No statement about the status of ancient Indian women is more famous than the one found in various versions 1 in the normative texts, here cited from Manu:
pitā rakṣati kaumāre bhartā rakṣati yauvane
rakṣanti sthavire putrā na strī svātantryam arhati (MDh 9.3)
Her father guards her in girlhood; her husband guards her in youth;
Her sons guard her in old age. A woman does not deserve independence.
Yet to anyone with even a passing acquaintance with ancient Indian literature, this meek and severely circumscribed female figure seems very distant from the vivid and assertive women characters one meets in narrative, such as the Mahābhārata ’s Draupadī, Damayantī, Sāvitrī, and Śakuntalā 2 or, earlier, Ṛgvedic Urvaśī, Yamī, and Lopāmudrā. This is not simply the result of a disconnection between narrative and normative texts, for the Mahābhārata women, especially, seem to know the law, often better than their male counterparts, and use it to their advantage. Consider, for example, Draupadī’s incisive question about Yudhiṣṭhira’s ownership status when she is being dragged from her chamber after the dicing match (MBh 2.60; discussed further in Chapter 9 in this volume).
We must therefore evaluate both extremes with some skepticism. The powerful narrative figures are of course not portraits of real everyday women; we can no more consider Draupadī the housewife next door than we can take Antigone as a typical representative of Classical Greek womanhood. But we must also read the apparently objective provisions of the dharma texts with an eye both to their decided lack of neutrality in attitude in many instances and to their aspiration to appear to exert a control that may have eluded them. As has been (and remains) true in most places and most periods, the ways women are configured conceptually and treated in sociolegal systems can reflect deep-seated biases and fears in the males who create and administer these systems. The same is far less true of less emotionally charged areas of the law.
The just-mentioned emotional charge is clearly in evidence in the text of the Mānava Dharmaśāstra from which the verse above was quoted. Manu not only constantly harps on the necessity of “guarding” women in the section containing that verse (MDh 9.1–9.7)—forms of the root √rakṣ “guard” occur seventeen times in those verses—but gives ample reasons why, detailing with misogynistic zeal the vicious qualities and habits of women that make them need stringent control. The root √rakṣ is itself ambiguous, and ambiguous in the same way that English “guard” is: it can mean both positive “protect, keep safe” and negative “keep under control, restrict, confine.” It is the latter, negative sense that seems most to animate Manu. A few samples of his vitriol and especially of his fear of untrammeled female sexuality will suffice:
asvatantrāḥ striyaḥ kāryāḥ puruṣaiḥ svair divāniśam
viṣaye sajjamānāś ca saṃsthāpyā hātmano vaśe (MDh 9.2)
Day and night women should be kept without independence by their men.
Clinging to sensuality as they do, they should be brought to heel under his will.
naitā rūpaṃ parīkṣante nāsāṃ vayasi saṃsthitaḥ
surūpaṃ vā virūpaṃ vā pumān ity eva bhuñjate (MDh 9.14)
They do not look for beauty, nor are they stuck on youth.
Handsome, not handsome—they enjoy him, (just thinking,) “He’s a man !”
pauṃścalyāc cālacittyāc ca naiḥsnehāc ca svabhāvataḥ
rakṣitā yatnato ‘pīha bhartṛṣv etā vikurvate (MDh 9.15)
Because of their whorish ways, their flighty minds, their lack of affection by nature,
even when guarded with great effort, they still thwart their husbands.
It is of course her unrestrained sexuality that is the principal threat, for, if she has sex with a man not her husband, the legitimacy of the latter’s offspring is in doubt. In this same section, Manu makes this clear: MDh 9.9cd tasmāt prajāviśuddhyarthaṃ striyaṃ rakṣet prayatnataḥ / “Therefore for the sake of the purity of his offspring (a husband) should guard a woman with great effort.” This fear is already given voice in the earlier Dharmasūtras, without the emotional punch found in Manu though with a more straightforward description of the danger. See, e.g., ĀpDh 2.13.6 tasmād bhāryāṃ rakṣanti bibhyantaḥ pararetasaḥ / “Therefore (men) guard their wives, fearing the seed of strangers.” 3
“Lack of independence” might be taken to imply that women had no legal status and were therefore not responsible for their actions if their guardian failed in his guarding, but this is not entirely the case. And in fact their status in the eyes of the law seems to have changed over time—with their visibility to the law paradoxically increasing even as the assertions of their non-independence becomes more strident. 4
Interestingly some of the best evidence for this growing visibility comes from the treatment of women who have committed adultery. In the earliest Dharmasūtra (by Olivelle’s dating), Āpastamba, in the section concerning adultery, the woman is the object, not the subject of provisions about adultery (here cross-varṇa adultery), and though she receives some punishment, it is far less than the man receives and it is apparently administered by her husband.
vadhyaḥ śūdra āryāyām / dāram cāsya karśayet (ĀpDh 2.27.9–2.27.10)
A śūdra (who has sex) with an Ārya lady should be killed, and he [= her husband, presumably] should emaciate his wife (that is, impose the kṛccha penance, which involves abstention from food).
This fits the “guarding” model. The wife is invisible to the legal system (though it seems that the male adulterer is not). The matter is dealt with internally, domestically; her “guardian” imposes the penalty. 5 But in a slightly later text, Gautama Dharmasūtra , the cross-class adultery brings down a far more serious punishment for the woman, and it is administered by the king in public. This now must be seen as an offense against the social order, and the woman has gained (however unfortunately for the particular woman in question) some measure of legal status.
śvabhir ādayed rājā nihīnavarṇagamane striyam prakāśam (GDh 23.14)
In the case of a (sexual) encounter with (a man) of lower varṇa the king should have the woman eaten by dogs in public. 6
By the time of Manu it is not only the adulterous actions of the woman but also her state of mind in undertaking them that is open to the law. 7 The notion of “mutual consent” (parasparasyānumate MDh 8.358) arises, and sexual crimes involving a “willing” (sakāmā ) female bring less severe punishment to the male than those with one “unwilling” (akāmā ) (8.364, 8.368). 8 Given Manu’s dark views of woman’s inherent sensuality, he no doubt assumed that she would be far more likely to be sakāmā than not, and it is no surprise that his treatment of sexual transgression essentially takes “guarded” as the opposite pole rather than “unwilling,” and “unguarded” as tantamount to “willing.” The collapse of the two categories can be seen in the following verse:
sahasram brāhmaṇo daṇḍyo guptāṃ 9 viprāṃ balād vrajan
śatāni pañca daṇḍyaḥ syād icchantyā saha saṃgataḥ (MDh 8.378)
A Brahmin should be fined a thousand if he “approaches” a guarded Brahmin woman by force,
but he should be fined five hundred if he “came together” with a woman who wanted to .
Thus in these cases the transgressing woman has become endowed with the possibility of intent , which at least in many modern legal systems is a crucial measure of culpability in criminal law. This notion of intent and the varieties of undesirable intent that Manu attributes to women should make us re-evaluate what asvātantryam actually means in the normative texts. In Manu women’s “lack of independence” has to be created and constantly kept current (see MDh 9.2 quoted above: asvatantrāḥ striyaḥ kāryāḥ , lit. “women have to be made non-independent” [my italics]); it is not that women are non-independent by nature, but that they continually want to assert their independence and must be kept from doing so. Thus the paradox that women show more agency in the texts in which guarding and lack of independence are most prominent is no paradox at all, but a predictable reaction to the growing recognition of women’s subversive will and intent.
What about other circumstances in which women might interact with or come to the attention of the law? Does she have legal standing in other matters? The clearest general statement I know about this is found in the Arthaśāstra (AŚ 3.3.1), where it is said that a twelve-year-old woman (dvādaśavarṣā strī ) is of an age for legal transactions (as opposed to a sixteen-year-old man: the difference presumably has to do with their average ages at marriage or the end of studentship). With regard to particular circumstances, there is not much evidence for or against. The provisions about witnesses in legal proceedings provides some evidence. Women can serve as witnesses in court procedures, but only for other women (MDh 8.68) and in the case of the absence of more qualified witnesses (8.70). 10 Note that the first provision also assumes that women can be party to lawsuits, since they could need witnesses to give evidence for them. On women’s relationship to property, see the discussion below. It is worth noting that females can be fined for infractions (e.g., MDh 8.369, where the offender is a kanyā “maiden,” and AŚ 3.3.20–3.3.31); this would indicate that they can themselves disburse funds and that legal penalties can be imposed on them directly, not on their guardians.
The verse with which we began divides a woman’s life into three parts, with each presided over by a different male figure: her father in childhood (kaumāre ), her husband in the prime of youth (yauvane ), and her son(s) in old age (sthavire ). It is tempting to equate these stages with the life stages of males as codified in the āśrama system, although in that system there are four successive roles: student (brahmacārin ), householder (gṛhastha ), forest-dweller (vānaprastha ), and renouncer (saṃnyāsin ). The superimposition of the two systems does not entirely work, but the ways they fit, and do not fit, each other can be illuminating.
For males the first stage, after unregulated childhood, is studentship, which is inaugurated by the initiation ritual of upanayana , sometime around the ages of six to eight (usually; texts differ, and the age is different for different varṇas ). For females there is no studentship and no upanayana , at least in any full sense; their unregulated childhood lasts until marriage. However, the system makes a special effort to identify and configure an event in the young woman’s life as an equivalent, if greatly telescoped, experience of the male’s first āśrama . Manu calls the wedding ceremony the upanayana for women and finds in her subsequent married life duties equivalent to the student’s service to his teacher during brahmacarya :
vaivāhiko vidhiḥ strīṇāṃ saṃskāro vaidikaḥ smṛtaḥ
patisevā gurau vāso gṛhārtho ‘gniparikriyā (MDh 2.67)
The marriage ceremony is traditionally held to be the Vedic rite of passage for women. 11
Serving her husband is (like) living in the guru’s (house), and household business is (like) (the student’s) attending to the (guru’s) fires.
Indeed the marriage ceremony contains echoes of the boy’s upanayana . The bride is yoked with a cord at the beginning of the ceremony, a cord that recalls the upavīta that the student receives at his initiation and wears henceforth, and both the bride and the initiate are made to stand on a stone and recite the same mantras about firmness. 12 The transition between the first two stages of the woman’s life, presided over by two different guardians, father and husband, is also marked in the terminology describing the most orthodox forms of marriage (for which, see Chapter 9 in this volume) by the word kanyādāna “gift of a maiden.” The father “gives” her to the husband, and the control over her thus passes from one to the other, as Manu makes clear: pradānaṃ svāmyakārakaṃ “the act of (the father’s) giving produces (the husband’s) lordship/ownership over her” (5.152d).
Despite the second half of the verse quoted above (MDh 2.67), which equates women’s experience in marriage with the student’s studentship, I think her “studentship” is fleeting, lasting only through the marriage ceremony itself: there is simply too much emphasis on the shared nature of the house-holding stage by husband and wife, in essentially all the texts, to assume a system that is out of synch, with the wife still mired in the first stage while the husband has moved on to the second. 13 Her second stage, yauvana , guarded by her husband, is equivalent to his fulfilling the householder role. And her third stage, sthavira , guarded by her sons, is roughly equivalent to the vānaprastha /saṃnyāsin phases. In one place Manu says specifically that her sons take over the guarding when her husband is dead (MDh 5.148 bhartari prete 14 ), but since at the man’s retirement to the forest he may either take his wife along or “entrust her to his sons” (putreṣu bhāryāṃ nikṣipya, MDh 6.3), she is not necessarily a widow in this stage. (For widowhood, see the discussion in Chapter 9 .)
As discussed in the chapter on marriage, one of the most important reasons for a man to marry is to enable him to perform rituals in partnership with his wife (patnī ). This ritual partnership has deep Vedic roots (see the extensive treatment in Jamison 1996a , and for this topic in particular 1996a : 30–8, 2006: 192–5). It is important to keep in mind that a man does not have the charter to perform solemn rituals independently any more than a woman does, and both ritual and Dharma texts emphasize that within this ritual partnership established between husband and wife there is no distinction of persons (e.g., BŚr 19.9 [381: 2] aviśeṣāj jāyāpatyor āhitāgnyoḥ “because of the non-differentiation of wife and husband who have established the [ritual] fires”; ĀpDh 2.14.17 pāṇigrahaṇād dhi sahatvaṃ karmasu / “for after their marriage there is togetherness in ritual acts”). Even those married couples who do not take the trouble and expense to become śrauta ritualists with the three “established fires” perform daily service to the fire kindled on the day of their wedding (often called the vaivāhika or “nuptial” fire and distinct from the fire for ordinary household tasks like cooking; cf. Kane II: 678–84 and, e.g., ŚāṅkhGṛ 1.17.8 sāyaṃ prātar vaivāhyam agniṃ paricareyātām / “Let the two of them serve the nuptial fire in the evening and the morning.”).
There is also evidence that under certain circumstances a woman could perform some rituals independently or at least act on behalf of her husband. For example, some of the Gṛhyasūtras allow the wife to offer the oblations into the domestic fire (cf. Kane II: 683 and, e.g., KhGṛ 1.5.17 patnī juhuyād ity eke gṛhāḥ patnī gṛhyo ‘gnir eṣa iti / “Some say that the wife may/should do the offering, for the wife is the house and that fire is the household one”; cf. GobhGṛ 1.3.14–1.3.15), and when the householder goes on a journey, he entrusts the fire to his wife, though also appointing a priest to offer the actual oblation (see Kane II: 683). When her husband dies, the widow of an āhitāgni is allowed by some texts to undertake gṛhya versions of the principal śrauta rites (see Jamison 1996a : 36–7).
Another way to look at a woman’s ritual status is to consider the saṃskāras (life-cycle rites) that involve or affect her. The major one is, of course, marriage, which has been amply treated in a separate chapter. But there is a whole series of rites associated with conception, pregnancy, and childbirth that, needless to say, require at least her presence. The details of the rites and the prescribed times for performance differ from text to text, but the order is the same. 15 This series starts with the ceremonial intercourse that occurs some days after her menstrual period with the intent of “setting an embryo” (garbhādhāna ). When she gets pregnant, in the early part of the pregnancy, there is the puṃsavana , the rite meant to ensure that the child will be male; some time later the garbharakṣaṇa “protection of the embryo,” followed by the sīmantonnayana “parting of the hair.” The purpose of this last is not entirely clear (at least to me) and it involves the husband parting his wife’s hair using a porcupine quill, an even number of unripe fruits, and some kuśa grass. Right before birth is the soṣyantīkarman (the rite for a woman about to give birth). With the actual birth, the attention shifts to the child, beginning with the jātakarman (rite for the newborn), with, significantly later, the first feeding of solid food (annaprāsana ) and the first cutting of its hair (caula or cūḍākarman ). However, there is one further rite focused on the mother, occurring (acdg. to most texts) ten to twelve days after birth, namely utthāna (“getting up”), when the new mother arises from childbed—quite reminiscent of the (archaic?) Christian rite, the “churching of women.” The utthāna brings to the end the period of impurity following childbirth.
Although the earlier texts do not seem to attest to such an organized system of successive pregnancy and birth rites, the late Ṛg Veda and the Atharva Veda already contain a number of charms for safe pregnancy and birth; the Atharva Veda in particular envisages menaces to the unborn child and its mother everywhere.
As was just mentioned, a period of impurity follows the birth of a child. It lasts for ten days, the same length as that for a death, but there is some difference of opinion about whether it affects both parents or the mother only (cf., e.g., GDh 14.14–14.16; VaDh 4.20–4.23; MDh 5.61). Relatives may observe a period of three days (MDh 5.71). A period of impurity also follows a miscarriage, generally held to be as many days as the number of months her pregnancy lasted (GDh 14.17–14.18; MDh 5.66).
Not surprisingly, a menstruating woman is also impure; she reestablishes her purity by taking a ritual bath after her period is over (e.g., MDh 5.66). While menstruating, she is excluded from participation in ritual because she is too polluting, and various solutions were devised to deal with this eventuality (see Jamison 1996a : 32–4). Other menstrual taboos include males not eating food touched by a menstruating woman, and Brahmins should not touch or even converse with one (Jamison 1996a : 14).
Above we noted the old, Vedic model of the ritual partnership established between husband and wife at marriage, and the lack of distinction between the two people in this partnership. This model entails that the married couple has joint ownership of their property (cf., e.g., ĀpDh 2.29.3 kuṭumbhinau dhanasyeśāte / “the household couple has dominion over the property”). Also in this model, the wife has the right to dispose of property independently in the absence of her husband (cf. Jamison 2006 : 192–3). The wife is also the usual dispenser of alms to bhikṣus . This last role presumably developed partly from the “joint-control” model and partly from the fact that the wife was more likely to be occupied with kitchen and pantry than the husband, and would be there to answer the begging request (cf. Jamison 2002 : 78–9).
Though the old ritual-partnership model endures in somewhat altered form in post-Vedic texts, the joint control of property associated with it is not continued. Instead, women’s property rights become very circumscribed, and there is some confusion and contradiction in the various texts about what she really owns and how (and to whom) she can dispose of it. 16 We cannot enter into the thicket of details, but simply sketch some of the major points and some of the disagreements about them.
In one uncompromising statement, Manu declares that women, or at least wives, have no property rights at all:
bhāryā putraś ca dāsaś ca traya evādahnāḥ smṛtāḥ
yat te samadhigacchanti yasya te tasya tad dhanam (MDh 8.416)
The wife, the son, and the slave are three (categories of persons) traditionally considered to be without property.
What they acquire, that is the property of him to whom they belong.
Yet in that same chapter (8.28–8.29) the king is required to protect several classes of women (including widows and women devoted to their husbands [pativratā ]) from having their property taken by unscrupulous relatives; such a provision presupposes that these women had property in the first place.
Elsewhere Manu provides a listing of the types of strīdhana , which more or less accords with other such accounts in other texts:
adhyagnyadhyāvāhanikaṃ dattaṃ ca prītikarmaṇi
bhrātṛmātṛpitṛprāptaṃ ṣaḍvidhaṃ strīdhanaṃ smṛtam (MDh 9.194)
What is given at the (wedding) fire, on the wedding (journey), in token of affection,
what was acquired from brother, mother, father: such are traditionally the six types of women’s property.
In other words, the major source of women’s property is wedding presents and possessions acquired from her immediate natal family either at the wedding or at another time. 17 When a bride sets out for her new home she is taking the major part of what she will ever own, 18 though Manu adds in the next verse two additional sources of postmarriage property: MDh 9.195 anvādheyaṃ ca yad dattaṃ patyā prītena caiva yat / “what is received subsequently and what is given by an affectionate husband.” AŚ 3.2.40–3.2.41 also states that if her husband seeks to supersede her, he must compensate her, as well as giving (/returning?) the bride price and the strīdhana (see also AŚ 3.3.3).
What can she do with this property? Precious little, it seems. AŚ 3.2.34 says that “women’s property is meant for adversity” (āpadarthaṃ hi strīdhanam ), and the uses it can be put to, at least according to that text, mostly fall into that category: supporting a son and daughter-in-law or supporting herself if her husband goes away leaving her in the lurch (AŚ 3.2.16), or for a chaste sonless widow to support herself after her husband’s death (AŚ 3.2.33). Her husband can also use it in dire circumstances (AŚ 3.2.16), presumably to support the whole family. Manu firmly states (9.199) that a woman cannot dispose even of her own property without the permission of her husband.
Since its uses while the woman is alive are so circumscribed, strīdhana seems to exist to be inherited. Who inherits it depends on the text, and multiple scenarios are envisioned. The simplest solution (and, if we may be partial, the fairest) is found in Gautama Dharmasūtra (GDh 28.24), where it goes to her daughters who are unmarried and/or without establishment (duhitṝṇām aprattānām apratiṣṭhitānām ca ), but this straightforward solution ramifies in both Manu (9.192–9.200) and the Arthaśāstra (3.2.35–3.2.37). However, in another provision in Manu (9.131), the “separate property” (yautakam ) of the mother goes to the unmarried daughter(s) (here called kumārī ).
Although the dharmic regulations concerning strīdhana seem to set severe limitations on women’s access to property, a somewhat different picture emerges in the more freewheeling world of the Arthaśāstra . First, in the larger section on strīdhana , extensively cited above, a number of provisions concern a woman’s life-choice options and financial situation after her husband’s death (AŚ 3.2.19–3.2.34), and the sources of her support and her choices (including remarriage) seem wider than those offered by the dharma texts. Moreover, the text several times mentions rich widows, ripe to be fleeced by the unscrupulous or ready to fleece others (1.18.9, 11.1.42, and 13.2.42), though poorer widows must take lowly employment (e.g., 2.23.2).
On the complicated question of the widow’s rights to inheritance from her husband’s estate, see Kane III: 701–13.
The emphatic and indisputable message about women in the normative texts is that there is no other role for women than marriage. There are simply no alternative paths laid out. However, it is also clear, not only from narrative literature and belles lettres, but also nudged into corners of the normative literature, that other female figures existed, often as cautionary examples. Before turning to those, we will examine what is certainly not an “alternative” role but one instead central to women’s identity—but which has curiously little representation in the legal materials.
As has been emphasized elsewhere, one of the major reasons for marriage is the procreation of sons to carry on the family line and provide ritual service to the ancestors (pitars ); we have also noted the saṃskāras having to do with pregnancy and birth. However, rather little is said about the rights and duties of the mother, perhaps because her involvement in her sons’ lives would be most intense in their early childhood before they achieve ritual and legal status. Substituting for detailed treatment of her role and conduct as mother are occasional offhand encomia to the role of the mother, e.g.:
utpādanam apatyasya jātasya paripālanam
pratyahaṃ lokayātrāyāḥ pratyakṣam strī nibandhanam (MDh 9.27)
Production of offspring and caring for those born,
the daily (conduct) of mundane affairs—the woman is clearly what holds it together.
as well as advice to sons not to abandon their mothers (cf. Kane II: 580–1 and Jamison 2006 : 203). Thus the successful mother is essentially invisible to the normative texts; not so, however, when things go wrong. As discussed in the Chapter 9 in this volume, a woman who fails to have children or has only daughters can be superseded after some years, with her husband marrying a second wife—though he must compensate her or at least maintain her. On the other hand, Manu promises that a widow who lacks sons will go to heaven if she remains celibate (MDh 5.159–5.160)—presumably to forestall niyoga (on which, see Chapter 9 ) or remarriage, both of which he expressly disapproves of.
Although the goal for all women was marriage, it stands to reason that not all achieved that goal, and the anxiety created by the approach (and passing) of menarche in unmarried girls and their parents is not only a staple of narrative literature but produces a host of ritual remedies (see Jamison 1996a : 236–47 and disc. in Chapter 9 in this volume). Already in the Ṛg Veda , there is mention of a female “growing old at home” (amājúr- ), as well as to a female giving birth in secret and abandoning the child (II.29.1), presumably a reference to an unwed mother. In the legal literature, the son born to such a girl is called a kānīna- (derivationally related to kanyā “maiden”). According to Manu (9.160) he does not inherit (at least from his birth father); he technically belongs to the man who later marries her (9.172), indicating that the disgrace was not sufficient to render her unmarriageable.
Nonetheless, there must have been spinsters who remained in their natal home for their whole life or, with the breakup of that home, were left to their own devices. Indeed Manu (9.89) states that a girl should remain at home until she dies rather than being given to a man lacking in good qualities. We already noted that in Gautama, a woman’s strīdhana was inherited by her unmarried and unestablished daughters; 19 there is also provision in Manu that after the father’s death, brothers should allot a quarter portion of their shares to their unmarried sisters (9.118), though it is not made clear whether these girls (denominated kanyā ) are marriageable or past marriageable age. Otherwise, spinsters do not merit much clear mention. In the Arthaśāstra (2.23.2, 11) spinsters, along with other women in financial straits, are employed in the manufacture of yarn (spinsters quite literally).
The normative texts strongly counsel against marrying a brotherless maiden; indeed already in the Ṛg Veda , such a girl has a problematic reputation. This is not simply a matter of not having brothers to keep her behavior in line. The danger is that she will be made a putrikā or “appointed daughter” to carry on her father’s line (succinctly stated in MDh 3.11). The sons of any man she marries will technically “belong” to her father’s family not the bridegroom’s and will owe their ancestral service to his maternal grandfather and his ancestors not to his father—though MDh 9.132 allows the possibility of dual responsibility. On the putrikā in comparative perspective, see Schmidt 1987 : Chapter 2; the issue is treated in Manu 9.127–9.140, etc.
The dharma texts barely mention what some would now call “female sex workers,” save, glancingly, as women to be avoided. For example, food given by gaṇikās should never be eaten (MDh 4.209.219). However, the Arthaśāstra devotes a whole section (2.27) to courtesans, who are under the supervision of the Superintendent of Courtesans (gaṇikādhyakṣa ) and who are not only subject to regulation but also provided with certain protections. Also lumped in are women associated with the performing arts: dancers, actors, etc. (AŚ 2.27.25). Thus there seems to have existed a demimonde whose inhabitants lived on the fringes of respectable society but who inhabited recognizable social roles. Such people become more visible in texts like the Kāmasūtra and in literature proper, for example, the self-abnegating courtesan heroine of Śūdraka’s famous play, Mṛcchakaṭikā (Little Clay Cart).
Given the religious landscape of ancient India in the centuries just before and just after the turn of the (Christian) era, the most surprising absence among roles for women is the option of renunciation, the choice to live a celibate religious life in a community of other such, as a nun—as Buddhist and Jain women could do. An orthodox Hindu woman could fulfill her religious duties only by devotion to her husband (pativratā ). No separate path of religious devotion, renunciation, asceticism, or good works was available. See Manu’s explicit statement:
nāsti strīṇāṃ pṛthag yajño na vrataṃ nāpyoṣaṇam
patiṃ śuśrūṣate yena tena svarge mahīyate (MDh 5.155)
There is no separate sacrifice, vow, or fast for women.
Because she is obedient to her husband, for that reason she is magnified in heaven.
It is true that there were some limited options for ascetic behavior. She could optionally accompany her husband when he went to the forest as a vānaprastha (ĀpDh 2.22.8–2.22.9, MDh 6.3), and as a widow, the restrictions on her behavior amounted to an ascetic regimen (see, e.g., MDh 5.156–5.166 and Jamison 2006 : 204–5). Still, both of these paths were thrust on her by circumstances, not chosen, and came at the end of her life or at least after a period of marriage.
The ascetic option for heterodox women must have been well known, however, and may have exerted its attractions on even orthodox Brahmin women. This may well account for the tendency in the normative texts to classify such ascetics with the women of dubious morals just treated under the gaṇikā heading (for some details, see Jamison 2006 : 206–9); it may also help explain the particular virulence of Manu’s insistence on “guarding,” to keep impressionable wives from getting ideas about living independently of men.