Abstract
In line with the special issue’s focus on material religion and ritualistic objects, this article focuses on the multi-sensory prayers that certain groups of Hindu women craft in cow dung at the doorstep of their residences during Divali. This yearly ritual of kneading and praying with cow dung is known as the Govardhan puja (worship of Mount Govardhan). It is generally said to be the worship of the popular cowherd god Krishna and the natural environment he inhabits. Ethnographic research into the multiple meaningful layers of women’s cow dung sculptures in the rural villages nearby Udaipur (Rajasthan) reveals the ritual is more than that. The cow dung sculptures not only reflect Krishna’s body and sacred landscape but also the local environment women share with families, animals and (other) gods. Therefore, the article seeks to answer the following questions: how are women’s cow dung sculptures built up as ritual objects, what different images are expressed in them, and what do these images reveal about women’s intimate and gendered connections with their human and non-human environment? To answer these questions the article focuses on the iconography of women’s sculptures, the performance of the ritual, and the doorstep as the location where women’s beautification of the cow dung takes place.
Highlights
On the fourth day of the annual Hindu festival Divali, women of the land- and cattle owning castes in the rural villages near Udaipur city in southern Rajasthan knead two-dimensional sacred sculptures out of large quantities of fresh cow dung (Figure 1)
I found the most detailed elaboration of women’s cow dung sculpturing in Raheja (1988) work on rituals of gift-giving and intercaste relationships in a rural village in north-western Uttar Pradesh. She describes a ritual called godhan takkarpurat which she analyses in the context of Divali, the sugar cane harvest, and people’s crucial relationship with cattle. She notes a link with the Govardhan myth and observes women doing the ritual in the cattle pen and placing small figurines of cow dung into the takkarpurat
Govardhan is jointly made by the married women of a patrilineal family who together enjoy the artistic process of beautifying the cow dung
Summary
On the fourth day of the annual Hindu festival Divali, women of the land- and cattle owning castes in the rural villages near Udaipur city in southern Rajasthan knead two-dimensional sacred sculptures out of large quantities of fresh cow dung (gobar) (Figure 1). Such a gender divide resonates in the literature on Govardhan puja in Braj This may be the outcome of local research on gendered divisions of tasks and responsibilities in private and public spaces in the 1980s and 1990s, it may reflect dominant (traditional) western and (priestly) male assumptions about Hindu women’s confinement to the home. Women’s Govardhan puja in rural Udaipur today, in both its public location and its outward orientation towards the natural environment, allows a gender perspective that goes beyond women’s domestic domain and values the vital contributions women make to the rural economy and the sustenance of the environment that humans and non-humans share It reveals a gendered view of the human–nature relationships that is part of women’s cosmology. In addition to the iconographic layers and before turning to the conclusion I will add to the analysis two more dimensions by describing the performance and the ritual space
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