Characters on the periphery

Scholarship on women in mythology in Indian academia is not a new phenomenon. Many authors and critics have written about women from Hindu mythologies but mostly their works are centred on women characters from the mainstream like that of Sita and Draupadi. This chapter moves beyond the mainstream characters and focuses on women from the periphery. It examines the importance of subcultures, interwoven with crisis of identity and patriarchal dominance. It retells the stories of women who were trivialised, misunderstood, blamed, forgotten and also sometimes used as cautionary tales. Though the mythical stories of Ekalavya and Shambuka that reveal the discrimination of caste and social status are quite familiar, but within this same discourse, female voices are muted or are not studied in detail. Thus, the focus is on the repressed narratives of female characters who belong to “other” tribes or clans rather than the royal clans of Aryavarta. We analyse some of the key marginalised women characters belonging to the non-Aryan race such as Surpanakha, Satyavati, Ulupi and Hidimba, all whose voices have been muted or discarded, because of the inherent perception that they do not matter, even though their stories were equally important in advancing the epics

Anthropological Studies and Insights · Indian History and Philosophy · Materials Science · Philippine History and Culture