"Write the Text Letter-by-Letter in the Heart"
Non-Literacy, Religious Authority, and Female Sadhus' Performance of Asceticism through Sacred Texts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v4i1.3Keywords:
female asceticism, Rajasthani oral traditions, scripturalityAbstract
The performance of the R?m?yan, a popular, medieval Hindi text composed by the Indian poet/saint Tulsidas, constitutes an important genre in the “rhetoric of renunciation” for female Hindu ascetics (s?dhus) in Rajasthan. It is used by them, along with the singing of devotional songs (bhajans) and the telling of religious stories (kah?n?), as integral to their daily practice of asceticism. This essay examines the performance and textual strategies by which non- and semi-literate female s?dhus create themselves as “scriptural”—how they perform a relationship with the literate textual tradition of the Tulsi R?m?yan—and thus engender female religious authority in the male-dominated institution of renunciation, in which men are often considered by Indian society as “the” experts in sacred texts. For these female s?dhus, R?m?yan performance functions as a rhetorical strategy with which they construct their tradition of devotional asceticism as a non-orthodox and vernacular alternative to the dominant (and orthodox) Sanskritic textual model of Brahmanical asceticism. The s?dhus’ identification of R?m?yan expressive traditions with Tulsidas’ written text contributes a new perspective on the concept of scripture, and their textual practices provide an alternative model of scripturality to current analytical models which equate it with individuals’ engagement with the written sacred text.
References
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Hess, Linda. 2006. “An Open-Air Ramayana: Ramlila, the Audience Experience.” In The Life of Hinduism, edited by John Stratton Hawley and Vasudha Narayanan, 115–139. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Holdrege, Barbara A. 1996. Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Jaffe, Martin S. 1998. “Oral Culture in Scriptural Religion: Some Exploratory Studies.” Religious Studies Review 24 (3): 223–230.
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics.” In Style in Language, edited by T.A. Sebeok, 350–373. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Khandelwal, Meena. 2004. Women in Ochre Robes: Gendering Hindu Renunciation. New York: State University of New York Press.
Khandelwal, Meena, Sondra L. Hausner, and Ann Grodzins Gold, eds. 2006. Women’s Renunciation in South Asia: Nuns, Yoginis, Saints, and Singers. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Klostermaier, Klaus. 1994. A Survey of Hinduism. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Lamb, Ramdas. 2002. Rapt in the Name: The Ramnamis, Ramnam, and Untouchable Religion in Central India. Albany: State University of New York Press.
———. 1991. “Personalizing the R?m?yan?a: R?mn?m?s and their
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1993. Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Appadurai, Arjun, Frank J. Korom, and Margaret A. Mills, eds. 1991. Gender, Genre, and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Baker, James N. 1993. “The Presence of the Name: Reading Scripture in an Indonesian Village.” In The Ethnography of Reading, edited by Jonathan Boyarin, 98–138. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Barrett, Ron. 2008. Aughor Medicine: Pollution, Death, and Healing in North India. Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bauman, Richard. 1977. Verbal Art as Performance. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press.
———. 1986. Story, Performance, and Event: Contextual Studies of Oral Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1989. “American Folklore Studies and Social Transformation: A Performance-Centered Perspective.” Text and Performance Quarterly 9 (July): 175–184. doi:10.1080/10462938909365929
———. 1992. Performance. In Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments: A Communications-Centered Handbook, edited by Richard Bauman, 41-49. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bauman, Richard, and Joel Sherzer. 1974. Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Behar, Ruth. 1993. Translated Woman: Crossing the Border with Esperanza’s Story. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Ben-Amos, Dan. 1975. Sweet Words: Storytelling Events in Benin. Philadelphia, PA: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.
Ben-Amos, Dan, and Kenneth S. Goldstein, eds. 1975. Folklore: Performance and Communication. The Hague: Mouton.
Blackburn, Stuart. 1991a. “Creating Conversations: The R?ma Story as Puppet Play in Kerala.” In Many R?m?yan?as: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, edited by Paula Richman, 156–174. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 1991b. “Epic Transmission and Adaptation: A Folk Ramayana in South India.” In Boundaries of the Text: Epic Performances in South and Southeast Asia, edited by Joyce B. Flueckiger and Laurie J. Sears, 105–126. Michigan: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies.
Blackburn, Stuart, Joyce B. Flueckiger, Peter J. Claus, and Susan S. Wadley, eds. 1989. Oral Epics in India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Blackburn, Stuart, and A.K. Ramanujan, eds. 1986. Another Harmony: New Essays on the Folklore of India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bleich, David. 1986. “Intersubjective Reading.” New Literary History 17 (3): 401–421. doi:10.2307/468821
Boyarin, Jonathan, ed. 1993. The Ethnography of Reading. Berkeley: The University of California Press.
———. 1993. “Voices Around the Text: The Ethnography of Reading at a Mesivtah Tifereth Jerusalem.” In The Ethnography of Reading, edited by Jonathan Boyarin, 212–237. Berkeley: The University of California Press.
Briggs, Charles L. 1988. Competence in Performance: The Creativity of Tradition in Mexicano Verbal Art. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Cenkner, William. 1995 [1983]. A Tradition of Teachers: ?ankara and the Jagadgurus of Today. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.
Coburn, Thomas. 1984. “Scripture in India: Towards a Typology of the Word in Hindu Life.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 52 (3): 435–459. doi:10.1093/jaarel/52.3.435
DeNapoli, Antoinette E. 2009a. “By the Sweetness of the Tongue: Duty, Destiny, and Devotion in the Oral Life Narratives of Female S?dhus in Rajasthan. Asian Ethnology 68(1): 81–108.
———. 2009b. “Leave Everything and Sing to God: The Performance of Devotional Asceticism by Female Sadhus in Rajasthan.” Ph.D. disserta-tion, Emory University.
Doniger, Wendy. 1991. “Fluid and Fixed Texts in India.” In Boundaries of the Text: Epic Performances in South and Southeast Asia, edited by Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger and Laurie J. Sears, 31-42. Michigan: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Michigan.
Fabian, Johannes. 1993. “Keep Listening: Ethnography and Reading.” In The Ethnography of Reading, edited by Jonathan Boyarin, 80–97. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Flood, Gavin. 1996. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Flueckiger, Joyce. 1991. “Literacy and the Changing Concept of the Text: Women’s Ramayana Man?d?al? in Central India.” In Boundaries of the Text: Epic Performances in South and Southeast Asia, edited by Joyce B. Flueckiger and Laurie J. Sears, 43–60. Michigan: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Michigan.
———. 1996. Gender and Genre in the Folklore of Middle India. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
———. 2006. In Amma’s Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Flueckiger, Joyce B. and Laurie J. Sears. 1991. The Boundaries of the Text:Epic Performances in South and Southeast Asia. Michigan: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Michigan.
Foley, John Miles. 1992. “Word-Power, Performance, and Tradition.” Journal of American Folklore 105(417): 275–301. doi:10.2307/541757
Gold, Ann, and Gloria G. Raheja. 1994. Listen to the Heron’s Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Graham, William A. 1993 [1987]. Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Griffiths, Paul J. 1999. Religious Reading: The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gross, Robert Lewis. 2001 [1992]. The Sadhus of India. Jaipur: Rawat Publications.
Heath, Shirley Brice. 1982. “Protean Shapes in Literacy Events: Ever-Shifting Oral and Literate Traditions.” In Spoken and Written Language, edited by Deborah Tannen, 91–117. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Hess, Linda. 2006. “An Open-Air Ramayana: Ramlila, the Audience Experience.” In The Life of Hinduism, edited by John Stratton Hawley and Vasudha Narayanan, 115–139. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Holdrege, Barbara A. 1996. Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Jaffe, Martin S. 1998. “Oral Culture in Scriptural Religion: Some Exploratory Studies.” Religious Studies Review 24 (3): 223–230.
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics.” In Style in Language, edited by T.A. Sebeok, 350–373. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Khandelwal, Meena. 2004. Women in Ochre Robes: Gendering Hindu Renunciation. New York: State University of New York Press.
Khandelwal, Meena, Sondra L. Hausner, and Ann Grodzins Gold, eds. 2006. Women’s Renunciation in South Asia: Nuns, Yoginis, Saints, and Singers. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Klostermaier, Klaus. 1994. A Survey of Hinduism. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Lamb, Ramdas. 2002. Rapt in the Name: The Ramnamis, Ramnam, and Untouchable Religion in Central India. Albany: State University of New York Press.
———. 1991. “Personalizing the R?m?yan?a: R?mn?m?s and their
Published
2010-06-05
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How to Cite
DeNapoli, A. E. (2010). "Write the Text Letter-by-Letter in the Heart": Non-Literacy, Religious Authority, and Female Sadhus’ Performance of Asceticism through Sacred Texts. Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 4(1), 3-40. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v4i1.3
