Miming Manu: Women, Authority and Mimicry in a Tantric Context

Abstract

This paper proposes an example of mimicry as an instance of intertextuality across genres, revealing a complex social response to normative, orthodox attitudes towards women through a close analysis of two very different types of male-authored religious texts from India, Tantric texts and a particularly famous law book, Manava Dharma Śāstra. I argue that mimicry functions to undermine a normative stance towards women by appropriating and subverting the well-known verse from Manu's Law Book that states that women should not be permitted any independence from their male guardians. In this case, this verse is reformulated to reverse the meaning it originally had in Manu's Dharma Śāstra, communicating a very different attitude towards women. This Tantric subversion of Manu suggests not only that elements of legal texts impacted on non-dominant populations through imitation and circulation in circles outside of expected Brahmanical orthodoxy, but also that textual satire via appropriation of these verses may have at times offered resistance, contesting the political assertions of a normative view.