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_____________________________________________________________ Volume 12 March 1997 Number 1 _____________________________________________________________ Editor Editorial Assistants John Miles Foley Michael Barnes Anastasios Daskalopoulos Scott Garner Lori Peterson Marjorie Rubright Aaron Tate Brandon Woodruff Slavica Publishers, Inc. For a complete catalog of books from Slavica, with prices and ordering information, write to: Slavica Publishers, Inc. Indiana University 2611 E. 10th St. Bloomington, IN 47408-2603 ISSN: 0883-5365 Each contribution copyright (c) 1997 by its author. All rights reserved. The editor and the publisher assume no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by the authors. Oral Tradition seeks to provide a comparative and interdisciplinary focus for studies in oral literature and related fields by publishing research and scholarship on the creation, transmission, and interpretation of all forms of oral traditional expression. As well as essays treating certifiably oral traditions, OT presents investigations of the relationships between oral and written traditions, as well as brief accounts of important fieldwork, a Symposium section (in which scholars may reply at some length to prior essays), review articles, occasional transcriptions and translations of oral texts, a digest of work in progress, and a regular column for notices of conferences and other matters of interest. In addition, occasional issues will include an ongoing annotated bibliography of relevant research and the annual Albert Lord and Milman Parry Lectures on Oral Tradition. OT welcomes contributions on all oral literatures, on all literatures directly influenced by oral traditions, and on non-literary oral traditions. Submissions must follow the list-of reference format (style sheet available on request) and must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope for return or for mailing of proofs; all quotations of primary materials must be made in the original language(s) with following English translations. Authors should submit two copies of all manuscripts. Most contributions will be reviewed by at least one specialist reader and one member of the editorial board before a final decision is reached. Review essays, announcements, and contributions to the Symposium section will be evaluated by the editor in consultation with the board. Oral Tradition appears twice per year, in March and October. To enter a subscription, please contact Slavica Publishers at the address given above. All manuscripts, books for review, items for the bibliography updates, and editorial correspondence, as well as subscriptions and related inquiries should be addressed to the editor, John Miles Foley, Center for Studies in Oral Tradition, 316 Hillcrest Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. Printed in the United States of America. South Asian Oral Traditions Gloria Goodwin Raheja, Special Editor EDITORIAL BOARD Patricia Arant Ruth Finnegan Brown University Open University Russian African, South Pacific Samuel Armistead Donald K. Fry University of California/Davis Poynter Institute Hispanic, comparative Old English Ilhan Bașgöz Lee Haring Indiana University Brooklyn College, CUNY Turkish African Richard Bauman Joseph Harris Indiana University Harvard University Folklore Old Norse Franz H. Bäuml Melissa Heckler Univ. of Cal./Los Angeles New York Storytelling Center Middle High German Storytelling Roderick Beaton Dell Hymes King’s College, London University of Virginia Modern Greek Native American, Linguistics Dan Ben-Amos Elizabeth Jeffreys University of Pennsylvania University of Sydney Folklore Byzantine Greek Daniel Biebuyck Michael Jeffreys University of Delaware University of Sydney African Byzantine Greek Robert P. Creed Minna Skafte Jensen Univ. of Mass./Amherst Odense University Old English, comparative Ancient Greek, Latin Robert Culley Werner Kelber McGill University Rice University Biblical Studies Biblical Studies Joseph J. Duggan Robert Kellogg Univ. of Cal./Berkeley University of Virginia French, Spanish, comparative Old Germanic, comparative Alan Dundes Victor Mair Univ. of Cal./Berkeley University of Pennsylvania Folklore Chinese Mark W. Edwards Nada Milošević-Djordjević Stanford University University of Belgrade Ancient Greek South Slavic EDITORIAL BOARD Stephen Mitchell Burton Raffel Harvard University Univ. of Southwestern Scandinavian Louisiana Translation Michael Nagler Alain Renoir Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Univ. of Cal./Berkeley Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, (Emeritus) comparative Old Germanic, Old French, comparative Gregory Nagy Bruce A. Rosenberg Harvard University Brown University Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Folk narrative, Medieval comparative literature Joseph Falaky Nagy Joel Sherzer Univ. of Cal./Los Angeles University of Texas/Austin Old Irish Native American, Anthropology Jacob Neusner Dennis Tedlock Brown University SUNY/Buffalo Hebrew, Biblical Studies Native American Felix J. Oinas J. Barre Toelken Indiana University Utah State University Finnish, Russian Folklore, Native American Isidore Okpewho Ronald J. Turner State Univ. of New York Univ. of Missouri/Columbia African, Ancient Greek Storytelling Walter J. Ong Ruth Webber St. Louis University (Emeritus) University of Chicago Hermeneutics of orality and (Emerita) literacy Spanish, comparative Svetozar Petrović Michael Zwettler University of Novi Sad Ohio State University South Slavic, Critical theory Arabic Contents Gloria Goodwin Raheja Introduction The Paradoxes of Power and Community: Women’s Oral Traditions and the Uses of Ethnography .................................1 Kirin Narayan Singing from Separation: Women’s Voices in and about Kangra Folksongs .....................................................23 Sarah Lamb The Beggared Mother: Older Women’s Narratives in West Bengal ....................................54 Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger “There are Only Two Castes: Men and Women”: Negotiating Gender as a Female Healer in South Asian Islam ......................................................................76 Ann Grodzins Gold Outspoken Women: Representations of Female Voices in a Rajasthani Folklore Community ...........................................103 Kathryn S. March Two Houses and the Pain of Separation in Tamang Narratives from Highland Nepal .................................................134 Gloria Goodwin Raheja Negotiated Solidarities: Gendered Representations of Disruption and Desire in North Indian Oral Traditions and Popular Culture ....................................................................173 A. K. Ramanujan “A Flowering Tree”: A Woman’s Tale.......................................... 226 About the Authors ...................................................................................245 Oral Tradition, 12/1 (1997): 1-22 Introduction The Paradoxes of Power and Community: Women’s Oral Traditions and the Uses of Ethnography Gloria Goodwin Raheja The essays in this volume address theoretical and ethnographic issues concerning oral traditions and women’s speech in diverse South Asian communities in northern and southern India and in Nepal, and situated in Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist milieus.1 Our analyses are brought to bear upon a complex set of questions concerning the relation between women’s speech and those cultural traditions and social practices that partly structure their lives. The papers are grounded, first, in an awareness of the colonial, postcolonial, and academic textualizations that so frequently have prevented women’s speech from being heard or their silences understood; we are aware that our position as scholars working in the Western academy constricts and compromises our efforts at interpretation, perhaps in more ways than we can yet bring to awareness, yet we write with the conviction that ethnography is nonetheless a possible and indeed critically important undertaking. And secondly, we write with an awareness that the relationship between women’s speech, on the one hand, and those more widely known, more audible, and perhaps more pervasive South Asian 1 These essays are dedicated to McKim Marriott, who has taught so many of us so much about the paradoxes of cultural production in South Asia, and to the memory of A. K. Ramanujan. I hope that my colleagues John M. Ingham and David Lipset will recognize in this introduction (and not wish to disown) the many ways they have contributed over the years to my thinking about cultural dialogue and the possibility of community, in moments of agreement and of disagreement, theoretically and practically. Early drafts of the papers here (with the exception of Sarah Lamb’s) were originally presented at a conference at the University of Minnesota, April 20-22, 1991. Other papers, which contributed much to our thinking but could not be included here, were presented by Prabhakara Jha, Frederique Marglin, Mrinalini Sinha, Margaret Trawick, Sylvia Vatuk, and Susan Wadley. The conference was made possible by support from the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota and by a College of Liberal Arts Scholarly Events Fund Grant. 2 GLORIA GOODWIN RAHEJA social and cultural conventions that insist that women be controlled and subordinate, on the other, is seldom a simple or unambiguous one. We might, with A. K. Ramanujan, express this differently by saying that women’s oral traditions, like those of men and like South Asian expressive genres more generally, “look like single