Goddesses: Textual and Spiritual
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RACY Pintchman has done BOOK REVIEW something which baffles the Hindu Tcompletely. She has mapped the manifestation of the Jagadamba textually, locating the genesis of the Goddesses : Textual and feminine principle in the sacred Samhitas and then describing its Spiritual evolution till it crystallises to give birth The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition to the notion of a Great Goddess in the Puranas. Exhibiting remarkable Tracy Pintchman scholarship and a meticulous study of the Vedas: the Samhitas, the State University of New York Press, 1994 Brahmanas, the Upanisads, the six systems of philosophical discourse: Review: Sarbani Sarkar nyaya, vaisesika, purva-mimansa, vedanta, samkhya and yoga, particularly the mimansa sutras and the samkhya karika, together with the Pintchman understands “text” to non-Brahmanical traditions. By the time Puranas, Pintchman’s encounter with be both the oral and the written of the Puranas, the staticness of the the Goddess displays an academic dimensions of Brahmanical scripture, Vedic texts is replaced by a fluid, ever- systematism far surpassing that of with the Vedic and the post-Vedic expanding body of mythological lore. David Kinsley, C. Mackenzie Brown or Brahmanical traditions borrowing from Between these two polarities of the Madeline Biardeau. Amongst western each other from genre to genre and from orthodox and the bardic, the static and scholarly works, only Thomas period to period. This creates a culture the fluid, the genealogy of texts get Coburn’s celebrated work on the Devi of inter-textuality from whence each played out discerned by common Mahatmya can match her theological new text is created as a conscious or patterns and principles and a common competence. Pintchman claims that she unconscious borrowed fragment of a grammar. textual continuum. The core tradition has attempted an “ontological” study From within this textual universe, of the Vedas as the symbol of authority, of the Goddess, perusing strictly Pintchman constructs the Mahamaya, with its cast of abstract, neutral “textual evidence”. Texts in India, as at first identifying her nebulous forms monism, gives way to the influence of Coburn has noted earlier, are living in an assortment of female, Vedic traditions and Goddesses are born not deities, which provides the framework only from the written traditions but and the principles upon which the also from a commingling of cultures Great Goddess is engrafted, principles spanning from the ascetic to the folk which get further refined and to the bawdy. In fact, one may say, the developed in the early philosophical written tradition was considered to be discourses. Finally, in the Puranas, a polluting one, and what existed was these philosophical and mythological the oral, the aural and the mnemonic categories get conflated when there is traditions. Pintchman, on the other a synthesis of divergent elements and hand, reads into these books the narratives from which emerges a notion notion of a twentieth century text, of a Great Goddess or a Devi. This looking at them through a post-modern Goddess is represented materially and hermeneutic lens. Incorrect tools tend cosmically, by and as prakrti, sakti and to warp the vision. Despite her maya — grammatically and essentially scholarly rigour, what baffles is the feminine terms — and Pintchman question of whether the Omnipresent methodically documents each instance One, who is at once nirguna —and of a cosmogonic account where the saguna— can be ontologically Divine Feminine most richly displays structured and textually constructed. herself through these three No. 90 35 cosmological principles. The Goddess creation as well as a political need to creative as well as destructive. She is which emerges is thus identified by incorporate non-Brahmanical traits both the creator of maya and maya Pintchman as having the following within the dominant theological herself. She is the Benevolent One, the three patterns: discourse at this historical juncture. protector, the refuge and the shelter. She is the text; can it be that she is The Goddess as the creative It is this teleological construction present in one part and not in the other? impulse inherent within Brahman that is both baffling and problematic. which activates the process of creation What Pintchman has overlooked is the Can such Omnipresence be structurally and then sustains the universe; in this fact that the Vedic notion of the Divine mapped? sense she is sakti (energy); is what Max Mueller has called The Goddess, above all, is henotheistic. In other words, though The Goddess as materiality and the perceived devotionally. It depends it believes in one God, it finds that it material matrix in which the manifest upon the bhakti (devotion) of the does not affect its contemplation of world is grounded; in this form she is devotee to realize the Brahman in the many Gods. Different deities are prakrti (matter/nature); and shabd, i.e. the word. The text therefore, identified with and as the one Divine is bound to the reader symbiotically, The Goddess as the delusory (ekam) and in such identification the who already carries within him/her the power which creates and affects difference of number and gender are imprint of the Goddess. For She is no creation, as maya (illusion). ignored. Unlike Pintchman’s myth nor is She text-bound but real and Pintchman adds that in the Devi “construction”, the Jagadiswari, as the alive and born of a great living tradition Bhagavat Purana, the Goddess is also of which the text is only a part. For the identified as the Nirguna Brahman, the For She is no myth nor is Hindu, reciting the text or hearing it eternal, unchanging Absolute, but that She text-bound but real and being recited is another way of this depiction of the Goddess is “far worshipping the Divine Mother. The less common”. alive and born of a great text, however, does not enjoy the same living tradition of which the status as the text, for example, as does Vedic material to Pintchman is text is only a part. the Bible or the Holy Koran. obscure, vague, and indefinite. She Pintchman’s exercise therefore, seems to have only a fuzzy notion of becomes considerably limited. an all pervasive feminine principle. To nirguna and the Absolute, is her, even concepts of prakrti and sakti genderless, the only One in the From the Vedic tradition, across the are not clearly distinguished or universe. She is at once the Great Void samkhya tattvas to the Puranas and developed — therefore Vedic (as described in the Nasadiyasuktam the Tantrashastras, sets of “texts” goddesses like Vac or Viraj tend to of the Rgveda) as well as being emerged devoted to the glorification embody both principles. Prakrti, the materially manifest as prakrti: the five of particular aspects of the ultimate principle of materiality, is most gross elements of ether, air, fire, water paramatman. If the Upanisads are elaborately defined in the and earth; the triptychs of heat, water, abstractly metaphysical, then the Samkhyakarika, the philosophical food; red, white and black; the sattva, Puranas concentrate on the discourse of the post-Vedic period. rajas and tamas; the sixteen vikaras mythographical details of the Brahman Sakti, on the other hand, is a concept including the buddhindriyas and in its masculine and feminine forms. developed much later outside the karmendriyas and the twenty-four Hence, the Kurma, Varaha, Garuda, Vedic-Brahmanical tradition, primarily tattvas. She is the whiteness of milk, Narada and Brahmavaivarta Puranas in the Tantric scriptures. It was the radiance of the sun, the pith of the are the celebration of Vishnu and his incorporated in the Puranas (the reed. She is touch, taste, smell and incarnation as Krsna, while the Linga youngest group of ancient Hindu texts) splendour. She is speech as and Siva Puranas elaborates the life of which according to Pintchman, is shabdbrahman, the masculine as Maheswara. The scriptures entirely where the Goddess finally comes into purusa, virat, mahat, Aditya, Shiv and devoted to the extolling of the Goddess Her own. Pintchman further holds that Vishnu. She is Aditi, Vac-Saraswati, is the Devi Bhagavata and Chapters the Devi is crystallised only in the Indrani of the Vedas. She is cit, or 81-93 of Markandeya Purana, better Puranas because of certain kinds of consciousness, the all-pervading known as the Devi Mahatmya. This equations in the Puranic myths of Omnipresence. As Energy, she is does not imply that such a synthesized 36 MANUSHI depiction of the Divine Mother is non- that of the Atharvaveda, yet Pintchman the physical creation and the endless existent in other texts. The three Vedic attaches undue importance to “water” expanse beyond the earth. She is the goddesses, Vac-Saraswati, Ratri and Sri almost as the apex feminine principle. waters, the earth, the mother, the father, of the hymns Devisuktam, She devotes a lot of space to the sons, the gods, all that is born and Ratrisuktam and Srisuktam of the describing “water” as an will be born. A single verse on Aditi in Rgveda, vividly portray the three “undifferentiated, primordial matrix... the Visvadevasuktam of Rgveda manifestations of sakti as Mahakali, portrayed as womb-like, emphasizing crystallises the essence of the Goddess Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati, the the maternal, nurturing, motherly rather than numerous myths of presiding deities of the Devi aspect,” in which the material, manifest creation involving water. In fact Mahatmya. The Ratrisuktam, usually cosmos gestates. The Universal Pintchman dismisses Aditi as read along with the Devi Mahatmya, garbha which gives birth to manifest possessing only “some kind of is a complete, devotional prayer to the matter in the form of the earth. Perhaps abstract, universal significance... even Bhuvaneswari, invoking the Goddess’ this is because Pintchman perceives though her precise nature is not clearly mercy to protect the world and to procreation to be the acme of articulated.” She even criticizes Max demolish the animalistic traits and Mueller for “stretch(ing) the limits of desires in man which surfaces in him textual evidence” in his assessment of from time to time.