| Popis: |
I examine the lives and practices of female sādhus in the region of Mewar, a former princely state in southwest Rajasthan. These sādhus have been initiated into one of the two pan-Indian ascetic traditions: the Daśanāmi and Nāth orders. The chapter shows that notions of place and space, which are underrepresented categories in the scholarship on asceticism, figure prominently in the sādhus’ “rhetoric of renunciation” or their practices of singing, storytelling, and textual recitation. From these they generate their constructions of identity and asceticism. I argue that their ideas of place create gendered symbolizations of space conceived and expressed through the competing idioms of “wandering” and “settling” and ground asceticism in a more “locative” notion of place. Their practices unsettle the dominant view of asceticism as illustrative of a “utopian” model that transcends place. Female sādhus’ rhetoric of renunciation explicates the tension between home and homelessness, wandering and settling. Their negotiations reveal an alternative and gendered understanding about their experiences of wandering and settling, which enable them to generate particular ideas about sādhu identity and an alternative vision of renunciation (sannyās), which is termed “devotional asceticism.” Their notions of place reveal as much about “place” as about wandering. I focus on stories and songs of Sad Giri, a 30-year-old Daśanāmi sādhu, as her views of wandering and settling express a shared view of spatiality among female sādhus in Rajasthan. Her background as an “unlettered,” low-caste woman; her creating a “satsang business” to raise funds to build her own ashram in her natal village; and her continuing to live with her natal family while keeping an ashram identifies her as atypical among female sādhus in Rajasthan. |
