VL 11 South Indian Goddesses Charlotte Schmid Flashcards
From the Tamil land: South-IndianGoddesses of the first millenium
South India and Goddesses, the challenges:
I. A first focus on artefacts: the identification process of female deities in India
The Tamil texts, Cankam literature, Bhakti literature, inscriptions
II. South-Indian Goddesses?
Jyeṣṭhā in Sanskrit or Mūttevī in Tamil Māhiṣāsuramardinī or Koṟṟavai
The Kāverī river: a Gaṅgā from the South
The identification process of “Indian” deities
A three-faced deity, accompanied by the name “Oesho” on a gold coin produced in the 2d CE in the Kushana empire which encompassed a large part of northern India.
The city of Mathurā where many Indian deities were represented for the first time. Some say this is a representation of Śiva, one of the three main Indian deities of Hindu Bhakti.
According to others, he is an Iranian deity. He has three heads, four arms, characteristic attributes, and is provided with a name, and still …
- The identification process of deities:
- liṅgas of Śiva, identification process is retrospective
- Viṣṇu ?
A retrospective reasoning From a region to another
The identification process of female deities
Fantastic anatomy less often encountered
Either no attributes or always the same ones or…
examples:
- An ivory artefact fromIndia, found at the Roman site of Pompei, 2D BCE? From which part of India?
- A woman, a queen, a goddess….
- Holds a lotus
- She stands
- She is bathed by elephants
Gaja-Lakṣmī, Bhumī and other female figures
- “Gaja-Lakṣmī” = are presentations of afemale deity, a symbol of prosperity, bathed by elephants and marking the entrance of a house, a palatial one, a temple.
A figure of the soil, the earth, as many goddesses; - they share with other figures most of what can be considered as characteristic attributes, characteristic postures, characteristics environments:
- The earth that is bathed by the clouds, an embodiment of fertility and fecondity, a strong relation with water.
pan-Indian Goddesses
Those goddesses can be said to be pan-Indian as they are certainly not specific to a region, a period of time or a religious movement.
Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism
North, Centre, South…
Their iconographic scheme is attested from the 2d BCE and still common today.
Śrī, the fickle one
Bhūmī, the stable one
Lakṣmī, the Prosperity
In classical Sanskrit, these auspicious goddesses have names that can be considered as linked to Vedic literature (where few goddesses make an appearance); “Śrī” is born in the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa, a text associated with the Vedic corpus.
The term lakṣmī in Vedic literature denotes a sign, a mark : « polysyllabic-ī-stems in Vedic… refer to power-substances believed to lead an independent existence ». (Jan Gonda 1970)
“Prajâpati was becoming heated (by fervid devotion), whilst creating living beings. From him, worn out and heated, Srî (Fortune and Beauty) came forth. She stood there resplendent, shining, and trembling. The gods, beholding her thus resplendent, shining, and trembling, set their minds upon her.” Śatapatha- Brāhmaṇa, 11. 4. 3. 1-2
- The identification process of female deities:
i.e. on Gupta cold coins (5.-6. century)
* a lotus, two arms, a posture, a location, an environment … not that
easy to recognize, to name.
* Different religious context and the same goddess, the embodiment of Prosperity.
* OR The goddess is the same in appearance, but she’s another…
* Details of the representation allude to specific feats, to a peculiar story but that story can be re-elaborated and finally be entirely distinct from the one that was “illustrated” by a first iconography.
Padmāvati from Karnataka, is she a Jaina goddess? What is a Jaina Goddess?
Goddesses blur the boundaries of religious movements within Hinduism itself but also in relation to other movements such as Buddhism and Jainism.
A common background, so-called popular deities…
The iconographic lab of Mathurā
Mathurā and the beginnings of the iconography of Indian deities, Ist BC-1st AD
The yakṣa Manibhadra known through texts, including inscriptions,
worshipped by an important part of the people, Buddhist, Jains and others… Many other male figures, who are they?
From the Buddhist or Jain Stūpas, apsaras? Guardians of the heavens? Protective deities of the threshold? Courtesans?
Indeed, the relation of goddesses with texts is peculiar. It does not facilitate the identification process, not to say it makes it peculiarly difficult but it is very instructive.
It brings into sharp focus the issue of the relationship between the visual domain and the textual one.
The goddess below, most often called “Durgā” is a telling example.
Devīmāhātmya (7-8th c.)
A significant time lapse between the first images (1-3d c.) and the first text where a myth is told that matches them, in the Devīmāhātmya (7-8th c.)
In this Devīmāhātmya, there is a fight between a goddess and a buffalo. A buffalo who is suffocated Pouring blood.
But this fight is not the main episode. The main story revolves around two demons,
École française d’Extrême-Orient
Sumbha and Nisumbha, that are virtually never represented in sculpted form.
the Devīmāhātmya,
Probably composed in the 7th c. EC
It depicts a female deity who brings together all the known female deities. Her very body, her mūrti, is made up of the energies emitted by the manifestations of all the male gods above whom she is placed in this text.
Devīmāhātmya 2 - texts
Appearance of the first known figures, 1st-2d c. introduction of blood in the representation of the fight (a sacrifice?), 5th-6th
appearance of the myth that describes the battle (the etiological myth?), 6th-7th c .
Early texts: the Māhabhārata (4BC-4EC) recounts the death of a buffalo and associates it with the theme of a consecration. This is the birth of the God of War, Skanda, consecrated as the general of the God’s armies and waging a battle against a buffalo demon, which he kills, A large number of female deities appear in the episode, but none of them are directly linked to the death of the buffalo.
The Harivaṃśa (2-4EC) contains several other elements linked to a goddess. This sequel to the Māhabhārata (prequel…) telling the story of Krishna before his appearance in the MBh features a goddess who loves animal victims, flesh, blood, who holds a thunderbolt and peacock feathers. This goddess kills Sumbha and Nisumbha. The king of gods then consecrates the goddess and assigns her a sanctuary in the Vindhya mountains, a range located between the south and north of India.
In a third text, the Skandapurāṇa (maybe to be inserted between these early texts and the Devīmāhātmya), the goddess of the Vindhya mountains kills Sumbha and Nisumbha. She is then consecrated in a very detailed ceremony as the goddess of the Vindhya mountains. She then goes off to visit a sage. On her way, she encounters a buffalo demon and kills him. That is all.
Devīmāhātmya 2 - myths
Based on these elements, very different hypotheses have been put forward.
The mythology of a buffalo slayer, an image of consecration, is developed through the back-and-forth between these two worlds.
- Two separate myths:
-one devoted to the struggle against the buffalo demon, -the other to the struggle against Sumbha and Nisumbha. First attested in two different fields: the buffalo is represented in the visual field; the fight against Sumbha and Nisumbha is recounted in texts. These myths began to merge during the 5th and 6th centuries. The theme of the fight against the buffalo is introduced as a minor part of the major myth of the fight against Sumbha and Nisumbha in the texts. - OR: there was a single original myth in which the two narratives were interwoven and divided into two branches over time.
The very first sculptures attest to the fact that the two myths were originally one and the same. In these images, the gesture of crowning, typical of the Sumbha-Nisumbha myth in the texts, became associated with the fight against the buffalo.
A South-Indian deity, the one called Koṟṟavai.
in the South of India, the relation of goddesses with texts is also not that clear. Let us take the most famous of South-Indian deity, the one called Koṟṟavai. We will have a look at her in the second part of the seminar. Her mount is an antelope; she stands on a buffalo head and like offerings implying blood and even lives.
Koṟṟavai is famous amongst other things because this goddess is part of the poetological tradition of Classical Tamil. And this allows me to introduce a few facts about Classical Tamil that are worth knowing if we want to explore the range of goddesses in the south of India.
Conclusion I
To distinguish between the representation of a woman and the one of a goddess is not always possible.
To distinguish between the different types of goddesses is not always possible: an apsaras, a local, regional, pan-Indian deity?
The same figure of a goddess belongs to religious movements that are considered distinct ones as Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism: a pan-Indian goddess is not only a trans-regional deity but also / or also a deity worshipped by people who claim they have this or that religious affiliation.
The iconography given to a female deity can be entirely reinterpreted in texts to promote another goddess, to suit the needs of another region, etc.
An identity entirely distinct from the one originally thought for a statue can be given to it.
The link between the textual universe and the visual domain is considered as often puzzling in India. It is not always that complicated but regarding goddesses, it is clear that the mythology corresponding to this or that female deity was introduced in the classical texts long after—in fact several centuries after—the images were first created.
