the Hindu goddess, Renuka Devi, gather
on the banks of the Varada river in Karnataka, strip and
parade naked for two and a half miles to an ancient temple.
They have been doing it for centuries, but recently the
festival has become the centre of unenviable attention
from the media and do-gooders anxious to reform the
practice. At the weekend the festival went sour as thousands
of pilgrims turned on their tormenters from the press,
a group of social workers and the police, forcibly stripped
them and paraded them through the dusty village streets."
(W. Doniger, Splitting the Difference).

Old habits die hard.

Goddess Ellamma/Maari myths in different variants, were told
in this list. She is connected with devadasi dancers,
and is usually called "lady with 1000 yonis" in tamil poems
and legends. From Maharashtra down South, Ellamma/Mari
myth is the most widespread of all goddess myths, and
Renukamahatmyam in the MBh. epic is called as first well-known
"Sanskritization" at work (Goldman). The headless Lajjagauri
sculptures in a love-ready posture of legs are related to the
outcaste mAri/elli-amma whose head is chopped off.

Regards,
N. Ganesan


Cautions L. C. Orr in her book on Temple women in
medieval Tamilnadu, OUP, 2000:
"Our knowledge of prostitutes - even in recent history,
but certainly in earlier times - is far too slight for
us to speculate about whether there were in fact "traditional"
communities or castes of prostitutes in India and about
how colonialism may have changed their circumstances. In
Indian literature, from a very early period, there are
references to vezyas and ga.nikaas ("prostitutes" or
"courtesans"), but they are for the most part portrayed as
ideal types or stock characters of various sorts, depending
on the genre (e.g., as donors in Buddhist literature, as
royal attendents in Epic literature, and as cultural
beauties in Sanskrit drama). We know very little about
what prostitution or concubinage actually entailed in
various periods of Indian history or what relation there
may be between the vezyas and gaNikas of literature
and the forms of prostitution encountered (or created
by) European colonists."

Like calling some castes as "criminal", "devadasis" were
called a caste by themselves! and was banned. But they
were the "jewels" of old India.

This may be the situation (ie., our lack of knowledge) in the ancient
Near East still further removed in time. There also we find
songstresses playing lute represnted as 'nude'.
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-shl/WA.EXE?A2=ind0101&L=indology&P=R13973

"Prostitutes are mentioned together with various
groups of women engaged in more or less relgious
activities. Inana/Ishtar seems to have been presented
as a protective goddess of prostitutes. In cult songs
the goddess sometimes refers herself as a prostitute,
and her temple is metaphorically called a tavern. It seems
possible that prostitution was to some extent organised
in the same way as other female activities (such as
midwifery or wetnursing) and in some way manipulated
through the temple organisation. But this is a subject
which is still not clearly understood and where further
research would shed light upon the exploitation of
women in Mesopotamia."
(p. 151, Gods, demons and symbols of ancient Mesopotamia,
J. Black and T. Rickards).


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