Exploring a ‘No-Conflict’ Zone: Interest, Emotio and the Family in Early India

Studies in History

Volumn 18, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 165-187

  Chakravarti, Uma ^a  

^a NONE   (India)

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EID: 84992779439     PISSN: 02576430     EISSN: 0973080X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/025764300201800202     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, New York, 1986, p. 239.
2. See for example R. Champakalakshmi, Trade, Ideology and Urbanization: South India 300 B.C.-300 A.D., Delhi, 1996, p. 16.
3. See for example the essays in Patricia Uberoi, ed., Family, Kinship and Marriage in India, Delhi, 1994.
4. Wendy Doniger and Brian Smith, The Laws of Manu, Delhi, 1991, p. 46.
5. Olivier Herrenschmidt, ‘Ambedkar and the Hindu Social Order’, paper presented at a seminar on ‘Ambedkar and Buddhism: Revisioning the World’, University of Pune, October, 1998.
6. For a detailed discussion of these paragraphs see Uma Chakravarti, ‘Conceptualising Brahman-ical patriarchy: Gender, caste, class and state’, Economic and Political Weekly (henceforth EPW), Vol. 28: 14, 3 April 1993, pp. 579–85
7. ‘Gender, caste and labour: The material and ideological structure of widowhood’, EPW, Vol. 30: 36, 9 September 1995, pp. 2248–56.
8. See the essays of Leela Dube and Saradamoni in Carla Riseew and Rajni Palriwala, eds, Shifting Circles of Support, Delhi, 1997
9. Tiplut Nongbri, ‘Gender and the Khasi structure’, in Patricia Uberoi, ed., Family, Kinship and Marriage, pp. 176–86.
10. Prem Chowdhry, The Veiled Women: Shifting Gender Equations, Haryana 1880–1980, Delhi, 1994.
11. I take this phrase from Kumkum Roy's work: ‘The king's household: Structure and space in the Sastric tradition’, in Kumkum Sangari and Uma Chakravarti, eds. From Myths to Markets: Essays in Gender, Shimla, 1999, pp. 18–38.
12. I.B. Horner, The Book of Discipline, Vol. IV, London, 1940, p. 255.
13. E.B. Cowell, The Jatakas, Vol. II, London, 1957, pp. 291–92.
14. For a full discussion of the family and the conflict between emotion and interest see Hans Medick and D.W. Sabean, Interest and Emotion.
15. Kumkum Roy, The Emergence of Monarchy in North India: Eighth to Fourth Centuries B.C., Delhi, 1994.
16. T.W. Rhys Davids, The Dialogues of the Buddha, Vol. III, London, 1977, pp. 180–83.
17. Ninth, Tenth and Thirteenth Major Rock Edicts of Asoka, cited in Romila Thapar, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Delhi, 1973, pp. 254–56.
18. Uma Chakravarti, ‘The ‘A'grihinis of ancient India’, Teaching Politics, Vol. 11: 2, 1985, pp. 61–73.
19. Moses Finley, ‘Between slavery and freedom’. Economy and Society in Ancient Greece, Harmondsworth, 1983, pp. 119, 124, 131.
20. The Arthasastra of Kautilya, Part II, tr. R.P. Kangle, Delhi, 1972, pp. 43–44, 202–6.
21. I have based my arguments on the Mahabharata on my reading of the narrative as handed down in oral narratives as well as very many written versions read over the years which are difficult to enumerate so many years later. However I have made the most sustained use of the following secondary works: Irawati Karve, Yuganta, Delhi, 1974
22. Sukumari Bhattacharji, Women and Society in Ancient India, Calcutta, 1994
23. B.K. Matilal, ed., Moral Dilemmas in the Mahabharata, Shimla, 1989
24. C.R. Deshpande, Transmission of the Mahabharata Tradition, Shimla, 1978
25. V.S. Sukthankar, On the Meaning of the Mahabharata, Bombay, 1957
26. R.N. Dandekar, ed., The Mahabharata Revisited, Delhi, 1990.
27. See for example D.D. Kosambi, An Introduction to the Study of Indian History, Bombay, 1956. Chaps. 4 and 5
28. R.S. Sharma. Material Culture and Social Formations in Ancient India, Delhi, 1983, Chaps. 4 and 5.
29. Uma Chakravarti, ‘Of hegemonic agendas and contesting voices: Towards recovering a Sitayana’, unpublished ms., 1999.
30. Uma Chakravarti, ‘Women in myth and literature: A case study of Sita’, Samya Shakti, Vol. 1:1, 1983, pp. 68–75.
31. Yudhishthira refers to greed while talking to Bhima about the war: ‘The emperor who rules the world has but one stomach, so how is it possible to justify this war of limitless greed’. Mahabharata XII. 17.3, cited in Sukumari Bhattacharji, Women and Society, p. 137. The obsession with territory is also referred to: ‘All the kings and emperors have killed each other for the possession of this earth’. p. 150; and Dhritarashtra describes the site of the war as, ‘In this Bharatavarsha, where the rattling of arms is dinning in our ears, where my son Duryodhana is power crazy, where even the Pandavas are full of greed, in this country where force and greed have shamelessly reared their ugly heads’, pp. 152–53.
32. Irawati Karve, Yuganta, p. 83, 9–10, 41–42.
33. Bhattacharji, Women and Society, p. 155.
34. Draupadi occupies the most complex location in the text in terms of her stakes in the material interests of the Pandavas. At one level as the Pandava queen she represents the kingdom; her violation is a metaphor for the violation, and later, the loss of the kingdom. But the fact that she was staked by her husband indicates that she herself is regarded as a thing, a possession of the king/husband. Her question to the assembly about whether she was staked before Yudhishthira staked himself is a crucial one for her regarding her rights. Also, following her violation the kingdom means less to her than her right to bodily integrity and honour—in fact she does not use the third boon granted to her by Dhritarashtra who actually asks her to seek the kingdom. In not doing so, and by keeping the hatred for the Kauravas perpetually on the boil, she ensures that revenge will be sought; which may not have been achieved if the Pandavas had got the kingdom back through her boon. There would have been no casus belli anymore. Draupadi's investment in the war is based on emotion not interest and has to do with intangible substances congealing around honour and a specifically female experience: bodily violation. She wants the Pandavas to fight the war not merely to settle scores with the Kauravas for their assault on her but also to expiate their guilt for being the agents of her violation. That the kingdom means little to her is movingly captured in the last scenes when the toll of the dead is being taken and she finds all her five sons dead: her words to Gandhari, who too has lost all her sons, are ‘What shall I do with a kingdom when all my sons have perished’ Bhattacharji, Women and Society, p. 148.
35. The examples of Satyawati, Kunti and Draupadi are provided in the main lines of the narrative. The most striking example of the woman as womb, an instrument of reproduction, in the Mahabharata is that of Madhavi. Madhavi's father gave her over to a poor brahman who used her miraculous ability to be restored to virginity after each occasion in which she conceived, as well as her capacity to provide chakravarti sons. Her husband gave her in exchange for horses to five different kings and thus made up his gurudakshina, the gift due to the teacher according to custom. Each time Madhavi had to leave the child she bore with the father. For an analysis of this story see Pankaj K. Singh and Jaidev, ‘Decentering a patriarchal myth’, in Kumkum Sangari and Uma Chakravarti, eds, From Myths to Markets: Essays on Gender, Shimla, 1999.
36. Karve, Yuganta, p. 59, 63.
37. The main arguments in this section are drawn from my reading of Sheldon Pollock, ed., The Ramayana of Valmiki: An Epic of Ancient India, Vol. II, The Ayodhyakanda, Princeton, 1986
38. M.L. Sen, The Ramayana of Valmiki, Delhi, 1976.
39. These points are sketched briefly in my earlier article on the Ramayana cited earlier. Chakravarti, ‘Women in myth and literature’.
40. When Dasaratha announces to Rama that he wishes to crown him king he gives the following reasons for choosing Rama over the other brothers: ‘You are born of Kausalya my first queen, you are highly qualified and I love you the most. You are the darling of the people’. Sen, The Ramayana, p. 56.
41. According to Lakshmana the kingdom belongs to Rama by virtue of seniority of birth. Sen, The Ramayana, p. 78.
42. Sumantra, the minister of Dasaratha, berates Kaikeyi for seeking to alter the ‘time-honoured law of succession to the throne’ and says that pious men would not be able to live in the kingdom any longer. Sen, The Ramayana. p. 93.
43. Pollock. The Ramayana of Valmiki. Vol. II. pp. 98, 297.
44. Sen, The Ramayana, p. 9, 14, 18, 88.
45. We get a clue to the unevenness of polygamous relationships in the king's household in terms of the rights of the next generation in Kalidasa's representation of this event when he says that the king divided the payasa between his ‘two’ wives—Kausalya whom he esteemed, and Kaikeyi whom he loved; therefore he desired that Sumitra be honoured with a portion by each of the two queens. Kalidasa also adds that Sumitra ‘loved alike both her co-wives’; we now have a suggestion that the other two are not so clearly well-disposed towards each other. Sumitra may be tactically ensuring good relations with both queens, thereby securing her own future regardless of which of them becomes queen mother following the transfer of power. All the queens then conceive, they ‘shine with beauty, virtue and glory’, and they have sons. There is still no hint of discontentment on the part of the queens in the construction of the household as an ideal and affective space (The Raghuvamsa of Kalidasa, tr. C.R. Devdhar. Delhi, 1985, p. 189).
46. Kumkum Sangari, ‘Consent, agency and the rhetorics of incitement’, EPW, Vol. 28: 18, 1 May 1993, pp. 867–82
47. Sally Sutherland, ‘Seduction, counter seduction and sexual role models: Bedroom politics and the Indian epics’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, 19, pp. 53–61. Many of the arguments in this paper are derived from, or are extensions of, the work of the above mentioned scholars.
48. Sally Sutherland, ‘The political and social ramifications of the constructions of gender in the Valmiki Ramayana’, unpublished papers read through the kind courtesy of the author, ms. p. 3, 4.
49. Kaikeyi tells Dasaratha that she will drink poison if Rama is made king as she prefers death to ‘paying homage’ to Kausalya, which apparently is inevitable if Rama becomes king. Sen, The Ramayana, p. 68.
50. Pollock, The Ramayana of Valmiki, Vol. II, p. 120.
51. Sen, The Ramayana, p. 77, 62, 64–66.
52. See also Kumkum Sangari, ‘Consent, agency and the rhetorics of incitement’.
53. Sen, The Ramayana, p. 71, 68, 79, 120–21.
54. Sangari, ‘Consent, agency and the rhetorics of incitement’, p. 874, 120–21, 60–64.
55. Sutherland, ‘The political and social ramifications’, p. 23, n. 42. A similar conflict between brothers over priceless possessions is mentioned in passing by Ravana who claims to have forcefully won the flying palace, the pushpakavimana, of his brother Vaisravana. p. 23, n. 44.