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ABSTRACTS
SESSION VIII:
WOMEN, BLOOD, AND IMPURITY
A Paternal Mother Reborn Bloodlessly: A
Feminist Reading of Angulimala’s Conversion Narratives
Liz Wilson, Miami University in Ohio
 This paper uses Pali accounts of
the conversion of the serial-murderer Angulimala as an occasion to
explore intersections between sacrificial logics (Vedic and
post-Vedic), Buddhist structures of paternal affiliation, and the
work of Buddhist women as child-bearers. Angulimala’s guru demands
one thousand human fingers as his fee for teaching, thus setting
this future Buddhist convert on a trail of destruction that earns
him the sobriquet “Finger Garland.” The Buddha intervenes when
Angulimala is about to kill his final victim, none other than his
own mother. If Vedic sacrifice can be described by Nancy Jay’s
formulation as “birth done better” (compared to the non-ritualized
conditions under which most women give birth), does the same
gendered logic hold true for the moral deeds that Buddhist
authorities substitute for the act of taking life in a Vedic
yajna? Can we view the Buddha’s intervention to save
Angulimala’s mother by converting the murderer as a form of male
parturition whereby the Buddha bloodlessly gives birth to a
transformed man, a new being in the Buddha’s own lineage? And,
finally, does Jay’s work help us to understand the Angulimala
paritta and Angulimala’s subsequent career as a patron saint of
women in labor?
Privilege
and Bodily Danger at a North American Hindu Temple: The Mixed
Messages of Ritual Power for (Menstruating) Women
Corinne Dempsey, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
 The Sri
Rajarajeshwari Pitham in Upstate New York is powered by Sri Vidya, a
tantric tradition that takes seriously the roles of and effects upon
the body in temple practice. The head guru-priest, Aiya, asserts
that bodily configurations such as ethnicity and gender are
irrelevant to practice and thus teaches the male brahmanical Sri
Vidya tradition to all, regardless of caste, ethnicity, or gender.
As conspicuous signs of his radical agenda, women assume leadership
roles during daily pujas and major festivals.
This paper focuses
on a central irony emergent at the pitham: women's bodies, fit for
ritual leadership are nonetheless excluded from the temple during
menstruation. This exclusion does not link menstruation with
pollution, but reflects an understanding that temple energies have
particular effects on the human body. As described by Aiya, a
menstruating woman's uterine lining is raw, making her susceptible
to medical complications when in range of certain temple deities. Of
particular danger are the forceful energies associated with Shiva. I
propose to unravel this paradox and vindicate Shiva from the
perception that, from a devotional perspective, he is less dedicated
to women than men. Framed by sacred narrative, folklore, and temple
practice, Shiva seems to have a particular penchant not just for
women but for women's bodily concerns. Shiva, like Aiya, bucks
conventional notions that link women with pollution; his temple
energies support the Sri Vidya notion that sacred power wields a
two-edged sword. Beneficent power, so it seems, is sharpened by
danger.
Bodily
Poiesis: Gendered Constructions of Tradition in Nitya Ghar Puja
Janet Gunn, University of Ottawa
 This paper queries
the significance of gendered embodiment with respect to Hindu
household worship in Ottawa. Drawing on ethnographic research, I
investigate the ways in which my research participants' specific
embodiments as women impact their ritual lives. Female bodies are
problematic within the Hindu ritual arena. Their biological
propensity for childbirth and menstruation means that they are
always potentially polluted and polluting. This cultural
construction of women's bodies actively circumscribes their
participation in, and attendance at, temple worship. The home
shrine, however, provides a more personal sacred space, within the
boundaries of which women are able to reinterpret these notions of
purity and pollution. Pursuing the notion that household puja
provides a unique framework for multiple interpretations of
cultural norms surrounding embodiment and its relationship to
ritual, I trace the interpretive processes surrounding traditional
understandings of female bodies as inherently impure; the resulting
perception of female bodies as occupying the dangerous margins of
the temple's ritual arena; and the potential for reimagining these
troubled bodies within the sacred space of the household shrine as
women persist, for example, in performing nitya ghar puja at times
they would understand their bodies to be unwelcome at the temple .
This inquiry reveals a poietic praxis at work, as women are seen to
read Brahmanic orthodoxy against the grain in constructing their
personal religious life worlds: the tropes of both sacred space and
female embodiment are opened to multiple and shifting layers of
meaning.
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