Women in Saivism

Women in Saivism

Saivism with its concept of BEING ( God) who presents Himself also as Ardhanari,  fully half-man and half-women holds within itself a view of EQUALITY between man and woman that needs to be  retold.



The Mythical Stories:


It is said that while Brahma holds KalaivaNi,  the Female of Wisdom and Scholarship in his mouth , VishNu holds Laxmi,. the Goddess of wealth and prosperity in his Heart, Siva in contrast holds Uma, as his equal half. 

The common adage goes that without Sakti there is no Siva and without Siva there is no Sakti. 

Sambantar dares to say that the Woman is also BEING ( PeN taan aaki ninRa pemmaan). Thus we can  see that for some very important reason the woman is held not only in high esteem but also given equality in Saivism.

Saivism is NOT peculiar to the South -- it is all over India and so is the image of Ardhanari and hence this view may be a pan Indian phenomenon though buried deep down by various new developments in Hinduism that have set aside such deep and metaphysically significant images.

Before I give some details (that may take several essays) let me state my view in a nutshell:

The anma in itself  is  neither man nor woman --it is FREE of sexual determinants. The sexuality is simply biological and hence not something ultimate on metaphysical grounds. Therefore when it comes to metaphysical/ religious  matters there should be NO DISCRIMINATION whatever between the sexes. However the inherited biological nature imposes some unconscious pressures and the male and female should  not  forget this. In this the WOMAN'S essence is  Motherhood and a man must promote and foster this MOTHERHOOD of a woman and in this consists his masculine Fatherhood.


Women Can be Great even in Metaphysics


The Tamil tradition right from the Sumerotamil period supports this. 

We have EnHudu Anna (2200 B.C) , not only the chief priestess of the main temple of Ur,  but also a brilliant philosopher , the most brilliant in the Third Millennium world whose Sirbiyam is a  delight even now. Then after a long gap we come  to CaGkam period ( 800 B.C to 300 A.D) where we have among so many brilliant lady poets the famous Auvvaiyar.

During the bakti period we have  Punitavati who set the model even for the Tevarat Tiruppatikam and who came with the deeply significant claim that it is aruL ( grace of BEING) that rules the world. We have also Andal Nacciyar whose Tirppaavai is a marvel of Bakti poetry and which are sung even to this day .

Later during the post bakti period we have Kaakkaipp Padiniyaar, the women Linguist who wrote a treatise on Prosody that was studied as a classic for  a long period and which exits till today. Subsequent to that we have Auvvaiyaar from the Chola period who wrote the Atticudi, the longest surviving school text book in the world. And several centuries later we have the Sittar Auvvaiyaar with her Auvaik kuRaL that is replete with deep metaphysical insights.

These are evidences to show that women can EXCEL in any intellectual field and in fact can be CREATIVE and show LEADERSHIP qualities provided they are given the opportunities.



ULLAGANAR

( Editing and re-paragraphing by his student )