HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for and Himalayan Studies

Volume 39 Number 1 Article 29

July 2019

Review of Reciting the Goddess: Narratives of Place and the Making of in Nepal by Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz.

Christoph Emmrich University of Toronto

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Recommended Citation Emmrich, Christoph. 2019. Review of Reciting the Goddess: Narratives of Place and the Making of Hinduism in Nepal by Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz.. HIMALAYA 39(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol39/iss1/29

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Acknowledgements The reviewer would like to thank the participants of the 2018 University of Toronto’s “Recent Readings in Nepalese Religion” reading group— Pushpa Acharya, Alexander O’Neill, Amber Moore, Jesse Pruitt, Srilata Raman, Austin Simoes-Gomes, Ian Turner, and Andrea Wollein—from whose insights and comments this review has greatly benefitted.

This review is available in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol39/iss1/29 Hinduism and of Nepalese religion in One), but not before introducing the general. The book’s most outstanding reader to the ritual performances and arguably enduring contribution that the text celebrates and demands, is that Birkenholtz writes the literary and at the center of which the text history of the text, or rather of the is placed through its reading and Svasthānīvratakathā (SVK) corpus, through the votive rites (vrata) from its incipience, documented dedicated to the goddess Svasthānī. by the earliest manuscript dating As the book’s secondary title to 1573, through its development indicates, it is “place” as a critical across centuries, languages, and term, even more than narrative, redactions, right up to the versions which drives the project’s interests in use today. Such an enterprise is and aspirations. The question of place still outstanding for comparable is articulated through the opposition literary corpora such as the of the “local” and the “translocal.” Reciting the Goddess: Narratives of Svayambhūpurāṇa or Paśupatipurāṇa. In terms of “traditions, practices, Place and the Making of Hinduism in The book’s further merit is that it ideologies, people, and geography,” Nepal. considers versions in all three major the local is defined as female, small, languages of Valley specific, private/familial, customary, Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz. literature in which the multilingual Newar, and “most immediately New York: Oxford University corpus of the Svasthānīvratakathā associated with the SVK tradition” Press, 2018. Xvi & 321 pages. ISBN was composed—Newar, Nepali, (p. 20). It is contrasted with the 9780199341160. and —and explores the translocal as male, public/civic, fixed, role these linguistic communities transcending specificity, non-Newar, Reviewed by Christoph Emmrich played in negotiating its present i.e. either Nepali, or, more generally, Whoever has had the chance to shape and practice. It is the first “cultivated in the Gangetic plains,” wander past the Bhotahiti bookshops monograph that looks at a particular (p. 75) or even pan-Indic. This latter in the early weeks and months of the Nepalese textual transmission from is further identified as authoritative year, cannot but have noticed the the perspective of its translation due to its association with normative towering stacks of hot-off-the-press between literary idioms, between Brahmanical Hindu ideology as flashy sindhur-red and plastic-bound ethnic and caste communities, and represented by the Sanskrit Purāṇas Svasthānīvratakathā volumes leaning across historical periods in which (p. 21). Regarding South Asian against each other on the concrete these languages conferred varying society, Birkenholtz points out that steps leading up to the counters, degrees of outreach and prestige. the place she is dealing with, both announcing the season in which Reciting the Goddess encourages in terms of texts and voices, is a the tales of Gomayaju, Satī, and Śiva scholars and students alike to high-caste environment, but also Mahādeva are read in households rethink the role given to Nepal in stresses that the difference between across the , and the study of Hinduism, advising local and translocal may also be in which women and men flock to us neither to elevate Nepal to the caste-specific; such as when she Sankhu for more public displays of most paradigmatic instantiation of contrasts “Nepali high-caste Hindu endurance and devotion dedicated to Indian Hinduism, nor to reduce it to culture and local Newar Hinduism” the goddess. Since last year, academic a picturesque but distant tributary to (p. 29) and in noting that some of readers who may have always wanted the Gangetic mainstream. Birkenholtz the historical changes on the lower to know more about this annual convinces her readers that what high-caste Newar side may be part of publishing and ritual occurrence are happens in Nepal can throw new light the project of “keeping up with the finally able to refer to Jessica Vantine on the history of religion in specific Joshis” (pp. 202, 131). It is also clear Birkenholtz’s masterly monograph parts of the rest of the subcontinent that for the author the most salient on the history, lives, and times of the to counter the fallacious equation of difference between the local and the text that stand behind it. Hinduism with an that is either translocal is that of gender. Though poorly defined, hegemonic, or both. Birkenholtz does see instances of Reciting the Goddess represents the an historical expansion of the local The book opens by formulating these first book-length study of one of in the history of the Kathmandu larger implications for “Hinduisms the most important texts of Newar Valley (p. 21), the irreducibility of and Histories in Nepal” (Chapter

HIMALAYA Volume 39, Number 1 | 249 The book’s most outstanding and arguably enduring contribution is that Birkenholtz writes the literary history of the text, or rather of the Svasthānīvratakathā (SVK) corpus, from its incipience, documented by the earliest manuscript dating to 1573, through its development across centuries, languages, and redactions, right up to the versions in use today. Emmrich on Reciting the Goddess: Narratives of Place and the Making of Hinduism in Nepal. the difference between local and 103-108), which consisted of the a first step by “weaving the Svasthānī translocal and its resulting tensions early Sanskrit-Newar core dealing Kathā into Purāṇic narratives and remain instrumental to the book’s with the heroine Gomayaju and vice versa” (p. 137). This is followed formulation of historical change. The the miraculous effects of the vow. by a second stage which, through main purpose of keeping the local The mid-eighteenth century then a movement “from the human and the translocal in categorical sees the incorporation of Purāṇic realm to include the world of gods opposition is ultimately to help material in the form of the narratives as an extension of the ritual vow,” identify “the historically local around Śiva-Mahādeva’s marriage leads to “establishing a larger female orientation of the Svasthānī to Satī, followed by the inclusion narrative that lays out universal Kathā as a vrat kathā and its gradual of the Vaiṣṇava narrative featuring conceptions of the Brahmanical transformation into a translocal the Veda-stealing demons Madhu Purāṇic worldview and effectively male-oriented tradition as an and Kaiṭabha in the late eighteenth ties the Svasthānī Kathā into different authoritative Purāna texts” (p. 203). century, all still told in Newar. It is Hindu devotional paths” (ibid.) the first Nepali versions, possibly This then culminates in a third step The book proceeds in its narrative dating back to the seventeenth with “increasing emphasis placed following three distinct historical century, but with evidence only from on traditional roles and notions movements: the changes to the the early nineteenth century, that of the feminine” (ibid.). In short, deity’s visual representation, the include the narratives surrounding we see the creation of “A Women’s growth of the textual corpus, and Śiva-Mahādeva’s encounters with Tradition,” the title of Chapter the shifts in the articulation of the ṛṣis’ wives and his victory over Five, that unfolds in the nineteenth the tradition’s ideology. In the the demon Jālandhara through the and early twentieth century. second chapter, “Goddess of Place, seduction of his wife Vṛndā. Newar Birkenholtz sees “a reemphasis on Place of the Goddess,” Birkenholtz versions, which in the nineteenth the historically conservative ideal outlines the changes that occur century instead expand the Gomayaju of Hindu womanhood” (p. 176) as from the sixteenth-century aniconic story, catch up with the Nepali the main feature of the latest turn embodiment of Svasthānī in the first accretions only in twentieth century in the life of the text. She explains manuscripts of the text itself, to her (p. 176). It is as late as the twentieth this as a Nepalese reaction to seventeenth-century apparition in century that the current thirty-one- modernizing trends emerging among sculpture in association with Śiva fold chapterization of the text is colonial Indian women under the Mahādeva, via her nineteenth- established and that its ritualization conditions of a reinvented Indian century localization within a yantra is extended from two nights and patriarchy (pp. 158-160). Ultimately, encircled by the Aṣṭamātṛkās, and, two days to a month-long series of this points to the twentieth century finally, her materializing in the early events. We see across the centuries fashioning of Nepal as the “last Hindu twenty-first century in the form of a the establishment of an expansive kingdom,” described by historians stand-alone image housed in a newly separate Nepalese tradition (pp. 110- and sociologists of Nepal. The close erected Sankhu . 115) that is both Newar and Nepali. readings of the female figures of the Chapter Three, “An Unexpected text, including the main heroine “The Making of Modern Hinduism Archive,” helps document the Gomayaju, her daughter-in-law in Nepal” is then traced, in Chapter process of Purāṇization the Candrāvatī, and Satī that Birkenholtz Four, along the trajectories of the Svasthānī corpus has undergone provides are some of the most redactorial moves identified in the since the sixteenth century (pp. insightful passages of the book. preceding chapter. This happens in

250 | HIMALAYA Spring 2019 Equally insightful are the voices of Christoph Emmrich is Associate Professor contemporary women that “reveal of Buddhist Studies at the University of the deeply divided opinions about Toronto in the Department for the Study whether the Svasthānī Kathā is a of Religion. He would like to thank the source either of empowerment or participants of the 2018 University indoctrination of women” (p. 201). of Toronto’s “Recent Readings in Nepalese Religion” reading group— The text seen as medium, archive, Pushpa Acharya, Alexander O’Neill, and tool identifies the author’s Amber Moore, Jesse Pruitt, Srilata main interest in it as functional Raman, Austin Simoes-Gomes, Ian for understanding matters that Turner, and Andrea Wollein—from lie outside of it, not so much in whose insights and comments this the text or in the goddess herself review has greatly benefitted. whose embodiment is the text. Thus, what must remain outside the scope of this book is the ritual power the text receives through the attribution of a divine status, and in the identification of text and divinity in which authors, redactors, and devotees relinquish their agency to the divine text - an exploration that may throw a different light both on the constitution of the text and the interfaces of theological content and liturgical practice. Even a successful functionalist reading of the text, however, may require a discussion of how far tools are more than just neutral objects that enhance our vision, but rather force decisions upon their users and organize interventions. Further, if the text’s ultimate function is to reveal what is outside of itself, its usefulness has to be measured by how much it tells us about Nepalese history that we do not already know. The fact that, on the contrary, it seems to powerfully confirm what sociologists and historians have already told us, while revealing about itself what they have not, seems to indicate that the Svasthānīvratakathā is much more than a tool, but a world in its own right shaped by authors, redactors, devotees, textual transmission, and sexual difference. It is this that Birkenholtz’s work has so brilliantly shown, and what makes Reciting the Goddess a model for future scholarship on Nepalese religion and literature.

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