Women Saints

India is a land of holy persons (one could call them living saints) who have abandoned home and family to wander the land seeking alms to maintain themselves. Because the ideal role assigned to women is that of wife and mother there are few women saints. Yet those who have made their mark as women saints are accorded honor and even deified. Women are also accepted as yoginis (adepts at yoga), a physical and spiritual discipline from which they are believed to acquire extraordinary powers. Thus, Devi can also be manifested as woman saints, born on earth but endowed with deep spirituality and other-worldly powers.

[IMAGE: Yogini with Disciple. India, state of West Bengal, Murshidabad, 18th century. Opaque watercolor on paper. Lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum. In a peaceful remote hermitage, a disciple plays a double-gourded vina for her female guru, who listens attentively to the music with a hoga band around her knees that enables her to retain this yogic posture for long periods. A peacock-feather fly whisk, an attribute of yoginis, lies at her side. Both yoginis wear the salmon-colored robes, rudraksha beaded necklaces, and large earrings (darshani) that are characteristic of ascetics of the Nath sectarian order. The subdued colors and the sparse composition communicate effectively the peaceful atmosphere of the yoginis retreat. A sandy plain between the silver-gray river and the sky, a simple white hut, and the restrained postures of the two women further enhance the mood of tranquility. This painting was produced in the provincial court of Murshidabad, which rose to power in the eighteenth century, asserting its independence from Mughal rule in Delhi.]

Prime among women saints, from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, is Karaikkal Ammiayar who lived in the 6th century. When a young and beautiful woman, who lived in the town of Karaikkal, beseeched the god Shiva to divest her of the burden of her flesh asking only that she watch him dance into eternity, a miracle occurred. In place of the young woman stood an emaciated hag, known from henceforth as Mother of Karaikkal (Karaikkal Ammaiyar). From then on she wrote poetry in praise of Shiva.

The ground is damp with liquid marrow--
Skeletal ghouls with sunken eyes
jostle and elbow--
looking furtively around them
extinguishing the fires
with gleeful hearts
they eat half-burned corpses--
There, in that menacing forest
holding fire in his hand
dances our beautiful lord.
(Vidya Dehejia, Antal and Her Path of Love: Poems of a Woman Saint from South India, 1990)

Saint Andal, a devotee of the god Vishnu, lived in southern India around the year 800. Andal wrote poetry full of longing for Vishnu. Andal, along with Karaikkal Ammaiyar, are two of the few women saints worshiped as images in temples.

O great deep ocean,
the lord entered into you,
mixed and churned you,
deprived you of your nectar.
That lord of illusion
entered into me too,
churned me,
deprived me of my essence.
Go to the serpent who is the lord's couch,
tell him of my endless sorrow
that he may plead for me.
(Vidya Dehejia, Antal and Her Path of Love: Poems of a Woman Saint from South India, 1990)

[IMAGE: Seated Saint Karaikkal Ammaiyar. India, state of Tamil Nadu, Chola period, 12th century. Bronze. Lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Edward J. Gallagher, Jr. Bequest in memory of his father, Edward Joseph Gallagher, his mother, Ann Hay Gallagher, and his son, Edward Joseph Gallagher III, 1982. Karaikkal Ammaiyar, a woman from the merchant, or viashya, community, lived in the town of Karaikkal sometime in the sixth century. She is one of the sixty-three saints of Shiva from Tamil Nadu. When young and beautiful Punitavati beseeched Shiva to divest her of the burden of her flesh and asked only that she watch him dance into eternity, a miracle occurred. In place of the young woman there stood an emaciated hag, known henceforth as Mother of Karaikkal, or Karaikkal Ammaiyar. Karraikal Ammaiyar wrote poetry in praise of Shiva. Perhaps her description of herself as the "ghoul of Karaikkal" in the final signature verse of some of her poems was partly responsible for the often fearsome imagery resorted to by the artists. This image portrays her not as a fearsome figure but as a once-beautiful woman who has lost her flesh. Her calm, smiling face expresses her inner peace while she blissfully plays her cymbals and sings to the glory of Shiva.]

[IMAGE: Saint Andal. India, state of Tamil Nadu, Tanjavur, 20th century. Opaque watercolor and gold on textile mounted on board. Lent by a private collection. Saint Andal, a surprisingly versatile poet and devotee of Vishnu, lived in southern India around the year 800. Andal's poetry is full of the intensity of her longing for union with her chosen lord, Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu. In this image wide-eyed Andal, represented as a garlanded icon standing on a pink lotus, gestures benevolently from a temple niche, and is flanked on both sides by a Vaishnava priest (one devoted to Vishnu) in an attitude of devotion. The gold relief technique, which arose from the application of a paste of sawdust and glue before the design was modeled and gilded, was applied to a cloth surface that was made to adhere to a board pasted upon a wooden support. This image, produced for use in homes, would have hung within a garden shrine or puja room.]

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