Gender in Indian Mythology
Gender - Ethnicity - Mythology
Arya Girish - AU190030
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fig 1: The Aryans in India
Fig 2: The Gods and Asuras engaged in a mythological event called Samudra Manthana
INDIAN MYTHOLOGY
INDIAN MYTHOLOGY
Indian mythology, like the country itself is vast and diverse. It includes Hindu mythology, Meitei mythology, mythology of Jainism, Buddhist mythology, mythology of Sikhism etc. This exploration focuses on Hindu mythology and the Gods and Goddesses that are a part of it, which is very vast in itself. It is one of the oldest religions of the world and over 3000 years has gathered holy stories and heroic epics to make up its mythology. The thousands of Gods, Goddesses and Asuras originated when the Aryans migrated to India from the Northwest and brought along mythic traditions which when merged with Indian culture and people became increasingly complex. The whole array of figures and 1000s of tales give rise to many topics of discussion. Here, we take a look at gender in Hindu mythology with a focus on gender identities.
Fig 3 and 4: Illustrations of the Mahabharata, an important scripture in Hinduism
Fig 5 and 6: illustrations of the Ramayana, another important scripture in Hinduism
Gender Identities in Hindu Mythology
Gender Identities in Hindu Mythology
Growing up we watched a number of movies and television shows that followed mythological storylines. The wide range of heroic, romantic and moral tales fascinated children and adults alike. Characters like Shikhandi, Aravan and Chudala are household names when it comes to mythology, right? No? Never heard of these characters? Are they not a part of mythology or did they not do something heroic enough to be a part of the tv shows? These 'unknown' characters were mostly overlooked because their stories were queer stories, making it easier for some of our elders to say that there are only 2 genders who are supposed to be attracted to each other and anything else is just a phase. Due to this, many of us are unaware of the existence of queerness in Hindu mythology and the unique Indian ways of making sense of queerness. Here are a few queer characters and their stories.
Aravan and Mohini
Aravan and Mohini
At some point in the Mahabharata, a human sacrifice was required and Aravan volunteered to be the one being sacrificed. he requested that he be married before it so that he could be entitled to a proper funeral with a cremation and other traditions. No woman was ready to marry him because they would be a widow the very next day. So, lord Krishna takes his female form, Mohini and marries Aravan, spends the night with him and mourns him the next day after he is sacrificed.
Many consider Aravan to be the origin of the third gender. He is considered to be the patron God of a number of transgender communities. The transgenders are considered to be the brides of Aravan and have a whole festival where they reenact Aravan and Mohini's marriage.
The idea of Krishna and Vishnu taking a female form is very common and Lord Krishna is also known to be in touch with his feminine side, the nose ring, hair plaits and the red alta for instance. This story only exists in some versions of the Mahabharata, particularly in the Tamil version.
Chudala
Chudala
Chudala was the Queen to King Shikhidvaja who decides that he wants to become a hermit and goes away to live in a forest. Chudala wants her husband back, so, she decides to take the form of Kumbakha, a man and lives with the King imparting words of wisdom with respect to being a sage in society. Kumbakha then lies that he was cursed to be a woman every night to test whether the King would give in to his desires and sleep with his female form, Madanika. He doesn't. Madanika then asks him to help her know the pleasures that a woman feels and the King gives in. During the day he listens to Kumbakha's wise words and at night he would dispassionately sleep with Madanika. As a final test Chudala creates an illusion of Madanika making love to a stranger to see if it affects the King. The king seems unbothered and apologizes for walking in. Chudala then reveals herself and the King realizes that he had been refusing to listen to his wife just because she was a woman and accepted the same wisdom when it came from a man.
The idea of bisexuality is explored here along with the change of genders. The king doesn't mind having sex with Kumbakha who has turned into a woman, however, still has the mind of a man. The King used to see men in intellectual terms and women in sexual terms, but then he starts seeing women in intellectual terms. So, maybe we can assume that he sees men in sexual terms as well.
Shikhandi
Shikhandi
Born as Amba and rejected by Bhishma for marriage, she prayed with great desire to be the cause of his death. Reborn as Shikhandini but raised like a man (Shikhandi) and trained in warfare, she got married but was insulted by her wife. She fled the place and came back as a man after a yaksha exchanged his sex with her. He was a part of the battle of Kurukshetra and was recognized as Amba by Bhishma who refused to fight a woman and lowered his weapons. Due to this, Arjun who hid behind Shikhandi was able to kill Bhishma. Without Shikhandi, killing the invincible Bhishma was impossible.
Shikhandi is what we would call today a female to male transsexual. In the retellings of the Mahabharata, she is defined with different terms like a eunuch or an intersexed hermaphrodite.
Urvashi
Urvashi
Two hermit warriors named Nara and Narayana would go about killing asuras. Indira, the King of the Devas feared their powers and sent some apsaras to seduce them. Seeing this Narayana drew a very beautiful image of a woman on his thigh with the stalk of a mango leaf. A nymph came to life out of Narayana's drawing on his thigh. Hence, Urvashi is a nymph who emerged out of a man's thigh.
The concept of men delivering children from their thighs is apparently a recurring motif in mythology. The question here is who are Narayana and Nara? Will they be considered as two fathers? How did Narayana manage to bring life into the world when scientifically (for now) only women (or a human with a uterus) are capable of doing so.
Ardhanarishvara
Ardhanarishvara
There are different stories of how this figure came into existence in mythology. One involves Brahma and his need for female powers to procreate. Another one involves the river Ganga who gets caught in Lord Shiva's hair and hence, Goddess Parvati is upset. Lord Shiva embraces her until they merge into one in order to placate her. The third story involves a devotee of Lord Shiva named Bhrungi who refused to worship Goddess Parvati. Hence to teach the devotee a lesson she merges with her Husband so that the devotee would have no choice but to go around both of them and offer his prayers. Another story tells that once they were married Goddess Parvati wanted to experience the state he was in within himself. Lord Shiva asks her to come sit on his lap and they merge together.
This is supposed to represent the existence of masculine and feminine qualities within one. However this also raises questions about the figure like is Ardhanarishvara bigender or a hermaphrodite?
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
As we see in these examples and many others that exist, gender and sexuality kind of overlap in these mythological stories. These stories are open ended when it comes to discussions of gender and sexuality as it is difficult to definitely point out who is what. Urvashi's story for example, do we consider Nara and Narayana to be gay? If yes, how did Urvashi come to existence? Does Narayana have female sex organs to create life? Or is he just that magical to conjure a beautiful woman out of his thigh? These are interpretative and so, even though we did start the discussion with just gender identity in mind, sexuality also comes into play in many of these.
Devdutt Pattanaik is a mythologist and his book "Shikhandi and Other Queer Tales They Don't Tell You' delves into many more stories that explore gender and sexuality in Indian mythology. The video below is one where he talks about gender fluidity in Indian mythology including how we interpret a relationship between two figures of mythology to be either romantic or platonic is up to us. Based on our interpretations our conclusions about their gender and sexuality might also vary and it will always be a guess because there is no way of exactly knowing who's what.
Works Cited
Chowdhury, Sanchita. “The Tragic Story of Aravan: Origin of the Third Gender.” Https://Www.Boldsky.Com, Boldsky, 19 Jan. 2015, https://www.boldsky.com/yoga-spirituality/anecdotes/2015/tragic-story-of-aravan-origin-of-the-third-gender-060821.html.
DevduttMyth. Gender Fluidity in Indian Mythology. Youtube, 6 Mar. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnxmN7-vWLY.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, et al. “Hinduism and Mythology.” Encyclopedia.Com, https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/hinduism-and-mythology. Accessed 23 June 2022.
Pattanaik, Devdutt. Shikhandi: And Other Tales They Don’t Tell You. Penguin Zubaan, 2014.
Tentaran. “Story of Ardhanarishvara.” Latest News, 27 July 2020, https://www.tentaran.com/story-of-ardhanarishvara/.
Arya Girish
AU190030
Representation of Gender and Sexuality in Literature
Sem 6
ary001@chowgules.ac.in
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