The Sanskrit term vrata, often translated as ‘vow’ or ‘votive ritual’, refers in contemporary Hinduism to a specific type of Hindu religious observance with a set of defining characteristics. South Asian Christians, Muslims, Jains, and Buddhists may also perform religious vows (Harman and Raj 2006), but the word vrata refers in particular to this type of ritual in its Hindu contexts. Hindus practise vratas under different vernacular names as well—vrat, brata, and nōṉpu, for example—all over India and across regional, sectarian, caste, linguistic, and class boundaries. In contemporary Hinduism, the term has come to refer primarily to a religiously sanctioned votive rite performed at a particular time with particular desires or intentions in mind on the part of the petitioner (McGee 1987: 17). Vratas usually entail some kind of promise directed towards a deity, often in exchange for a boon, and a predetermined form of ritual observance (McDaniel 2003: 29). Men, women, boys, and girls may all perform various vratas. There are many vratas, however, that only females undertake in contemporary Hindu practice. In fact, vratas are among the practices most broadly associated with contemporary Hindu women’s religious observance. The meanings and practices evoked by the word vrata are nevertheless historically and textually contingent and have evolved over the course of many centuries.
Given that Hindu scriptures throughout history reflect primarily male voices, interests, perspectives, and experiences, where are we to go to uncover information about women’s performance of vratas prior to contemporary times? Stephanie W. Jamison rightly observes that a lack of direct testimony and observation has made the study of women in Hinduism, as in many other non-Western contexts and other such cases, more often an anthropological rather than an historical enterprise (Jamison 1996: 7). Yet Brahmanical Hindu texts have quite a lot to say about vratas, and one can see in that history not only the general evolution of vratas from the earliest texts to contemporary times, but also the corresponding evolution of women’s engagement with vrata rites. In her work on women in Judaism, Susan Sered notes that women’s religiosity is not independent of normative traditions; women’s practices do not exist in a vacuum, and women’s beliefs tend not to differ radically from those held by male coreligionists. Rather, in male-dominated religious contexts, women have a tendency instead to ‘alter, elaborate, reinterpret, reshape, and domesticate’ normative traditions into forms that are most ‘meaningful to and consistent with their perceptions, roles, identities, needs, and experience’ as women living in a particular historical and cultural context (Sered 1992: 49–50). Such is also generally the case with Hindu women’s vrata observance.
The term vrata first appears in Hindu texts in the Ṛgveda Saṃhitā (ca. 1500–1200 bce) as vratá, where it seems to have a number of meanings. The Vedic Saṃhitās constitute the earliest layer of Hindu scripture and consist primarily of hymns, prayers, and mantras used in conjunction with Vedic sacrificial rites performed as hospitality rituals in order to appease a large array of deities. P.V. Kane argues that the earliest uses of the term refer to a related set of concepts that revolve around its primary meaning as ‘will’ or ‘what is willed’ by a deity or a person in a position of authority. Kane notes that people may perceive the will of an authoritative figure as a command that implies a corresponding call to follow that command. When commands are obeyed and duties are therefore performed in a set pattern over a long period of time, they become practices that those who perform them come to experience as religious obligations. Hence, Kane concludes, the term in the Ṛgveda refers broadly to ‘command or law, obedience or duty, religious or moral practices, religious worship or observance, sacred or solemn vow or undertaking, then any vow or pattern of conduct’ (Kane 1994a: 5; cf. McGee 1987: 18–19). Kane observes further that in the other Vedic Saṃhitās, as well as in the Brāhmaṇas and early Upaniṣads (ca. 1200 bce–500 bce), the term comes to assume two primary meanings as (1) a religious observance or vow, including any restrictions on food and behaviour that such an observance entails; and (2) the special food that a votary is enjoined to take as sustenance while observing such a practice (Kane 1994a: 23; cf. McGee 1987: 19). By the time of the Brāhmaṇas, the term is also used to refer secondarily to a proper pattern of conduct that a person should undertake in a particular situation (e.g. a king ought not to sit down before his enemy does) or as a term equivalent to upavāsa, a term that refers both to passing the night near a sacrificial fire and the practice of fasting, with which vratas are in later contexts strongly aligned (Kane 1994a: 25–6).
Timothy Lubin has argued instead that the Ṛgveda envisions the vratá not particularly as a ‘command’ of any kind but instead as ‘a regular course of ritual observance corresponding to the particular character of the deity to whom the rites pertain’ (Lubin 2001: 566). Lubin notes Paul Hacker’s argument that in most cases, the term vratá in its Ṛgvedic uses refers primarily to patterns of action that gods establish through their concrete activity, with humans and other creatures and things adapting themselves to those patterns accordingly (Hacker 1973: 116, cited in Lubin 2001: 566). In keeping with Hacker’s observations, Lubin argues that in its earliest usages, the term refers not to a vow per se, which implies a promise made, but instead to a rule adopted (Lubin 2001: 567). Each deity’s sphere of action is distinctive and calls for correspondence in human behaviour, ‘particularly in the form of ritual observance’ (Lubin 2001: 578). These early uses of the term confirm later conceptions of vrata as a form of ritual that ‘can put a human worshiper in accordance with divine laws (vratá) and thereby confer divine blessings’ (Lubin 2001: 579).
In the Gṛhyasūtras and Dharmasūtras, the term vrata comes to refer primarily to ritual observances that contribute to the moral formation of an individual and generally entail strict rules for diet and behaviour. These two types of sūtra texts address domestic (gṛhya) rituals and duties as well as social, civil, and religious (dharma) responsibilities incumbent upon all individuals in the later Vedic period and beyond. There are four extant Dharmasūtras dating from approximately 600 bce–100 bce: the Āpastamba (450–350 bce), Gautama (600–200 bce), Baudhāyana (500–200 bce), and Vāsiṣṭha (300–100 bce) Dharmasūtras. The observances prescribed in these texts are generally not devotional or votive in orientation but are instead primarily expiatory and purificatory rites prescribed in general for both men and women during each of the delineated stages of an individual’s life (āsramas). The four extant Dharmaśāstras (Manu, Yājñavalkya, Nārada, and Viṣṇu, ca. second to seventh centuries ce), which are rooted in the Dharmasūtras but provide much greater elaboration on the subject of dharma, largely use the term in the same way (McGee 1987: 25). One may thus conclude, along with Donald R. Davis, that in Vedic and early Hindu texts that concern themselves with dharma, ‘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 regiment in favor of a worldly reward’ (Davis 2018). The sūtra texts also delineate a number of other rites that are not categorized as vratas but resemble closely rites that later do come to be delineated as such, including rituals prescribed for averting evil, removing inauspiciousness, increasing wealth, or promoting long life (McGee 1987: 20–2; Davis 2018).
In the Mahābhārata (ca. 400 bce–400 ce) the term vrata continues to appear mainly to denote a religious observance that requires food restriction or restraint in other behaviours, although the term is also used in reference to patterns of conduct that are not necessarily religious, including, for example, Yudhiṣṭhira’s reference to his ‘vow’ not to refuse dice play when challenged to it (Kane 1994a: 27). There is no evidence in early Hindu scriptures of any special relationship between vrata observances and women, but passages in the Mahābhārata do associate particular individuals—including women—with vrata observance (Pearson 1996: 51). One of the most well-known such depictions emerges in the story of Sāvitrī, a story that continues to sustain the performance of an annual vrata that many contemporary Hindu women observe (cf. Pearson 1996: 54 and Sharma 2011). In the epic version of this story, Sāvitrī undertakes a vrata, here portrayed explicitly as a religious vow, to save the life of her husband and rescue him from the clutches of Yama, the god of death. Anne Mackenzie Pearson makes particular note of Sāvitrī’s performance of tapas, religious austerity, as part of her vrata performance in this rendering of the narrative, which describes Sāvitrī as standing all night for three consecutive nights and fasting as part of her vow (Pearson 1996: 54–5). The literal meaning of tapas is ‘heat’, and, Pearson notes, recalls the heat of the ritual fire at the centre of Vedic religious practice, a fire that transformed offerings into food fit for the gods. In performing austerities, Sāvitrī comes to be transformed ‘just as tapas transformed the vedic sacrifice from the raw material of the offering to the energy which finally (re)creates and sustains the universe’ (Pearson 1996: 54–9).
One begins to see consistent descriptions of vratas as optional, devotional rituals that bear fruit for individual petitioners in the Purāṇas (ca. fifth to sixteenth centuries ce) and Dharmanibandhas (ca. ninth to eighteenth centuries ce). Recorded over the course of many centuries, the eighteen major and eighteen minor Purāṇas encompass narrative, ritual, philosophical, ethical, and devotional materials drawn in from a variety of regions and historical periods. The Dharmanibandhas are wide-ranging digests of religious prescriptions that draw upon scripture to elucidate Hindu laws and customs. Vratas as they have come to exist in modern Hinduism originate largely in the Purāṇas with the authors of the Dharmanibandhas, beginning with Lakṣmīdhara in the twelfth century, ceding to the Purāṇas’ authority in matters concerning vrata practices (Davis 2018). It is in the Purāṇas and Dharmanibandhas, too, that we see continued openness towards women as well as low-caste males as performers of vratas.
The Purāṇas and Dharmnibandhas move almost entirely away from portraying vratas as expiatory and purificatory rites towards portraying them instead as self-imposed, petitionary rituals undertaken primarily to satisfy particular desires. McGee describes this shift as a transformation of vratas from being obligatory, impersonal acts undertaken to maintain one’s status to being instead optional, personal acts of devotion and service to a deity or deities, or ‘in other words’, McGee writes, ‘from rites of maintenance to rites of acquisition’ (McGee 1987: 25). There are various theories as to why this shift occurs. McGee, for example, understands the surge of attention to vratas that seems to occur in the Purāṇas as resulting from the rise in influence of bhakti, devotional Hinduism, which began spreading throughout the sub-continent at that time (McGee 1987: 28). She remarks, ‘By including these indigenous votive observances in the corpus of sacred literature, the brāhmaṇas sanctioned these observances and gave them a legitimate status’ (35–6). Davis, on the other hand, suggests that the Brahmin authors of the Purāṇas themselves created the idea of vrata as a voluntary vow made to a deity and available to all petitioners, just as ‘Christian bishops, not popular folk’ introduced the cult of saints to Christianity or Buddhist monks and nuns, not laity, ‘introduced the image cult to early Buddhism’ (Davis 2018). In other words, Davis suggests that the impulse to integrate a multitude of vratas into normative Hinduism during the Purāṇic period came primarily from the top down, not the bottom up. In any case, the shift is transformational.
The Purāṇas and Dharmanibandhas tend to portray vratas as a category of rites to which all persons may avail themselves to express devotion to a deity or deities and to satisfy both spiritual and worldly desires. The Dharmanibandhas classify religious rites as nitya, naimittika, or kāmya. Nitya rites are ‘duty-born’; that is, obligatory rites that form part of one’s general religious duty. Naimittika rites are ‘occasion-born’ and therefore required by particular occasions. The Dharmanibandhas treat both of these categories of rite as ‘desireless’ (niṣkāmyakarma), meaning they should be undertaken simply for their own sake and without a specific outcome in mind. Performing ‘desireless’ rites does have positive effects on actors, like building moral character, conferring spiritual merit, and enabling a votary to avoid the sin that would incur from not performing an obligatory ritual, but ritual actors should do them regardless of any benefit that the person performing them accrues. Kāmya rites, on the other hand, are specifically ‘desire-born’, meaning ritual actors perform them with a particular spiritual or material outcome in mind. The writers of the Dharmanibandhas generally classify vratas as kāmya and therefore optional rites. Individuals might choose, therefore, to perform only the vratas that they believe will help them achieve a desired goal (McGee 1991: 74–5).
Descriptions of vratas are limited in number in the earliest Purāṇas, such as the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (ca. 300–500 ce), but increase in number in later ones, proliferating ‘almost exponentially’ in Purāṇas composed from the ninth century on, such as the Padma Purāṇa (Pearson 1996: 64). The later Purāṇas and Dharmanibandhas tend to indulge in lengthy descriptions of a broad variety of vratas, including recipes for their enactment and tributes to their value. They portray vratas largely as optional practices allied with both dharma and bhakti, bringing into focus the modern vrata rite as it is widely practised among Hindus today.
The Purāṇas sometimes portray the performance of vratas as effective and meritorious even without the willing participation of the votary actor. David Haberman, for example, makes note of a story in the Garuḍa Purāṇa (1.124) of a sinful king named Sundara Senaka who accidentally performs all the required actions of the Śivarātri vrata won Śivarātri. As a consequence, upon death this ‘accidental ritualist’ assumes a place in Śiva’s abode as an attendant of Śiva himself, thereby achieving the benefit of performing this vrata even though he did so unintentionally (Haberman 2014: 155–6). Haberman notes in this regard that the Purāṇas tend to emphasize the importance of correct ritual action over intentionality or thought and hence are in keeping with earlier Vedic emphases on proper ritual action as the basis of correct religious behaviour (Haberman 2014: 162). More often, however, the Puranic texts laud the intentional, self-conscious performance of vratas as efficacious acts grounded in devotion to a particular deity or deities and leading to both spiritual and material benefits.
There is no reason to believe that women did not perform vratas, or rituals very much like them, prior to the existence in the historical record of evidence that they in fact did so since a bias against placing attention on women’s ritual practices in Brahmanical Sanskrit texts would mostly likely have been quite strong. Pearson cautions that even in the Purāṇas, women are portrayed most often as secondary ‘if not virtual silent players’ when it comes to vratas, with male upper-caste individuals granted licence to place restrictions on female and low-caste participation in vrata performance (Pearson 1996: 63). Yet already in the Mahābhārata, we have the story of Sāvitrī’s remarkable performance of a difficult vrata, and a number of Purāṇic accounts of vratas feature women as votive actors. Davis observes that one finds in the Dharmanibandhas more and more ‘women-centered’ and ‘women-permitted’ vratas gleaned from the Purāṇas which, he argues, ‘suggests that the Purāṇas at least had already opened a new religious space for women’ (Davis 2018). Hence it would not be outrageous to postulate that women may well have been performing a variety of vratas or vrata-like rituals as personal acts of both dharma and devotion well before Hindu texts began to represent them as doing so. McGee contends that many of the vratas that the Purāṇas describe were mostly likely already in existence and being practised well before the Purāṇic period, ‘even during the Vedic period’ as morally weighted ‘customs and conduct of good people’ (sadācāra) (McGee 1987: 34). These ‘good people’ surely included women.
In contemporary Hinduism, many vratas are calendrical rites that take place on a weekly, monthly, or annual basis. The Hindu calendar recognizes twelve lunar months, each of which is divided into thirty lunar days, or tithis, which are each then divided into two fortnights. Each vrata is prescribed for a particular time: this may be a specific day of the week, month, or year; a particular month or season (such as the four-month, or caturmāsa, vrata prescribed for the rainy season); the occasion of an eclipse; or for another specific occasion (cf. McGee 1987: 253). Some votaries observe particular calendrical vratas throughout most or all of their adult lives as long as they are capable of doing so. Full moon (pūrṇimā) days, fourths (caturthi), and elevenths (ekādaśī) are especially popular vrata days, and some Hindu votaries may observe vratas for these days even if they don’t observe every single occurrence of the day in question. Others may observe a specific vrata for a particular period of time and a particular purpose, ceasing its performance when they no longer need or want the perceived benefits of the vrata in question. A girl who seeks a favourable marital alliance, for example, may undertake a vrata to Śiva on Mondays until a suitable match is made and cease performing it thereafter.
The category of vrata is an elastic one, and it is sometimes difficult to categorize particular practices as vratas, festivals, or general devotional acts. Vratas can, as one scholar observes, ‘be long-term or short-term, constitutive or instrumental, ontological or conditional, duty-bound or voluntary, directed toward a specific deity or aimed at transforming one’s life path to increase one’s spiritual status—or, seemingly almost any combination thereof’ (Pechilis 2006: 147). However, observant Hindus tend to understand vrata as a particular type of ritual that is defined, albeit often loosely, in relation to a number of particular constituent elements.
Based on her study of both Hindu scripture and modern Hindu women’s vrata performance, Mary McGee has enumerated eleven components of vratas (1987: 128–234). Vratas consist of a combination of at least some, and sometimes all, of these types of individual religious rites and disciplines. The list includes, first, a declaration of intention (saṅkalpa), which commits the petitioner to the fulfilment of all the required rites and rituals of a particular vrata. In addition, vratas often require some form of ritual bathing (snāna) to purify the body and recitation of some kind of mantra (japa) to purify the mind. Votaries may perform an all-night vigil (jāgaraṇa) and sacrifice of oblations into a fire (homa), although these are not always performed in every vrata; in addition, vratas usually require some form of worship (pūjā) and the observation of a fast (upavāsa), as well as the ultimate breaking of the fast (pāraṇa); the telling or hearing of a vrata story (kathāśrāvaṇa); ‘gifting’ or giving donations (dāna) to worthy recipients; and the performance of a concluding rite (udyāpana). For any given vrata one, or sometimes two, of these observances may be designated as a principal rite (pradhāna) whose performance is central to that particular votive ritual, with other observances designated as subsidiary rites (aṅgas) (McGee 1987: 124–5; cf. Pintchman 2010).
The elements that one encounters most often in vratas that contemporary Hindus perform are fasting (upavāsa), recounting of the vrata narrative (vrata-kathā), and performing vrata-related pūjā (cf. Pearson 1996: 152). Hindus commonly associate vratas with the practice of upavāsa in particular. The larger concept of upavāsa includes abstention from all forms of sensual and sexual gratification (Pearson 1996: 147; McGee 1987: 190). In practice, however, most Hindus associate the term upavāsa primarily with practices of food and drink abstention. Fasting is indeed a very important part of vrata performance, and Hindus often translate the word vrata specifically as ‘fast’. Since vratas also entail additional ritual actions directed towards a deity or deities as well as other ritual elements, however, they cannot be said to be religious fasts tout court. In Hindu traditions, ‘fasting’ refers to various practices of abstention from nourishment for a predetermined period of time, ranging from complete abstention from all food or drink to abstention from one or a small number of particular forms of nourishment. Some vratas require the petitioner to abstain from all food and drink for a prescribed period of time while others prescribe consumption of only certain types of foods during vrata observance or eating once a day or only at night (McGee 1987: 189–204).
Central to the practice of vratas in contemporary India is the notion of niyama, ‘rule’ or ‘restriction’, which underscores an emphasis in the vrata tradition on practices that inculcate self-discipline and restraint of the senses (McGee 1987: 50, 93–5). Practices advocated might include, in addition to fasting, sleeping on the floor at night, abstaining from sex, or keeping silent during meals, with specific restrictions varying according to the particular vrata (McGee 1987: 93). McGee notes that several of the Dharmanibandhas affirm the ascetic quality of vratas, quoting the Agni Purāṇa’s definition of vrata as ‘restriction’ (niyama) after the restraint of the sense that occurs during vrata performance, or ‘austerity’ (tapas) because of the hardships that votaries undergo to complete a vrata (McGee 1987: 50). Yet, she observes, it is important to remember that these acts of self-restraint are temporary, and therefore function to make the votary more aware and appreciative of just those things that he or she may ordinarily take for granted (McGee 1987: 94).
Virtually all vratas involve a religious narrative, the vrata-kathā or vrata story, which is usually recited at least once during the course of the vrata. Many of these vrata-kathās appear originally in the Purāṇas and are then excerpted in the Dharmanibandhas. Religious manuals and pamphlets containing individual vrata-kathās derived from the Purāṇas and Dharmanibandhas are sold all over India in vernacular languages, and many votaries use these vernacular renditions in their votive practices rather than original Sanskrit ones. Some vrata-kathās are orally transmitted vernacular (‘folk’) narratives that have no identifiable textual sources. Pearson identifies three common characteristics of vrata stories. First, they provide details for the procedure of the vrata in the course of the narrative; second, they may provide an aetiology of the vrata; and third, they often recount an example or examples of the vrata’s performance in past times as evidence of the efficacy and transformative power of the vrata (Pearson 1996: 150–1). Vrata-kathās delineate the deity to whom the vrata is dedicated and often emphasize both the spiritual and material merits that votaries accrue by their vrata performance.
Vratas always also include some form of ritual worship, or pūjā. Pūjā is the most fundamental practice of devotional Hinduism and occurs regularly in a variety of religious contexts. In pūjā one proffers offerings to an image of a deity or deities in exchange for darśaṇa, seeing and being seen by a deity. The specific list of ‘honor offerings’, or upacāras, made to a deity or deities may vary from pūjā to pūjā, but sixteen is considered appropriate for a complete pūjā (Eck 1998: 47). Individual devotees may perform pūjā at home altars, temporary shrines, or temples; priests may also perform pūjā on behalf of individual votive petitioners. Pūjās performed in the context of vratas are often straightforward and simple in form as they are to be performed by the votary or votaries at a home altar or using an image purchased or made specifically for a particular vrata performance. On some occasions, however, a vrata pūjā may require the intervention of a priest. Selva J. Raj and William P. Harman maintain that South Asian religious vows, including vratas, are ‘unmediated acts freely embraced and self-monitored by the laity’ and hence ‘do not require or involve the participation of official ritual specialists’ (Harman and Raj 2006: 4). Yet in practice many vratas do in fact require the services of a Brahmin ritual officiant (pandit or pujārī) for some of its constituent parts, including pūjā performance (cf. Pearson 1996: 141–3).
Other elements that McGee identifies are also important components of many vrata performances. The end of many vratas, for example, is marked by the performance of the udyāpana, the concluding rite. Short-term vratas may end with a concluding pūjā followed by the breaking of the fast (pāraṇa), while longer vratas may have elaborate concluding rituals. Performing an udyāpana is especially important when a votary ceases performing a vrata that she or he has always observed in the past, perhaps because of advanced age, infirmity, or cessation of desire for the particular boons with which a particular vrata is associated. In such a case, the udyāpana may be especially elaborate and may entail the offering of generous gifts or feeding honoured guests.
Hindus regularly perform ritual bathing (snāna) before doing religious rites, including all vratas, as a way of mentally and spiritually cleansing themselves in anticipation of a religious undertaking. Such bathing usually consists of a brief showering of cold or room-temperature water poured over one’s body while standing and sometimes reciting a mantra. Some item of clothing is always worn for this kind of ritual bath (McGee 1987: 133–4). Preparatory ritual bathing may also consist of a brief dip or series of dips in natural bodies of water, like rivers or lakes. For some auspicious occasions, an oil bath may be prescribed, requiring a votary to anoint his or her entire body with oil (McGee 1987: 136–7). Some votive observances prescribe ritual bathing as their central rite (pradhāna). These include the month-long votive observances connected with the Hindu months of Māgha, Kārttika, and Vaiśākha. During the month of Kārttika, for example, votaries rise very early in the morning to perform daily ritual bathing in Gangā, the Ganges River, as the bathing is seen as much more meritorious when performed before sunrise (see Pintchman 2005: 25–6).
Many vratas entail the recitation of some kind of mantra (japa), an all-night vigil (jāgaraṇa), or a sacrifice of oblations into a fire (homa), as McGee notes (McGee 1987: 143–52, 186–9), although these elements, which are common to many forms of Hindu worship, are not present in all vratas. More common is the practice of ‘gifting’ (dāna), which is a ritualized giving of gifts to prescribed individuals at prescribed times. These gifts may include clothing, jewellery, or other imperishable items, but the most common gifts offered are money and food items. Textual traditions tend to emphasize the merit of giving vrata-related gifts to Brahmins, especially pundits who have assisted a votary in vrata performance, and these individuals remain important recipients of dāna. But many votaries in contemporary India also emphasize the merit of offering dāna to the poor and needy (Pearson 1996: 143–5).
It is impossible to say how many Hindu vratas exist. While observant Hindus practise some vratas all over India regardless of geographical context, other vratas are regional or specific to one particular community or deity. Some vratas are based in vernacular or ‘folk’ (laukika) traditions while others may be considered more properly to be part of Brahmanical Sanskrit scriptural (śāstrika) traditions. P.V. Kane provides a list of vratas that extends for over 200 pages, yet he notes that the list does not claim to be exhaustive (Kane 1994b: 253–462).
Hindus, including Hindu women, perform vratas for a wide variety of reasons. While many perform vratas to honour a particular deity or deities in exchange for some kind of spiritual or material benefit, it is quite possible to perform a vrata in a ‘desireless’ manner out of a sense of religious duty (dharma), to express religious piety, or to demonstrate devotion towards a particular deity. There is a good measure of continuity between vratas and other forms of religious observance, so the boundaries in this regard are quite fluid: a pilgrimage or daily devotional rite (pūjā), for example, can be undertaken in the petitionary manner sometimes associated with vratas, just as vratas themselves can be undertaken without any specific desired outcome whatsoever (cf. Pearson 1996: 204). Hence it is impossible to classify vratas as they are actually performed in the surgically precise manner that the writers of the Dharmanibandhas do when classifying them as inherently kamya rites. It is, nevertheless, fair to say that those who perform vratas generally presume that they will bring some kind of beneficial outcome, often understood as a positive response from the deity to whom a given vrata is directed, even when no specific desired outcome is articulated. In this regard vratas are essentially instrumental, although votaries might view their instrumentality as no more than a request for or vague expectation of general blessings, peace of mind, or the continuance of a favourable state.
Stories and popular beliefs about vratas clearly link their performance to good outcomes, and in many contexts vratas are understood to bring worldly, as well as spiritual, benefits to the individual who undertakes them. In her analysis of several vrata narratives (kathā), Susan Wadley notes persistent underlying themes pertaining to transaction between humans and deities as well as issues of sin and merit. With respect to the first theme, transaction between humans and deities, Wadley observes that in vrata narratives, gods consistently exercise compassion and provide boons in exchange for human trust, devotion, and service in the form of not only vratas, but other devotional activities as well (Wadley 1985: 81–2). She describes this exchange as modelling ‘a transaction of the patron-client (jajmān-kamin) variety’ (81). Wadley does not distinguish between boons that flow from vratas and those that flow from other forms of devotion in her analysis, including vratas within the larger framework of devotional activity that helps one reap appropriate rewards, but she does focus on the specific narrative genre associated with vrata. With respect to sin and merit, Wadley observes that the narratives she explores tend to be quite clear about the relationship between the ethical force of an action and its result: sinful acts lead to sorrow and meritorious acts lead to happiness. In this context, the category of ‘good acts’ encompasses the performance of vratas and other devotional rites, which she describes as falling under the rubric of dharma, religious duty. It is notable, too, that such stories tend to portray karmic effects—the relationship between actions and their results—within the framework of one life without necessarily invoking any reference to future lives, reflecting broader popular notions of karma in Indian culture (Wadley 1985: 85; Wadley and Derr 1989).
Wadley observes that many Hindu narratives portray vratas as powerful ‘transformers of destiny’ that can enable a devotee to overcome an undesirable karmic legacy. Vrata stories tend to imply that dedicated votaries can even alter fate through votive observances. The moral of many vrata narratives is that fulfilment of a vrata may destroy the bad effect of past misdeeds, and votaries can expect the deity to whom they direct vrata performance to ‘overrule’ karmic destiny to the benefit of the votary (Wadley 1983: 155–6). Austerities normally associated with vratas function in this regard as signals of one’s devotion such that the deity to whom they are directed ‘will reward this faith and service with some kind of boon’ (Wadley 1983: 149). Acts of austerity are also inherently transformative practices that depend on the active participation of the devotional agent and not just passive receptivity of a deity’s favour. Gavin Flood describes the term ‘asceticism’ as referring to ‘a range of habits or bodily regimes designed to restrict or reverse the instinctual impulses of the body’ as well as ‘an ideology that maintains that in so doing a greater good or happiness can be achieved’ (Flood 2004: 4). Flood notes as well that the goals of ascetic action ‘are not simply abstract ideologies or justifications for the power of institutions’ but are also ‘the future orientations and narrative identities of people; their desire to achieve a goal, the goal of human perfection in this or in some other world’ (Flood 2004: 4). In this regard, austerities associated with vratas often act as a form of domesticated ascetic praxis, embracing bodily practices—fasting, subjecting the body to discomfort or pain, and so on—that are generally associated with a life of renunciation but incorporating them into the domestic realm.
A number of scholars have noted that Hindu women often perform vratas in particular for the benefit of familial others, especially husbands but also children and other family members. Boons that women seek in vrata performance often include, for example, a husband’s good health or long life or the wellbeing of their children. Both McGee and Pearson have detailed the strong connections that married women make between their performance of vratas and the maintenance of their favourable status as wives and mothers. McGee notes, further, that 94 per cent of the Hindu women she interviewed in Maharashtra state that they observe vratas in general to maintain saubhāgya, the state of ‘good fortune’ or marital felicity that describes the auspicious state of married women with living husbands.
Some scholars have also argued that Hindu women in contemporary India tend to understand the performance of vratas as practices that are not entirely optional, but instead are part of their religious duty. Hindu women are especially prone to see the performance of particular vratas as required for them to maintain their status as a pativratā, an auspiciously married woman with living husband and children (McGee 1987, 1991; Pearson 1996). Women also tend to remark that vrata observance is allied strongly with their strīdharma, their dharma as women, especially in relation to their maternal and spousal roles. Here we see evidence of Sered’s argument, noted above, that in many religious traditions, women tend to reshape and often domesticate normative religious ideas and practices to render them meaningful to and consistent with their embodied contests as women (Sered 1992: 49–50).
The fourth (cauth) of the dark fortnight of the month of Kārttika, for example, marks one of the most important vratas of the year for married Hindu women, who often observe this vrata, called the Karvā Cauth vrata, for the long lives and good health of their husbands. Men, widows, and unmarried girls do not observe this vrata at all, but it is especially popular among newlywed women. The central observance of this vrata is total abstention from food and water for a full day until after moonrise. The name of the vrata is derived from a special kind of earthen pot with a spout (karvā) that is used during the evening rite. On the day of the Karvā Cauth vrata, female votaries rise before sunrise, perform ritual worship (pūjā) to the moon (Soma) and other deities, and eat special vrata-specific foods. They then spend the rest of the day in a complete fast, often in the company of female family members or, sometimes, female friends who are also performing the vrata. In the evening, votaries dress up in fine clothing and jewellery, adorning themselves in preparation for the conclusion of the fast. When darkness falls and the moon appears in the sky, votaries perform a special pūjā, paying particular attention to honouring the goddess Pārvatī. Votaries then gaze upon the moon through a sieve before breaking their day-long fast.
There are many different Karvā Cauth stories in existence. One narrative that seems to be especially popular among contemporary votaries features the story of a woman who inadvertently breaks the Karvā Chauth fast before the moon’s appearance in the sky. In this account, the woman’s brothers are so concerned about her wellbeing during the fasting period that they don’t want her to continue to postpone eating. Hence they deceive her into thinking that the moon has risen when, in fact, it has not. As a consequence of the broken vrata, the woman’s husband dies. Following advice given to her, the woman preserves her husband’s body for a full year, and on the following Karvā Cauth, she maintains the fast correctly, breaking it only after the moon has truly risen and she has performed her worship correctly. As a result, the husband is brought back to life. This vrata narrative clearly expresses the relationship between the performance of this vrata and women’s sense of their dharma and power as pativratās, auspiciously married women with living husbands.
One must be careful, however, not to exaggerate or overemphasize the motivating role of marital or larger domestic concerns in women’s performance of vratas. McGee notes, for example, that the women she interviewed in fact offer many reasons in addition to domestic ones for performing votive rites. These include personal desires such as the promotion of one’s own health and prosperity (42 per cent), acquisition of wealth (32 per cent), or acquisition of power (21 per cent) as well as religious benefits like drawing nearer to God (37 per cent) or attaining spiritual liberation (mokṣa) (30 per cent) (McGee 1991: 79). Pearson, too, explicitly cautions against an overemphasis on domestic values when it comes to women’s performance of vratas, noting that, in her experience, ‘while women often spoke initially of vrats as being for [maintaining] suhāg [Hindi for saubhāgya]—the auspicious married state—they also spoke directly or indirectly about the psychological, social, physical, and spiritual benefits for themselves’, such as peace of mind or spiritual liberation (Pearson 1996: 9). In addition to the values associated with women’s prescribed dharma as pativratās, she outlines four spheres of meaning that the women she interviewed tend also to invoke: vrata as duty or dharma; vrata as resolve (saṅkalpa), a voluntary undertaking to which one chooses to commit for a specified length of time; vrata as an ethical action or moral good; and vrata as a form of spiritual discipline (sādhana) (Pearson 1996: 196–203).
Scholars do not always agree on how to think about vratas with respect to gendered power relations in contemporary Hinduism. Some have argued that religious practices like vratas function to empower women even if they do so in ways that that have nothing to do with struggle or resistance against gender oppression in the public sphere. Wadley, for example, argues that women’s rituals, including vratas, ‘may give psychological support to the women themselves because they allow women to have active control of events rather than depend completely on their male kin’ (1983: 109). Wadley does not use the language of empowerment specifically in speaking of Hindu women’s religious rites, stressing instead the ‘psychological support’ they offer in enabling women to feel they have active control over events that are important to them. Pearson, however, does specifically invoke the language of empowerment in relation to vratas and concludes, ‘Women use vrats as a way to gain control over their own lives’. She goes on to argue that vratas are indeed a source of empowerment for women in two ways: first, by providing them with a degree of personal autonomy; and second, by tapping into traditional religious notions of power (tapas and śakti) cultivated through ascetic practice (Pearson 1996: 10). Hindu women, ‘traditionally denied access to formal asceticism, have found a way to tap into this powerful realm for their own benefit through the performance of vrats’ (Pearson 1996: 11). Similarly, Harman and Raj, speaking of religious vows across religious traditions in South Asia, argue that through the performance of vows, women in Hinduism, Jainism, and Islam ‘gain access to the ritual activity and spiritual benefits of their respective traditions through the vows they take’ because ‘taking vows is their way of entering into a tradition where there are fewer ritual opportunities available to women to participate in their religion’ (Harman and Raj 2006: 6).
Other scholars are more ambivalent or even negative in their evaluations of Hindu women’s vrata traditions in relation to women’s larger status in Indian society. June McDaniel, for example, observes that, from a feminist perspective, the vrata tradition ‘is both good and bad for women’. She argues that it is good for women because it encourages female community and mutual respect among women of all ages and stations and enables women, not male priests, to function as teachers and ritual specialists. However, she argues, there are also disempowering elements of vratas, such as the tendency of vrata narratives to emphasize traditional gender values and encourage female subordination, obedience, and self-sacrifice (McDaniel 2003: 110). Jack E. Llewellyn acknowledges that even though there have been women who have used vratas to acquire power in their families and communities, nevertheless he views vratas largely as ‘an expression of an ideology that is oppressive toward women, requiring them to make sacrifices for their families that are not expected from men’ (Llewellyn 2006: 244).
I have argued for the importance of remembering that when scholars speak of power and empowerment with respect to women’s religious practices, including vratas, they may refer to a wide variety of forms that power may take: divine or transcendent power, inner spiritual power, enhanced prestige or influence in the community, increased autonomy, increased feelings of self-worth, or authority in a particular religious sphere (Pintchman 2005: 184). What is meant by the term ‘empowerment’ is inherently ‘context-sensitive’ (see Ramanujan 1989), and claims about women’s power are most persuasive when they are qualified and deeply contextualized. Empowerment in any one sphere may have no effect on, or may even diminish, power in another, and women may derive a sense of empowerment through religious practice even when that power is not related to resistance to patriarchal structures or women’s economic, social, or political advancement. In this regard, Marjorie Proctor-Smith distinguishes between what she calls the emancipatory function of religion with respect to women, which refers to ways religion helps women transcend normative social restraints and behave in ways that are contrary to social expectation, and a sacralizing function, which refers to the ways religion may serve to affirm women’s traditional roles and experiences as sacred (Proctor-Smith 1993: 25–8; Pintchman 2005: 184–5). By sacralizing women’s domestic roles, vratas seem often to enhance women’s feelings of self-worth, empowering women emotionally, spiritually, and even socially by enhancing their prestige in the household and larger community. Yet it seems fair to say that the emancipatory function of ritual that Proctor-Smith outlines is largely absent from women’s votive practices.
Vratas are ubiquitous throughout India and are performed by observant Hindus of both genders and from all walks of life. Many vratas facilitate direct communication between devotee and deity, empowering lay practitioners to bypass official institutions and ritual specialists and instead exert direct influence over deities through actions voluntarily undertaken. Harman and Raj observe that vows are of special importance to those religiously and socially marginalized groups, including women, who generally do not have ready institutional access to supernatural power. For such groups, the performance of ritual vows may constitute the core form of religious practice observed (Harman and Raj 2006: 6). In this regard, vratas constitute a category of Hindu ritual observance whose religious importance, especially to historically disenfranchised groups, we should not underestimate.