Lectures by Professor Mandakranta Bose

Session 21 of the 2007 Shivdasani Conference. While the general interest of this symposium lies in the relationships between temples, architecture, texts and performance, my presentation focuses on the relation between the formal description and analysis of dance and its practice. My discussion draws exclusively upon the primary source material for our knowledge of the performing arts of India, that is, the extensive body of Sanskrit texts on dance, drama and music. I must also clarify here that I understand the term “dance” as a hybrid performance genre that consists of non-mimetic action, natta, as well as mimetic representation, natya, and narrative action, natya. But let me first try to bring this discussion closer than it might appear to the theme of the temple in the Indian imaginary.

In India the treatises of law founded upon the sacred books of the Hindus had a far-reaching and defining influence on social life. As foundational documents of the Hindu way of life which codified social relations as well as personal belief as religious imperatives, these texts have exerted the deepest influence on the lives and conduct of women through history and their teachings have not yet entirely lost their force. In this lecture I shall consider some of the provisions in Hindu sacred law that moulded the lives of women, as derived from the writings of Manu and other ancient Hindu lawgivers, as well as some later writers on this basis we shall attempt to understand the intimate connection between the religious framework and the social, which has laid the basis of women's status, roles, rights and duties in Hindu society.

Poetry by women can be traced back in South Asia to the 6th century BCE, when Buddhist nuns recorded their joy at finding freedom from the drudgery of everyday life and at achieving not merely social but spiritual liberation in religion. Centuries later, from the 9th century onward, a more durable and powerful tradition of poetry appeared in songs by the women poets of devotional Hinduism, which afforded space to people on the margin, such as, women, lower castes and outcastes, and sparked a cultural awakening that retains its vitality even today. Women, powerless and silent in many domains of community life, found strength in their sense of the divine and their own voice in poetry and songs. Against this historical background this lecture will introduce the poetry of Antal, a 9th century Vaisnava a poet, of Akka Mahadevi of the Virasaiva sect from the 12th century, of Lalla, a 14 century Saiva poet, and songs by the 16th century Vaisnava princess Mirabai. Understanding the intensity of their approaches to the idea of the divine will aid us in appreciating how these works have affected the people of India and continued as a living tradition of women's spiritual quest.