The bridge over the Billakurru canal is packed tight with all imaginable colors flowing in brilliant sun, a kaleidoscope of scintillating saris and glistening bangles on girls and women thronging the road toward Jaganathota. It is the long-awaited Tadithota festival, an assembly of gods from fourteen villages in a spacious palm orchard some three miles from Sriramapuram. Shouting troupes of men lug giant prabha, garlanded bamboo and papier-mâché floats for every village god and goddess, each grand enough to carry several riders along. Formerly they were thirty feet tall with masts strapped on bullock carts but the new god of electric wires reduced their vertical scale. As if to compen sate, each village increased its amplified drum-and-bugle legion in competi
tive cacophony. Men are always out and about but today in this local Mardi Gras it is the joyous release of girls from school and auspicious wives from the confines of house and lane. Their best cotton frocks or silk saris and lus trous oiled and jasmined braids command almost as much attention as their broadly smiling faces.
Girls and women—wives, mothers, daughters, daughters-in-law—have appeared only briefly in Chapter 4 on textual studies since the upanayana and access to Veda learning has been exclusively male for many centuries and the social system is patrilocal. In this chapter on the life of householders, however, women are center stage and their oral histories are particularly noteworthy, providing a counter-narrative to claims of patriarchal supremacy. In Chapter 6 on the ritual life, wives are further recognized in co-sacrificial roles. Some brief details about the lives of fifteen patni were featured in the overviews of families in Chapter 3. In the order of that village-by-village survey, wives of ahi tagni included Sundari, Surya, and Subbalaksmi in Sriramapuram, Anasuya in Nedunuru, Satyavati and Kamesvari in Vyaghresvaram, and Anasuya
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in Kakinada. Discussed also were the wives of other Veda pandits, some of them potential ahitagni: Laksmi, Savitri, and Kamala in Sriramapuram, Narasamamba in Iragavaram, Sita Rama Laksmi in Simhacalam and Maruti and Sita Nagalaksmi in Annavaram. Finally, Laksmikanta, widow of the Konasima-born srauta champion Renducintala Yajulu, graciously contributed her reflections on a half-century of agni-hotra.
As sources of information about women “living in Veda” they varied considerably, as did the circumstances of interviews. Some were present on numerous occasions, often in the company of their husbands for long, mul tifaceted conversations about Veda, srauta, and life as patni in general. Only one was not permitted by her husband to be consulted; some were in poor health or in seclusion at the time of visits. A few contributed strongly only after they became widows and enjoyed the uninhibited opportunity to speak about their lives. Among the most informative of all were the youthful and energetic Maruti, wife of Kapilavayi Rama Sastri in Annavaram, and their married daughter Sita Nagalaksmi when she was still living at home; a reflec
tive Anasuya in Nedunuru, particularly after she became the widow of Lanka Venkatarama Sastri; Satyavati, wife of Bulusu Kamesvara in Vyaghresvaram; Subbalaksmi in Sriramapuram after she was Bulusu Cayanulu’s widow; and Laksmikanta, the strong-willed, assertive widow of the senior Renducintala in Vijayawada.
Narasamamba Laksmi, a skilled folklore field worker teaching high school in Rajahmundry, with the additional cachet of stemming from a Vaidika Brahman family, was freely able to enter the interiors of the more tradi tional houses where male outsiders were not welcome. She provided valu able recorded interviews with Anasuya, wife of Lanka, their daughter-in-law Savitri, wife of Baballa’s son Bullebbayi, Subbalaksmi, second wife of Bulusu Cayanulu (whose first wife, Rama Suryakanta, died at age twenty-four, c. 1945), and others. It should be noted that familiar use of first names of patni, quite untraditional, is apologetically adopted here to aid the reader in following the narratives of scores of individuals. As mentioned before, all wives of soma sac rificers are known as Somi-devamma, an honorific that replaces given names (and is contracted to “Sodemma” in colloquial Telugu). This title is the equiva lent of Soma-yaji or Yajulu that may be affixed to the name of the yajamana after first offering soma. Wives of an-ahitagni (non- ahitagni) pandits usually have the traditional -amma, “Mother,” suffixes: Kamala, for example, is known as Kamalamma. Since girls are named for goddesses at birth, and unlike boys lose their family names when married, there is a certain amount of name duplication. In the following remarks Anasuya, wife and later the widow of
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Lanka, is quoted, not her daughter Anasuya, wife of Mitranarayana, who was not interviewed.
Women speak their minds on many topics from the drudgery of kitchen duties to joyous recollection of ritual roles. Conversations tend to focus, how ever, on several themes: the utmost importance given to madi, ritual purity, the numerous tasks assigned in ritual life, failure of the new generations to maintain traditional standards of their elders, the bearing and raising of chil dren, the loss of an older husband and trauma of widowhood, and the fragil ity of health in old age. A constant topic is first in this list, the significance of remaining pure in self, kitchen, food, ritual rooms, and the household in general, particularly when serving as hostess for visiting Veda pandits. To be pure is to be auspicious; conversely, impurity carries the onus of being inauspicious.
Sundari and Baballa, occupying for many years the house on the corner of Sriramapuram’s single lane and Mukkamalla road, served as gatekeepers for the agrahara. No one could pass without notice. They became hosts for agra hara events large and small. Since a visiting ahitagni must rely on food cooked only by a Veda patni this meant considerable labor for Sundari and then later her sole daughter-in-law Savitri. Added to that burden was the loss of a child only twenty days after her birth and care-giving for needy son Bullebbayi. Her neighbor across the lane, Surya, wife of another ahitagni and also a frequent hostess, bore fourteen children, of whom ten survived. What the historical novelist Russell Banks captured in nineteenth-century America as “the dark fatigue of women and the death of infants”1 must certainly be acknowledged as a fact of twentieth-century life as well. The recounting of life-experience by patni themselves, however, varies from matter-of-fact or upbeat acceptance to the rare lamentation over the dark side.
It was Laksmikanta, performer of agni-hotra for half a century alongside her husband, Renducintala Yajulu, who expressed with animation the hard ship as well as the joys of the patni: “It is not easy to play the role of cook as wife of a srauta ritualist. Guests come without prior notice and the wife should be ready at all times to change into madi (Telugu ritual purity, Sanskrit sauca) and prepare food. Chores in the kitchen are untold suffering for the wife of a performer of srauta.” In the same conversation she also gave voice to a com monly held opinion regarding the softness and ill-preparedness of the next generation: “My daughters-in-law are modern and have no faith in ritual life. My sons help them in domestic chores and that is not right for men!”
Satyavati, then in declining years, was amazed in recollection that she managed to accomplish adhana and continuing agni-hotra alongside hus band Kamesvara: “I had a baby on the hip, a baby on my lap, a baby in the
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stomach (Telugu kolupu), all these babies! But people in the village said ‘Don’t be scared! If you perform agrayana once a year you’ll be fine as agni-hotrin.” By the time of agni-stoma there were eight of an eventual ten children underfoot and Satyavati was quite reluctant to advance into soma rites: “Children require so much attention, my elderly mother-in-law needed care, and the thought of cooking and serving so many people for five ritual days plus an additional one was overwhelming.” Kamesvara prevailed, however, both of them offered soma, added soma-sacrificer to their respective names, and decades later Satyavati was proud to be Somi-devamma.
For a patni, maintenance of an agni-hotra room and a puja area in the kitchen in constant states of ritual purity is not the sole concern. As the moon has its monthly phases she has monthly (masika) cycles2 but unlike the moon her body may pose a threat. As noted in Chapter 2 the culture at large main
tains deep-seated apprehensions about menstruation. The impurity (Telugu maila, Sanskrit asauca) of a woman in her period, like death pollution, is par ticularly damaging in ritual situations. ApSS measures an-alambhuka, her period, as three days. As the moon is invisible for three days per month, so is a woman in her prime “invisible.”3 “Untouchable” is a heavily loaded, now a constitutionally proscribed and outmoded appellation in the caste hierarchy, but the Sanskrit term for a woman in menses means exactly that: she is nei ther to be touched nor to touch any person or item connected with food. She turns her drinking cup upside down as a signal and withdraws into privacy. In addition to the diksa that covers the impurity of death and menstrual blood for a soma ritual there is another measure that can protect daily agni-hotra. The belt of munja grass that encircled the patni for initial moon rites may take her place near the offering fire for those three days while her husband performs alone.4
It has been an indological custom to treat the yajamana as sole sacrificer. Here, however, as in previous publications,5 the patni is termed co-sacrificer. It must be acknowledged that patriarchal subjugation prevails, as in most aspects of life in the subcontinent. Vedic texts subordinate the patni, her mantras and kriya are far fewer and she receives instructions in both domestic and extended rituals from the yajamana, adhvaryu, and other males. Marriage is sometimes described as her upanayana, the husband being her guru. At the same time it should be recognized first that every Veda pandit stresses the essential role of the patni. Baballa expressed it in January 1988: “Without a wife neither domes tic ritual nor great sacrifices can be performed. One obtains the authority of a ritual life, karma-adhikara, only if she is present.” Lanka was quick to point to ApDhS for that authority, noting that no distinction can be made between husband and wife since rituals are performed jointly.6 Examples of the wife’s
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participation are legion. To take but one example, after offering the omentum of an animal (today always a goat) the wife must accompany the yajamana and priests to the kitchenette outside the arena for the necessary self-cleansing because she too has sacrificed (ApSS 7.21.6).
A second substantiation for applying the term co-sacrificer is self-referential: patni have referred to themselves as agni-hotrin and have cited other women as performers of extended sacrifices, as for example, Anasuya addressing Duvvuri Sastry, “When your grandmother performed paundar
ika . . .” A third reason concerns Agni: if an ahitagni needs to be away from home for a fortnight or a month he may perform, respectively, paksa homa or masa homa, fortnight or monthly offerings, and let the wife cover agni-hotra. If she too must leave the home the fires become laukika, no longer sacred. In other words, Agni cannot remain in a house without one or both. There should be no hesitation in perceiving a joint role in the household either on the grhya or srauta level of sacrifice. “I know,” said Laksmikanta proudly, “that rituals cannot be done without me.” Maruti expressed it more bluntly: “One who has no wife is useless, practically a corpse.” And more than one pandit confessed that after his initial hesitation it was his wife who was impetus for advancing to extended sacrifices beyond agni-stoma.
Some wives of ahitagni and potential ahitagni take enormous pleasure in recollecting the details of sacrifices or planning to undertake them. Maruti is a fine role model for three daughters. She is as tough as she is alert, totally in control, adroitly inserting her knowledge and experience into discussions of srauta, carefully explaining the difference between yajna and yaga, correcting mistakes in the observations of males in the room. Having grown up with her ahitagni grandfather performing agni-hotra and isti on a regular basis she was thoroughly acquainted with extended ritual life before marriage, then gained far more as she married into a srauta family and traveled with the Kapilavayis from sacrifice to sacrifice. “My husband routinely being a rtvij, I am now expe riencing the same srauta life I knew as a girl. A rtvij may bring his family if he wishes, a matter of choice, and we stay in the same yajna-sala (temporary sacrifice hall of bamboo and fronds) as other patni, sleep, eat, spend our time there.” Kapilavayi Yajnesvara trained his two sons well in both text and ritual and they are now reciting in famous temples, one in Simhacalam, the other, Maruti’s husband, in Annavaram. But he and his wife also educated their three daughters, in particular the firstborn of the five children, one who now lives with her husband in Tenali and has knowledge of the Sama Veda as well as the Taittiriya Samhita
Satyavati, already mother of eight, including a baby of three months, when she underwent the diksa consecration for agni-stoma, happily recalled all details in a conversation many decades later. But a tinge of sadness entered her voice as she commented:
“My husband and I were so tied up with ritual actions we had no opportunity to observe the great number of people feasting. We only heard from others about the beauty of the whole scene. Feeding everyone in the area at noon and again at 7:00 pm is so important. All who come should eat, without exception. It is prasada, grace. Feasting at a yajna is special, full of merit for it is anna-feeding, rice-feeding! Vyaghresvaram was famous for that, but those days are gone.”
And here Kamesvara added a bit of folklore heard in other agrahara as well:
“One day more people came than expected. There weren’t supplies enough. Hired Brahman cooks (vanta-brahman) were extremely busy. One merchant in town gave a full bag of tavudu (the outer cover of a rice grain after the husk is removed, usually given to livestock) and the cooks spiced up a special dish! It disappeared quickly and people remembered our yajna for this special food!”