Women and Society in Early Medieval India: Re-interpreting Epigraphs 9780429826429

Citation preview

Women and Society in Early Medieval India

This book examines women and society in India during 600–1200 ce through epigraphs. It offers an analysis of inscriptional data at the panIndia level to explore key themes, including early marriage, deprivation of girls from education, property rights, widowhood and satī, as well as women in administration and positions of power. The volume also traces gender roles and agency across religions such as Hinduism and Jainism, the major religions of the times, and sheds light on a range of political, social, economic and religious dimensions. A panoramic critique of contradictions and conformity between inscriptional and literary sources, including pieces of archaeological evidence against traditional views on patriarchal stereotypes, as also regional parities and disparities, the book presents an original understanding of women’s status in early medieval South Asian society. Rich in archival material, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of ancient and early medieval Indian history, social history, archaeology, epigraphy, sociology, cultural studies, gender studies and South Asian studies. Anjali Verma is Assistant Professor, Department of History, Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, India. She completed her PhD from Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla and has taught at several colleges under Delhi University, Panjab University, Guru Nanak Dev University, Himachal Pradesh University and Amity University, Haryana. She specializes in ancient Indian history, culture and archaeology.

Women and Society in Early Medieval India Re-interpreting Epigraphs Anjali Verma

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Anjali Verma The right of Anjali Verma to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-56302-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-44801-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Dedicated to Professor Laxman S. Thakur

Contents

List of illustrationsviii Prefaceix List of abbreviationsxiii Key to diacritical marksxv  1 Introduction

1

  2 Childhood and education

23

  3 Marriage, widowhood and satī 

45

  4 Women and sacred rites

92

  5 Capacity for governance

159

  6 Property rights

200

 7 Conclusion

232

Bibliography245 Index of names261 Index of terms and subjects263

Illustrations

Figures 3.1 Marriage within maternal relations 5.1 Genealogical tree of six Bhauma-kāra queens of Orissa

48 163

Tables 4.1 Land grants issued by females 102 4.2 Perpetual lamps donated to temples by females in various capacities 116 4.3 Various gifts donated for religious purpose by females 126 4.4 Contribution of females in Jaina Monastery and temple-building activities 138 4.5 Female disciples of various Jaina sanghas 143 7.1 Various fields of education open to women 233 7.2 Cases of disapproved forms of marriages 235 7.3 Cases of bigamy and polygamy 237 7.4 Few cases of satī and samādhi239 7.5 Showing administrative capabilities of women  242

Preface

The visible presence of women in epigraphs and literature has been worked over the past several decades. Previous studies done so far based on inscriptions and literature certainly have increased our knowledge and understanding on women as subjects of history. At the regional level, several attempts through epigraphs have been made up to recent times by many historians to either locate the female as an agency, her place in social processes and structures, but virtually no pan-Indian study has been done through the analyses of epigraphic material on the period between ce 600–1200. To locate women’s identity solely on material culture or literature and religious texts will not be fair until we compare them to get a comprehensive view. This monograph is a diligent attempt to contextualize women’s visibility during the early medieval period through inscriptions and depicting society through this framework of contextualization. Many textual sources, travel accounts and other contemporary sources have been consulted where sometimes, merger, dilution, differences and divisions appear while comparing the data. Divided into seven chapters, the first chapter of the present work is an introduction outlining the importance of epigraphy with a brief note on various approaches that have affected writings on the history of women, mainly Nationalist and Marxist. Debate on historiography among historians on Indian periodization with different perspectives has been entered into. A vast and diverse review of the literature has been explored to conceptualize female identity. Through this review, shaping and reshaping of congenial paradigms of gender history emerges, which provides a panoramic growth sequence to the forthcoming chapters. The review tries to introduce a gender lens by meaningfully incorporating gender as a critical component of writing history simultaneously trying to find her locus.

x  Preface The second chapter, divided into two inter-related segments, is an attempt to analyse the position of a girl child on her arrival in the family and opportunities of education made available to her. The obsession of the society with sons rhetorically providing existence of a mother only through her son, presents a case of gender bias for a girl child from the time of her birth. Reversing the order to reconstruct the previously held notion of deprivation of girls from education (through textual sources), epigraphs present a different interpretation in curriculum shift adapted from the Vedic education to decentralized subjects. The third chapter carries forward the debate on marriage from the previous chapter. The contrasting situation through inscriptions and literary sources has been debated, where ideal society has been tried to be created by smritikāras, but epigraphs often suggest diversity of practices and complex matrimony relations existing in the early medieval period. The chapter notices the extent of subordination of a married female through bigamy and polygamy and of a widow by either burning her as a glorified satī or making her follow the path of asceticism. The chapter ends by noticing an important shift of widows’ religious interest from Hinduism to Jainism in the south in search of ultimate salvation. The fourth chapter observes a broader outlook of overall religious activities of early medieval society and changing patterns through gender perspective. Several tables and charts are appended with the details of religious donations made by a diverse female section in various capacities, bringing out how religious feelings were shaped through donations. The concept of ‘salvation’ available to women in three different dominating religions – Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism through their ideological trends – has been elaborated. The focus of the fifth chapter is to explore the administrative caliber of women through epigraphs. This chapter tries to place women at the centre of feminist and nationalist debate and tracks the trajectory of change in their position from a hidden place in the textual sources. We see them in exotic roles where there are many charters, orders and grants issued by women in various administrative capacities. There can be no quarrel with the women administrators handpicked for notice from epigraphs which offer a bird’s-eye view of their contributions in the field of politics and revenue. What is offered in the sixth chapter is valuable historical mapping of women’s property rights through epigraphs and literary sources that allows one to understand whether women were marginalized in this sector or not. Intriguingly, there is a striking disconnect between the property rights of widows and the rest of the females coming under the

Preface xi family framework of mother, daughter, sister and wife. The inclusion of devadāsī in the section of property rights is a deliberate attempt to understand another social indicator that characterized early medieval society vis-à-vis the position of females with a different tangent. Strewn across almost all the chapters is the pervasive anxiety to reach a conclusion about the visibility of women, especially the common class, through epigraphs that may differ with or assent to the textual sources. The concluding chapter summarizes the data in its entirety and debates on various issues culled from epigraphs in the previous chapters. Nevertheless, the epigraphic data have also helped in discerning some regional peculiarities. The contradictions and conformity between inscriptional and literary sources have certainly helped in understanding women’s invisibility as a deliberate attempt in early medieval society. This chapter provides historical context through charts and tables for a proper understanding of the female in areas such as education, property rights, religious preferences, and administration. In most of the charts and tables, the place of inscriptions has been indicated with territorial units within the states where they have been found, along with the date of issue, donor, purpose and imprecatory verses. As the length of epigraphs varies and deals with various aspects, for convenience, I have chosen only those translated lines which dealt with our subject. The epigraphs under study record various reasons of grants, but I have used them to search out female identities and issues. Names of the reigning kings have not been stressed. They are cited only where required or supplied with. The same pattern has been adopted while mentioning the names of inscriptions. Most of the inscriptions cited from Epigraphia Indica have been named as they were captioned by their editors and authors. Inscriptions consulted from South Indian Inscriptions and Epigraphia Carnatica have not been named. Also, the inscription where translation (English/Hindi) was not available has not been cited. In the chapter on religious aspects of women, a loose application of methodological tools has been applied deliberately. Data in terms of tables have been used and analysed, keeping in view the large number of inscriptions and to avoid monotony, as most of the inscriptions are keeping the same language pattern and almost the same context. The references provided in tables have not been cited in the reference and bibliography sections to avoid repetition. A great caution has been taken to place inscriptions chronologically as far as they are dated. In discussions and analyses, sometimes there are contradictions and paradoxes at places while comparing

xii  Preface inscriptional data with literary sources, which is obvious due to the nature of both the sources. Also, the linear development of regular visibility of females cannot be drawn as the attitude of society depicted in both the sources sometimes produces a huge gap. Though the focus of the monograph remains to make visible the presence of women, many times the influence of the elite class hovers over the picture. I have tried to showcase the strengths and limits of female identity and to present beauty, ugliness, compassion, serenity and chaos that existed in defining her position in the society of the early medieval period at various levels. Main focus is that the concept of visibility may not be lost in managing a vast array of facts, still keeping in view the extensive epigraphic data, but some spaces remain unspecified. Also, certain themes are more complex than what has been managed here in this monograph. I have tried to avoid the urge to pack more information in than critical assessment of the issues discussed here requires.

Abbreviations

ARE Annual Report on [South Indian] Epigraphy, Delhi AIR All India Reporter ARMAD Annual Report of Mysore Archaeological Department, Mysore ARRMA Annual Report on the Working of Rajputana Museum, Ajmer ASMAR Archaeological Survey of Mysore, Annual Report ASINIS Archaeological Survey of India, New Imperical Series BORI Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona BTC Bulletin of Traditional Culture CII Corpus Inscriptionum Indiacarum E. Br. Encyclopaedia Britannica EC Epigraphia Carnatica Epigraphia Indica EI E. Soc. Sc. Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences GOS Gaekwad Oriental Series, Baroda HAS Hydrabad Archaeological Series IA Indian Antiquary IAS Institute of Asian Studies, Chennai ICHR Indian Council of Historical Research IHQ Indian Historical Quarterly IHR Indian Historical Review IESHR Indian Economic and Social History Review IIAH Institute of Indian Art History IIAS Indian Institute of Advance Study, Shimla Ind. Arch. Indian Archaeology – A Review IT India Today JAS Journal of Asian Studies JBRS Journal of the Bihar Research Society, Patna JBORS Journal of Bihar and Orissa Research Society

xiv  Abbreviations JGJKSV Journal of the Ganganatha Jha Kendriya Sanskrit Vidyapetha, Allahabad JHS Journal of Historical Studies JIH Journal of Indian History JOI Journal of the Oriental Institute JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Manu Manu Smriti MAR Mysore Archaeological Report Nārada Nārada Smriti Nav. Navsāhsāṅkacaritam QRHS Quarterly Review of Historical Studies Rāj. Rājataraṅgiṇī of Kalhaṇa SII South Indian Inscriptions SUNY State University of New York TASSI Transactions of Archaeological Society of South India VIJ Vishweshwaranand Indological Journal Yāj. Yājňavalkya Smriti

Key to diacritical marks

Vowels v vk b bZ m Å _ , ,s vks vkS

Consonants a ā i ī u ū ṛ e ai o au

d [k x ?k ³ p N t > ´ V B M < .k

ka kh ga gh ṅ ch chh j jh ň ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ

r Fk n /k u i Q c Hk e ; j y o “k ‘k l g ³