Religion and Protection

Because a Rajput wife's ambition is to avoid becoming a widow, the religious practices a Rajput woman performs have everything to do with being a good wife, which is to say, a good husband-protector. The word women use to describe this ideal is pativrata , meaning "one who has taken a vow (vrat ) to [protect] her husband (pati )." Sometimes they employ this word loosely to refer to any wife. But even in this generic sense it has an ideological nuance, for it implies a conception of how a wife should behave and of the consequences her behavior will bring.

A wife becomes a good wife, a true pativrata , by selflessly serving her husband and his family. This service includes attending to ritual and other religious responsibilities. Each household has its specific constellation of religious deities to whom household members, including women, owe devotion. They express this devotion in a number of ways.

Among these is the performance of vrats , the vows that entail fasting. Many unmarried girls keep a fast on Monday in order to please Shiv; many married women also keep this vrat in order to gain Shiv's protective blessing in their attempts to live as good wives. In addition to the Shiv vrat there are six other weekly vows, which makes one for every day of the week. Deciding which vow or vows to perform is generally a matter of personal preference. Except for the Monday vrat , Rajput women show little continuity in the weekly vows they keep. The same is true of fortnightly vrats , the vows coinciding with the full and new moons.

Besides weekly and fortnightly vrats there are annual vows, which accompany many major festivals. The two that have the largest following among women I interviewed are the Navratri vow and the Dashamata vow. Nearly all Rajput women perform Navratri Vrat. The reason they most often give is that Navratri is really the Rajput holiday—it commemorates a great military victory. Navratri celebrates the conquest by the warrior goddess Durga over an army of demons.^[55] Thus a

[55] The Navratri (Nine Nights) observance culminates in a celebration of Dashara (the Tenth), which commemorates Ram's victory over Ravana, the villain of the well-known epic, the Ramayan . On this day Rajputs worship their weapons and horses. Formerly (and in some places today) this veneration (puja ) combined with a goat sacrifice.

Rajput woman performs the Navratri vow not simply because she is a woman but also because she is a Rajput.

The second vow, which a great many of the women in my survey mentioned, is predominantly practiced by women living in Mewar. This is Dashamata Vrat. Dashamata, whose name means "Mother of Fate," is worshiped by keeping a fast, by tying on a string necklace, and by reciting ten stories.^[56] Rajput women do not conceive of Dashamata Vrat as an exclusively Rajput vow. Rather, they see it as a vow that Rajput women should perform because the Rajputs are a high caste and all high-caste women should perform it. Yet there is an implicit connection between Dashamata and the Rajput community: to the string necklaces that the vow requires women to wear, Rajput wives in this area affix their kul goddess pendants (palas ). The avowed purpose of this vrat is to preserve a husband's health, which will be strong as long as his wife's necklace is unbroken. Each year after marriage, the wife replaces the string with a new one, thus renewing the strength of her commitment to the marriage. If the string breaks in midyear, she must replace it immediately in a special ritual.

These two vrats are characteristic of the vows women perform. They all stress the welfare of the husband, which must always rank first among a woman's concerns. A distinguished noblewoman most succinctly summed up this attitude: "One has many children but only one husband. My first allegiance must therefore be to him." I heard many variations on this theme. The point is not that children are not precious but rather that no other commitment rivals a woman's devotion to her husband.

Apart from vrats , Rajput women perform four major forms of regular religious devotion. The first is a regular honoring of the household deities, which is done both by women and by men. This is called dhok dena , the "giving (dena ) of respect or prostration (dhok )." One shows respect by entering a temple or stopping at a shrine and then bowing to an image with palms joined. For the most part it is a voluntary and spontaneous matter. Some occasions, however, require a formal giving of respect. One must show respect to kuldevis and satis when one leaves for or returns from a major trip.^[57] In this way one asks for protection during a journey and shows gratitude for a safe return. Second, one must show respect when one reaches the life thresholds represented by

[56] Some connect Dashamata's name with the fact that ten (das ) stories are recited.

[57] Often women who are strict about parda will perform dhok from inside their automobile when there are nonfamily members at the shrine site.

rites of passage.^[58] Families vary, however, in their determination of who must give dhok and when. All households require a groom to give this respect to his family's sati, kuldevis , and perhaps other divine beings when he marries. The households also require a bride to do the same when she arrives at her new home. Some households require the bride to show respect before she leaves her natal home and its various protective deities. All households require an act of respect to their deities at the birth of a boy; some also require it at the birth of a girl. Finally, some families give dhok in conjunction with their children's first hair-cutting ceremonies.^[59]

The next major form of religious ritual is the ratijaga (night wake). Ratijagas are usually organized and performed by women, who are supposed to spend an entire night singing songs to honor the various deities and spirits dear to the household. Sometimes Rajput women actually do stay up all night singing, but often they delegate this task to servants and village women, whom they pay. Two figures who always appear in the lists of songs sung by families are the kuldevi and the sati . Others so honored may include various Bherus (local manifestations of the Sanskritic deity Bhairava; attendants of kuldevis and other goddesses; see fig. 19), pitr s and pitrani s (male and female ancestors), and jhumjhar s (warriors who died violent deaths but continued fighting after death to exact revenge).^[60] The ratijaga is performed in conjunction with the same ceremonies during which dhok is given, except the hair-cutting ceremony.^[61]

Another shared form of religious observance is puja , a more elaborate and less spontaneous form of worship than dhok .^[62] Performing

[58] Dhok is not given in conjunction with funeral ceremonies, which are inauspicious occasions.

[59] A child's first hair-cutting customarily occurs at a particular temple, often at a goddess temple. The University of Wisconsin film, An Indian Pilgrimage: Ramdevra (1977), has an excellent depiction of tonsure.

[60] A queen (thakurani ) from a Solah Thikana gave me a list of the songs that her family performs in the ratijagas and names of those to whom they are dedicated: (1) Mata Ji; (2) Ekling Ji; (3) Kuldevi; (4) Bheru; (5) the purvajs (ancestors); (6) Satimata; (7) the jhumjhar s (beheaded heroes); (8) memhdi (red clay with which women dye their hands and feet); (9) jhajham (the carpet ridden by gods and goddesses); (10) the purvaj s (again); (11) Satimata (again); (12) Kuldevi (again); (13) Bheru (again); (14) the jhumjhar s (again); (15) kukaro (the cock, who announces daybreak); (16) prabhat (dawn).

[61] Komal Kothari identifies the ratijaga with the jagran , which, he says, is performed with birth and marriage celebrations as well as with ceremonies for death, house building, land purchasing, and well digging ("Epics of Rajasthan" [paper presented at the Conference on Oral Epics, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, July 1982], 5).

[62] On puja , see Diana Eck, Darsán (Chambersburg, Pa.: Anima Books, 1981); and Norman Cutler and Joanne Punzo Waghorne, eds., Gods of Flesh, Gods of Stone (Chambersburg, Pa.: Anima Books, 1985).

puja , a devotee offers a divinity flowers, lamps, incense, or other pleasing substances, including food, and in return receives the divinity's blessing, which is represented by the prasad (leftovers) that the divinity gives back. On this basic level this puja resembles puja done in many other places in India, with perhaps one exception. As mentioned before, Rajput women tend to do almost all their puja at home. Because Rajput women maintain some form of parda , they do not like to enter local public temples. Sometimes they send servants to give offerings in such temples, but they tend to think it immodest and undignified to go themselves. Generally Rajput men also worship in their own homes. Their ancestors built temples within their estate palaces, so if men want to perform puja , they can do so there. These temples were mostly in the mardana , which meant that in former times women could not usually worship there. Today, however, because of the breakdown of intrahousehold parda , many women do worship in the mardana .

Members of the family perform puja for all the supernatural beings they worship. Among these are kuldevi s and satimata s as well as various ishtadevta s. Ishtadevta , a catchall term for divinities that do not easily fit into other categories, literally means "chosen (ishta ) deity (devta )." The nomenclature can be misleading. Some ishtadevta s are selected by individuals who feel a rapport with them, and others are passed down through generations as deities requiring worship. They are thus "chosen" by the family, not by the individual.^[63] In addition to worshiping such a family ishtadevta , however, the individual may worship other deities of his or her own pleasing.^[64] A woman's options have an inherent limit: the deities she chooses must not draw her attention away from the deities worshiped by her conjugal family. Any natal deities she wishes to import may be thought competitive. If competition is perceived, a dutiful wife must abandon her personal ishtadevtas .

Finally there is the bolma , a vow that is usually connected with pilgrimage. Unlike the highly ritualized calendrical vrats, bolmas are infor-

[63] A good example is Ekling Ji (a form of Shiv), chosen by Mewar's legendary founder, Bappa Rawal. As the ishtadevta for the ruling family, Shiv may be referred to as a kuldevta . Here, kuldevta is synonymous with ishtadevta ; Rajputs have no male deity to correspond to the female deity, kuldevi , which all Rajputs must have. When I first asked Rajputs about kuldevtas , the typical response was a look of incomprehension or condescension followed by a remark such as "You must mean our kuldevi " or "You must mean our ishtadevta ." In other Indian communities the term kuldevta (or some linguistic variant of it) is used in quite different ways—and often, very loosely—to designate various relationships between deities and kinship groups. For examples, see Hiltebeitel, Cult of Draupadi ; Tarabout, Sacrifier ; Meyer, Ankalaparmecuvari ; Roghair, Epic of Palnadu ; Bennett, Dangerous Wives ; and Beck, Three Twins .

[64] Ishtadevtas are often local forms of Shiv, Krishna, and Durga.

mal and personal promises made by individuals to deities. Besieged by problems, people resolve to do something that a deity desires, such as going on a pilgrimage to the deity's shrine and making certain offerings there.^[65] They hope that in return the deity will assist them.^[66]

Typically the bolma is made by a woman, who speaks on her own behalf or on behalf of her family, but a man can make a bolma if he wishes. The recipient of the bolma may be a deity whose image resides within the household or some other less familiar deity. In either case the bolma may require a pilgrimage to a special shrine dedicated to the deity. Among the women I interviewed in Mewar, I found some who had recently made bolmas to Avri Mata (whose temple is near Chitor, a former capital of Mewar), to Ram Dev (whose shrine is near Jaisalmer), and to Karni Mata (situated near Bikaner). They say that when the crises precipitating the bolma disappear, they will have to journey to these deities' primary temples. Whereas in some cases the pilgrimage itself will fulfill the bolma , in others the individuals have promised to perform special rituals.

Pilgrimage, as might be expected, is not something that noblewomen undertake freely. It means temporarily relaxing, if not abandoning, parda . When noblewomen do undertake pilgrimages to fulfill their bolmas , they adopt the kind of "when in Rome" posture already mentioned. They can be comfortable in public because they are far from home and their identities are unknown.

With this cursory sketch of religious tradition as background, it is possible to compare the separate modes of authority that inform men's and women's interpretations of their religiously articulated and sanctioned duties.