Widows and goddesses: female roles in deity

symbolism in a south Indian village

BRUCE ELLIOT TAPPER

Southern Asian institute
Colombia University

In this paper it is argued that certain cultural ideas about female person-
alityare a consequence of women’s subordination to men in society. It is
further held that these ideas are utilized and reinforced by ritual symbo-
lism. In particular, women as mothers and wives are the source of stereo-
types of female compassion and sexuality which are used by society to
conceptualize deities which control human health. In the discussion which
follows, a look is taken at the role of women in the Gavara caste, farmers
in the Telugu-speaking state of Andhra P;adesh. Asa, an ideology about
the excessive compulsiveness and passion of women, is identified and
analyzed as a rationale for male domination. Next, a goddess festival,
utilizing feminine symbolism, is considered. In the analysis it becomes
clear that the goddess is not merely a deified woman but rather a personified
power of a non-human order. The way allusions to femininity are com-
bined and manipulated in dealings with her, however, reveal the potency
of the notion of female dia. This insight is reconfirmed by the portrayal
of human females in two varieties of dramatic performance, linked to the
goddess festival. These allegorically mark stages in the transformation of
the goddess’ character during the course of the ritual. Finally, while it is
observed that women are kept peripheral to the planning and performance
of the public ritual proceedings, the festival activities in which they are
encouraged to participate act to channel their concerns which emphasize
their roles as mothers and wives.
The material I examine here is based on data collected in Aripaka, a
Hindu village in rural Visakhapatnam district, between 1970 and 1972. It
is a village of average wealth and appearance. Its typical multi-caste popu-
lation lives in a cluster of associated nucleated settlements or hamlets. I
lived in the largest of these, Yatapalem, which at the time of study had a
population of 904, divided into 214 households. While Yatapalem forms
only one component of the larger political and ritual unit of Aripaka
2

households 390), it is the hub of the Gavara caste

(population 1,713,
whose economic and political life dominate the village as a whole.’

TABLE 1 ,

THE GAVARA CASTE POSITION IN ARIPAKA VILLAGE

*Number of households.

The discussion which follows focusses on the Gavaras who comprise

nearly half of Aripaka’s population and which have over four times as
many members as the next largest caste. Gavaras also predominate in land-
ownership. They own 65 per cent of the most productive irrigated lands
used for rice and sugarcane. This is more than seven times the next largest
caste holding. In addition, Gavaras control the political leadership of
Aripaka through the elective panchayat presidency and the hereditary tax
collectorship.

The fieldwork
1 on which this article is based was conducted between October 1970
and August1972 while I was affiliated with the Anthropology departments of Andhra
University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
I am grateful for the Fulbright-Hayes grant which assisted my research. I also wish
to acknowledge the assistance of Prof Kanisetti Venkata Ramana, Head of the
Department of Social Work at Andhra University, while I was in the field. I also
received aid and encouragement at various stages of my research from Prof C. von
Furer-Haimendorf, Prof A.C. Mayer, Prof A. Cohen, Prof N.S. Reddy, Dr W.R.
Holmes, Dr M. Kodanda Rao, and Mrs A. Hayley.
 3
’

POWER IN THE HOUSEHOLD: AUTHORITY BASED ON AGE AND-SEX

Within the Gavara caste, two hierarchical principles are fundamental.

-

These are the principle of seniority, by which elders have inherent autho-
rity over their juniors, and the principle of male authority, idealized as
two core relationships, husband-wife and father-child. These principles
ate of crucial significance in the organization of the household, the chief
residential and property-holding unit in the society. A household is com-
posed of residents of a particular dwelling who are all under the authority
of a single household head, the ijamffii. Since descent is reckoned patrili-
neally and residence after marriage is generally patrilocal, this head is
ideally the eldest male, accompanied by his wife and children.
After the elder male children marry there is an increasing tendency for
them to split into independent household units. This fission can begin in
stages with the setting up of separate hearths and then residences, both
while maintaining joint participation on the family land. This nominal
division of landed property eventually yields to full separation and eco-
nomic independence. Particularly when the head of a household is long-
lived and active there is the tendency for married sons to remain together.-
Once he dies, the ever-present pressures to split are no longer constrained.
If a male household head dies before any sons have married, his widow is
considered the household head. However, once one of the sons marries, he
comes to be considered the household head, even if his mother continues
to stay with him.
Control over land is ideally inherited exclusively by and through males,
with each male sibling entitled to an equal share. However, if a man has
no male offspring, there is a way he can secure male assistance and assure
that his share of his patrimony does not revert to his brothers. He can
arrange a uxorilocal marriage for his daughter, termed itlaYakarn , whereby
his son-in-law comes to live with him and his daughter’s sons inherit his
land. A man who goes to live with his father-in-law in this way is in a
position of ambiguous authority in the household. He lacks backing from
his male kinsmen, the ties to whom he has abandoned by moving to his
wife’s village, and he lacks economic means independent of his father-in-
law’s authority. For these reasons such arrangements are not common.
To stress that, in the family, hierarchical principles are fundamental is
not to discount the intense ties of affection linking family members to
each other. Hierarchy is, however, the basic characteristic of formal autho-
rity. Occasions when such authority is most conspicuous, the disciplining
of children and the negotiation of marriages, are important for the eco-
nomic functioning and well-being of the household’s members. It is the
responsibility of children to participate in their parents’ economic acti-
vities and parents and family elders exercise full authority over the choice
4

of aspouse for their children. We have already noted that marriage stra-
tegies can be determined by a household’s requirements for agricultural
labour and heirs.
To reinforce the authority of a husband over his wife a five to ten year
age difference is maintained between husbands and wives. In this way
seniority, the hierachical principle of age, is enlisted to reinforce the hier-
archical relations between the sexes, the dominance of husbands over
wives. At marriage, a wife becomes a member of her husband’s patrilineal
clan. Death pollution caused by her death is subsequently a matter affec-
ting her husband and his clansmen rather than her natal family. As men-
tioned above, women do not own land in their own right, though they
can temporarily manage the estate of their unmarried children. The seve-
rance of the ties between a woman and her natal family is also a feature
of marriage residence patterns. Out of 163 married Gavara males in the
village in 1972, some 60 per cent of their wives came from outside the
village. Of the remaining 40 per cent, over a third were married to women
who were not related to them, such as through being a cross-cousin.
Other conventions in daily life express the formal authority of husbands
in the household. Wives are not supposed to eat before their husbands,
even if the latter are unexpectedly delayed in returning home. There is
also a taboo on the wife saying her husband’s name, so that she refers to
him obiquely with even their children as ’the household head’. Such
behaviour is termed mariyäda, showing proper respect and honour.

FEMALE CHALLENGES TO MALE AUTHORITY

z

Though women never substantially challenge male dominance, there is an

ideology that they do. It is the nature of this ideology that these challen-
ges justify male domination and imply that women have an inferior
character.

Women’s economic leverage

Unlike women of the higher twice-born castes who are prohibited from
working, Gavara women participate in the economic life of their families
to a significant degree. Gavara women play an important role in numerous
agricultural operations (transplanting, weeding, harvesting, carrying cane
and fodder) in addition to their domestic tasks of providing meals for the
family and looking after their children. Gavara women are also strikingly
active in economic activities, autonomous from their husbands. Gavara
women generally form over 40 per cent of the sellers at the weekly village
market where they deal in vegetable produce from their own family plots.
Women reported earning between 10 and 15 rupees at an average market.
This means that much of the cash realized from the vegetable plots culti-
 5

vated by their men passes through their hands.

A number of Gavara women also engage in entrepreneurial activities.
They buy vegetables, spices, fruit, and chickens at one village market and
sell them for higher prices at another in the rotating weekly cycle of pro-
duce markets. There is a solid core of women who regularly attend markets
and predominantly depend on their income from market sales. They are
mainly poorer, self-supporting widows or divorced women. However, most
Gavara women, from even the wealthiest families, engage in supplemen-
ting their incomes from sales in the weekly markets A portion of the
money from such sales often remains in their hands. This money is some-
times used to make loans of up to 50 rupees independent of male control.
Of course, this is all on a very small scale by comparison with the econo-
mic activities of the men in cash crop sales and loans.
An incident of suicide provides evidence that female economic domi-
nance in a family can produce severe strains. The man who committed
suicide had been known in the village as an especially diligent farmer,
though rather retiring and with few friends. He had married his wife in a
uxorilocal arrangement whereby he came to live in his wife’s village to
work her father’s land. He had two young sons and the land was to pass
on to them from his father-in-law who had already died. He himself had
no inherent rights in the land which still belonged to his wife’s family.

Though he was the titular head of his household, his wife and her widow-
ed mother exercised inordinate control over the household, the boys, and
the income from their vegetable plot.
The degree of his virtual subordination to his wife and widowed mother-
in-law finally reached an intolerable point. An incident occurred in which
he consulted an itinerant curer to relieve him of chronic abdominal pains.
When the time came to pay the curer for some medicine, he requested
money from his wife who customarily sold the vegetables he raised She
refused and scolded him for wasting money. This was the final blow in his
inability over the years to exercise authority over his wife and her mother.
He went into a rage and drank a quantity of insecticide. He died a rather
gruesome death. From his death bed, he took the opportunity of publicly
denouncing his wife and mothei-in-law saying ’why are you crying for me
now, when I’m dying, when you refused me money while I was alive?’ and
’you can have all the land to yourselves now!’ The incident brought shame
on the women but also on himself for having let himself be dominated by
them.

Women’s quarrels’
In more usual circumstances women exert pressures in family matters
through the numerous which repeatedly punctuate the course of
quarrels
social life. Women chide their husbands to tend to long overdue repairs,
 6

or complain of their husbands’ wasting money on liquor. The nature and

form of these quarrels throw light on the role of women and. in particular
the kinds of pressures they exert to influence decisions.
While men have numerous formal avenues for expressing their authority
in society, women tend to exert pressure in informal ways These usually
take the form of public displays of emotion or sentiment. Women have a
particular stylized crying lament which they employ if they are dissatisfied.
Typical occasions on which these occurred were instances of a woman
objecting to her husband’s drinking, weeping over his having beaten her,
or bewailing a grown son’s disobedience. This same stylized moaning
lament is associated with other situations of stress and is a vehicle for
expressing other deeply felt emotions, for example lamenting a family
member’s severe illness or death, or even the sudden death of the family’s
draught animal.
, Angry. outbursts of temper are also employed in quarrels. In these,
women go into rages which usually include a form of stylized verbal abuse
(liftulu), and a listing of grievances. The abuse is delivered with a vertical
motion of the left arm and an exaggerated emphasis on the last syllable.
Common forms of misfortune wished upon the adversary concern widow-
hood and death, for example: ’Remove your forehead mark!’ (this refers
to the widowing ceremony after certain funerary rites); ’Snap your waist
cord!’ (an act done by a widower at a funerary rite); ’Take your ashes
and throw them out!’ (cremation ashes); ‘Put your three leaf plates!’ (a
reference to funerary offerings); as well as the common ’Son (or daughter)
of a whore!’ These curses, shouted loudly and intended for neighbours to
hear, are a form of public denunciation. They are best understood as
-
appeals by women to the general public to solve disputes. Women’s out-
cries and anger often rise to a pitch which the surrounding society cannot
tolerate and mediation is quickly begun. In this way, women force men
to become involved on their behalf. Fights between women are often broken
up by male relatives who have close ties with both parties.

Asa: an ideology of women’s character _

Linked to the association of women with emotional outbursts of anger

or lamentation is the widely held belief that women are generally more
emotional and impulsive than men.2 The key ideological concept involved
in this notion of women’s character is asa. This word has various connota-
tions meaning passion, desire, lust, emotion, love, hope, and worldly
attachment. Men are considered to have less dia than women and wander-

This phenomenon is germane to Ortner’s recent observations on the ’universal

2
devaluation of women’ (1974: 83), namely that women are seen as closer to natural
forces and less culturally constrained than men. -
 7

~
ing ascetics, sadhus, are said to totally devoid of dia In ritual activity
be
as well as everyday 1 fe, women often encouraged and expected to
are

express dia. Women’s attachment to their families is thought to be greater

than men’s When questioned about dsa, Gavaras explicitly stated that a
married daughter retains stronger attachment to her parents than does a
married son. Women’s dia even tends to continue more prominently than
men’s after death. It is usually female ghosts which come back and haunt
the living, not male ghosts.
Funerary rituals have an elaborate ceremony for appeasing the asa of a
woman who dies with her husband still alive. The dead wife’s release is
sought to free her husband to remarry. Villagers likened this to a
so as

divorce, a different process significantly termed vidudala, ’release’. Without

this ceremony a dead wife’s ghost would ruthlessly attack any woman
taking her place, and would be spiteful of others in the world she left.
There is no equivalent set of ritual precautions for men.
The behaviour of the participants at funerals is also stylized along sexual
lines. One of the main activities of women is to gather in a circle around
the body and express hysterical grief and lamentation By contrast, men
are expected to act stoically and can be observed suppressing their tears.

Sexual promiscuity .

Sexual promiscuity is an area of behaviour in which women are perceived

as posing a threat to their husbands’ dominance. In the village, some 20
illicit liaisons were the subject of covert gossip and served to reinforce
men’s suspicions about all women’s sexual drives. There were also overt
boisterous quarrels when a . husband believed he had caught his wife
flirting suspiciously with other men. Men are highly concerned with wo-
men’s sexuality since it is one of the rationales they use to justify the neces-
sity for their domination and authority over them, and, in particular, the
age differential in marriage. Such notions directly derive from the idea of
women’s i7ia, their compulsive emotionalism and passion Men believe
that if they do not satisfy their women sexually, they will run off in the
night for secret meetings with ’boy friends’.3 It was commented that older
men can satisfy women by sustaining intercourse longer than younger men,
who by this theory would seem to have less self control.
Illicit sexual relations have additional implications which are variations
on the theme that female sexuality affects male status. Gavaras appear to
condone covert premarital affairs between their young men and women of
lower castes. This seems to be a demonstration of the inferiority of lower

In other parts of India similar beliefs exist. Berreman reports that ’a woman is
3
believed to have seven times the sexual energies that a man has’ (1963: 170). Mandel-
baum reports parallel findings of others (1970: 77).
8

caste males who are thus shown to be incapable of controlling the activities
of their women. Other sanctioned forms of adultery include unconfirmed
gossip about wealthy Gavaras in towns who maintain mistresses, uncukonna
manisulu, ’kept women’. It would appear that the control by wealthy men
of women in addition to their wives adds to their aura of importance and
power. It is rumoured that members of itinerant juggler and acrobat castes
are most desirable as mistresses because of their sexual agility, perhaps a
further demonstration of a wealthy male’s potency.

Marital instability
Problems of control over women’s sexuality are also associated with the
considerable Gavara divorce rate. Adultery and suspicions of adultery are
often given as grounds for divorce. About a quarter of all Gavara house-
holds in the village have at least one member who has been divorced.
While theoretically divorce is said to be permissible only when no children
have been born to the couple, this is not always so in practice. Barrenness
is not usually cited as the main ground for divorce though it must greatly
contribute to the other kinds -of tensions which are said to lead to
divorce. Such problems include the conflicts of a wife with her husband’s
mother, disputes over non-payment or misuse of dowry, illness leading to
impotence, and disagreements between husband and wife.
What is particularly significant in this pattern of unstable marriages is
the challenge they pose to the ideals of hierarchy In situations of marital
breakdown, the wife refuses to obey her husband, either in daily activities
or in matters of sexual fidelity A common pattern of marital breakdown
often begins with the failure of a wife to return to her husband from a
visit to her parents’ villager While this entails collusion by the woman’s
parents, it seems to be based on the initiative of the woman herself. If her
parents do cooperate with her, even grudgingly, it is because she is able to
convince them that she is not being treated properly by her husband.
Mothers-in-law are often at the centre of conflicting attachments and
jealousies between women which focus on men. A new wife often finds
herself at odds with her husband’s mother, particularly if they live in the
same household. The husband’s mother covets her influence over her son
and behaves domineeringly towards her son’s wife, over whom she has
authority by virtue of seniority and her position of influence over the
husband. Wives resent this and try to influence their husbands to live
separately. Since problems with the husband’s mother are frequently cited
as rationalizations for divorces, and divorces occur usually only when there
are no children, it is likely that barrenness weakens a wife’s position with

Twenty-eight out of 40 divorces experienced by Gavara males, i.e. 70 per cent, were
4
marriages to women from outside the village.
 9

relation to her husband’s mother. On the other hand, having children

strengthens and cements the position of a wife in her new family. In any
event, household fission is often related to or blamed on conflicts between
women.5

Widows and the status of ‘nou-widow’

Like the notions of women’s excessive dia and sexuality, widowhood is
an ideological issue combined with a ’self-fulfilling prophecy effect’ which
enables men to rationalize their domination over women. The status of
widows is a potential challenge to the principle of the hierarchy of the
sexes since a widow is a woman who is not subordinated to the authority
of an older man, while she has seniority in her own right.
Society destines a high .proportion of women to become widows by
using the principle of seniority to reinforce the authority of the husband.
Since it is customary for brides always to be substantially younger than
their husbands, natural demographic forces make a high incidence of
widowhood inevitable.’ Thirty-one per cent of Gavara households in the
village have a widow residing with them, in contrast with one per cent with
a widower. Out of 86 recorded incidents of marriage terminated by death,
70 per cent involved the death of the husband while only 30 per cent in-
volved the death of the wife.
There is an aura of inauspiciousness around a woman whose husband
has died before herself. This is emphasized in ritual symbolism and can be
considered very much a product of it. Rather than elaborating widowhood,
the cultural system emphasizes the auspiciousness of ’non-widows’ in
ceremonial contexts, for example at weddings and funerals. It then stresses
the exclusion of widows from auspicious activities. (Widows can, however,
be present as spectators on the periphery.)
The concept of ’non-widow’ might appear awkward in English but is
more easily understood when the Telugu categories are considered. In the
word piranjilu there is an identification of the statu3 of a married woman
whose husband is still alive (perantdlu, pativrata -’husband devoted’, or
pupyastri-’meritorious woman’) and that of the status of a young pre-
pubescent unmarried girl (7~/~~M~/M -’young/~ra~j/M’). Both of these
are contrasted with the inauspicious status of widow, vedava
The important auspicious role of the non-widow is symbolized by the
application of turmeric and vermilion powders to tie body. Women with

Bean notes that barren spurned women (without men) in Karnataka are envious
5
of others and dangerous (1975: 326). They cast evil eye causing injury. While accusa-
tions of this nature were not encountered in Yatapalem it was clear that there was the
belief that young divorcees and young widows tempted men away from their wives.
Compare the statistical evidence in the study by A.B. Bose and M.L.A. Sen.
6
10

their husbands still alive and young unmarried girls have the proud prero-
gative of wearing an auspicious yellow and red forehead mark, bottu (a red
dot on a yellow background). The distribution of turmeric for women’s fore-
heads at the end of numerous ritual occasions is considered a highly meri-
torious and auspicious act which contributes to the husbands’ longevity as
well as to the e~cacy of the particular ritual. Widows, on the other hand,
are not permitted to wear a forehead dot and the ceremony in which a

recently-widowed woman has hers wiped ofl’ for the last time is a highly
ritualized and poignantly sorrowful event. (However, if she remarries she
can wear the forehead mark again.) In funerals, the bodies of women who
die as widows are treated differently from those who are non-widows.
Only the latter are smeared with auspicious turmeric and vermilion pow-
ders. During the most important rituals of the wedding ceremony, a non-
widow is seated between the bride and groom for her auspicious influence.
. In acting out the identification of non-widows with auspiciousness,
women themselves internalize this ideology of the ideal wife as one
who, through her devotion and faithfulness to her husband, keeps him
alive and herself in an auspicious status. Consequently, myths about
faithful wives, pativratalu, such as the story of Balanagamma, are
among the most popular themes of stories and myths followed by village
women. Interestingly, all of this amounts to an ideology of marital stabi-

lity and female subordination in a society in which, as we have seen, there

are considerable tendencies to marital instability, and both real and ima- -

gined challenges to male dominance.&dquo;

’

Summary .

At this point it will be useful to summarize our findings on the position

In
7 an article about fear and the status of women among Brahmins in Karnataka
Harper states that there is a ’relationship between the low status of women and their
portrayal in the cultural belief system as dangerous persons’ (1969: 81). He suggests
that this arises from men’s fear of women and that this fear derives from men’s guilt
from keeping women in a subordinate disadvantaged status. It seems more plausible
to interpret this ’fear’ as arising out of actual or perceived threats to male dominance
rather than guilt. As Harper himself explains, widows in particular pose a threat to
male dominance since they have established a real base of power and influence over
their mature children and are no longer under the control of their husbands. In the
area Harper studied Brahmin widows were singled out in accusations of poisoning.
In coastal Andhra restrictions on Brahmin widows centre on curbs on their sexuality.
They are prohibited from eating substances believed to excite passion, e.g. garlic,
onions, and other strong spices, and they are prohibited from making themselves
sexually attractive with colourful clothing and adornment. They are required to shave
their heads and wear plain white saris. Gavara widows are not subjected to the same
wide range of prohibitions but are not permitted to use the forehead mark or wear
glass bangles. Gavaras technically allow widows to remarry though it is rare that
they do.
 11

of Gavara women in Andhra village society. Essentially, the organization

of economic activities around a patriarchal household (joint or nuclear)
with power vested in elder married males, gives rise to a focus on women as
wives and mothers. As a wife, a Gavara woman is expected to be obediently
subordinate to her husband’s authority. As a mother, she is expected to
be protective and emotionally attached to her children. Though she has
seniority over them, formal authority is more clearly the prerogative of
her husband. Should her husband die and leave her in a position of poten-
tially independent authority, she is saddled with culturally dictated disabi-
lities and stigma.
Linked to these socially ascribed roles are the situations in which wo-
men actually or potentially challenge male authority. The social structure

pushes them this way leaving only emotional outbursts or returning to their
parents as possible strategies in exercising their own wills. Such situations
are u.ilized by males as a rationalization for the continuing need for male

authority over women. These ideas come to be expressed in a theory about

female personality, the concept of dia, which serves as an explanation of
female sexuality, emotionalism, and attachment. This theory is prominent
in the symbolism of a goddess festival to which we now turn.

A GODDESS FESIIVAL: THE BANDAMMA PANQUGA

Rituals as female are prominent’in Andhra

centring on deities characterized
village society (Cf. Whitehead 1921:17; Elmore 1915).8 Of greatest impor-
tance are the annual village goddess festivals, the only celebrations which
regularly mobilize all the settlements for cooperative ritual action. Before
analyzing their use of symbolism we will describe a typical festival in
detail. Our example is the festival for the goddess Bandamma which takes
place annually in Aripaka. This festival is performed in April, the un-
healthy hot season before the coming of the monsoon rains. It is essenti-
ally an effort to propitiate the goddess to protect villagers from epidemic
illnesses for the coming year. Though the goddess can manifest herself as
illness, when properly pacified with sacrifices and tribute, her influence is
benevolent.
The Bandamma festival is conducted over the period of a week and is
planned by the Gavara elders so that the last, most important day, falls
on an astrologically auspicious date. The festival (panduga) consists of the

There is no equivalent in coastal Andhra for the independent male village deity,
8
Iyenar, found in Tamilnad (Whitehead 1921: 17-18). In the distinctive Telangana
region around Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh certain castes propitiate male deities
associated with their caste occupation (Tapper 1967: 85ff.) but this is a rather different
phenomenon.
 12

following phases: (1) the first five days-beginning with an invitation and
escorting of the goddess into the midst of the village houses there is a
nightly procession with offerings and entertainment in her honour; (2)
Tolelu (related to tolinfdu - ’the day before’ the sixth, next to last day, on
which a decoy offerings is made to ghosts who hover around her temple;
(3) Anupu (related to anuputa-’to send, dismiss’), the final day with a
procession to make a propitiatory sacrifice to her at her temple in the
fields on behalf of the entire village.
In the hot season Gavara elders deliberate and decide when to call the
festival. They send a Harijan drummer to circulate in the village streets
announcing the festival. On the appointed day, Gavara-elders and a ritual
officiant (püjäri) of a low Shudra caste perform an initiatory ritual at a
termite mound outside the settlement. Pinches of termite mound dirt,
referred to as gold, are taken into Yatapalem and thrown on the roof of
the ritual officiant’s house. This initiates the use of the goddess’ pots which
are customarily stored there. These pots (ghat,tam, ’pot’) are the focus of
the first six days of festival activities. Each evening there is a ceremonial
drum-led procession with the pots following a clockwise circuit of the main
village lanes. The procession periodically stops for housewives to worship
(puja) the pots and put offerings of rice into them.
Every night, after the pots have been taken around, a series of impro-
vised satirical skits is enacted in front of them in a public square. The
skits, performed by Gavara men, usually allude to fellow villagers but can
also concern purely imaginary situations. In many of the skits wives are
shown being disloyal to their husbands and inferiors are shown taking
advantage of their superiors. The great amusement this produces, among
the audience of both sexes, is also intended to please and entertain the
goddess. In fact, even on the rare occasion when almost no audience at-
tend, it is mandatory that skits be performed, if only in a perfunctory
fashion.
On the night before the last day of the festival a small contingent of
villagers keeps a vigil until a decoy offering is sent to appease greedy
ghosts. This offerings takes the form of a small wheeled frame to which a
basket is strapped. At the appointed time it is pulled through the village
streets escorted by two drummers. Women come to their doors and hastily
drop in bamboo rice sieves heaped with boiled rice. These offerings are
then taken to the goddess’ temple and abandoned there. This mission is a
highly perilous one, involving travel at night to the ghost-infested shrine
outside the built-up area of the settlement. Hence, the processants’ return
is awaited with some anxiety.
Activities on the morning of the final day of the festival focus on the
fulfilment of private vows to the goddess which have been made during the
course of the past year. Most of these, and the routine worship of the
 13

goddess at most family’s house shrines, are performed by women on behalf

of their households.
In the afternoon, the final procession begins. A contingent of elder
Gavara males goes with a goddess pot to the quarter of the carpenter
caste. There they ceremonially collect a set of newly carved wooden idols
representing the goddess (in this case Bandamma) and her younger brother,
P6turdju. After these wooden idols are wrapped in a white cloth and pla-
ced on the head of one of the processants, the procession resumes its
course in the village lanes. By then, the crowd of villagers swells to huge

proportions. Amidst furious drumming by contingents of three service

castes and deafening fireworks, the procession sets out for Bandamma’s
temple with pots, idols, and the communal sacrificial goat. It is late twi-
light by the time the Yatapalem procession leaves the settlement. A crowd
accompanying the second pot, which has been taken around the other
settlements of the village, surges forward to meet them. Prominent among
them is a man of the washerman caste who is violently possessed by the
goddess, thrashing and leaping wildly despite attempts to restrain him.
Periodically, pots of well water, some mixed with turmeric, are poured
over him. He is also brushed with bundles of neem leaves9 and clouds of
incense are fanned into his face. These activities and substances are inten-
ded to cool him and contain the energy of the goddess possessing him.
The atmosphere of frenzy and danger intensifies as the crowd reaches
the temple. The drummers lead a circumambulation of the temple by the
bearers of the pots and the other ceremonial items. Simultaneously, five or
six people begin walking through troughs of embers to fulfil vows to the
goddess. Inside the temple, the pujari and a male Gavara elder conduct
worship to the pots, wooden idols and the permanent stone statue of the
goddess. Outside the temple, against a background of relentless drumming,
a Gavara elder and a Harijan village functionary lift the sacrificial goat in
a gesture of obeisance towards the goddess. It is then held on the ground
and swiftly decapitated. Its severed head and a shallow bowl of its blood
are placed inside the shrine. Two lines of Gavara men holding bamboo

poles form a corridor to the temple entrance. They wave and beat the
poles while emitting a prolonged and eerie high-pitched howl of ’woooo,
woooo, woooo.. :’ to frighten off hovering ghosts which would otherwise
snatch the offerings away from the goddess.
Immediately after the sacrifice the drums come to an abrupt halt. The
villagers flee the area and its menacing ghosts. Once they have left the
Neem pa
9 ē in Telugu, azadirachta indica in Latin, margosa and neem in Indian
v
(
English) is held to be a cooling substance in much of India (e.g. Babb 1973: 21).
Elmore provides an observation of why this should be so. ’Its foliage is most luxuriant
in the hot season when many trees are bare and shade is especially appreciated’
(Elmore 1915: 54 n. 2).
 14

temple precinct there is a mood of sudden release. The accelerating tempo

of the activities gives way to peaceful calm as villagers return home in a
relaxed manner. There follows an evening meal, often a chicken or other
meat curry.
Several hours later, an all-night operatic drama is performed in the cen-
tral square in the village. Most parts are acted by males of the village
(mainly Gavaras) though a female dancer, a musician and the costumes
are hired from a nearby market town. The source of the drama is a prin-
ted text of a currently popular story. The theme of the drama is not pres-
cribed by tradition and choices change from year to year. Generally they
concern heroes from Hindu mythology.

FEMALE ROLES IN THE FESTIVAL

With this outline of the Bandamma festival in front of us we are in a posi-

tion to analyze its implications for the ideology of female roles. We con-
sider here aspects of the festival in three sections: (1) conceptions of the
goddess’ character, both in cognitive categories and actions; (2) portrayals
of women in the dramatic performances; and (3) the activities of women
themselves. These represent a number of levels of meaning and action
which are contained in the festival. Among the more striking findings in
the first section is the observation that the ideology of female dsa is not
only expressed in the rituals but is used as a metaphor for the potentially
uncontrolled power of the deity and her attachment to a single village. In
a similar way, verbal references to protective motherhood are manipula-

tively used for bribing the goddess with tribute. This is all part of the pro-
cess which is the goal of the ritual, to pacify and control the power of the
goddess for society’s benefit. -

In the second section we observe that the dramatic performances take

on a significance beyond that of fostering the ideology that women need
to be controlled by men. In the context of the ritual two types of dramatic
enactments portray, by analogy to female roles, the progress of the god-
dess from uncontrolled threatening power to benevolent protectress.
In the final section we note how the rather narrow place given to women
in the festival proceedings emphasizes their proper concerns to be the wel-
fare of their husbands and households. By contrast, males are responsible
for the conduct and performance of the festival activities for the larger
units of village society and hence its well-being as a whole.

CONCEPTIONS OF THE GODDESS’ CHARACTER

The significance of a conyortless goddess

Depictions of female deities as married or unaccompanied by a spouse
 15

have been observed to correlate with their disposition towards people.

Babb points out that in the Chhatisgarh region of Madhya Pradesh
female deities which are not accompanied by a male consort deity are con-
sidered potentially destructive (1970: 142, 146-7). However, when female
deities are accompanied by a husband, the pair is benign. The husband
appears to control and subdue the wife. Telugu categories of female dei-
ties exhibit a similar pattern. Localized goddesses of the category grama
devata (grfma-’village’, d-6vata -’deity’), of which Bandamma of Aripaka
is an example, are never considered to have husbands. They are of ambi-
guous character, liable to be dangerous and destructive if not regularly
propitiated with tribute.
It is useful here to consider the wooden idols which are carried in pro-
cession in the Bandamma festival. These idols represent the goddess
Bandamma and her younger brother, P6turdju. They form one link in a
chain of progressive ’embodiments’ of the goddess from ant hill dirt to
pots, and later, on to the fixed stone at her permanent temple.~° Their
stylized iconography has an obvious sexual content. The goddess is depic-
ted as a vertically grooved diamond shape having a square head, distinct
facial features, but no arms. Her brother is represented by a phallic cylin-
drical stick with two raised ridges just below a pointed knob at its top
end.
Verbal cues reiterate the visually male nature of Poturaj u. The term potu
occurs widely as an indicator of maleness, in the sense of male of the

species in words for animals, birds, insects, plants (Galletti 1935: 284)11
and people. For example, it plays a role like ’tom’ and ’billy’ in the English
words for male cats and goats, tom-cat and billy-goat (p6tupilli -’tom- cat’,
pilli-‘cat’; w~~o~M―’billy-goat’, meka-‘goat’). The male water buffalo,
significant as an animal formerly sacrificed to grdma devata, also has polu
in its name dunnapbtu (dunna-’ploughing’). In Aripaka village speech con-
trasting terms for male and female person were ddamanisi/potumanisi (dda
-’female’, manisi-‘person’). The word rdju which forms the second com-
ponent of Poturaju’s name literally means ’king’. It is a caste indicator at
the end of male names of members of the Raju caste, the local Kshatriyas.
It is also commonly appended to male personal names among many castes,
including the Gavaras, e.g., Appala Raju, Jogi Raju, much like the words
Rao and Naidu which originated as titles but became popular chosen
names, e.g., Rama Rao, Durgu Naidu.

Harper has discussed the question of embodiment for Karnataka village deities,
10
remarking that certain malevolent deities who cause illnesses can be transformed into
benevolent forces by being installed in a fixed shrine and periodically worshipped
(Harper 1959: 233).
The feminine equivalent is petta: ’,
11 bitch kukka—
’
—
pettakukka petta on its
’dog’,
own also means ’hen’.
16

The juxtapositionof the idols of the goddess and her younger brother
appears to represent of sexual symmetry, though not a procreative
a sort
one. The relationship of younger brother (tammudu) to elder sister (akka)
is one in which the superior female protects the inferior male. In the local
marriage customs which allow and even encourage uncle-niece marriage
(both actual and classificatory) an elder sister can become a mother-in-law.
The ambiguity in the goddess’ character, sometimes protective but also
potentially in a position to interfere disruptively, fits well with this image
of a male’s relationship to his elder sister, that mother-like potential
mother-in-law.
Contrasting with the grama devata is the category of female deity gene-
rally referred to as a dëvi, who is considered to be married. Such a goddess
is the devi Gairamma, a local version of Gauri, the wife of Siva. Her cha-
racter is considered entirely benevolent and her worship is associated with
the pleasurable anticipation of the ripening crops in October and Novem-
ber. Most years the Gavaras of the village celebrate an agricultural
festival in her honour. In the celebrations, not only is she invariably depic-
ted alongside her husband Siva (she is always smaller in size than he) but
marriage songs and a ride in a wedding palanquin are prominent during
her festival processions. -

The contrast between these two varieties of female deity. gräm2 dovata
and devi, can be compared to the contrast between the social categories of
widow and non-widow. This is not to equate grama dzvatas with widows.
Rather, it is significant to note that what grdma devatas have in common
with widows is an association with a threatening, potentially uncontrolled
power which is characterized as dangerous to the well-being of society.
What is going on, then, is a metaphoric equation of the village goddess’
power with the strength and quality of female dsa.

Female dga in ghosts and dc-ified virgin girls

This aspect of dsa, the excessively emotional, passionate nature of
females, is even more clear in the other categories of female supernaturals,
ghosts As we have already mentioned, even afcer death, women’s dia lives
on. After the death of a married woman with a family and husband still

alive, special precautions have to be taken against the deceased woman’s

asa. Part of the funerary rituals propitiate her and ask her if she died
satisfied and if she will release her husband to marry again. If this is not
done, she is liable jealously to attack a new wife who would presume to
replace her. Once it is established that she is satisfied, she is cleared for
installation into the family’s ancestor shrine (after the requisite year of
mourning). Thereafter, she is believed to exert benevolent influence over
the household and the undertakings of its members.
Elmore, in his study of Andhra village deities, reports that in the regions
 17

he studied, grfma devatas often originated as peranjflu, women who died

before their husbands (1915: 58-75). While there was no evidence for such
an origin of gräma devatas in the Visakhapatnam district, there was a

phenomenon akin to it, the deified bdla-perantdlu. A bila-perantalu, pre-

pubescent girl who dies. 12 This is perhaps because she its believed to have
the potential to exert benevolent influence for everyone in her village and
even for people of other villages,l3 was never linked to a particular house-
hold as a wife. The stories behind temples built in honour of bala-peran-
idlu all exhibit similar features. The deceased young girl appears in her
parents’ dreams and requests that a temple be built for her. When she is
disinterred, her body has not decomposed. (Prepubescent unmarried
children are buried, not cremated, and salt is customarily thrown into the
grave.)
It is for us that the character of the bfla-peranjflu draws
significant
heavily on the associations with the ’non-widowhood’ of perantalu, asso-
ciating it with auspiciousness and well-being. One of the principal areas in
which popular bdla-perantalu in the region demonstrate their powers is in
fulfilling requests made by women with problems affecting the well-being
of their household. Barrenness, problems with irregular supply of breast
milk, and children’s diseases are among the most common reasons for
vows. Some of the most striking symbolic elements in the bala-perantalu
shrines are allusions to auspicious married status. Commonly found votive
offerings are gold wedding lockets, cosmetic boxes containing turmeric
and vermilion powders, and a kind of child’s toy. The memorial pillar
erected on the site of the bdla-peranfdlu’s burial is always planted with
sweet basil (tulsi), associated with non-widowhood and the longevity of
husbands in other ritual contexts.

Terms for motherhood as euphemisms of tribute

There is another aspect of verbal categories which throws light on the
use of female role stereotypes for deities. It is the use of the term amma.
The festival to a grdma devata which we described above was in honour of
the goddess named Bandamma. The meaning of the first part of this name,
Bandi, is unclear but is perhaps related to a term for a cart, banJi, or a
worn stone, bane/a. Other goddesses of this type have names which trans-
late as items such as rice husks (N3kalamma), items of value such as gold
or pearl (BaDgdramma, Mutydlamma), or names deriving from well-known

12
When enquiries were made about special terms for pre-pubescent boys who die,
the reply was that they are called rudu—
ī Unlike la-peran
v
’hero’. ā they never
b
tlu
ā
seem to be specially venerated.
By no means are all deceased girls so deified. The pattern of the creation of la-
13 ā
b
perantālu temples will be considered in a later article.
18

deities such as Durgalamma. The sum of the names of all grdma devatas,
however, is invariably amma.
This term deserves attention because of its intimate association with
feminiriity.14 It is’found at the end of all women’s names as a marker of
their femaleness. Names of male deities which are given to women take
this ending, e.g. Narayanamma. Ammrx also occurs as a kinship term. On
its own, it means ’mother’, both as a term of reference and as a term of
address. It is also found as a compound of other kinship terms, for exam-
ple nannamma-‘father’s mother’ (nanna-‘father’, amma-‘mother’) and
ammamma-’mothet’š mother’. Amma is additionally a suffix of address
implying respect and politeness when a woman is being spoken to.15 Thus,
urikeltanu (firiki-’to the village,’ vë!tánu-’l’m going’) becomes firiJ<iJifn-
amma-’I’m going to the village, ma’am’.
It is significant that the sufhx amma can bemused among males particu-
larly to strangers, in requests which are at once pleading and a:flectionate.
A villager begging a gatekeeper in town to give him access to a hospital
will use amma as if to say ’won’t you let me in, friend?’ In such cases, the
manipulative use of the sufhx amma is achieved through the allusion to
the mother-child relationship.16 It is not meant to express an already exist-
ing relation of affection . but rather to manoeuvre the’person addressed
into a position where it is difficult for him to refuse.
’

It is with this manipulative sense in mind that we should interpret the

use of the ending amma in the names of disease-causing village deities.
While a grdma devata is explicitly referred to as a mother, her motherly
qualities are not always readily apparent.17 Rather, such qualities are wish-
fully hoped for. The use of amma to address a grdnla devata is, in fact, a
kind of euphemism, a form of manipulative understatement.’,, By contrast,
when amma is used towards the benevolent devi Gauri, in the form of
Gairamma, it is more straightforwardly applied. -

The fact that references to motherhood in the context ofgrama.devata

Compare Bean’s parallel work on the equivalent Kannada term amma (Bean
11
1975).
Bean suggests that in Kannada amma is an honorific because it is as a mother
15
that a woman derives most respect and authority (1975: 321).
The suffix amma also occurs as an expression of affection when an adult addresses
16
a child (without regard to the sex of the child) perhaps as an extension of this sense of

parent-child friendliness (Cf. Bean 1975: 324).

Elmore is decidedly against ihe interpretation of female village deities (’Dravidian
17
deities’) as being of ’maternal’ character (1915: 141). Rather, he stresses that the
female qualities of the goddess are actually quarrelsomeness, vindictivenss, and jealousy
ibid.
(
.
)
In this interpretation I am gcing farther than Bean who in her Kannada data inter-
18
prets the term amma when used for a goddess to be merely an example of metonymy
(1975:324).
 19

~vorship constitute manipulative flattery is further reflected in the use of

the term talli. Talli, another word for mother, generally occurs as a term
of reference. It also freely substitutes for amma in the name of grama
dovatas. Bandamma in Aripaka is sometimes called Banditalli. Between
people, talli occurs, rather like amma, in a figurative sense to express a
request for motherly protection and aid. A woman exclaimed, ’talli, talli’
during an incident in which I was going to fetch a doctor from outside
the village in an effort to save her gravely ill husband. That statement,
addressed to me, combined an expression of appreciation for help from an
outsider with allusions to the pleas for mercy made to village goddesses in
°

the same words.~9 .

The euphemistic aspect of references to motherhood in the context of

grama devatas is especially- striking in the synonymous terms, ammatalli
and ammaväru. Ammatalli is the combination of two words for mother
but is never used in this double form to refer to people. Literally speaking,
ammavfru is a respectful form of amma. Väru is a variant2° of the honori-
fic suffix -gdru (similar to the Hiridi suffix ji as in Gandhi-ji) which is used
after the names of both sexes to connote respect. In actual usage, ammi-
talli and ammavaru refer both, to grfma dëvatas and to the epidemic dis-
eases they are believed to cause’when angered, especially smallpox. Though
the disease of smallpox has a technical name derived from Sanskrit;
masucikam, it is never used by villagers. Its. use would be disrespectful and
would anger the goddess further, the strategy is to flatter the goddess by
using terms which allude to the affection and protectiveness of mother-
hood. It is hoped that the goddess will live up to these expectations and will
interpret the euphemistic terms, exaggerating the actual state of affair, as
a form of tribute. Following the same rationale, blisters and pustules,

normally called pokkulu, are referred to as kunçlalu-’pots’, when associa-

ted with smallpox. Similarly, the firewalking troughs used in vow-fulfilling
tributes to Bandamma are termed H~/a/M&horbar;’waters’, and termite mound
dirt used to initiate the annual festival is called’ put tu bangäram- ’termite
mound gold’ .71 .

Compare Bean’s interpretation of

19 the use of amma in Kannada to mean ’help!’
She remarks, inter alia, that its expressive power derives from its association with
benevolent power of mothers and goddesses (Bean 1975: 327).
V&amacr;ru appears to be a plural form of
20 g&amacr;ru though the plural here is a way of indi-
cating great respect. Names of certain great gods are pluralized in a similar way, e.g.
&Sacute;r&imacr; R&amacr;mulu for Rama.
Similarly, the name of the north Indian smallpox goddess, Sh&imacr;tl&amacr;, means "the cool
21
one" (Babb 1973: 19), a euphemistic disguise of the fact that illness caused by her is
the result of over-heating.
20

DEPICTIONS OF THE GODDESS’ CHARACTER

So far, we have observed a certain paradox in feminine imagery in the

verbal categories used about goddesses cf the grama devata variety. On
the one hand, their power to harm people by causing severe and epidemic
illnesses is identified with the threatening uncontrolled sexuality of women
undominated by males (analogous to widows). On the other, they are
spoken of in a terminology which alludes to benevolent, protective mother-
hood. The activities involved in the performance of the Bandamma festival
reconfirm this contrast. The goddess is repeatedly associated with uncon-
tained sexuality and danger. At the same time, the villagers are heavily
involved in show of devotion and tribute to her. These two aspects are
related to each other in a single theory of power relations which can be
deduced from the evidence. Villagers act as though it is essential to flatter
and pay tribute to deities with threatening or coercive powers. The offering
of such tribute is believed to indebt the deity to the worshipper and to
obligate her to reciprocate with benevolent actions.
A full examination of this concept is beyond the scope of our present
enquiry on allusions to female roles. However, it should be noted here
that this tribute is a version of a wider phenomenon of pcija, the funda-
mental form of Hindu village worship. It involves a transaction, an ex-
change of show of self-effacing deference and tribute in return for divine
benevolence and protection. The belief in the need to humble oneself in
order to achieve health and prosperity (and the converse explanation of
misfortune in terms of pride and social competitiveness) ultimately serves
as an ideology of social hierarchy, a rationale of the status quo (Tapper
1978).

Acts of tribute
Essentially, villagers view the annual performance of the Bandamma
festival as a propitiatory act of tribute to tbe goddess. By its impressive
and successful performance they gain her good graces for the following
year, after which they must renew the relationship. That this sort of thing
is the underlying rationale for the festival was brought home to me by the
villagers’ tale of a Harijan drummer who mistakenly publicised the wrong
goddess’ festival. The villagers felt they had better perform the announced
festival so as not to insult the goddess by withdrawing an invitation already
made to her.22
a

Observers of gr&amacr;ma vata

22 &emacr; worship in Andhra in the early twentieth century were
d
often struck by the prominence of fear and propitiation. To these descriptions are often
added condescending and slanderous remarks that this worship lacked Christian-style
expressions of gratitude and love to the deity (Elmore 1915: 134-5, n. 38; Whithead
 21

The same attitude be discerned in an incident in which I observed a

can
man going to sleep upside down cot. When I enquired about this
on an
unconventional act it was explained that by overturning the bed he was
indicating to the goddess that his sleeping was not intended as ant -imper-
tinence. His act was in the villagers’ idiom of hierarchical social relations
in which respect is shown to a superior by refraining from being in greater
comfort or in greater elevation.23
By the logic of this formula of respect, illnesses and misfortunes are at-
tributed, after the fact, to improper respect having been shown to a god-
dess. A relative of one of the villagers who lived in another village develop-
ed a peculiar swelling in her neck. She suddenly recalled that she had been
present in Yatapalem when the Bandamma festival had been announced
and begun She suspected that the goddess was angered by her having left
before the end of the festival. The woman then returned for it and indeed
her neck swelling subsided. On another occasion the whole village applied
this logic. Right after the performance of the Bandamma festival there
was an epidemic. They realized the goddess was not satisfied with the way

they had performed her festival and immediately performed another one.
Thereafter they made her festival an annual event. It had previously been
celebrated triennially. ..

Danger, sexuality, and heat

To understand the depiction of the goddess as jealous, threatening. and
coercive, a closer look at the festival activities is necessary. Many of these
clearly identify the goddess with ideological notions about female charac-
ter, their excessive dia and the potential threat to society of their uncon.
tained sexuality.
At the initiation of the festival to Bandamma, representatives of the
village worship at a termite mound and take a pinch of dirt from it. The
significance of the termite mound is that it is believed to be the abode of
grdma dëvatas ’in the wild’. Termite mounds are also considered to be the
abode of snakes, particularly dangerous cobras, While there is an annual
propitiation of cobras at a different time of year, it seems that the poten-
tial of goddesses to harm becomes associated with the harmfulness of
snakes
In a similar way, the worship of the goddess is associated with the pro-

1921: 152-3). Their own preconceptions prevented them from understanding how this
system of worship expresses a moral code of social values and responsibilities.
Babb describes similar types of precautions in Madhya Pradesh. When a goddess
23
is causing someone to have smallpox, visitors to the patient are careful not to wear
ornamants lest the goddess become further angered (Babb 1973: 18) presumably at
their lack of humility. Women who are fortunate to be pregnant are also thought to
provoke the goddess’ jealousy and are prohibited from visiting the patient.
22

pitiation of rather dangerous ghosts. It will be recalled that this is

the aim of the ’decoy offering’ in the precinct of Bandamma’s shrine the
night before the last day of the festival.21 The offerings of rice on rice
sieves which are placed in this wheeled basket echo the same offering for
ghosts which is placed on the bier of a corpse about to be taken away for
cremation. Also, ghosts are forciably driven off with sticks and -shouts at
the time of the final annual sacrifice and blood offering It should be re-
called that ghosts represent the persistence of people’s dia after their death,
and that the majority of dissatisfied ghosts tend to be female.
Activities in the festival which specifically enact the goddess’ powerful
presence are incidents of possession and the performance of firewalking,
Especially, in the case of the washerman possessed at the time of the final
procession, the heat and violence of her power are visible to all. The great
efforts required to restrain him and cool him off attest to the uncontrolled
energy which is associated with the presence of the goddess in his body
and her proximity to the crowd through him.
The displays of firewalking, on the other hand, are manifestations of her
power which are more clearly directed towards benevolent ends. Her pre-
sence seems to counteract the normal physical effects of fire on the body
of her devotees. Just as she cured them of their illnesses, she protects them
against the heat of the firepits. (Illnesses which entail fever are said to be
manifestations of overheating in the body.25) At the same time they demons-
trate their fearlessness of pain as a tribute to her power.
Finally, it should be remarked that the proceedings on the last day of
the festival have an urgent air, analogous to sexual arousal 26 The tempo
of the drumming creates a compelling, quickened rhythm. The procession
rushes to the temple amidst rather menacing explosions of fireworks and

24 describes similar decoy offerings and processions of men circumambulating

Elmora
the village’s boundary shouting, flourishing swords and sticks, and making sacrifices
(Elmore 1915: 38-9).
Though the specific rituals are rather different, we find similar themes in data on
25
disease goddesses in other parts of India. In Madhya Pradesh the goddess Shitla
manifes s herself as illness, considered to be bodily over-heating, when she is angry
with a victim (Babb 1973: 18). The goddess’ power is controlled for the benefit of society
by rituals which contain this heat with cooling substances: neem leaves, lemons, and
submersion in water.
While villagers did
26 not explicitly articulate this idea, it seems paralleled by others’
observations. Babb refers to frenzy and ’frantic in ’oxication’ followed by a ’cool
aftermath’ in describing the final day of a goddess festival (Babb 1973: 26). Beck
describes the final day ofa festival ritual to Mariyamman in Tamilnad in which the
goddess is said to fight ghosts with ’power (heat) stored up through celibacy in the
preceding year’ and then satisfy her sexual desire by engaging in sexual intercourse
with Siva (Beck 1969: 564). Mariyamman’s new cool state is demonstrated by
absorbing the heat of the coals upon which firewalkers tread.
 23

crackers which at times seem to be thrown at random into the crowd.

The climax is the sacrifice followed by a hasty withdrawal from the tem-
ple precinct. The calm which follows further enhances the impression of
sexual release.

PORTRAYALS OF WOMEN IN THE RITUAL PERFORMANCES

While these identifications of the goddess with aspects of female charac-

ter and sexuality remain on a metaphoric level, the evening skits and final
night’s drama explicitly portray women’s behaviour. The two varieties of
performance, skit and drama, offer radically different images of women.
In the skits we are presented with an exaggeratedly negative picture of
disloyal and insubordinate wives. The women of the dramas, on other
hand, are exaggeratedly positive. They are embodiments of virtue whose
near superhuman display of fidelity induces the benevolent intervention of
the gods.
To explain the contrast between these two different portrayals, we need
to understand them in the context of the Bandamma festival. The skits
occur at the phase in the rituals in which the goddess’ ambiguity towards
the community is - only in the process of being altered. It is during the
time when she has not been fully ingratiated to the community for the
coming year. Thus, the skits seem to echo the theme of the threat to social
harmony of a woman not adequately controlled by a superior male, or of
inferiors who do not accept subordination to their superiors. Such threats,
especially with their ’close to the bone’ portrayals, are however ultimately
only laughed off as absurd. 17 The drama occurs after the festival is over
and has been successfully received by the goddess. Thus, its themes of
loyalty and protectiveness seem congruent with the new relationship with
the goddess. Women portrayed in it fulfil their obligations to their hus-
bands and, in fact, harness great power on their behalf.

The skits: female insubordination

As we have already observed, a type of improvised humorous satirical
skit, vdlakdlu (from välakam-’pretence; deceit’), forms a mandatory com-
ponent of the daily entertainment of a grama dëvata. These skits are per-
formed in a stylized format. They always commence with a man or boy
going around in a circle in a counter-clockwise direction in an open area
Elmore’s description of goddess rituals in other parts of Andhra suggest an additi-
27
onal interpretation of the meaning of the skits. He describes events in which Untouch-
ables are given licence to revile the higher castes (Elmore 1915: 27, 30). This is inter-
preted as the goddess humiliating proud high-caste people : ibid. 30). Their permitting
(
this is a gesture of self-humbling analogous to other forms of tribute offered to the
goddess, e.g. gestures of obeisance in puja.
24

in front of the goddess (represented by a ghattam pot). This person holds

a burnt or smouldering palmyra leaf behind him while exclaiming ’abb6,
abbo’ as if it were his tail on fire. The skits often employ this convention
of pacing around in a circle to represent people walking from one place to
another, ploughing, or driving bullocks in a circle to operate a sugarcane
press.
The plots of these satirical skits typically employ reversals of normal
behaviour They often depict villagers and recent incidents in the local
gossip but can also represent typical characters of a hypothetical nature.
Recurrent themes are men subordinated by women, women’s illicit sexual
liaisons, and masters dominated by their servants. Reversals of the
symbolic markers of hierarchical status are a constant feature in the slap-
stick antics. Men touch the feet of ’women’ (women impersonated in the
skits by men) and ’women’ immodestly lift up their saris and kick the men.
Such actions unfailingly evoke howls of laughter in the audience of both
sexes.
These skits are also interesting guides to the suspicions about female
character which are a part of the ideological rationale for male dominance.
Among the issues raised in them are the problem of the lack of male heirs,
the role of female economic activity, the need for wives to respect their
husbands, adultery and other aspects of marital breakdown. As we saw in
the first half of this paper, these are vital issues in the relations between
’

the sexes in everyday life.

We will now outline three typical skits which comment on roles.
The first is a commentary on women’s economic participation in the house-
hold. It satirizes the situation of a well-known villager who has several
daughters but no sons. He pressures his daughter to work for him, to the
dismay of her husband. The skit focuses on the problem of confusion in
sex roles by a series of jokes about harnessing female buffaloes to operate
a sugarcane press, a job customarily done by male buffaloes. There follows
an ill fated attempt to milk a male buffalo. The buffaloes are portrayed by
small boys who have great fun participating in the skit. One of their rou-
tines is to kick the main actors as they bend over to determine the sex of
the buffaloes they are about to milk.
In another episode of the same skit, comments are made about sons-in-
law of the man with no sons One is singled out for criticism for working
his father-in-law’s land rather than cooperating with his brothers. This
issue of a man with an interest in his father-in-law’s land, through his
wife, is the occasion for criticism of one of the Gavara families in the
-village. This family is said to be interested in having one of its sons marry
the daughter of the man with no sons Such strategies go against the gene-
ral rule of patrilineal inheritance and ultimately compromise a husband’s
authority over his wife.
 25

Another skit touches on one symptom of marital instability, the wife

who refuses to return to her husband. A young woman, impersonated by
a man wearing a sari, stays away from her husband at her father’s house.
She defies her father’s exhortations that she return to her husband. Every
time he suggests she return to him, she feigns illness. Finally, the father
decides to hold a ceremony to placate the ’malevolent astrological in-
fluences’ which cause her to fall mysteriously ill every time he mentions
her husband An imitation of this ritual, complete with mock Sanskrit
chanting, is staged, to the great amusement of the audience.
A third skit describes a wife’s infidelity and attempted deception of her
husband. A woman prays to Bandamma for her husband to go blind so
that he will not be able to see her boy friends. The husband overhears her
and decides to pretend that he is blind. The woman believes that her hus-
band has actually gone blind and proceeds to invite numerous boy friends
for dinner. The wife puts poison in the food intended for her husband,
but while she is out of the room he mixes it into the food on the other
plates.
After the meal, all the guests die, leaving the wife with the problem of
getting rid of the dead bodies. To this end she enlists the aid of a wander-
ing beggar28 by means of a generous bribe. He throws a body into a well
and comes back for his payment. He is surprised to find what he thinks to
be the same body back in the house. He then dumps this body into the well
and returns again, only to be startled to find another body to be disposed
of. Many bodies later, and after this satire has been used to send the audi-
ence doubling over with laughter, the husband opens his eyes and up-
braids his wife for attempting to deceive him.
A number of interesting comments on husband-wife relations come out
in the actual dialogue and miming of this skit. The wife begins cooking
her husband some millet gruel, a preparation looked down upon as chea-
per and inferior to rice. She then begins to flirt with members of the
audience, allowing her sari end to slip off immodestly. She then comments,
’Oh, these expensive saris never stay on. They keep falling off !’ Later
when she brings her husband his meal of gruel, he sarcastically remarks
’You always bring me this miserable gruel to eat but spend hundreds of
rupees on expensive saris!’
At another point, the ’battle of the sexes’ is waged with sarcastic re-
marks on the ethic of virtuous wifehood, the role of the perantdlu or
pativrata:

This man was the subject of a recent scandal. He had run off with the wife of a
28
wandering entertainer and had been chastised by an iratecaste council convened on
the outskirts of Aripaka.
26

Wife: (brags, gossiping with another woman) ’Do you have a husband
’

who is equal to mine? (long pause) Well, perhaps our husbands

are similar after all.... Your husband has a crooked mouth and
mine has a crooked arse.’

Wife: (enters her house and begins ordering her husband to help her
take a heavy basket off her head) ’Come on, help me take this
basket off my head. Do it slowly, be careful.’ (As he helps her
she uses the opportunity of his bending over to step on his
head.) .

Wife: ’Due to my devotion to you as a loyal wife (nd pativrata dhar-

mam), if I put my foot on your head, I will go straight to hea-
&dquo;°

. ven.’
Husband: ’Hey! Are you putting your foot on my head?’
Wife: ’Yes, doesn’t every wife? Hold on, I’ll take my leg down’ (said
as she steps on him even more emphatically). ’Ah, I am so loyal
to you. From the day I was born I never desired any other man!
(Aside) Except Penta Rao!’
The dramas: female loyalty
The plots of the dramas often based on mythological themes but are
are
not always episodes directly out of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. A
number of stories concern their principal characters but pit them against
one another in unexpected ways to produce seemingly irreconcilable con-
flicts of loyalty or moral d-ilemmas. In the drama performed after the
Bandamma festival, SatyahariScandrïyam, the moral dilemma is the choice
between selfish narrow familial interest and moral behaviour which will
benefit the community as a whole. While in this play, the moral dilemma
is primarily posed for King Harischandra, his wife Chandramati plays a
highly significant part in the story. In fact, in the depiction of her charac-
ter we can see the portrayal of a perfect pativrata.
.

The main story concerns a jealous sadhu’s wager that he can cause King
Harischandra, renowned for his truthfulness, to break his word. He pro-
ceeds to extract a promise from the king of a large charitable donation.
Subsequently, the sadhu manoeuvres the king into a situation in which he
declares he would rather abdicate than break his caste rules by marrying
a low caste dancing girl. The sadhu holds him to his word and he abdi-
cates rather than become a liar. At this point the sadhu insists on the pay-
ment of the donation earlier promised him. Since Harischandra is no
longer king he is unable to pay. Nevertheless, he promises to keep his
word and find money within a month. He wanders in a forest with his
wife, son, and a servant of the sadhu. They are beset by hardships but
. eventually arrive in Benares just as the month is up.
In order to pay the sadhu, Harischandra sells his wife as a servant and
 27

becomes a menial of a low caste attendant of a cremation-ground. He is

later reunited with her when she brings their son, who has died of a snake-
bite, for cremation. The cremation is marred, however, by her being
wrongly accused of being a Thief and being sentenced to be executed by
the cremation-ground attendant, Harischandra. Just as he is about to
comply with this final test of his steadfastness, the gods intervene. He and
his wife are rewarded with boons for their adherence to truth and the
sadhu is humbled.
In the representation of female roles in the character of Chandramati
we can discern two major themes. The first is of steadfast loyalty to her

husband and the second is of the generation of mystical power. The two
themes are related to each other by the common factor of self-negation,
in the sense of controlling the negative forces of äsa. Chandramati’s loyalty
to her husband is focussed on reinforcing his moral stance regardless of
the consequences to herself. In fact, she actually volunteers to be sold into
slavery in order that her husband fulfil his moral commitment to honour
his contracts with the sadhu and remain loyal to his caste customs. Later,
she even volunteers to be executed by her husband to maintain his obe-
dience to his superiors. In both cases, Chandramati does not display any
attachment to her own comfort or life. It is not a coincidence that in for-
mer times, in other parts of India, a wife who sacrificed her life to go with
her husband at the time of his death was termed sati,29 a word which
derives from satyam-’true, loyal.’ This is the ultimate obedience, the sub-
ordination of a woman’s dga, her attachments to the world, its pleasures,
hopes and desires.
During their forest wanderings, Chandramati’s loyalty to her husband
manifests itself as a mystical power. The ill-intentioned sadhu sends a
forest fire. Chandramati plans to follow her husband into it but first prays
to Agni, the god of fire, alluding to her loyal worship of fire (in Brah-
manic rituals) in the past. The power she has generated as a loyal wife,
causes the fire to subside and be extinguished. In an aside, the sadhu re-
marks that her power as a pativrata is superior to his power of tapas which
generated the fire.
Underlying this episode is a theory of power in the human body which
can be harnessed by self-control. A male sadhu’s austerities, which entail
denials of normal -bodily functions (manifestaticns of a male’s natural
impulses), ultimately give him control of extraordinary power. This power
is conceived of as a form of heat, the heat of passionate desires is contain-
ed to become the heat of tapas (Cf. Beck 1969: 560). In a similar way, a
perfect wife who denies her natural female ása, tendencies to be sexually

The Telugu
29 term is more ’going with’.
properly sahagam&amacr;nam&mdash;
28

uncontrolled and selfish, also gains control of extraordinary power.3° Per-

haps the fact that females are attributed with greater dia than males
means that if they can control it they can harness a greater mystical

power.
It should be recognized that we are dealing here with mythical formula-
tions, indeed, those articulated by male playwrights. Rather than saying
that females have greater power than men, they in fact imply that women’s
dia is greater than men’s and is less controllable Actual sadhus are rare
in society, and many wandering holy men are regarded by villagers with
scepticism and the suspicion that they are actually thieves in disguise.31
’

Real life pativratas are perhaps even rarer.32

In this drama there is also the notion of sexual interdependence. As long
as the wife remains subordinately faithful to her husband, her husband’s
well-being is assured. In a number of myths recounted by Elmore there is
the theme that a husband’s power is based on the chastity of his wife
(1915: 78, 83). In them, plots to undermine the men result in schemes to
cause their wives to be inadvertently disloyal to them.33

.
ACTIVITIES OF WOMEN IN THE FESTIVAL

Despite the prominence of symbolism based on female roles the goddess

ritual is essentially a male dominated event. It is only men, as representa-
tives of castes and public social categories (e.g , pujari or village messenger)
who conduct the public events in which women remain peripheral. The
most striking feature of women’s participation is their involvement on be-
half of their individual households.
Women’s main duty during the processions is to put offerings in the
goddess pots and perform puja to them with the ritual substances, turme-
ric and vermilion. As we have seen, these vivid red and yellow powders
are associated in other contexts with non-widow status as well as auspi-
ciousness in general. The goddess pots are painted white, have a turmeric
stripe around the middle, above which, are numerous red dots. These dots

O’Flaherty,
30 in analysis of the mythology of Siva, identifies a vacillation between
tapas and kama, asceticism and sexuality (O’Flaherty 1969b: 35-6). Kaelber, working
with somewhat different textual materials, feels O’Flaherty over-emphasizes the opposi-
tion between sexuality and tapas (1976: 382). He stresses that they both derive from
an original unity and identity. ’K
ma is itself a form of tapas’ :
&amacr; ibid. 383).
(
See O’Flaherty (1969a: 323) for further evidence that Hindu society viewed ascetics
31
with scepticism and suspicion.
Even in the Ram i legends, the Ramayana and Uttara Ramayana, Sita is not above
32
suspicion.
Compare this with my earlier observations
33 on attitudes towards inter-caste sexual
relations: See page 7.
 29

are each referred toas bottu, the same term used for women’s forehead

markings. Püja consists of turmeric paste with red centres being affixed to
the upper portion of the pot, as if on a woman’s forehead. The pot itself
should not be overlooked as an allusion to femaleness. In non-festival
settings the same variety of pot is the main utensil used by women for
carrying water and cooking food. It is also an essential item in a woman’s
dowry at the time of her marriage.
The fulfilment of obligations is a major theme of the morning activities
on the last day of the Bandamma festival and many of these concern
women. First of all, most private vow fulfilments and all household pujas
are conducted by women. In this way, it is emphasized that women’s pri-

mary concern is the well-being of their families. Secondly, obligations

between families who have exchanged women are also reinforced on the
last day of the festival. This is the time when women who have married
out of the village return and women from other villages are joined by their
relatives from elsewhere. Such visits are the occasion for the preparation
and exchange of holiday foods, another special domain of housewives.
It should be recognized that these festival activities serve to structure
women’s own perceptions of themselves.34 Women’s ritual duties and out-
lets for enjoyment, dressing up, visiting relatives, witnessing colourful pro-
.
cessions and shows are all confined to the context of their fulfilling socially
allocated roles. At the same time, in order to ensure themselves and their
families against misfortune they become involved in enacting an ideology
which stresses the beneficial effects of their accepting their position in
society. In addition, the festival symbolism prominently features the con-
cept of the potentially anti-social implications of uncontrolled female
sexuality, and the notions of the inherently protective qualities of mother-
hood.

CONCLUSIONS

We have attempted here to trace a relationship between women’s roles in

society and statements about them in a deity ritual. In the first section we
examined the actual role of women and noted that their behaviour is a
crucial concern for males. While wives are clearly subordinate to husbands,
their participation in the household economy, their leverage in male deci-
sion-making, their importance in marital stability, and their influence over
their children, make their position highly important.
In the cultural practices and beliefs surrounding women we noted that

Ortner remarks that women’s acceptance of their own devaluation is ’nearly

34
universal’ since women’s consciousness is structured by their participation in cultural
activities which contain this premise (1974: 76).
30

the domination of wives by husbands has a strong ideological underpin-

ning. The auspiciousness of non-widowhood and the inauspiciousness of
widowhood were identified as linked to the practice of reinforcing domes-
tic sexual hierarchy with seniority. Asa was also found to be a key ideo-
logical concept in cultural expectations of female behaviour. It essentially
stands for a motivating force within individuals. This force is conceived of
as a source of natural impulses, attachments, emotions, and passions un-
directed by social restraints. Men have it but less intensely than women.
The supposed sexual impetuousness of women is a manifestation of dia
which is perceived as a potential threat to society while the naturally pro-
tective attachment of a mother to her children is its positive aspect (as
long as she is prevented from turning her influence over them to socially
divisive ends). We found that the ideas about the anti-social potential of
female character are used by husbands to justify the need for their domi-
nating their wives.
In the second section we examined a village festival in honour of the
goddess Bandamma. We found that, like social relations, rituals are
phrased in a hierarchical idiom in which respectful behaviour is an essen-
tial element used in exchanges to initiate or maintain reciprocal moral
obligations. However, it cannot be concluded that there is a direct corres-
pondence between female deities and actual females. Rather, deities and
the rituals which are associated with them utilize female role stereotypes
for metaphor, euphemism, and praise. A gräma clevata is like a female
threateningly undominated by a male, but she is not a widow any more
than she is an earthly mother. Though she is addressed as a mother this
must be understood as a form of flattery and tribute. Female asa is a parti-
cularly fertile metaphor for the character of female village deities. In the
negative sense, unbridled female dga, overheated passion, jealously, and
contentiousness, is identified with epidemic illness (also a form of over-
heating in the victims’ bodies). In the positive sense, controlled female
fla, attachment to the narrow circle of children and household, is identi-
fied with a goddess protecting the welfare of the narrowly defined sphere
’
of a particular village. I

Bandamma and other gri7ma devatas are personified epidemic, illnesses,

and misfortunes which sanction anti-social behaviour. The threat of their
anger, if they are not properly treated and appeased, is a force which com-
pels people to enact festival rituals. These rituals then ennoble wives’ sub-
ordination to husbands and people’s responsibility to their caste duties.
The goddess’ destructive jealousy is a sanction against the self-centred
anti-social pride of human competitiveness. Humility, gestures recognizing
authority and social responsibility become, through the festival; essential
to continued human well-being.
... _ . _ , .
, ...... , .
_
 31

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