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TRANSSEXUALISM,
The virtually universal theme of transsexualism, the idea that a person can or should under certain circumstances change his or her original sex has had a particularly long, complex, and productive history in South Asia. From the time of the earliest known Sanskrit texts through the
biographies of medieval and modern religious and political leaders, to contemporary fiction this
theme has been closely connected with some of the region's most central theological, aesthetic, and
social ideologies. In this study I will survey and discuss a number of salient examples of transsexualism drawn from the religious and mythological texts of ancient and medieval India. I will also discuss some signficant manifestations of the theme in cultic practices at various shrines in north and
south India, and in the lives and teachings of several important modern Indian religious figures and
members of organized religious communities. In doing so I will propose an analysis of the theme
and its role in the constructions of gender, power, and authority in a traditional patriarchalsociety.
In Memory of Bimal Krishna Matilal (1935-1991)
such reading. Workers in anthropology, history, and literary criticism have sought to demonstrate that reading
a text is, among other things, a political act, especially
when the reader places himself (or herself) in a position
of dominance vis a vis the audience for which the text
was intended. Scholars such as Said, Clifford, Geertz,
Spivak, and others2 in their own ways have contributed
to the erosion of the old orientalists' philological authority and the notion that a text could be studied and interpreted in a social and political vacuum with nothing to
intervene between the author and the translator/editor
and no one to contest the latter's reading.
2 Said
1978, Clifford 1986, Geertz 1973, and Guha and Spivak 1988.
374
GOLDMAN:
375
sented when we have, as in the case of much Indian literature, texts that are not merely ancient, but have
continued to occupy a central role in the culture in a
variety of forms from antiquity right down to the
present. One such opportunity is presented by the
themes and characters of the Sanskrit epics and major
puranas which have fascinated the peoples of South
Asia from the time of the late vedic bards to that of the
modern television serial. A still greater opportunity is
to be had when major recurrentthemes of these documents are internalized and acted out for popular consumption by highly visible and influential figures in the
religious, political, and artistic realms.
Themes and texts that have attained the kind of longevity and diffusion as these have are of profound
significance to people among whom they are current,
although it does not necessarily follow that the reasons
for their significance are immediately apparent to or
easily articulated either by these people or by scholars.
This distance between the significance of a mythic
theme in any given social or cultural context and the
ability to account for it is especially great when these
materials may speak, in some cases, to deeply and
powerfully acculturated anxieties and fears which, by
their very nature, may be difficult to confront in undisguised form. In South Asia, as in other largely patriarchal societies, these fears, which these texts may
paradoxically both reinforce and partially alleviate,
frequently cluster around a deeply problematized complex of issues involving the body, gender, sexuality,5
power, hierarchy, and subordination.
3 This has been
trueof the majorityof scholars
particularly
A commonplace in the social, performative,and literworkingon the vast corpusof textualmaterialsin Sanskrit.In
ary representations of these anxieties in virtually all
recentyears, however,a few Sanskritistshave becomeinterpatriarchalsocieties has been the expression of a highly
estedin reexaminingsomeimportantSanskrittextsin the light
charged and deeply ambivalent attitude towards women
of psychological,political,andfeministcritiques.See, for exand women's sexuality. In many texts women are ideaample, Masson 1974, 1976, 1980; Pollock 1985; Sutherland lized as pure, spiritual, and nurturantwhen they are
1989, 1991, 1992;andGoldman1978, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1991.
4 Before
to issue a sortof
proceedingit may be appropriate
transsexualismseem invariablyto derive their sense of the
caveat on the subjectof the "meaning"or "meanings"of a
phenomenonfrom the ancient sources which they use as
particulartext, whetherwritten,oral or performative.In what
sources of inspirationand validation.I am indebtedto my
follows I shall be attemptingto extracta certainthreadof asfriend and colleague ProfessorSheldon I. Pollock for the
sociatedmeaningsfroma broadandcomplexfabricof myth,
I do not meanto suggest
belief, practice,and interpretation.
probingintelligenceandgreatlearninghe has broughtto bear
on this aspectof the study.
thatall the materialswithwhichI shallbe dealinghavea sim5
Throughoutthis paperI have triedto maintaina distincple, single "meaning"thatdoes not varywith time,place,and
tion betweenthe conceptof "sex,"whichI use-as in current
the shiftingbelief systems,symbolicuniverses,andpowerreandaudiences. practice-to refer to the biologicalor anatomicalaspectsof
lationsof theirauthors,purveyors,performers,
one's sexualpersonaand "gender,"whichgenerallyrefersto
It is, finally,difficultto know, for example,how ancientInthe complexof constructions,attitudesand orientationsthat
dian texts were originallyunderstoodby their variousaudiences. On the other hand,a certainstrandof hermeneutical defineone's social role as a genderedbeing. In manycases,
continuity is provided by the fact that the contemporary especiallyin the texts with which I will be dealing,this distinctionis significantlyblurred.
groupsandindividualswho articulateand/orperformtexts of
But texts too, no less than our readings and constructions of them, are themselves political in that they have
both prescriptive and descriptive value for the cultures
of which they are artifacts. Yet certain texts, particularly the religious, philosophical, and mythological
texts-both written and performative-of traditional
Asian cultures, have only occasionally been read for
what they can tell us about the inner affect and power
relations associated with specific cultural and social
configurations. This has been particularly true in the
case of traditional India where textually based scholarship has tended to concentrate on philological, theological, and philosophical analysis and has rarely
shown much interest in "reading" traditional Indian
texts as vital elements in the social, political, and psychological matrix of South Asian cultures.3 Nonetheless, to the extent that we fail to examine the cultural
purposes served by specific texts and their recurrent
themes, the ways in which they were intended to be
"read" by their original audiences, and the ways in
which they have been read by successive indigenous
audiences, we may-for all our philological skill and
hermeneutical wit-utterly misunderstand what they
are "about," either in some probably irrecoverable intended meaning or in any of the other meanings constructed by historically particular users and consumers
of these texts.4
A particularly good opportunity for an integrated
study of textual materials in their social context is pre-
376
6 Brownmiller 1975.
7 For
example, Bullough 1973, Docter 1988, Vyas and Shingala 1987, Sharma 1989, and Nanda 1990: 128-43.
8 It turns
up frequently both in public television documentaries and on the daytime talk shows that feature provocative
topics, frequently associated with sexuality. Just recently, for
example, the American public television screened a documentary on the life of an individual transsexual ("Metamorphosis:
Man Into Woman," June 26, 1991, KQED, San Francisco)
while the BBC presented a film on the hijras of India entitled
"The Third Gender" (see Prasad 1991).
9 Examples of transvestism would be the films "Some Like
It Hot" and "Tootsie." Cinematic renderings of the theme of
transsexualism may be seen in the more recent films "All of
Me" and "Switch."
GOLDMAN:
pitchers.
Her face, abode of phlegm, is likened to the moon.
Her thighs, damp with trickling urine, are said to rival
the trunks of the finest elephants.
Oh, what a contemptible thing to be made such a fuss
over by the great poets.
15 Jaini 1991.
377
Manusmrti 5.148.
7 Rdmcaritmdnas5.58.6.
8
Subhasitaratnabhdnddigdra,no. 9, p. 348.
darsanad dharate cittam sparsanad dharate dhrtim
mithunad dharate viryam nari pratyaksaraksasi
The sight of her carries off your mind, her touch your
378
gious, and literary texts from many parts of the world, and it
occurs in a wide variety of such texts in South Asia. European
legends and alleged case histories of sexual transformation
tend to associate such change with a person's acting like or associating too intimately with members of the opposite sex or to
explain the change naturalistically. For a discussion with a
number of examples, see Laqueur 1990: 124-29. Perhaps the
23 See, for
example,the charmingandplayfulliterarytreat-
complex and highly charged erotic devotionalism characteristic of the Bhagavata literature and the performative traditions of the Krsna cult,24 and even the
Buddhist literature.25I will return to some aspects of
these figures later on, but to begin I should like to turn
to some less well known but still widely disseminated
legends in which we see unambiguously articulated
the notion of complete and literal transsexualism.
One of the oldest such legends of which we have a
record and the one most frequently recounted in the traditional literature is the tale of King Ila.26Variants of
this legend are found in both of the Sanskrit epics27and
many puranas.28 It is closely bound up with the ancient
and widely disseminated cycle of tales centering on
Ila's son Pururavas,ancestor of the Lunar dynasty, and
his ill-fated love for the apsaras Urvagi.29This cycle is
well established in the vedic literature,and although the
episode involving Ila's transformation is not fully developed there, it is detailed in an account quoted at
length by the commentator Sayana30as providing the
historical context for the birth of Pururavas. According to this version, the prince Ila, out hunting, inadvertently enters the trysting spot of the Goddess (devikrida)
at a moment when her husband, the Lord Siva, is making love with her. In order to prevent any other male
from seeing his wife in his embrace, the God, through
his divine power, had ordained that any male entering
this forbidden spot would be turned into a woman. The
king undergoes a transformationinto a woman, which is
the source of acute shame. The woman Ila implores the
anthology the Subhasitaratnakosa, translatedby Ingalls (1965:
89-90).
24 Hein 1972 and
Hawley 1981.
25 For a discussion of some stories of sexual transformation
in the Buddhist literatureof India and China, see Brown 1927:
19-21.
26 Hertel (1911: 153-86) provides an extensive treatmentof
the story and its numerous variants in a paper which is, in
turn, discussed by Keith (1913: 412-17).
27 Rdmayana 7.78-81 (hereafter cited as Ram), Mahabharata 1.70.16 (hereafter, MBh), and Harivamsa 10.615-37.
Unless otherwise indicated, Ramdyana and Mahabharata references are to the critical editions.
28 Bhdgavatapurdna 9.1, Brahmapurdna 7.1-23, Lingapurana 1.65.19-32, Markan.deyapurdna111.8-18, Matsyapurana
10.43-11.14, Vayupurdna85, and Visnupurana4.1.7-16. For
furtherdiscussion of the theme, see note 95 below and Brown
1925: 13-14.
29 RV 10.95, Satapathabrahmana 11.5.1, and Kalidasa's
Vikramorvasiya.
30 RV 10.95
(vol. 4:639-40).
Traditional India
379
380
GOLDMAN:
Brown1927: 14-16.
41 MBh 6.103.75-79. The underlying "karmic" reason for
Bhisma's death in this peculiar fashion at the hands of his
381
382
383
sex motif. Some provocativeexamples are to be found in the Mahayanatext, Vimalakirtinirdesa.At one point a goddess, debating
with the venerable Sariputrathe possibility of changing her female sex, actually exchanges sexes with him as partof a forensic
strategy to prove that in reality there is no such thing as gender
(Thurman 1976: 61-62). Later in the same text, Vimalakirtiindicates that one of the many forms adoptedby bodhisattvasover
the eons to help bring about the enlightenmentand liberationof
beings is that of the female prostitutein which form they use the
lure of sexual desire to bring men to Buddhaknowledge:
samcintya ganikam bhonte pumisamdkarsandyate
ragdnkuramca samlobhya buddhajndnesthapayantite
(Thurman1976: 71, 130 note 33).
49 Cf. the reference to Ramakrishnain note 59 below.
50
et passim.
52 Cf. the Hindi riddle about Krsna:solah sahasra ndri phir
remains celibate."
53 Ram 2.3.12 (=
Gujarati Printing Press edition 2.3.29):
rupauddryagunaihpumsam drsticittapahdrinam.
54
Govindarajaon Ram 2.3.39 = Gujaratied.: yadva pumsdm
rimam
api
pasyatdm stribhutvdham amum anubhaveyam ity
abhildso bhavati yathdhuh:
pdacalydh padmapatrdksyih
sndyantydjaghanam ghanam
ydh striyo drstavatyas tdah
pumbhdvammanasa yayu.hiti
The association of a powerful homoerotic desire with the fantasy of changing sex so as to reclassify the desire as heterosexual finds an interesting illustration in the Dhammatthakatha,
384
(1990:64, 75-76).
57A
Sri
good anddetailedexampleis SwamiSaradananda's
Sri RdmakrsnaLild Prasanga, translated by Swami Jagadananda (1952) as Sri Ramakrishna: The Great Master, of which,
according to McDaniel (1989: 305) the original English title
was The Play of the Divine Mother as Sri Ramakrishna.Other
importantsources for the life of Ramakrishnaare Gupta 1980,
Rolland 1960, and Mueller 1974. See also Kakar 1981: 11112, Masson 1980: 33-50, and McDaniel 1989: 92-103.
58 Saradananda 1952: 233-34, Bose 1953: 206, and
McDaniel 1989: 92.
GOLDMAN:
Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety In Traditional India
59 Saradananda
1952:235-39 andMcDaniel1989:97.
60 Saradananda
1952:290, 209-10.
61 McDaniel 1989:
96, quoting Saradananda1952: 172.
385
99, quotingfromGupta1980,2:595.
386
revelation that his earthly mother was but a manifestation and that she had not abandoned him. It is also at
this point that he resolved to abandon the world and
become a yogi in the Himalayas.64
Yogananda's relationship to his father was much less
close. Bhagabaticaran Ghose's children regarded him
with a "certain reverential distance" and not even Yogananda's idealized and sentimental memoir quite succeeds in concealing the portrait of his father as a stern,
self-righteous, miserly, and pious disciplinarian. Given
this austere, distant patriarch whose attitudes towards
human sexuality were such that they permitted him intercourse only once a year and then only for the purposes of procreation,65it is little wonder that young
Mukundlal grew up, like Ramakrishna, obsessed with
the notion of women as manifestations of the desexualized Mother, and of men as all-knowing and potentially
menacing gurus. It is also not surprising that all of this
was accompanied by an irresistible impulse to flee the
world.
It is interesting, too, in the present connection to note
that, no doubt as a result of his particularconstellation
of relationships and anxieties, the mature Yogananda
and his disciples after him tended to resurrect and revalorize the fantasies of sexual transformation and the
androgynous parent that occur so frequently in Indian
myth, legend, and theology. His own father, his guru,
and he himself came to be characterized in his writings
and those of his disciples by a prevailing and cherished
ambiguity regarding sex and gender: a belief that these
men have or could somehow become women.66
To his own flock in Los Angeles, Yogananda, like
his own widowed father, would become "both father
and mother" not merely by virtue of a dual role nor
even through a metaphor derived from his tenderness
and compassion, which are frequently regarded as
"womanly" characteristics. For, as in the case of Ramakrishna, the femininization of the guru was something that, at least in the eyes of his disciples, entailed
Bapu, My Mother.70
64 Yogananda1974: 17-18.
65
Yogananda1974:4-8.
66Thus,for
example,Yogananda,writingof his fatherafter
the deathof his motherremarks,"I noticedthenthathis gaze
often metamorphosed
into my mother's"(p. 16). Elsewherehe
says of him, "outwardlythe grave father,inwardlyhe possessed the meltingheartof a mother"(p. 238). The firstthing
his guru Sri Yukteswar promises the young Mukundlal Ghose
is the unconditional love of a mother (p. 94). In writing of his
own role as the founder and head of a school in Ranchi, he
muses on the way in which he was the "father-mother"to his
charges (pp. 255-56).
Gandhi's lifelong struggle with his sexuality is extremely well documented in his autobiography, as well
67
Kriyananda 1977: 539.
68
Kriyananda 1977: 313.
69 Kakar 1989: 122-25. Carstairs
387
values
(bhava) associated
with the
388
on the part of its founder Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, or Anandamurti, was "justified as being in accordance with secret 'Tantrik' practices which would spiritually elevate the disciple.
The doubting disciple himself was also satisfied with the explanation that the act of homosexuality was a result of the disciple's wish in the past life to worship the 'ParamaPurusa' in
the form of 'Radha'and that this unfulfilled desire was acting
as a barrier to his ultimate liberation" (Kishore 1976: 16).
V. S. Naipaul, who had evidently heard similar rumors about
the cult, has a somewhat different version. He claims that recruits to Ananda Marg desired by the leader "were persuaded
that they had been girls in previous lives" (Naipaul 19761977: 62). If these charges are true, this would be a particularly sinister exploitation of what would then have to be seen
as a widespread and deeply rooted cultural notion. Even if
they are false, it is apparent that people would not contrive
them unless they were sufficiently culturally syntonic to be
deemed plausible. Compare the passage cited from the Padmapurana in note 76 where this is precisely the argument
stated to explain the gopis' amorous involvement with Krsna.
76 I am grateful to my colleague Professor Usha Nilsson, of
the University of Wisconsin, for having called this anecdote to
my attention. She informs me that the original reference is to
be found in the Bhaktirasabodhinitikd on the Bhaktamdla of
Priyadasa. Reference to the story can also be found in Prabhat
1965: 189 and in Hawley 1987: 59.
GOLDMAN: Transsexualism,
avadhiritakandarpakotilavanyamacyutam
sarvd gopastriyo drstvd manmathdstrenapiditdh
purd maharsayah sarve dan.dakdranyavdsinah
drstvd rdmam harim tatra bhoktumaicchan
suvigraham
te sarve stritvam dpanndh samudbhdtds tu gokule
harim samprdpya kdmena tato muktdbhavdrnavdt
Padmapurdna 6.272.165-67.
Compare the alleged exploitation of this notion on the part of
the leader of the Ananda Marg, as discussed in note 73 above.
389
[Female]
Charushila
Lakshmana
Padmaganda[sic]
Vararoha
Subhaga
Sulocana
Hema
Kshema80
390
GOLDMAN:
dle- and high-caste women after their periods of menstrual seclusion. Indeed, he notes, the term for the
change of garments in both cases, marru, is most generally understood to refer to the ritual of purificationafter
menstruation. Moreover, he adds, local people recognize that during these ceremonies the priests' dress is
"more like a woman's than a man's." The priests, it
should be noted, resist their identification with menstruous women, but Freeman notes that the fact of the ceremonies for the priest being carried out monthly on the
Tuesdays sacred to the goddesses further suggests a
convergence.
These beliefs and practices, some of which represent what van der Veer and others have called the
"Krishnaization of Rambhakti," like the ancient legends and beliefs of some modern "saints" and mystics,
clearly speak to the same underlying and evidently
powerful fantasy. In most cases, whether mythical or
associated with historical personages, transsexualism,
which overwhelmingly occurs in the direction of male
to female, takes place as the consequence of a desire to
avoid or defuse a potential sexual liaison with a prohibited female seen as the property of a powerful and
revered male and/or the desire to be passively enjoyed
sexually by such a male. Thus Ila is made female because of the sages' visual transgression in casting their
erotized male gaze upon the Mother Goddess engaged
in the sexual act with the powerful phallic divinity
Siva. Sri Ramakrishna began playing at being female
and dressing as a woman in his youth as a way of gaining sexually unthreateningaccess to the women's quarters of a wealthy and powerful neighbor's house. Later
in life he appears to have often "become" a woman in
order to indulge in romantic fantasy about Krsna and
to engage in intimate but de-erotized, and therefore not
anxiety generating, contact with the Mother Goddess
both in her proper representations and in the form of
his own wife. A similar dual purpose can be clearly
seen in the adoption of the personae of sakhis on the
part of the rasik sadhus of the Ramanandi order. Even
the feeling on the part of the disciples of Yogananda
and Gandhi that their masters were in some sense their
"mothers"may be viewed, in part, as a consequence of
an attempt to deny the element of passive homoeroticism that informs many manifestations of the gurudisciple relationship.89
In those mythic instances in which the change of sex
is the result of a curse, as in the tales of Ila, Bhaingagvana, and Soreyya, it appears that we have a multiform
of the sort of Indian "Oedipal" pattern that I have
89 Goldman 1978 and 1982.
391
91The
392
Then too, while the cases of male to female transsexualism may involve only temporary or periodic transformation, the transformations themselves appear to be
thoroughgoing and accepted as such by the associates
of the central figure. In the case of Sikhandin, however,
the desired acquisition of a male body is achieved, despite the ruined princess' penances and dying wish
(nidana), the ritual acts of her father, and the promise
of Siva, only through the intercession of a sort of deus
ex machina in the form of the yaksa Sthunakama and,
even then, only through an exchange of genders that
balances her shift to maleness with his more typical
shift to femininity. The transformation is, moreover,
not accepted as fully genuine; for after all, the entire
narrativerationale for the episode in the central story of
the Mahabharata is that Bhisma, the great patriarchof
the Kurus, will not fight with a woman and so submits
to death at the hands of his surrogate son Arjuna rather
than take up arms against Sikhandin.
Still, the issues and relationships underlying this
carefully hedged and evidently more problematic female-to-male transsexualism are not entirely different
from those involved with the variants of the more common type of transsexualism. At the heart of the whole
elaborate episode is the traditional culture's powerful
investment in the rigorous definition of genderappropriate roles and its profound disquiet when such
roles are questioned. In essence it is Bhisma, the archetypal renouncer of his own male sexuality in deference
to that of his father,92who prevents Amba from fulfilling her culturally determined roles as wife and mother.
Only when he has abducted the princess to make her the
bride of the Kaurava dynast does Bhisma realize that
she has already been betrothed to, and so become the
"used property" of, another man. Her suitability for
marriagethus destroyed, he attempts to returnher to her
originally intended husband. But he too is forced by the
patriarchal code of honor to reject her, for from his
standpoint she has now been sexually "used" by the fact
of her abduction. Caught in this impossible bind, the
princess attempts to compel Bhisma himself to marry
her.93But Bhisma too is constrained. For having made
his famous vow of celibacy in deference to his father's
sexuality, he is no longer able to function as a sexual
being. Bhisma's own act of self-degendering,94 then,
leads inevitably to a corresponding functional degendering of Amba that is merely actualized through her
transaction with the yaksa. Amba can now no longer be
92 Goldman1978:338-40.
93 MBh 5.170-77.
GOLDMAN: Transsexualism,
monks and mystics? How are we to explain this endless fascination with the idea of a man's turning into a
woman in a profoundly patriarchal culture where both
literary and religious documents, as well as deeply
ingrained social usage, so frequently reflect the most
radical misogyny? In order to begin to answer these
questions, it will be helpful to recapitulate briefly.
Clearly a number of powerful and closely interrelated
concerns run through much of this material. One is the
frequent portrayal, in plain or disguised form, of a man
confronted with the sexual activity of a powerful couple
and/or the looming presence of a dominant and potentially malevolent male. In one of the oldest surviving and
most widely distributed complexes of tales animated by
this theme, the story of Ila/Ila, there are repeated and
sometimes quite explicit references to the most primal of
primal scenes, the lovemaking of the parents of the entire universe.96 As indicated above, the king inadvertently stumbles into the trysting spot of Siva and Parvati
and therefore must be punished by his "father," the
rightful "owner" of the mother's body.97 The nature of
96
393
the goddess naked. She leaps up from Siva's lap to cover herself with her garment. The seers retire, after witnessing the divine couple's love play, to the ashram of Narfyana, but to
please his wife the Lord places the sexually transformative
spell upon the woods which men then tend to avoid. Ila falls in
love with Budha and bears him the son Pururavas.Finally, she
remembers her family priest, Vasistha, who takes pity on her
plight and intercedes with Siva on her behalf. The god, once
propitiated,restores Sudyumna'smanhood on the familiar condition that it shall alternate with womanhood on a monthly
basis. The Gautamimdhatmyaof the Brahmapuraina(38), in
providing the origin of the Ilatirtha, gives a lengthy and complex version of the saga of Ila/Ila. According to this version the
hapless king is deliberately led into the Umavana by a yaksini
who has taken the form of a deer in order to rid her husband of
the powerful monarch who has been occupying his forest cave.
After bearing Pururavasto Budha, Ila unburdensherself of her
secret sorrow (her loss of manhood) to her son who, along with
his father, intercedes with Siva and Pfrvati. When the divine
couple is duly worshiped and propitiated, Siva tells Ila that she
may recover her lost manhood by bathing in the Gaiga. She
does so and thus is permanently restored to her original sex.
This version is interesting in that it combines the three most
common narrative motifs involving changes of sex in Indian
literature:the enchanted grove, the intercession of a yaksa, and
the immersion in a sacred pool. Compare also the version of
this story at Matsyapurana 10.43-11.14. A quite different and
somewhat enigmatic account of the transgenderism of Ila is
found at Brahmapurdna7.1-23. There Manu, having as yet not
fathered his nine sons and being desirous of obtaining one, performs an isti, making the offering to a portion of Mitravaruna.
As in the Gautamimdhatmyaversion (Brahmapurdna108), the
rite somehow produces a daughter instead of a son. Manu
names the splendid woman Ila and bids her follow him. Unwilling to contemplate such a violation of dharma, Ila goes to
the dual divinity from whose portion she was created. The gods
praise her for her virtue and promise her that she will become
a son of Manu's named Sudyumna who will carry on the lineage. She then bears Pururavasto Budha, subsequently turns
into Sudyumna, and fathers three sons. Sudyumna does not inherit his father's kingdom, because he had been a woman, but
does carry out the duties of a king in Pratisthana.He goes to
heaven, praised as one who had borne the characteristics of
both a woman and a man (stripumsor laksanair yutah). This
version makes no reference to the enchanted grove of Uma and
has none of the repeated alternation between sexes found in
many of the other versions. The historical point of this episode,
like the others, is that this enigmatic bi-gendered figure is the
common ancestor of both the Solar Line (as the son of Manu
Vaivasvata) and the LunarLine (as the wife of Budha) of kings.
A variant of this version which is largely identical in wording
occurs at Vayupurdna85.
394
the crime can be judged from the form of the punishment.98Thus we can see that the visual transgression of
Ila is regarded as the equivalent of actual Oedipal intercourse from the fact that his punishment, literal or functional castration, is very much the same as that meted out
to Indra when he seduces the venerable Brahman sage
Gautama's wife or to Pandu when he unwittingly assaults a powerful holy man engaged in the sexual possession of his wife.99 In other words, the transgression
in word, thought, gaze, or deed upon the sexual property
of the father is inevitably punished with the destruction
of that which makes the transgression possible, the
transgressor'smaleness.
But what we have here in the tales of Ila, Bhangasvana, Thera Soreyya, and other figures from ancient
mythology and, I would argue, in the biographies of
Ramakrishna, Gandhi, and Yogananda and in the behavior of the Ramanandirasiks, represents a more fully
realized and somewhat less menacing response to
the negative Oedipal castration anxiety that I have
discussed at length in another paper.'1? Here-most
clearly in the tale of Bhafigasvanaand also in the teachings of some Vaisnava groups-we see an extension of
the theme. For in actually becoming a woman, and
98 For a discussion of the
relationship between Oedipal
crimes and the specific forms of punishments administered by
curse, see Goldman 1985 and Hopkins 1932.
99 Indra's punishment varies in the different versions of this
widely distributed cautionary tale. In one, Ram 1.47.26-27, he
is literally castrated by the enraged brahman; in others, he is
subjected to what can only be seen as a highly exaggerated
version of forced sexual transformation,in that he is given not
just one set of female genitalia-like Ila or Bhafigasvana-but
a full one thousand of them all over his body. It is these organs that, in some versions, are turned into eyes after Indra's
horrified protest and so provide an explanation for his common epithet sahasrdksa, "thousand-eyed" (MBh 13.41). In
Pandu's case, as in that of Yayati, the castration or degendering is functional, the imposition of either impotence or a curse
of death as a consequence of sex. Cf. MBh 1.109.25 and
1.78.30-41. The significance of this can be seen from the fact
that this punishment is not merely to be adduced from myths
and legends but is in fact part of the prescribed retributionfor
the Oedipal sin of gurutalpagamana, or adultery with the
guru's wife, as set forth in the traditional law texts (dharmasastra). This sin, which is held to be as serious as killing a
brahman (brahmahatyd), constitutes with that crime one of
only four transgressions (mahdpataka) regarded as virtually
inexpiable. On this, see Manusmrti 11.54 and Goldman 1978:
328-29.
100Goldman 1978.
104Nanda1990:23.
105
O'Flaherty 1973: 318.
395
malehomosexual,also suggestsemasculation,
or
transvestism,
both.Fora discussionof the Jainaconstructionof gender,see
Jaini 1991: 11-13, 162-64.
107Carstairs1961: 163; Kakar1981: 79-112, 158; Nanda
1990:34-36; O'Flaherty1980:280; andSutherland1991.
396
age of six or seven. The child's response to what is represented as the sudden deprivation of a devouring and
erotized mother-love is, it is urged, a self-protective
withdrawal reinforced by the psychic construction of
women as insatiable, devouring mother figures, contact
with whom drains a man of his physical and spiritual
resources.108One resolution to the tension thus created
between incestuous desire and fear of abandonment,
this line of argument concludes, is the culturally reinforced shift, in fantasy or reality, from the male to the
female or "third"genders.
This line of reasoning is doubtless based upon both
observation of the acculturative and child-rearing practices of the Indian family and analysis of the relevant
literary, mythological, religious, and sociological materials. Indeed it may well explain at least some aspects
of the powerfully ambivalent attitude towards women
expressed in the traditional literatures of India and in
iconic form in such representations as the antipodal
renderings of the Goddess as sometimes nurturant,
beneficent, and maternal and at other times as wrathful,
bloodthirsty, and terrifying. It does not however, in my
opinion, fully explicate either this attitude or the fascination with and even yearning for the extirpation of
maleness that we have seen expressed in the mythological literature and in the writings, teachings, and actions of some Indian religious figures. For one thing,
the case studies of Bose and Kakar are, after all, case
studies. That is to say that they represent in most instances the fantasies and behavior of people who feel
themselves to be sufficiently out of harmony with their
social and cultural milieux and are sufficiently Westernized in their thinking to present themselves to a
psychoanalyst for treatment. It is risky, perhaps, to
generalize from such cases, as they probably tend to
represent the extremes rather than any norm of the society. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the fantasies these patients report are wholly syntonic with
those that can be adduced from the traditional literature
and the lives of several of the outstanding religious
figures discussed above. In my opinion, it is the omnipresent examples represented by the popular mythology and the very visible and widely known lives of
saints, mystics, and others, that serve-for the vast
majority of people-as the means of reinforcing the
acculturation carried out in the normal, as opposed to
the pathogenic, family.
It seems to me that these texts, if they are to be more
fully understood, must be read in the context of the
108Kakar1981:79-90 andCarstairs1961:158-61. See also
note 112 below.
1.79.27-29.
112It is thus thatwe may understand
the powerfulfantasy,
so frequentlyelaboratedin the variousVaisnavacontextsdiscussed above, of the devotee being "enjoyed" by the God.
314.
14 Kakar 1981: 95.
15
of the
Examples
tendencyto blamethevictimof thismale
powerstruggleor to use womenas a coverforit arenotdifficult
to findin the literatures
of India.Theclassicformulation
of the
themewouldbe, of course,theheartlesstreatment
of bothDraurerenpadiandSiti in the nationalepics andtheirinnumerable
themein whicha
derings.Morespecificwouldbe the recurrent
woman,oftenanapsaras,orderedby Indrato seducea holyman
andso preventhimfromacquiringthroughhis asceticismpower
greaterthanthatof thegodhimself,is cursedby thesage.Cf. the
storyof theapsarasRambhaas toldat Ram1.62-63.Theuseof
womenas a screenfora powerstrugglebetweenmalesis perhaps
best illustratedby the bitter and prolonged dispute between the
two majorJaina sects over the capacity of women to attainspiri-
tualliberation.Althoughthe impassioned
rhetoricof thisdebate
focusesupontheallegedcapacitiesandincapacities
of women,it
wouldappear,as I have suggestedelsewhere(Goldman1991:
xx), that what is really at stake is the Digambaraclaim that
Svetimbara monks, who like Digambara "nuns" must remain
clothed, are for that very reason ineligible for spiritualliberation.
Traditional India
397
restricted to South Asia. The simultaneous disempowerment of women and the construction of them as
agents rather than victims of such disempowerment is
an unpleasant feature of most of the societies and cultures-ancient
and modern-of
which we have knowl-
1958.
398
even practiced both castration and extirpation of the ovaand female respectivelyries on those patients-male
whose sexuality and general behavior they saw as transthe
gressing societal norms.119 Here we have-through
unusual coincidence of the father's systematization and
publication of his rigid and obsessional beliefs about
child rearing and the son's insistence on publishing the
119That
Flechsig actually advocated and even practiced what
he called "castration,"at least in the case of female patients, is
clear from one of his own articles, "Zur gynaekologischen Behandlung der Hysterie" (On the gynecological treatment of
hysteria), published in Neurologisches Centralblatt 1884,
3:457-69 and quoted in Niederland 1968. Further,in an autobiographical essay (P. Flechsig, Meine myelogenetische Hirnlehre [mit biographischer Einleitung] [Berlin: Verlag von
Julius Springer, 1927]) quoted in Masson's unpublished piece,
Flechsig returns to a discussion of the outcomes of this procedure in various kinds of cases. For all references concerning
Schreber and his father, I am indebted to the scholarship and
unstinting generosity of Dr. Jeffrey Masson.
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