Of Gender and Vedanta
KAlidAsa, the famous Sanskrit poet, starts his epic Raghuvamsa with the customary invocation of the favorite deity, who in his case, are the couple Siva and PArvati. He gives a simile to illustrate how inseparable they are: the simile of vAk and artha i.e. the word and its meaning. Just as the word cannot be separated from its meaning, so is the divine couple, according to the poet. In Sanskrit the word ‘vAk’ is feminine and ‘artha’ is masculine. Artha is the essence which comes first and vAk, the word follows. Without the essence there is no word, and without word, the essence cannot manifest itself. Content requires a form to express itself. So is the case of God who has to manifest himself through his power, (sakti, female, in Sanskrit). What better simile can be thought of to explain the unity of the divine pair, or to explain the phenomenal world itself, which is the handiwork of the male substratum and the female ability to manifest?
As a student of Sanskrit, I have several times wondered about gender and the way in which it is associated with certain concepts in philosophy or mythology. In Sanskrit, gender of a word is not immediately known as in English or in other languages, it is known only after some experience with the language. In English, gender is usually a biologically distinguishable thing. Males in all species can be called as ‘he’ and females in all species can be called as ‘she’, and all other inanimate things or abstract nouns are in the neuter gender. The word ‘power’ is neuter in English, but its equivalent, shakti is feminine. ‘Language’ is neuter, its equivalents bhAsha, vAni, vAk and so on are feminine. Gods are all males, but their powers are females, and the Supreme reality is neither male nor female, nor hermaphrodite, but simply neuter gender, na strI, na pumAn, na shandah, says Vishnu bhAgavata explicitly.
God Shiva cannot move a blade of grass if not associated with Shakti, his consort, says the opening line of Soundaryalahari, a long hymn by Shankara in praise of the goddess Shakti. It is surprising that all powers associated with all gods are in feminine gender. Saraswati, the goddess/power of speech, creation, invention etc. is the wife of BrahmA, the creator. (This BrahmA in masc. gender is different from Brahman/brahma, which is in neuter gender). Lakshmi the goddess/power of prosperity, abundance, wealth etc. is the consort of Vishnu, the sustainer of creation. Similarly, Durga,Kali, Shakti etc. are the names of the consort of Shiva, the god of laya or assimilation/dissolution (so as to facilitate new creation). Durga is also the goddess of raw power, worshipped by kings whenever they went on expeditions to conquer. It is as though all the female deities are powerful and the male deities are dependent on the females. The three powers – knowledge, wealth, and raw power are discussed by Alvin Toffler in ‘Power Shift’ in equal importance, of course, without mentioning the Sanskrit names for them.
Curiously, each and every letter in Sanskrit alphabet represents either a god or goddess, denoting some power or quality. There is one version that all vowels represent the female and all consonants represent the male aspects of the ArdhanArIswara, the half-man-half-woman representation of Lord Shiva. The vowels are called prAnas, or the life force, without which the consonants cannot give any meaning. People learned in the occult sciences (mantra sAstra) have written much about the alphabet and what they represent.
The well known couplet in praise of a guru runs as follows:
gururbhahmA gururvishnuh gururdevOmaheswarah,
gurussakshAt param brahma tasmai srI guravE namah.
I deem my guru as BrahmA, Vishnu, Maheswara(Shiva) and the Supreme Brahma, and bow to him, says the disciple. The ‘BrahmA’ (masc.) mentioned in the first line is the consort of the goddess denoting creativity and ‘Brahma’ (in neuter gender) in the second line is what we discuss in the Vedanta as the Supreme Reality. The Supreme Brahma is over and above the trinity (representing creation, sustenance, and dissolution) and referred to as ‘It’. The Brahma has no doership, or kartritwa.
Other terms used in Vedanta are equally interesting. The four words used for antahkarana(the ‘mind’ in general) are:
Manah, the receiver of sensory impressions, (neuter),
Buddhi, the identifying faculty of the mind, (fem),
ahamkAra, the ‘I’ feeling, (masculine),
chittam, the discriminating and understanding faculty,(neuter).
Manah is a mere tabula rasa and hence it is in the neuter gender whereas buddhi is a sort of power and hence it is in the feminine. The ‘I’ feeling is naturally masculine, and again the chittam is treated as a neutral faculty.
The word manas is, however, commonly used to denote all the above four faculties. This is the instrument either for release or for bondage. The target to be achieved, i.e. the brahma and all other equivalents of ‘brahma’ (like ‘satyam, jnanam,anantam)are in the neuter gender. The word, Atma, however, is in masculine, as it also refers to jiva, the human being.
The emergence of created world from the neuter brahma is through the power of maya or avidya, both of which are in the feminine. Avidya is not total ignorance or dullness but it is a type of brilliant misunderstanding, mistaking one for the other. Ajnanam is in the neuter as it is mainly the antonym of jnanam.
The Sankhya world view also envisaged prakriti, the female creative power, and the male purusha, the enjoyer. In fact, they give the example of a dancer- prakriti her dances way to create the universe.
In the puranic tradition, the names are in all the three genders, particularly for the female deities when the deity is worshipped as the Supreme. In the commentary on the Lalita names, the commentator quotes the sloka:
pumrUpam vA smarEd dEvIm, strI rUpam vA vichintayet,
athavA nishkalam dhyAyEt sachhidAnanda lakshaNam.
One can visualize the goddess in any gender, as she is worshipped as the Supreme reality. In all visual representations of Lalita (another name for the consort of Shiva), she is seen sitting on Shiva, meaning that avidya or maya has the Supreme reality as the substratum.
Bhartrihari, the well known grammarian-philosopher (5th cent.AD?) calls grammar as the finest of tapas of Brahma- tapasAm uttamam tapah. In his philosophy the ‘Word’ or sabda is Brahma, (sabda-brahma-vAda). Grammar is accepted as one of the Vedangas, i.e. an important component of Vedas by all systems of philosophy in India.
Evolution of language depends normally on the people and not on linguists or spiritualists, but in the Vedic tradition it is intriguing to see a great design to integrate language with philosophy. It looks as though language was developed or oriented for spiritual quest. I do not know whether parallels exist in other Indo-European languages in the good old days of gods and goddesses. Probably a grammarian-philosopher only can throw light on this.
All these saktis or powers are, of course, on the upasana plane only (which is a preparatory stage for knowledge) and not on the plane of ultimate knowledge.
