When I arrived in Sansika I headed straight for the ruins of the first Buddhist stupa, a small mound made of stone and brick, which according to the legends was built on this place to commemorate Buddha’s descending on the earth right after his physical death to spread his new philosophy among the common people. 6th century BC was a period of human intellectual endeavor and progress in different geographical areas. This is the era of the pre-Socratic philosophers in Greece, Confucius in China, the Zoroaster in Persia, Jeremiah in Judah, etc. During this time Siddhartha, called Buddha, and Vardhamana, called Mahavira or Jina, were born in India, the founders of new reforming ideologies – Buddhism and Jainism. These two schools originated in very similar philosophical and social contexts and for that reason they shared common features and postulates. Both men renounced the Brahmanical tradition of purification through bathing in sacred waters, of exoneration of sin through pilgrimage, worshipping deities and the need to appease them, and the reverence towards ascetics who could be mendacious. They rejected the dominance and privileges of the Brahmin class and its knowledge of the sacred Vedas as a source of authority. Both doctrines did not support the notion of priesthood exercised in the esoteric Vedic ritual, which was gradually growing more and more incomprehensible in its language and ritual symbolism for the common people.
According to the traditional story Prince Siddhartha grew up in a rich palace, completely sheltered from the outside world. While his mother was pregnant with him, a respected rishi had premonitions that he was going to devote his life to asceticism rather than to the throne, but his father did not want this to happen. Thus, he made sure that his son grew up always surrounded by opulence and luxury, married him off to a beautiful princess and they had a son. However this didn’t bring Siddhartha happiness and inner peace. One day, unnoticed, he sneaked out of the palace alone and encountered the outside world for the first time. For the first time he saw a feeble man suffering from old age, the next day he encountered a frail man incapacitated from disease, then he watched a procession carrying a dead person, and the fourth day he came across a peaceful ascetic mendicant. Siddhartha realized how much inevitable pain and suffering there existed in the world and that was when he decided to seek wisdom and peace, kissed his wife and child good-bye, and secretly left the palace. For six years he lived in the mountains and subjected himself to severe ascetic self-penance, but none of it brought him the wisdom he sought. Then he went to the plains searching for the truth about the world through a different path. He sat under a tree and when he was able to concentrate, overcoming his emotions, desires and senses, he became a Buddha, i.e. enlightened. He discovered the middle path towards awakening and understood the four noble truths, which he formulated in his first sermon, namely that suffering was universal and inevitable, that suffering was caused by desire and the lack of understanding of reality, that there was a way to overcome ignorance and suffering, and that this was achievable through the eightfold path – righteous sight, thought, speech, action, life, effort, inner state and concentration. This was the core meaning of the dharma doctrine, namely the ultimate approach to improving the quality of life through detachment toward earthly possessions, which in essence are momentary, and developing an ability to attain inner harmony independently of the outer changes and material achievements. By practicing discipline and self-control, by following dharma, the individual could reach nirvana, the absolute state of existence where there is no greed, hate and delusion.
Buddhism in its origin is an agnostic school of thought, characterized by skepticism vis-à-vis the existence of god and by moral constructs about righteous behavior independent of the idea of god. Buddhist philosophy is based on rational exploration, logic, and epistemology as well as the search for knowledge which leads the individual towards spiritual and intellectual progress. It does not attempt to solve metaphysical puzzles that cannot be proved, such as what absolute and individual reality is, or eternity and temporariness, or whether there is an omnipresent god, etc. It emphasizes that the process of practice and its results are related to changes in the worldview and the life of the individual. Because of its principles whose objective is the development of personal ethics and moral conscience independent of the concept of god and creation, on the one hand, and, on the other, may be because it is the least gender discriminating religion, Buddhism even today continues to attract new followers all over the world9.
According to the legends, here in Sankisa, Buddha, accompanied by Brahma and Indra, descended from heaven to earth to spread his new ideas. The fact that he appeared in the company of Hindu gods indicates the relation between the two doctrines, on the one hand, and on the other, it exhibits an idiosyncrasy of Hinduism, its adaptability, flexibility and inclusiveness. The latter was not brought about by one person, such as Buddha, Jina, Moses, Confucius, Jesus or Mohammad. Hinduism developed gradually as a complex and diverse system for centuries in response to new and old beliefs, notions, cults and practices10. Even its name is the product of interaction with foreign invaders and it did not have to change. When around the 8th century Muslim invaders crossed Indus, a river called Sindhu by the locals and pronounced Hindu by them, used that name to signify the people living east of the river. This name was actually never used by the local people to signify any homogeneous or unified community, because they had a large variety of beliefs and practices. Later on this name was adopted by them to signify their difference from others rather than similarity inside the community and, eventually, ideological, religious and political meanings were added11.
Interestingly, many followers of Hinduism believe that Buddha was a reincarnation of the god Vishnu and this different set of ideas is not perceived as competitive or contradicting vis-à-vis the orthodox tradition, but rather as an expansion or deviation. Buddhism was dominant only for a certain period of time in India. It slowly moved out of India and was adopted by neighboring civilizations until it eventually reached the Far East. A few centuries later Christianity arrived in the subcontinent and although conversions took place on a large scale, it was unsuccessful in growing deep roots in the subcontinent; Jesus became another form of Vishnu. Nowadays, however, after the Tibetan Uprising in 1959, India is home to the Dalai Lama. Along with many Tibetan refugees, he resides in Dharmashala, Himachal Pradesh, which with the support of the Indian government has gradually turned into the most important administrative and cultural center of the Tibetan community and the Tibetan government in exile.
The stupa that I had come to visit looked like a mound of brickwork in the middle of huge grassland. Buddha’s followers believe that here the Great Teacher set foot on earth and that it is one of the seven stupas containing his remains. Unfortunately, through the centuries this monument has seen ruin and decay and all that is left is a mound of brick and soil covered with shrubs. The only sign that it was not just a part of the landscape was an old broken gate, covered with rust, with bent and twisted pieces of a metal net fence attached to it.
“People used to come and steal the bricks… Can you imagine…” said the guard who lived in a tent set up a few yards away under the only tree in the area. “Then fences and gates were installed several times, but they would also get stolen. Pilgrims from Japan, Korea, China, Thailand come here regularly and they want to restore the stupa, but there’s always a problem and they cannot make a deal with our government, so now I am here to guard this place and that column.”
I looked to where he was pointing and noticed a small fenced square about sixty feet away. In the middle there was a huge capital, a remnant from a column, with an elephant on the top. This was a relic from emperor Ashoka of the Maurya dynasty, circa 3rd century BC. After a series of bloody battles, he expanded his empire and it became dominant in the subcontinent and beyond. Afterwards, he accepted the peaceful philosophy and practice of Buddhism and established it as the official religion. Ashoka’s name is pronounced with a lot of pride until today, because of the size of his empire and the extent of its cultural influence. He also formulated new rules of tolerance and understanding among people of different ethnic, linguistic, religious backgrounds and the rules of rights for all including women and slaves, unlike Aristotle. As Amartya Sen has indicated, Ashoka was able to establish a multicultural model very close to the contemporary concept of global society12. He ordered a great number of pillars with inscriptions about his reforms to be placed throughout the state, many of which were found in today’s India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal. The column here struck me as unusual. The typical capitals have one or four sitting lions facing the four directions, signifying Ashoka’s might, the most representative among which, the Sarnath one, has become Indian national emblem. Instead, this pillar had an elephant capital, which most probably represented the dream that Siddhartha’s mother had at the time of conception that a white elephant, a symbol of wisdom, came to her and handed her with his trunk a lotus flower, a symbol of purity13.
I had been invited to visit a friend of mine from Kanpur, who was staying for a week in Kannauj at her sister’s place and she was going to go back home with me. So, on my way back from Sankisa I stopped in Kannauj, located in the middle of the state of Uttar Pradesh, close to the Ganges River. It used to be the capital city of the Gupta Empire between 3rd and 6th century. During this time the borders of the empire had reached today’s Pakistan and Bangladesh and the rulers from the Gupta dynasty successfully established their military and political dominance in the area. The time of their reign is known as the “golden period” during which mathematics, astronomy, literature, architecture, philosophy underwent unprecedented progress. Several notable scientific discoveries are believed to have been made during this time, such as the concept of the decimal system, zero and infinity, the idea of gravitation and that the earth has a spherical shape and that it rotates around itself and around the sun. Today, Kannauj is a trade center known for its perfume business.
The house I visited was very large and my friend, her sister and her sister’s husband, welcomed me in the spacious guest room. My friend had told me that her sister and brother-in-law were about two years older than me, but they were already grand-parents with a grand-daughter about two years old. While we talked I was seated in a comfortable armchair and the hosts sat around me. I was told that the tea was almost ready. I examined the room. There was a big bed, four armchairs all upholstered in the same greenish fabric, and a lacquered dark wood coffee table in the middle. The wall above the bed was covered with shelves all the way up to the ceiling. All sorts of objects were on display there – children’s bright colored toys and dolls, rubber ducks and stuffed elephants, some of them still in a wrapper with a ribbon, just the way they had been presented as a gift. A little girl in a red dress with a big bow in the back walked in from under the curtain separating the room from the inner courtyard. This was Urvi. She ran with her hands stretched out in front of her and jumped into the lap of her grand-father, who was sitting on the bed. She had her hair up in a small pony tail with several colorful little barrettes holding it neatly in place. She wanted to reach one of the toys on the wall, but instead her grandfather gave her his cell phone. She had learned how to push the buttons and she played some tunes on it with a happy smile on her face and from the corner of her eye she peeked secretly at me a few times to check whether I was paying attention to her. We were sipping tea and chatting about little Urvi.
In the meantime I heard water splashing in the inner courtyard and a male voice singing a religious song. Through the curtain I caught a glimpse of a naked body of a man clad only in a loincloth and a woman in a sari pouring water over him. When the ceremony in the yard was over a tall young handsome man entered the guestroom, smiling. His mother motioned for him to greet me by touching my feet, which I tried to avoid. He came and sat down next to his mother. She wanted him to talk to me. It was obvious they hey were proud of him. He got married almost three years ago and had started his own business. His father was a bank manager, but he had expressed the desire to do be involved in the extended family business, so he opened a shop for scented oils and incense sticks. He was going to take me to the shop later and while we were talking he explained to me that the kinds of scents used in their products were natural, that their oils were not perfumed, but were made from real plants, and that his incense sticks did not smoke a lot when burned because they were not just dipped in perfume oil but they were hand rolled in the powder of the actual raw material…
A short while later, his two teenage sisters showed up at the door and announced that dinner was ready and asked their mother if they should start serving the food. She gave them a nod and they placed five plates in front of us. They told me that they were not joining us and that they were going to eat with didi, their sister-in-law in the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what was going on and why I had not met her yet, so I asked the hostess. She just smiled and called her name. Parvati timidly lifted the curtain and stood at the doorway with her face covered by the loose end of her sari wrapped around the shoulder. I glimpsed two almonds-like big eyes staring at the floor. This was apparently a very traditional family, I figured, strictly observing the old custom that if the father-in-law is in the room, the daughter-in-law is required to hide her face behind the veil and be silent. Her father-in-law quietly got up and left the room. She instantly removed the veil, smiled and sat right next to me. She was breathtakingly beautiful. Parvati, the name of Shiva’s wife, had glamour like a movie star. Gorgeous light brown eyes and perfectly curved dark eye brows, silky skin and oatmeal color complexion, snow-white teeth between plump lips, hair that was thick and black. She was talkative, curious and animated. But her mother-in-law interrupted her with an abrupt hand gesture she made by turning her palm inside out and Parvati quickly disappeared. Her father-in-law came back right away, as if he was waiting behind the curtain. Husband and wife proudly told me that these were the Indian traditions and that when there was work to be done in the kitchen what business did she have being in the guestroom…
We were almost finished eating when I noticed a hand moving the curtain and saw Parvati’s smiling face. Saying I had to wash my hands, I excused myself and joined her. She made a sign to me to follow her up the stairs and we went to the roof. She pointed in one direction and said:
“Look. This is where my parents’ house is. Can you see it? With the orange border on the rooftop. See, it is in the same neighborhood. I’m so lucky that they are close. When I was a girl, maybe around thirteen-fourteen, I saw him through my window and fell in love with him. I dreamed to be chosen for his bride. And how happy was I when they came to our house and talked to my parents about me. I am really lucky, he is so nice, his business is growing and he started traveling a little and brings me presents …You know he doesn’t mind when I visit my parents and my sisters.”
Parvati asked me questions about my husband and how we met, and about my daughters, but a girl’s voice yelling “Daadii! Daadii!, which means ‘grandma’ interrupted us. It took me a while to realize, with some dismay and shock that she was calling me. I was about to turn forty, but being a friend of their grand-ma’s sister automatically made me also a grandma. I wasn’t quite the right age to be the most popular and neutral aunty.
I joined the others. We were going out, first to visit a Shiva temple and then to stop at the ruins of the huge fort built by the emperor Harsha, the last powerful ruler in the area before the Muslim invasion of the subcontinent. Everyone was waiting for me outside the house. Parvati came downstairs with me and, lowering her voice, asked me if I was going to come back after the walk as she wanted to show me her wedding album. I asked her why she was not coming with us, but she didn’t answer and just looked down sadly. Her mother-in-law then pointed to her belly and said:
“She shouldn’t go out in public in this condition.”
Then I noticed the small bump under the multiple layers of Parvati’s sari and realized that she was pregnant. They believed, as was generally thought, that keeping the mother-to-be at home guarded her and thus the fetus, from evil eyes.
I cut the walk short because I wanted to hang out more with Parvati who was really sad because she couldn’t come with us and who was waiting for me. We went to the roof again. She had brought a blanket for us. We sat down and she confirmed that it was to protect her that she was not supposed to go out. She added:
“My in-laws are so nice. They agreed to not send me to my mother’s place until the baby is born. They do that a lot around here. So I get to be with my husband the whole time. I am so lucky.”
She used the Hindi adjective subhaagii, ‘lucky’ or ‘fortunate’, several times. It made me think about the use of this word in the Rig Veda. Interestingly, the word exhibits a semantic split and has a different meaning based on the gender of the person to whom it refers. In the Wedding Hymn of the RigVeda (10.85) this word and its derivational forms are used in reference to the bride and exactly matches the meaning that Parvati was implying: ‘fortunate with a good husband’. Similarly, in another hymn (10.86) the wife of Indra calls herself ‘fortunate’ because her husband will never die from old age. However, on the other hand, when used in reference to men, the word’s meaning is defined by a different context, and it connotes ‘wealth’, ‘prosperity’, ‘protection’.
Parvati opened her wedding album. She showed me pictures of her red sari and her gold jewelry, the henna decoration on her feet and her hands. Then it was time for me to go. At the door, she handed me one of her wedding photos as a memento.
Driving back I chatted with my friend, who was a banker with two grown up daughters living in England, about Parvati and her family. I told her that I liked her a lot and that I felt bad that all of us went out for a walk without her.
“My sister and her husband are quite superstitious. Do you know that after little Urvi was born, everyone at home was distressed and worried that Parvati had not had a boy. A few months later they took her to a holy place to make offerings and pray for a son. I hope she has better luck this time…”
“Was your family always so superstitious?” I asked.
“Oh yes! But my mother and father are not so educated. I have a Ph.D. in Economics. My sister has a Master’s in Education. Everyone in this family is a college graduate … I don’t know why my sister does this. Poor Parvati! I hope this time she has a son. Otherwise who knows what they will want her to do and where they will want her to go. I have told them it’s the man whose Y chromosome determines the male sex, but they don’t believe this.”
She changed the topic:
“What about all the superstitions around menstruation. And everyone knows about it…even on the street.”
I knew that a woman was considered impure for a few days every month and that she could potentially compromise the purity of the people surrounding her. Hence in this condition she was not allowed to go to the temple, to light the lamp in the shrine at home, to eat with the rest of the family and even step into the kitchen. But I didn’t understand what she meant and so I asked for clarification
“We have a special signal,” she said, “to show that a girl is in her period, like this.” And she touched her forehead on the right side at the hairline with the tip of her fingers of her right hand.
“But when do you do this? To whom?” I had seen this for the first time.
“To inform the guests at home or at events or the friends one meets on the street why the daughter or daughter-in-law is not present or not responding to calls and questions. Older people say that in this way the woman gets a needed break from work once a month, but I am not sure I want everyone to know about this.”
I remember talking to a woman from South India, who told me that in her village when a girl got her first period she was isolated in a room for seven days, she would get her food in the room and no man was supposed to see her. When the period was over, she would get a ritual cleansing bath and the clothes she wore during this time would be burnt. Afterward she would receive presents. In that area a popular superstition among traditional people is that if a woman looks at the pots in the kitchen during her period she will get dark spots on her face.
I was wondering what they thought of me when they saw my spots which appeared on my face after my first daughter was born. I was asked many times in quite a loud voice whether I was menstruating, before I entered a kitchen or a room where food was prepared, especially at big events. I know their rules and I follow them very carefully, but how would they know this? I remember that several times women asked me when I would have another baby since in their view my husband was going to be miserable all his life with two daughters and no son. It was my duty to give him a son, according to their friendly warning, otherwise he might look for another woman and divorce me, and then it would be my fault, not his. I was often advised that if a wife did everything she was expected to, she could actually be really happy and have a loving husband. They were stunned when I shared with them that cooking was not my forte and that most of the time it was my husband who did the cooking. The women would feel pity for him and expressed regret for his bad luck in having a wife like me. They insisted on teaching me how to cook so that I could save my marriage. How could I tell them that it was my husband who would be really interested in their cooking lessons and demonstrations and that they were wasting their time trying to teach me.
A few months later Parvati delivered another daughter and the family was in despair. I hope she gets a third chance to redeem herself.
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9 See for more Life of Buddha by Ashvaghosha, transl. Patrick Olivelle, Clay Sanskrit Library, New York University, 2009. Also Williams Paul and Anthony Tribe. Buddhist Thought: A complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. New York: Routledge, 2000. About the controversy on women see Gross, Rita M. (1992). Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism. State University of New York Press and Diana Y. Paul; Frances Wilson (1985). “Traditional Views of Women”. Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in Mahāyāna Tradition. University of California Press.
10 See for more Thapar, Romila. “Communalism and the Historical Legacy”. Communalism in India: History, Politics and Culture. Ed. K. N. Pannikar. Delhi: Manohar, 1990. 23. Quoted in Zakia Pathak and Saswati Sengupta. “Resisting Women”. Women and the Hindu Right. Eds. Sarkar, Tanika and Urvashi Butalia. Delhi: Kali for Women, 1995. 288
11 See for more Stietencron, Heinrich von. Hindu Myth, Hindu History, Religion, Art, and Politics. Orient Blackswan, 2005. 227-249
12 Sen, Amartya. The Argumentative Indian. New York: Picador, 2005: p. 288
13 See for more Thapar Romila. Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 422-453