The Rig Vedic Slaying of Vrtra: Menstruation Taboos in Mythology by Janet Chawla Due to my frustrations with the to the Mandir, Masjid or Gurdwara, woman’s body and procreative medical model of pregnancy and birth, performing or participating in Pujas, capacity is defined as a source of ritual I decided to document traditional not reading holy books, as well as the impurity. Water or bathing is Indian childbirth practices which importance of bathing rituals after understood to be purifying; washing seemed to me to be more congruent menstruation. One basti woman spoke away bodily pollution. On the other with my natural childbirth orientation. of the blood of childbirth as rook hua hand the worship of the water source, I worked with the Ankur-Action India (stagnant) and the placenta as nau a woman-centered ritual involving women’s health group to collect mahina ka narak kund (nine month’s singing and celebration, constructs stories of women from all classes and hell vessel). both the well and water as sacred. religious backgrounds about their Second was the well worship Symbolically the well is analogous to experiences with menstruation, ritual.1 Many of the basti women the yoni. Just as the baby emerges pregnancy, birth and mothering. mentioned a ritual worship of the well from the watery womb—the source From these interviews emerged (or in the resettlement colonies the of life—so the well, in the traditional two conceptual areas which seemed nal, or water tap) on Chatti after Indian setting, was the source of important. One was ritual pollution. childbirth. As they spoke of the ritual, water, necessary for the continuing Almost every woman spoke of a it was actually worshipping the water life of people, plants, animals. woman’s body as being considered source, not simply a purification ritual. I asked rather simple questions: unclean or impure during the time of Thus I encountered two seemingly Why are menstruation and the blood menstruation and postpartum. They contradictory ritual and belief of childbirth considered ritually spoke of being prohibited from going systems. In Brahmanical Hinduism, a polluting? What were the origins of a No. 68 (January-February 1992) 29 belief which so categorises women’s Doniger O’Flaherty categorically Indra’s Vrtra slaying: body and the biological processes states “The Rig Veda is a book by men “1. A woman is not independent, which bring new human life into the about male concerns in a world the males are her masters. It has been world? (I should acknowledge here dominated by men; one of these declared in the Veda, ‘A female who that defining women’s bodily concerns is women, who appear neither goes naked nor is temporarily processes as polluting and throughout the hymns as objects, unclean is paradise.’ antithetical to religious practice is not though seldom as subjects.” 4 2. Now they quote also the unique to Hinduism. It is also a part The text, however, speaks for following verse; “Their fathers of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic itself on the general category of protect them in childhood, their tradition.) I got my first inkling of an women: “Indra himself hath said, the husbands protect them in youth, and answer when I discovered the myth mind of woman brooks not discipline, their sons protect them in age; a of Indra slaying Vrtra. Her intellect hath little weight.” (RV woman is never fit for independence.” In the Rig Veda Indra’s slaying of VIII 33.17). (Ironically this aphorism 3. The penance to be performed Vrtra (or the Vrtras) is referred to over is put in the mouth of the heroic by a wife for being unfaithful to her 100 times. Most Vedic scholars agree warrior known for neither his intellect husband has been declared in the that this killing is the central dramatic nor his self-discipline.) “With women section of secret penances. event in India’s oldest existing text. there can be no lasting friendship: 4. For month by month the Vrtra is depicted as the withholder hearts of hyenas are the hearts of menstrual excretion takes away her of the waters, the demon of droughts, women.” (RV X95.15) sins. a snake or dragonlike figure who It is of interest that Vrtra, in fact all 5. A woman in her courses is impure dwells in the rivers or celestial waters, the demons of the Rig Veda, are known during three days and nights. or in a cavern in the earth. He lives in by matronymics rather than 6. During her period she shall not the caves with the cows. Indra kills patronymics. As Keith notes, Vrtra is apply collyrium to her eyes, nor anoint Vrtra with his thunderbolt, thus a Danava, son of Danu, and her body, nor bathe in water; she shall releasing the waters, the cows, and describing his death the Rig Veda links sleep on the ground; she shall not wealth, prosperity, and progeny, the the two in imagery of cow and calf: sleep in the day-time, nor touch the hymn singers reveal. “The vital energy of Vrtra’s mother fire, nor make a rope, nor clean her Keith notes that Vrtra ranks first ebbed away, for Indra had hurled his teeth, nor eat meat, nor look at the among the enemies of the Vedic gods: deadly weapon at her. Above was the planets, nor drink out of a large vessel, “He [Vrtra] is a serpent with power mother, below was the son; Danu lay or out of joined hands, or out of a over the lightening, mist, hail and down like a cow with her calf.” (RV copper vessel. thunder, when he wars with Indra; his 1.32.9 O’Flaherty) 7. For it has been declared in the mother is Danu, apparently the stream My hypothesis is that Vrtra is Veda, “When Indra had slain Vrtra, the or the waters of heaven, but he bears mythically and symbolically linked to three-headed son of Tvashtri, he was that name himself as well a Danava, pre-patriarchal, pre-Vedic social seized by Sin, and he considered offspring of Danu. His abode is formations. By re-interpreting the himself to be tainted with exceedingly hidden in the waters, but is also on a slaying of the “son of the mother”, great guilt. All beings cried out summit or on lofty heights which we discover the mythic origin of the against him saying to him ‘O thou suggest the waters of the air. He is by later Brahmanic pollution ideology slayer of a learned Brahmana!” He ran name the encompasser of the waters, which devalues the female bodily to the women for protection and said rather than the holder back by processes of menstruation and to them, ‘Take upon yourself the third congealing them: the cloud mountain childbirth. part of this my guilt caused by the is therefore said to be in his belly. He From Slums to Sacred Texts murder of a learned Brahmana.’ They has 99 forts which Indra shatters as The Dharam Shastras, the law said ‘Let us obtain offspring if our he slays him.”2 givers’ treatises on how to live a husband approach us during the Existing critical literature proper life, contain various proper season, at pleasure let us dwell acknowledges the marginality of proscriptions on what a menstruating with our husbands until our children women in the text. J. Gonda woman should and should not do. In are born.’ He answered, ‘So be it.’ acknowledges that: “Women are a this text, Chapter 5 of the Vasishtha Then they took upon themselves the rare subject; in the Rig Veda they are Dharmashastra, menstrual taboos, third part of his guilt. That guilt of mainly mentioned in metaphors and, and woman’s subordinate social Brahmana-murder appears every as a collectivum, in similes.”3 Wendy position are related to the myth of month as the menstrual flow. 30 MANUSHI Therefore let him not eat the food of a before building a structure. The peg outstretched (asayanam). The woman in her courses; for such a one is to secure the head of the snake hurling of the lightning and the has put on the shape of the guilt of (thought to reside in the earth) and decapitation are equivalent to the act Brahmana-murderer. prevent it from shaking and of Creation, with passage from the 8. Those who recite the Veda destroying the building. “But the act nonmanifested to the manifested, proclaim the following rule: ‘Collyrium of foundation at the same time repeats from the formless to the formed.”5 and ointment must not be accepted the cosmogonic act for to “secure” Eliade’s notion of primal chaos is from her; for that is the food of women. the snake’s head, to drive the peg into outdated and androcentric. The new Therefore they feel a loathing for her it is to imitate the primordial gesture physics is radically changing while she is in that condition saying scientists’ conception of order and ‘she shall not approach.’ chaos. Phenomena previously 9. ‘Those Brahmanas in whose understood as chaotic now seem to houses menstruating women sit, display an underlying sense of order. those who keep no sacred fire, and It is masculine ‘creation’ which those in whose family there is no involves hurling of lightening (read Srotiya—all these are equal to sperm) and the decapitation is a rather Shudras.’” anomolous symbol for creativity. In this text we find practices What has previously been relating to the seclusion and understood as “primal chaos” might restrictions of menstruating women now reveal itself as a matristic social explicitly linked to the mythic drama and symbolic order.