The Odiya Festival of Raja Parba
According to the Śakta-Hindu tradition, religious acts and events attain fruition only when performed as worship of the female body of the women-earth-Goddess. As the Manusmṛti puts it, “Where women are not worshipped there the activities do not attain fruition. The one who worships (praises) woman, worships (praises) the Goddess and so worships the three worlds”
Frederique Apffel-Marglin and Purna Chandra Misra have critically presented their fieldwork on the menstruation festival (Raja Parba, also known as Mithuna Sankranti) of the Goddess in Orissa. This is a festival of menstruation of the Goddess who is variously known as Harchandī, Prithibī, Thākurānī, Basudhā, and Draupadī. Etymologically, the word raja parba consists of raja (menses) and parba (festival), meaning, the festival of the menses of the mother earth, who is Goddess Harchandi. Participants believe that the life movements in the environment, that is, the cyclical changes of the seasons and different states of the earth, entail and correspond to the joining and disjoining of humans (that is, wives and husbands). During this period of June 14–18 the earth itself is said to be menstruating. Hence her separation from the environmental forces — humans, rain, and so on — is observed. It is believed that for humans to plow or dig the earth during the menstruation period violates her and makes her unhappy. Conversely, her separation from the environmental forces during her menstruation period would ensure happiness and continuity of the life cycle. This belief corresponds to the custom that during their menstruation women must keep to themselves, and not engage in any kind of work. Doing so ensures the happiness and continuity of the life cycle; disregard leads to chaos and destruction. On the third day of the festival, women try not to walk barefoot on earth so as not to hurt her. During Raja Parba, men of some fifty villages go to the temple of Harchandi, whereas women stay in the villages and celebrate the festival there. The main participants in this festival are women and men from the agricultural community, but other members from different strata of society also take part in this festival.
Menstruation, the sine qua non of a woman’s being, is a focal point around which the conception of the Goddess and the relationship of women to the Goddess is formed. The experience of the participants also furnishes an important insight into the nature of the female body. For the participants in the festival, the concept of the female body encompasses more than what is biologically given in a human form. It encompasses a larger reality that is inclusive of women, the earth, and the Goddess.
The vast literature of the Śakta-Hindu tradition that explains the nature of the Goddess as an eternal all-pervading reality, manifesting herself in different and diverse but interrelated aspects of the world. This interconnectedness of the universe is explained by Gargi, a woman philosopher of c. 800 B.C.E., in a dialogue with the famous Indian philosopher Yajñavalkya. Gargi’s philosophical thesis or proposition (pratijña) is that “Since all that is here is woven, like warp and woof what is it that weaves everything together? (Brihadarnyaka Upanishad ch. 3, verse 6).
In a similar vein, other texts such as the Devī-Mahātmya argue for the various ways in which the Goddess makes herself known, stating that the Goddess is manifested as intelligence (buddhi), energy (śakti), peace (śānti), compassion (daya), prosperity (lakṣmī), instinct (vṛttī), and so on. The great Goddess embraces in her manifestations both the animate and inanimate, seen and unseen worlds. The thesis that everything is interrelated and that this interrelation is grounded in the goddess principle may be termed metaphysical feminism. Metaphysical feminism accepts the goddess principle as the ultimate reality that binds together different and separate elements of reality.
Adapted from: Patel, K. C. (1994). Women, Earth, and the Goddess: A Shākta-Hindu Interpretation of Embodied Religion. Hypatia, 9(4), 69–87. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810423
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