The topic of vrata —vows, regimens, and austerities of many kinds—captures in miniature the general history of the development of Dharmaśāstra in a way that few other topics do. In brief, vrata appears in the early Vedic texts but has several meanings that subsequently are narrowed and expanded in later texts. The Vedic usages become a touchstone for later meanings, but at the same time, the category catches on to describe a whole series of devotional vows and regimens that are seen textually first in the Purāṇas and only later in the medieval Dharmaśāstra digests. By then, the vrata practices described are already well established in connection with temples, pilgrimage centers, and domestic vows. The dharma texts nevertheless co-opt the vrata category, as if it had been there all along (which in a very loose way it had). Huge dharma tomes appear that collect the Purāṇic material and add to it. From then on, vrata remains a standard topic of dharma in Dharmaśāstra, while also maintaining its relevance as a broad category for innumerable religious vows and austerities, especially by women, in Indian society. Indeed, women so dominate the observance of vrata s today and in recent centuries that it is practically only a women’s ritual. Figuring out how far back this dominance goes, however, is difficult, but the question is essential to understanding how Hinduism evolved.
In early Vedic texts, vrata is a flexible term meaning either “rule, divine attribute, or observance.” It then narrows in later Vedic texts to signify an ascetic regimen that was part of a ritual consecration (Lubin 2001 ). 1 There it is used in connection with preparatory rites that form part of ritual consecrations, especially either the restrictions on food to be observed in such moments or the restricted food itself (Kane V: 22–5). Within the Gṛhyasūtra and Dharmasūtra texts, vrata similarly means a “ritual observance,” especially for students and especially rites involving fasting. Āpastamba (ĀpDh 2.1.1), for example, states, “After marriage, the special observances (vratāni ) of the couple living the household life come into force” (Olivelle 1999a : 43). A series of food restrictions follows. However, vrata should not be considered an important term in these latter texts, since it occurs infrequently.
The most common meaning of vrata in the early Dharmaśāstra texts is expiation (Kane V: 27). In other words, it is often a synonym of the more common word for expiation, prāyaścitta . For instance, in the chapter on expiation, Manu (MDh 11.170) reads, “Through these observances (etair vratair ), a twice-born should remove a sin incurred by stealing. The sin incurred by having sex with a woman with whom sex is forbidden, on the other hand, he should remove by means of the following observances (vratair ebhir )” (Olivelle 2005a : 224). Here, as elsewhere, the affinities between ascetic practices involving fasting and other restrictive observances led to frequent semantic overlap between concepts that later become clearly differentiated. Vrata is often synonymous with niyama (restrictive observance) and with upavāsa (fasting rites) (McGee 1987 : 50–3). McGee calls some rites of the early texts not labeled vrata “precursors” of later vows for removing inauspiciousness, safe journeys, long life, and wealth (1987 : 22), but the conceptual and ritual affinities are loose and sustained mostly by back reading later understandings onto earlier. In short, even by the time of the major root texts of the dharma tradition, we are still somewhat far from the later standard denotation of vrata as a voluntary vow made to a deity to observe a fast or other ascetic regimen in favor of a worldly reward.
Within Hindu jurisprudence, the number of recorded vrata s expanded rapidly in the period between the basic Dharmaśāstra root texts and the digests of dharma composed from the twelfth century ce on. From less than twenty, often ill-defined vows, consecratory rites, and regimens in the major root texts, we very quickly jump to a description of 170 vrata s in the twelfth-century Vratakāṇḍa of Lakṣmīdhara’s Kṛtyakalpataru . Several hundred more appear in subsequent dharma digests, with the total number approaching a thousand. The dramatic increase in the number of attested vrata s can be explained textually by the fact that the vrata material is almost wholly Purāṇic in origin. The early Dharmaśāstra provided little to draw upon for this topic in the medieval digests. So, textually, the dharma tradition just took everything from the Purāṇas and presented their long praises and descriptions of vrata s as though they had been dharma all along. Historically, however, the question is whether the vrata s represent an intrusion of proverbial popular custom or came out of another religious tradition, namely the Purāṇas, now appropriated by Dharmaśāstra.
McGee’s unsurpassed study of vrata s in the medieval Dharmaśāstras presents the explosion in vrata literature as an incorporation of “good custom” (sadācāra ) into the Hindu law (1987 : 37). She describes the difference between Vedic and Purāṇic vrata as a shift from impersonal to personal acts and from mandatory to optional observances (1987: 33). However, these explanations may be incomplete both because they assume that “popular culture” is the source of innovation in history (especially when the change seems to open up practices and institutions) and because another explanation is in evidence.
It was Christian bishops, not popular folk, who introduced the cult of the saints to early Christianity (Brown 1981 ), and it was Buddhist monks and nuns, not the laity, who introduced the image cult to early Buddhism (Schopen 1997 ). Similarly, what I want to suggest is that the Brahmin authors of the Purāṇas created the idea of vrata as a voluntary vow made to a deity and available to a wide segment of the populace. The Purāṇas should be considered a parallel expert tradition to the Dharmaśāstras, not part of one monolithic Brahmanical tradition. Therefore, the textual proliferation of vrata s occurred owing to their promulgation by expert Pauraṇikas in the second half of the first millennium. If Hindu temple culture takes off under and after the influence of the Gupta kings in the fifth and sixth centuries ce (Willis 2009 ), then the textual correlate of that rise is the Purāṇa tradition with its glorification of sacred pilgrimage sites and its intricate narrations of the lives and acts of the Hindu deities. Vrata as we now know it originates in the Purāṇas. Beginning with Lakṣmīdhara in the twelfth century, the Dharmaśāstra authors simply decide that Purāṇas are authoritative sources for rules regarding vows, pilgrimage, the consecration of images, and pūjā . 2 In other words, the dharma authors accepted temple Hinduism explicitly in a way that they had not done previously.
Nevertheless, it is a curious fact requiring an explanation that early attestations of vrata are male-centered regimens associated strictly with socially exclusive Vedic rites, while medieval and especially contemporary vrata s are socially open, female-centered vows to deities associated with family reputation and success. As McGee (1987 : 85) points out, the dharma digests do not resolve the issue of whether and how women and lower classes may be eligible to perform vrata s. The core tension arises from the Dharmaśāstra authors’ commitment to women’s lack of independence in matters of law and religion. Viṣṇu (ViDh 25.16) states, “If a wife performs a vow of fasting while her husband is alive, she robs her husband of his life and also goes to hell” (Olivelle 2009a : 90). The medieval authors agree that this passage and similar ones mean that women must ask for the permission of their fathers, husbands, or sons before undertaking a vow (Kane V: 51). An old disability of women and Śūdras in the Dharmaśāstra and Mīmāṃsā texts is that their rites cannot be performed with Vedic mantras. This technical prohibition, for several dharma authors, excludes women and lower classes even from vrata observance.
What male experts dictated, however, only women could maintain. It is impossible to know how many or which vows were observed by women in medieval India, but we do find a lot more reference to women in connection with vrata s, not to mention the possibility that lower castes and even foreigners (mleccha s) could undertake vrata s of various kinds (Kane V: 54, 157). Hemādri, for example, describes 35 vows for women and another 125 that were open to women or men (McGee 1987 : 86, fn. 27). In the end, as McGee suggests, the digest authors permitted vrata s for all classes and for women, often assigning special vrata s to different groups across the social spectrum, in spite of the objections that some held about their being qualified or permitted to do so (1987 : 87). This acquiescence supports the possibility that vibrant, but only partially textualized, practices of women’s vows existed alongside the vows found in the Purāṇas.
Textually, the Dharmaśāstra digests draw only on previous textual prescriptions and descriptions of vows and make little or no claim to incorporate customary or regional vrata s as such. We seem then to have three simultaneously functioning vrata “worlds”: the partially recorded world of customary and regional vrata s, the huge sections on vows in various Purāṇas, and the digests and manuals of Dharmaśāstra that systematized the Purāṇa material. Historically, these must have been in constant interaction, but we are limited by our dependence on the texts in our ability to describe this interaction in full. What is clear, however, is that the observance of vrata s comes in the modern age as one of the, if not the , primary religious practices of Hindu women.
In the earliest dharma digest on vrata s, that of Lakṣmīdhara, the 170 odd vows form the structure for a religious calendar (Aiyangar 1953: xi–xx). The chapters are arranged first by vows to be observed on specific days of the week, then days of the month, then fortnights, then months, then seasons, then annually. The annual cycle of vows emerges from this calendar as a template for an observant Hindu, or at least a Hindu who would like to appeal to the power of various deities to ensure the success of various worldly goals. Given that vrata s in Dharmaśāstra are usually classed as kāmya rites, meaning they are motivated by the fulfillment of a particular desire, the long list of vows is not at all meant to be observed in its entirety. Rather, the appropriate times, deities, and ritual procedures for each vow are systematically presented according to their calendrical periodicity. The close association of vows with the calendar means that the literature on vows intersects frequently with Hindu astrological doctrines and calculations and with festivals that mark the passage of religious time.
The standard elements of a vow include a statement of intention, the identification of the deity, the correct time, the necessary ritual procedures, and the rewards to be received. Long discussions of the ritual eligibility for making vows, the incapacity to undertake a vow, and failure to complete a vow surround dharma discussions of vrata . Procedurally, vratas are comprised of other rites that are timed and carried out in order to achieve a specific purpose. What brings the elements of a vow together is the statement of one’s intention (saṅkalpa ) to perform the vow. So, a vow might ask the votary to perform a fast (upavāsa ), offer a pūjā , say muttered prayers (japa ), give a gift (dāna ), make an ancestral offering (śrāddha ), or even go on a pilgrimage (tīrtha-yātra ). In addition, most vows come with a story, the vratakathā , usually a mythological episode involving the performance of the vow, an instance of its effectiveness (McGee 1987: 226).
The statement of intention that precedes the principal and subsidiary rites provides the religious link necessary for the overall vow to work, to have its desired effect. Indeed, the statement of intention is generally considered the most essential element in a vrata precisely because it puts often-generic ritual actions in the service of a specific votive rite and, in effect, guarantees the proper internal commitment or devotional attitude (bhāva, bhakti ) by externalizing it in words. For many dharma authors (Kumārila, Medhātithi, Śrīdatta, etc.) the saṅkalpa defines the vrata itself and distinguishes it from other rites (Kane V: 29–30). The definition by Raghunandana captures this view: “A vow refers to an intention to perform restrictive rites accompanied by a range of various procedures that must be observed for a long time” (cited in Kane V: 30, fn. 63). 3 Nevertheless, the details of the saṅkalpa are often not expressed in the description of different vows.
A vrata may be stated simply or may include a host of procedural details, backstory, and praise of its rewards. Here is a simple example from the vrata book of the twelfth-century Kṛtyakalpataru of Lakṣmīdhara:
When the Sun is passing into a new position, if one offers the ancestral rite with the appropriate procedures for the sake of pleasing the Sun, then that wise person will be honored in the world of the Sun. On the sixth lunar day, the man should observe a fast and, on the seventh, recite, “May the Sun be pleased,” according to the usual procedure. He is released from all disease and honored in the world of the Sun. This is the vow to the Sun. (Aiyangar 1953 : 388–9) 4
In this case, a śrāddha ancestral rite is the basis for the vow, which is now dedicated to the Sun and accompanied by a fast and an additional recitation. Like all vows to the Sun, this one provides the benefit of health. In Susan Wadley’s famous phrase, this vrata , like others, is a “transformer of destiny,” and takes shape as “a willing or a vow to gain some desired end, undertaken optionally” (1983 : 148–9). To prevent or to combat illness, Hindus may undertake a vow to the Sun as needed in their life. The vow is thus a religious tool to reshape one’s karmic future.
One further example illustrates a women’s vow from the vrata book of the Caturvargacintāmaṇi of Hemādri (II: 154):
And, a woman should fast on the 14th lunar day of each dark fortnight for a year. At the end of the year, after fashioning an auspicious image out of rice flour, she should honor and adorn it with songs, oil libations, garlands, and yellow clothing. Once everything is prepared in the specified manner, she should offer it to Śiva. “In the specified manner” means observing nonviolence, abstinence, sleeping on the ground, etc. 5 Travelling in seven-storied vehicles resplendent with refined gold, she is honored at the very summit of the world of Rudra for hundreds of millions of eons. Having enjoyed all the pleasures she could desire in all the worlds of Śiva and the other gods, in due course she will return to this world and obtain a king as a husband. This is the vow of Dark 14 as stated in the Śivadharma . 6
As before, another common rite, in this case pūjā , forms the procedural core of the vow, though some necessary elements of the pūjā are specified. The proper time and duration of the vow open the description, and the praise of its great rewards close it. The reward in this case, as for most women’s vows, pertains to their husbands or families. The exclusion and subordination of women in the rites of early Dharmaśāstra yield here to a wide array of rites that are independent of men, but conceptually directed toward their welfare and success. Hemādri’s digest appears to be the first major collection of vows to include a high percentage of women-centered and women-permitted vows. The proportions grow in later texts such as the Vratarāja, Vratārka, Nirṇayasindhu , and Vrataprakāśa . The standard elements of vows remain the same, but women now seem to be the dominant performers of vows, even in the dharma texts.
To return to the three vrata “worlds,” reviewing the dharma digests on vrata , one notices both an expansion in the total number of vows described and an increase in the proportion of vows exclusively for women or permitted to both men and women. These women-centered and women-permitted vows are also gleaned from various Purāṇas, which suggests that the Purāṇas at least had already opened a new religious space for women. However, the early dharma digests of Purāṇic vrata s did not incorporate a large number of these vows, thereby yielding the impression that women were not the main social group who made vows. Digests in and after the fourteenth century, by contrast, incorporate more and more vratas for women, indicating the acceptance of women’s vows as a part of orthodox Hindu dharma . Historically, women were practicing vows all along and probably to a greater extent than men were. Did that social reality overwhelm the Dharmaśāstra as it had the Purāṇas earlier? Or, did the Purāṇa authors instill a new, more open theology that included women’s vows prominently and promulgated the practice among women? If so, once the Dharmaśāstra authors had embraced the Purāṇas, it must have become increasingly hard or unnecessary to reject some parts of the Purāṇas and not others.
A fascinating example of just this sort of partial acceptance is found at the beginning of the Dānasāgara of Ballālasena (Bhattacharya 1953 : 6–7). Though the text concerns religious gifts, not vows, the same dilemma faced its author. He needed material to compile for his digest on gifting, but he did not trust all of his Purāṇic sources. He writes, “Only the seventh book of the Bhaviṣya Purāṇa has been carefully compiled here, as I have rejected the eighth and ninth as tainted by heretics” (ibid.: 7). 7 After deeming several other Purāṇas either acceptable or irrelevant, he then states, “After examining the Devī Purāṇa which stands outside the standard enumeration of the various Purāṇas and sub-Purāṇas, I have not digested it here as it conforms to the scriptures of heretics by promoting impure rites” (ibid.: 7). 8 When it comes to women’s vows, my guess is that a theological innovation of the Purāṇas gradually gained full acceptance, after an initial period of critical and skeptical adoption of Purāṇic material. Full acceptance textually was bolstered by the social reality of women performing vrata s as a key part of their religious lives.
In recent years, many anthropologists have brought to light the importance and functions of vows in contemporary Hinduism. 9 Almost all acknowledge a deeper history in the Purāṇas and Dharmaśāstra. 10 At the same time, all struggle to link the history and the ethnography through explicit connections. In short, the practices of vrata found in Dharmaśāstra and in the observable practices of Hindu women feel similar and they share a common conceptual space, but the names, procedures, performers, deities, and purposes do not always match up in precise or direct ways. The gap between text and practice should not, however, be seen as a failure of text to control practice.
It is rather at the level of broad goals and procedural frameworks that we can see how contemporary vows influenced, and are influenced by, the Dharmaśāstra. As with its historical development, the vrata tradition today exemplifies the continuing presence of Dharmaśāstra norms, concepts, and expectations among Hindu communities. But not in the details.
Both McGee and Pearson, for instance, observed that the classificatory boundary of nitya (mandatory and perpetual), naimittika (required on certain occasions), and kāmya (optional and in view of specific desires) vows from Dharmaśāstra is much more flexible in women’s practice than the scheme would normally allow. Family tradition or personal inclination regularly converts an occasioned vow into a mandatory vow or a vow of desired welfare and most women do not speak of vows in these terms (Pearson 1996 : 75, 208). By contrast, men’s vows in contemporary Hinduism usually fall into the category of “occasioned” observances: the marriage of a daughter, the celebration of a festival, etc. Very few men, it seems, observe regular vows as mandatory rites or as rites to achieve particular end. The textual scheme fails, then, as description of contemporary vrata s, but succeeds in its differentiation of vow types that are still culturally and academically relevant.
For further insight, let us look at the most reported overarching goal of vows, the welfare of one’s husband and family, generally called saubhāgya . McGee has “defined this concept of saubhāgya as one which encompasses all the desires and goals of women and, in the context of svadharma , equated women’s pursuit of saubhāgya to a man’s pursuit of mokṣa . To be a saubhāgyavatī [a woman of good fortune] is the sole aim and desire of many Hindu women” (1987 : 388). For the most part, saubhāgya is a virtue directed outward toward others, the securing of good fortune for those who are close to a person. Creating good fortune for one’s family obviously brings satisfaction, comfort, and joy to oneself, too. Saubhāgya as good fortune is widely touted in the Dharmaśāstra digests, too, where it also serves as a collective category for a range of hopes and desires women have for their families: material and business success, good health, harmonious marriage, successful education, and the birth of children. Likewise, these components of good fortune are frequently mentioned as the desired ends of vows in the dharma texts. In terms of general goals, therefore, we find considerable congruence between text and practice, especially regarding women’s vows.
The actual vrata procedures observed show a variation in practice that is unparalleled in the texts. Regional, village, and family vows involve intricacies and specific ritual requirements that we just do not find in textual sources, even in the modern manuals printed to facilitate the correct observance of widespread vows. Karva Chauth (Pitcher Fourth, on the fourth day of the month of Kārttika), for example, which is very popular as an annual festival and vow of fasting in North India, has similarities to rites described in Dharmaśāstra, but hardly “derives” from them. It consists of a sunrise-to-sunset fast and often the exchange of earthen pots containing auspicious items of feminine beauty (bangles, cosmetics, etc.). Other rites accompany the daylong celebration for the longevity of one’s husband, but these vary across localities. In recent years, the popularity of the vow has made it increasingly more of a commercial festival, with shops and communities preparing collectively for the observance of married women (and sometimes even unmarried women seeking a good husband). None of these preparations is part of the dharma texts’ concerns. Probably thousands of other vows—some grand, some private—are similarly part of a living tradition that may nod to Dharmaśāstra but passed down not through textual study but through family and community tradition. 11
Although the specifics diverge, the broad procedural frameworks of vrata found in Dharmaśāstra nevertheless remain. The standard elements described above still capture well the cultural expectations of good intention, austerities, core and accompanying rites, proper eligibility, and desired ends as essential pieces of a valid vrata . To that extent, Dharmaśāstra synthesizes a theological summary of vows that still holds good to understand Hindu observances in practice today. We cannot say that Hindus “apply” Dharmaśāstra very often or at all in their vrata practices. Yet, by bracketing the independent development of regional and customary vows, we can still reliably turn to dharma texts in order to discern the basic goals and elements of vows even in contemporary Hinduism.
The practice of vrata in Hinduism today has long attracted anthropological interest because it is so obviously central to women’s religious lives in ways that correct for textual misogyny and provide insight into a prevalent and ubiquitous element of Hinduism generally. Vows are a domain of Hindu religious life that women control and promote as key to the well-being of Hindu families. Women lead in other areas of Hindu religious practice, such as domestic pūjā and religious education, but vrata s have become a special technique that Hindu women take pride in. In her study of vows observed by Varanasi women, Pearson speaks of “a certain possessiveness that Hindu women seem to feel about the vrat tradition,” even as they acknowledge that men can and do observe vows on certain occasions (1996 : 126).
These anthropological observations make a richer understanding of the independent world of women’s vrata observance possible. On the basis of these ethnographies, we are able to postulate a historical depth for women’s vows for which the texts only provide a partial, often reluctant, glimpse. The fascinating story of Hindu vrata s is precisely their historical evolution from ascetic and ritual observances by men in the service of other rites to the transformative use of other rites by women and their fasts in the service of worldly desires that bring prosperity to Hindu families.