The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition.

White, David Gordon

Over the past twenty years, books on the Hindu Goddess have become something of a cottage industry in the West. Ranging from detailed anthropological treatments of regional traditions, to critical translations of fundamental sources on the Goddess, to text-based overviews of the history of Goddess cults, these studies have done much to compensate for a prior penury of scholarship concerning the distaff side of the Hindu pantheon. Tracy Pintchman has written a well-argued and original book that fills a long-standing gap in Western writing and research on the Goddess, to wit, the emergence of the Goddess as a distinct, self-sufficient deity, in philosophical and mythological sources, and in special relation to the three cosmic principles of prakrti, maya, and sakti. This work will no doubt become the reference work on the subject, as well as a useful tool for teaching on undergraduate and graduate levels.

The heart of this book is its second and third chapters, devoted to the feminine principle in philosophical discourse and in puranic cosmogony and cosmology, respectively. It is in these chapters that Professor Pintchman truly shines as a scholar, carefully leading the reader through the evolution and elaboration of the abstract concepts of prakrti, maya, and sakti, from their relatively simple and tentative Vedic antecedents to the highly sophisticated synthesis that one finds in the Sakta Devibhagavata Purana. The changes in the meaning of these terms are subtle, and Pintchman is at her best as she skillfully compares and contrasts the uses of these terms as they occur across some fifteen hundred years of Sanskrit textual tradition. Her translations of passages from the Samkhyan and puranic sources are clear and accurate.

The task Pintchman has set for herself in this book is an ambitious one, for which a historical overview of the evolution of these three concepts proves, on at least one count, to be insufficient. This is the issue of the ambiguous nature of the Great Goddess who is, by turns, beneficent and terrible, nurturing and devouring. This insufficiency is especially apparent in Pintchman's final chapter in which she proposes to present her conclusions on a contextual, thematic, historical, and interpretive basis, and to tackle the issue of "the ambiguous Goddess." Unfortunately, she instead does little more than to present a summary of rather dated anthropological and sociological theory on the role of goddesses and women in Hindu society, theory that generally begs the question of the problematic darker side of the Goddess's nature. I believe that it is impossible to take stock of this fundamental aspect of the Goddess without looking more closely at the historical origins of the cults of certain of Hinduism's "terrible" goddesses, on the one hand, and without taking into account the powerful impact of Hindu tantrism on the cult and mythology of the Goddess. This book would have been greatly strengthened by greater attention to these two issues.

As the title of her book indicates, Pintchman wishes to concentrate on the emergence of the Goddess as a unique, individual female divinity from within the Hindu tradition. As its discussion makes plain, however, there have been, since the beginning, many goddesses, of which certain have been decanted into that single deity known as Devi, Sakti, Durga, etc. - i.e., the Great Goddess. Others have, however, remained the objects of Hindu devotional cults, independent of the Great Goddess, and have little or nothing to do with the abstract principles of prakrti, maya, and sakti. This relationship, between the Goddess and Hindu goddesses, between the one and the many, between the abstract and the concrete is a subtext to much of her study; yet, it is an issue that she appears not to address directly, save to reiterate the commonplace that the Goddess is often viewed as the source of other goddesses, and the goddesses as manifestations of the Goddess.

It is here, I believe, that Pintchman might have broadened and deepened her discussion by delving deeper into the putative Ayurvedic origins of Samkhyan philosophy (to which she makes passing reference on page 65), on the one hand, and to the mythic and cultic origins of what she terms "non-Vedic" goddesses (p. 109), on the other. On the first count, it is noteworthy that the Caraka Samhita, compiled between the third century B.C. and the fourth century A.D., is a text that is not only foundational to the history of Indian medicine, but also that of Indian philosophy, containing as it does an early exposition of the principles of Samkhya (Caraka Samhita 4.1.1-156). Now, this same source is the locus classicus of the Ayurvedic theory of the three dosas, the three humours or morbific entities that are responsible for pathogenesis in the human organism (Caraka Samhita 1.12.13). According to this theory, the human organism, for so long as it is not exposed to the outside world (when in the womb, for example), enjoys a perfect balance of dosas. When, however, it becomes exposed to the outside world, the dosas fall out of balance and the individual becomes subject to health disorders. This tridosa theory, which emerged between 1000 and 313 B.C.,(1) is of a piece with - if it is not the origin of - the Samkhyan theory of the three gunas, the three strands or qualities that, taken together constitute prakrti, materiality. For so long as the gunas remain in equilibrium, prakrti remains in an unmanifest state; when these same gunas are stirred, however, prakrti becomes manifest. Given this striking parallel, found within a single foundational source, a certain aspect of the ambiguity of the Goddess's creativity is made clear: in a religio-philosophical context in which "physical creation is viewed not as something to be celebrated, but rather as something that causes suffering" (p. 200), genesis is tantamount to pathogenesis. As prakrti, the Goddess is the cause of the disease that is existence. As the author indicates, this parallels the role played by the human woman as progenetrix, and by the female gender as that gender tainted by the blood of menstruation and childbirth - in which context the term dosa is, once again, brought significantly into play: rtu-dosa is the term used for the menstrual period, the "seasonal fault" of women.

Pathology and pathogeny are also central to an epic myth concerning the "mothers of the world" who, as Pintchman indicates (p. 24), play a certain role in the Vedic myth of the birth of Agni. This is the myth of the birth of Skanda which, in its earliest form (in Mahabharata 3.207.2-221.80) makes that god out to be the son of Agni (and not Siva, as in later myths). Involved in the birth of this divine child are a group of goddesses called the "mothers of the world" (lokasya matarah) who, having no progeny of their own, threaten to devour the children of actual biological mothers.(2) These become the female Graspers (graha), dread goddesses of childhood diseases. However, when propitiated with oblations, incense, collyrium, and other offerings, these Graspers or Kumaris bestow virility and long life. This tradition, also found in later medical literature,(3) attests yet again to the medical foundations of certain elements of the Great Goddess's darker side. In it we also find early textual precursors of the classical Hindu goddesses of disease (mentioned in passing, with regard to Sitala, p. 199), as well as of the powerful yet dangerous goddesses and Yoginis of tantric tradition.(4)

It is in fact the tantric traditions of the Great Goddess that are least represented in Professor Pintchman's study. Stating that the portrayal of sakti in Tantrism has much in common with the portrayal also found in the puranic literature (p. 108), she gives little more than a cursory treatment of Sakta Tantrism, which is nothing less than the culmination of the Goddess's rise to autonomy and power in Hinduism. In fact, much of the terminology and many of the concepts that she elicits from certain of the Saiva puranas and especially from the Sakta Devibhagavata Purana, on the subject of the Goddess, are of tantric origin, and cannot fully be discussed without reference to the Kaula tantras, in particular. The principles of prakrti, maya, and sakti are revolutionized in the highly sophisticated philosophical works of these tantric schools, which also significantly alter the image and roles of women within their respective traditions.(5) The Great Goddess emerges as much out of Hindu Tantra as she does out of the Vedic, philosophical, and puranic traditions.

In order to have discussed the many points I have raised, Professor Pintchman would have had to have written a much longer book. The book she has written, while it does not tell the "whole story" of the rise of the Goddess in the Hindu tradition, is a most welcome contribution to the field, one that performs a great service to scholars by forging a bridge between Vedic and Hindu mythology and Samkhyan philosophy. For this, she is to be applauded.

DAVID GORDON WHITE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA

1 Jean Filliozat, La Doctrine classique de la medecine indienne: Ses origines et ses paralleles grecs, 2d ed. (Paris: Ecole francaise d'Extreme orient, 1949, 1975), 154-59.

2 See especially Mahabharata 3.219.14-19. The Rg Veda (10.30.10) refers to the waters as "progenitrices of the world" (janitrir bhuvanasya).

3 Susruta Samhita, 6.27.1-37.20.

4 A short but insightful discussion is A. L. Basham, "Notes on the Origins of Saktism and Tantrism," in Sudhakar Chattopadhyaya Commemoration Volume (Calcutta: Roy and Chowdhury, 1984), 148-50.

5 The best synthetic discussion is Alexis Sanderson, "Purity and Power among the Brahmins of Kashmir," in The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History, ed. Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985), 191-216.