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 , a polluting? What were the origins of a

No. 68 (January-February 1992) 29 belief which so categorises women’s Doniger O’Flaherty categorically ’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 , 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 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. The creative of Indra’s slaying of Vrtra. This myth order of the menstrual cycle and the is found first in the Rig Veda and rhythms of labour may involve stress subsequently woven through various and pain—but not the violence to the texts: Vedic, Puranic and Epic. other depicted in the Indra-Vrtra Myths are traditional stories slaying. What/whom is really being which serve to unfold part of the killed? world view of a people and/or explain Eliade continues “Vrtra had a practice, belief or natural confiscated the waters and was phenomena. Myth serves various keeping them in the hollows of the functions in any given society. First, mountains. This means either that a metaphysical function; myth orients Vrtra was the absolute master—in the a person vis a vis the world, the same manner as Tiamat or any serpent cosmos, and society and imbues divinity—of all chaos before the experience with meaning, often Creation; or that the great serpent, understood as religious or spiritual. keeping the waters for himself alone, Second, myth serves a social funtion had left the whole world ravaged by of providing role models, prescribed drought.”’ or tabooed actions and dramatically But Sjoo and Mor interpret the revealing consequences of behavior. pervasive serpent and dragon Third, myth provides a pedagogical metaphor in a radically different tool; as the young hear the stories of fashion. their elders, they learn about “The serpent of chaos is originally themselves and the world and begin of (RV II,12,1) or of Indra when and always a woman’s body. As the to understand their environment and the latter “smote the Serpent in his Great Mother of Chaos, of matter still the behavior expected from them in lair” (VI, 17,9) when his thunderbolt unformed and undifferentiated, she ways acceptable to their family and “cut off its head” (I,52,10). The holds the earth like an egg in the pure group. serpent symbolises chaos, the energy of her coils. She represents the Mircea Eliade, writing of the Vrtra formless and nonmanifested. Indra ‘time before the gods,’ before the myth, notes the Indian practice of comes upon Vrtra undivided establishment of patriarchal astrologically determining the (aparvan), unawakened (abudhyam), hierarchies and distinctions. As the placement of a peg into the earth sleeping (abudhyamanam), dragon of matter, the Undivided One

No. 68 (January-February 1992) 31 older than the individuation of forms, Chakravarty so eloquently poses: rape of the female prisoners.” 10 she also signified the common flesh “Whatever Happened to the Vedic Although Lerner is describing the and blood bond of the people. This is Dasi ?” Dr Chakravarty, in her enslavement of women in West Asia, why the snake/dragon everywhere is deconstruction of “The myth of the a similiar situation probably existed identified with the indigenous golden age of Indian womanhood as in India as well. R.S. Sharma writes of ‘masters of the ground’—the located in the Vedic period,” Vedic life: “Spoils of war and cattle matrifocal peasantry— who are emphasises the foregrounding of “the formed the main forms of property. invaded,conquered, plundered, co- Aryan woman (the progenitor of the Cattle, horses, and women slaves were opted by the ‘dragon-slayers’ of upper-caste woman) as the only object generally given as gifts.” “ I am patriarchal history..... This [Indra- of historical concern. It is no wonder suggesting that the Rig Veda, Vrtra] murder generates the ‘act of then that the Vedic dasi (woman in however tentative an historical Creation,’ since in the Indo European servitude), captured and subjugated, source, can be read as a mythic view the dark, serpentine Danu and and enslaved by the conquering version of a lived past. Indra’s slaying Vrtra had ‘withheld the waters in the Aryans, but who also represents one of Vrtra, like his rape of , can be mountain hollows’and so hindered aspect of Indian womanhood, understood, not just as a the world from coming into being. The disappeared without leaving any trace phantasmagorical metaphor, but as Indo-European patriarchal world, that of herself in nineteenth century the mythic rendering of real human is.7 history.”8The Indo-Europeans experience; of the encounter between The violence of the Vrtra murder infiltrated the subcontinent in the patriarchal invaders and the extant is recapitulated in the ritual metaphor different waves, c. 1500-1200 BC. The social formation. of the serpent having to be pegged Aryan hymn singers of the Rig Veda D.D. Kosambi writes of Indra’s for masculine ‘construction’ to take lionised the exploits of Indra— his rape of Ushas, an otherwise place. (That this metaphor is still swigging of Soma, his rape of Ushas, inexplicable event: “She is an ancient operative in the folk mind is obvious his plundering of booty for his goddess in spite of her virginity and from the worship of the Nag which followers and also his killing of Vrtra. youth, which are preserved by her took place after the recent Uttarkashi Sukumari Bhattacharyaji calls Indra a being born again and again. The only earthquake). We are arguing that culture hero.9 As Chakravarty possible explanation lies in a clash of another paradigm of order, not primal suggests, a focus on the dasi and the cults, that cults, that of the old mother- chaos, can be discerned in the text; figure of Vrtra implicitly questions the goddess being crushed on the river one that is congruent with women’s legitimacy and sanctity of this heroic Beas by the new war-god of the procreative capacity, menstrual and paradigm. patriarchal invaders, Indra. That she lunar cycles and our hypothesised War has always been a different survives after being “killed” can only matrifocal social order. I am suggesting experience for men and for women. To indicate progressive, comparatively that what preceded Vedic ideology on quote Gerda Lerner, “Biological and peaceful, assimilation of her surviving the subcontinent was not the primal cultural factors predisposed men to pre-Aryan worshippers who still chaos of chthonic peoples, but a enslave women before they had regarded her as mother of the sun, previously unrecognised, humanly learned how to enslave men. Physical wife of the sun, daughter of constructed social order. And that the terror and coercion, which were an heaven.”12 death and dismemberment of Vrtra essential ingredient in the process of Bloodshed, rape, plunder are all can be viewed as a metaphor for the turning free persons into slaves, took, masked in the Rig Veda as the heroism Indo-European exercise of power, for women, the form of rape. Women of the solar god, pushing back the symbolic and martial, over the pre- were subdued physically by rape; frontiers of darkness and primal, existing people and their culture. once impregnated, they might become chaotic disorder. Evidence of a Rig The mythic Indra was, after all, a psychologically attached to their Vedic overlay on a pre-existing warrior par excellence; the Rig Veda is masters.... Free sexual access to meaning system is provided by Dipak a martial document. Scholars have slaves marks them off from all other Bhattacharya in his chapter on the debated whether the warfare was persons as much as their juridical birth of . In a section interestingly literal, ritual, symbolic—between classification as property... There is titled ‘The flow of Rta from the groups of men, men and demons, overwhelming historical evidence for obscured mothers of Agni’, gods and demons. But Vedic study, the preponderance of the practice of Bhattacharya grapples with the both desi and foreign has neglected a killing or mutilating male prisoners and imagery of Rta and rajas crucial question which Uma for the large-scale enslavement and (menstruation). Agni is said to be born

32 MANUSHI ‘in the depth of the great’ and ‘in the blood shed by them during material allowed for what we might call yoni of this rajas’ and is refered to as menstruation and childbirth may have ‘Prakritisation’, that is, the ‘the embryo of the waters.’ The been ritualised as sacred. Indra’s transformation of the Aryan world aqueous origin of Agni in the slaying of Vrtra ended that. As the view, which we find more starkly in atmospheric region is a well Dharma Shastras show, menstrual the Rig Veda. Brahmins, as a priestly recognised Vedic idea. Bhattacharya blood is loathsome—powerful, caste, did not yet exist in Rig Vedic writes: “On the relation of the rains to dangerous and threatening. It is now times. The notion of Brahminicide the waters, it has to be noted that in a Indra who assumes the right to shed describing Indra’s slaying of Vrtra is different context Pischel and Geldner blood. The warrior is socially thus an anachronism. Perhaps the recognise that the waters are imagined sanctioned to shed his enemy’s Brahmins, while formulating these as females with their regular blood—that act is constructed as later texts were appropriating some of peculiarities, mainly periods. The being heroic, dharmic, sacred, as is the power and legitimacy of Vrtra (or highwaters of the rains are regarded evident in ’s advice to Arjuna proto-Brahminic forms) to as catamenia [menstruation] and their in the . Two questions themselves. Nevertheless the device drying up as menopause. In the remain in this interpretation of the of the “Brahminicide” shows that the context of the birth of Agni the rains Vrtra figure. One, why in the Rig Veda later Brahmin priests in some way may symbolize not catamenia, but is Vrtra grouped with the Dasas, and identified themselves with the Vrtra locial [childbirth] discharge.”13 in the later texts, including the Dharam figure. This symbolic nexus of the waters, Shastras quoted above, his slaying is The Rig Vedic Vrtra is both a rajas (also meaning atmospheric refered to as a Brahminicide, which demon, dasa, and magician or priest. vapour) and Rta or cosmic order would lead us to see him as a Brahmin? He exercises the power of maya, or indicate an original mythic structure Second, why is Vrtra usually rendered illusion. The use of the neuter gender which sacralises menstrual and lunar in the neuter, rather than masculine in referring to Vrtra and the Vrtras can rhythms and recognises these gender? It seems to me that although be related to the literal meaning of rhythms, embodied by women, as the Rig Veda is the earlier document, vrtra, concealing-covering-hiding and principles of clarity and order, as well actually the later texts contain more defending-resisting-protecting. (The as the source of life. information about the aboriginal root vr conveys the idea of aiding or Perhaps to the indigenes, woman’s peoples. In the later , succouring, in a positive sense, blood was awesome and numinous. and Epics Vrtra is further personified, sheltering.)14 Most interpreters have Women bled monthly, in harmony with fleshed out, and conceptualised. The favoured a natural phenonomenal the moon, and yet did not die—rather process of assimilation and understanding, as mentioned above. miraculously produced new life. The absorption of pre-Indo European This level of meaning is certainly

No. 68 (January-February 1992) 33 media literature, from Amar Chitra 5 Eliade, Mircea, The Myth of the Eter- Katha comics to Doordarshan’s nal Return, Cosmos and History, and , from (London: Arkana, 1989) p 19 Sayana’s commentaries on the Rig 6 ibid. Veda to Kalidas’ Kumara Sambhavan 7 Sjoo, Monica and Mor, Barbara, The need to be investigated sensitively Great Cosmic Mother Rediscovering and critically for what many of them the Religion of the Earth, (San Fran- are — androcentric constructs cisco: Harper and Row, 1987) p 250 produced in the male voice, rendering 8 Chakravarty, Uma in “Whatever women more as symbols than as Happened to the Vedic Dasi?” from persons. Recasting Women: Essays in Colo- References nial History, eds. Kumkum Sangari 1 H.A. Rose, ICS, Rites and Ceremo- and Sudesh Vaid (New Delhi: for nies of Hindus and Muslims [based Women, 1989) p 28 on the Census Reports for the Punjab, 9 Bhattacharji, Sukumari, The Indian 1882 and 1883] (New Delhi: Harnam Theogony, (Delhi: Motilal Publications, 1983) corroborate the present but not exclusive of a socio- Banarsidass, 1988) p 258 existence of this little documented 10 symbolic as well as biological- Lerner, Gerda, The Creation of Pa- practice. “In Rohtak, a month or so symbolic (women’s biology) reading. triarchy, (New York: Oxford Univer- after the birth of a boy a rite called The neuter gender may have been sity Press, 1986) p 87 doghar puja is observed. Women visit used because the reference is finally 11 Sharma, Ram Sharan, Material Cul- the nearest well singing songs...the to the indigenous people’s system, a ture and Social Formations in An- well is worshipped, rice and dubh social and symbolic formation. Within cient India, (Delhi, Macmillan India, grass being offered to it. In Ferozepur the Vedic text this system is 1983) p159 the mother goes, on the twenty-first represented in the form of resistance, 12 Kosambi, Damodar Dharamanand, day, to a well and there distributes concealment— masking the beliefs Myth and Reality, (Bombay: Popular boiled barley to the children, (p. 23) and practices, ruses and manoeuvers, Prakashan, 1983), p.64 2 Keith, Religion and Philosophy of of a defensive indigenous population. 13 Bhattacharya, Dipak, Mythological the Veda I feel that it is essential that and Ritual Symbolism, A Study with 3 A History of Indian Lit- r feminist scholars and researchers Jan Gonda, Reference to the Vedic and Tantric involve themselves in the erature, vol. 1., Vedic Literature Agni, (Calcutta: Sanskrit Pushtak monumental task of revisioning the (Weisbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1975). Bhandar, 1984) 4 sacred texts from a woman-centered O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, The Rig 14 Lahiri, Ajoy Kumar, Vedic Vrtra, perspective. What we know, what Veda. (London: Penguin Books, 1981) (Delhi: Motilal BanarsiDass, 1984)pp informs the public discourse, the p245 28,e71

34 MANUSHI