Goddesses of the Courtyard
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The courtyard is where the world authored by men and the world authored by
women converge. Of course, there can be no radical cultural cleavage between
the two domains. Women are so encompassed by the male world that those domains
of women which are not simply shared with men are likely to be small regions,
spatially and conceptually, overlooked or tolerated or avoided by men. We will
assume, since men do not participate in the wall painting, that the art is an
example of such a domain of women: it is about themselves and their world.
A look around a courtyard which has been prepared for a wedding, particularly
in the northern villages around Madhubani, tells us what women as artists are
thinking about: here is Sita, presenting a garland to Rama; here is Durga,
flailing weapons astride her tiger; here is Krishna up in the kadamba tree,
luring gopis with his seductive flute; here is Mahadeva in meditation and
Gauri attentive and adoring. Undoubtedly the dominant figures painted by women
on the courtyard walls are the gods and goddesses. They watch, protect, and
preside over the family and its transformations at marriage and childbirth.
But which divinities are they, and why those and not others?
The Goddess of Many Forms;--In one sense all the goddesses are One Goddess, whose name is Devi or Shakti.
Shakti means literally "power," conceived as generative power, in human terms
the power to bring life into existence, and on a cosmological scale to bring
life to the universe. As Shakti, the goddess is the greatest divinity of all,
greater even than Shiva, whom she dominates, whose prostrate and inert body
she enlivens by the heat and passion of her play on top of him. In the Puranic
mythology, we find this goddess descending through tiers of immortality and
mortality, taking form as more differentiated goddesses, first Durga and Kali,
then down to gentler female divinities like Parvati and Radha, married to or
consorting with male gods, then lower to mortal females raised to goddesses,
such as Sita, and finally to ordinary, fully mortal human women whose names,
at least in Mithila, always end with "Devi"--Jayanti Devi, Sita Devi, Baua
Devi.
Composed By
Nagendra Jha
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