The Making of Womanhood in Early India: Pativrata in the Mahabharata and Ramayana

Abstract

As the symbol of a patriarchal society, the Pativratas have been recognized as the ideal women in the brahmanical tradition. Traditionally Sita, Savitri, Arundhati, Anasuya and Damayanti have long been celebrated as the Pativratas. They accept chastity,2 submissiveness and wifely devotion as the highest qualities of their selfhood. They practice and pursue stridharma (pativrata dharma) during their entire life and even in their previous or afterlife. Sometimes the extreme devotion of stridharma enabled them to acquire extraordinary power. Their sexuality is totally controlled by their husbands. They all belong to the higher social varnas in the society. Since the husband is equated with god, to be worshipped according to the pativrata dharma, the most miserable situation for the pativrata is the death of her husband (god). In this paper, will focus on some of these depictions of the ideal women to bring out how the brahmanical tradition in early India was constructing notions of womanhood in conformity with caste and other social denominators to reinforce notions of social order and harmony, which privileged those in positions of social power.