Mother Who Is Not a Mother
In Search of the Great Indian Goddess
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 desses, at other times they are muffled, at
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 god-
desses, 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 inter-
preted 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 world-
view in which the creative power of femini-
nity 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 interpreta-
tion, and indeed has been developed in dif-
ferent 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 in-
terest. The ideas conveyed by the mother-
goddess are sometimes found in other god-
Kamala Ganesh
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 ex-
ploratory 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 icono-
graphy, occasionally using textual, ritual or
cultic material to make a point. Visual tradi-
tions 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 mother-
goddess. 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.
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 excava-
tions 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
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 abbrevia-
ted; usually there are no toes, feet, hands or
fingers, the legs and the arms ending abrupt-
ly like stumps. The facial features are blur-
red 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 specula-
tively 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 pre-
tend they cannot imagine what functions
these numerous figurines performed. The
remarkable feature of this whole group of
figures is the extreme stylisation, expres-
sionist 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

the female principle in votive and ritual
activity.
The basic 'venus' type with elaboration
and variation recurs in the settled agri-
cultural 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 bull-
headed 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 ex-
cavated 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 pro-
geny [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 Nagarjunakon-
da, the area below the navel is filled with the
drawing of a highly decorated purnaghata
(overflowing pot), which, symbolises abun-
dance 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 associa-
tion with a bull and a lion. 7
She is catechrestically called Lajjagauri by
the local population (lajja: 'shame'); more
Economic and Political Weekly October 20-27, 1990
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 in-
carnate, 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 tradi-
tion in iconography starting with the ter-
racotta 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 inspir-
ing 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 ring-
stones 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 pre-
cedents, but for an example from an un-
expected quarter.
The hymns of the Rg veda are, in the
main, addressed to male nature gods. God-
desses are few and in the vedic scheme of
things, definitely secondary. Tucked away
amidst the bland beauty of vedic nature god-
desses is the elemental figure of Aditi, literal-
ly '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,
11
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 god-
desses. 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 encom-
passing one of cosmic dimensions.She is 'un-
bound', not tied to specifics, to a particular
husband, family or lineage. Aditi and Laj-
jagauri 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, 'un-
husbanded' goddesses (like Kali) whose
power is seen as dangerous and destructive,
and goddesses who are appropriately mar-
ried (like Lakshmi) whose power is positive
and benevolent, and how this is echoed in
social arrangements and evaluations, par-
ticularly 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 con-
sidered to have sacred power. A widow has
a diametrically opposite position in the
WS-59
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 excel-
lence. 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 consort-
hood 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 in-
dependent 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 re-
reversed in delightful abandon and
celebrated in icon, poetry and song. But
then, Radha is not a spouse. The whole rela-
tionship 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 indepen-
dent goddess, she is equally often portrayed
with a spouse. Here the conventional rela-
tions 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 op-
posite. 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' god-
desses, whose iconography the male is not
part of. This is the goddess who neither con-
fronts nor subserves, she exists in herself, by
herself. By her very presence and feminini-
ty, 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. Chrono-
logically, this goddess appears earlier than
the consorts and spouses. She is a descen-
dant in the mother-goddess tradition. In the
latter, 'auspiciousness' is implicit; in the
former, it is elaborated and explicit, a'fre-
quent motif in temple and domestic icon.
Thus we have srilakshmi and gajalakshmi,
auspicious ones, whose images are put on
doorways and thresholds for magical pro-
tection. 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 strik-
ing illustration of the shift from indepen-
dent, 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 obser-
vance [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
Economic and Political Weekly
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 hus-
band (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 pur-
sue her activities independently. 'True' con-
sorts 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 rele-
vant to remember here that the concept of
the goddess as virgin-mother is deep-rooted
across cultures.lt contains a suggestion of
parthenogenesisself-created, self-
supportingand is linked with the magico-
religious 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 god-
dess is dominated by the theme of the benign
versus destructive goddess or the 'good' and
the 'bad' aspects of the goddess. It is vir-
tually impossible to read a paper on the sub-
ject which does not have a reference to the
'ambivalence' of the goddess. It is treated as
axiomatic. Some of the approaches ground-
ed in psychological analysis develop the idea
of a radical split in the mother image into
the 'good sheltering' versus 'monstrous ter-
rifying'. 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 un-
conscious [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 relation-
ship, 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 evalua-
tion 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 bene-
volence; as the independent goddess, she
threatens to destroy the very basis of the
October 20-27, 1990
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 October 20-27, 1990
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 word-
picture 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 vegeta-
tional 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 god-
dess, the ritualsfor example ghatasthapana
and navapatrikashow her as a vegetation
goddess.19 Even the popular mahisha-
suramardini 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 god-
dess 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 produc-
tivity. 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 war-
rior 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 descrip-
tion 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 univer-
sal 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 off-
spring is one of her functions, but by no
means the only or main one. The most im-
portant 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 goddess-
writers, 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 proposi-
tions on the type of society 'goddess culture*
represents or is a survival from. It \% perti-
nent 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 discus-
sions on the theme of Aryan versus pre-
Aryan, and includes a spectrum of ap-
proaches that attempt broad synthesis of the
subcontinent's early history (for example, the
work of Basham and Kosambi). The con-
frontation 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 ele-
ment in the Indian context has been the con-
tinuity 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
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, nuetra-
lises 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 world-
process 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 'matriar-
chate". Pitched on a grand scale, within the
general framework of evolutionism, the
general thrust of the argument for a univer-
sal stage of matriarchy preceding and later
overtaken by patriarchy was based on the
rich goddess-centred mythology of non-
semitic cultures as well as the ethnographic
material on communities with simple
economies.22
'; The subject at one stage, generated con-
siderable 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 revival-
debunking 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 univer-
sality of gender hierarchy. Based on
ethnographic work among hunter-gatherers,
she suggests that principles of gender struc-
turing other than hierarchy are real pos-
sibilities in pre-class societies and that to see
incipient hierarchy everywhere is to project
oar own ethnocentricity on to all societies
25
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 prin-
ciples 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
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 auto-
nomy of the individual? Can we project con-
temporary definitions of words like 'auto-
nomy' '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 relation-
ship. 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 god-
desses 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, self-
worth, 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 in-
terest 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-
Economic and Political Weekly
ging questions and created a profound
dissatisfaction, a spiritual vacuum [see for
example, Christ 1979]. Efforts at looking in-
to 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 in-
clude androgyny [for example, Gelpi 1984]
are responses to a consciousness of this
vacuum. Gross argues that imagery, meta-
phor 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 turn-
ing to look inwards for sources of em-
powerment, 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 god-
desses 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 en-
thusiasm. 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 contem-
porary 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 oppres-
sion, the goddess will resurface. The ques-
tion 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 com-
pletely different setting, as a certain genre
October 20-27, 1990
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: hook-
swinging, 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 'mother-
goddess' 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
Economic and Political Weekly October 20-27, 1990
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 depar-
ture 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 unpub-
lished 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 struc-
tures 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 sug-
gests 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'Flaher-
ty 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 'squat-
ting with knees raised and turned outward'.
The dictionary meaning (Monier-Williams
1899) of the term is "one whose legs are ex-
tended 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' (Camp-
bell 1959:V1:327); in Quetta valley, the god-
dess and bull pair were found on a mud
brick platform which had in its founda-
tions, 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 suppos-
ed 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 com-
pletely underplayed, with the emphasis
being laid on the less disturbing devi
iconography. Sometimes, the whole em-
phasis 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 Fleuhr-
Lobban (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 domi-
nant current of Soviet scholarship. The
premise of equality of men and women in
 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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