| Abstract
|
:
|
This study includes texts by six women: Karaikkāl Ammayar (seventh century from Tamil Nadu), Antal (eighth century; Tamil Nadu), Mahadevi Akka (twelfth century, Karnataka), Lalla Ded (fourteenth century, Kashmir), Mirabai (sixteenth century, Rajasthan), and Bahinā Bai (seventeenth century, Maharastra). These six Hindu women saints from 700-1700 CE left behind an oral tradition and a legacy of bhakti, devotional poetry. These poems reflect philosophical ideations that offered philosophical truths. This is a both a religious studies and a women's studies dissertation. I will be combining the religious studies' methodologies of exegesis of text and hermeneutics of text, with the women's studies in religion methodology of close description of the subjective message, using empathy and close listening to the spiritual subjectivity of the women. Philosophically, the six women offer myriad insights regarding divinity. I have focused on their attitudes towards how to live; their ideas of the self, including the use of their bodies as tools for spiritual growth; their sense of placement within the phenomenal and metaphysical realms; and their theological ideas. It is evident that these educated women were philosophers; they took philosophical systems that had been established at the beginning of the Common Era and presented them to their devotees in an accessible manner so that their devotees could utilize them in their own religious traditions. These six Hindu female saints were key teachers who served as religious leaders. They were important links in a conduit from other philosophers who established philosophical schools to the people who delighted in the women's exegetic processes. Oral tradition in the local languages saved their work for posterity, passing it from generation to generation. The varieties of religious traditions depicted include Śaivite and Vaisnavite, as well as local manifestations of these two personal deities. Lalla Ded represents the union of the great Goddess and great God. Since these women lived in peripheral areas of India, and they lived in a wide variety of time periods, they exhibit much of the strength of the vernacular tradition for which Hinduism is well known.
|