Female poets in Sanskrit: A legacy lost to time?

It was Women’s Day yesterday, and of course, the usual Whatsapp tributes to women being superheroes and excellent multi-taskers made the rounds – which of course completely ignores what women need and want in India – no female foeticides, no violence against women, being treated as equal citizens, equal opportunities… the list goes on.

Until then, however, I cannot resist but use the opportunity to talk about female poets in Sanskrit. We have only a handful of female poets in Sanskrit – it has always been an elite language. However, the poems we do have make up in quality what is missing in quantity. I am going to refrain from narrating the stories of Gargi, Maitreyi, or Vachaknavi, since we have heard them mentioned all the time as proof that women had equal status as men in Vedic times. This is obviously not the case, considering that any of us can quickly name over a dozen male sages and scholars mentioned in the Vedas. The very fact that we can barely think of three names – two of which, Gargi and Vachaknavi, probably refer to the same person – should tell us something. Fewer people perhaps know of the poetry in the wonderful sister language of Sanskrit – Pali, which has the Therigatha, or the Verses of the Elder Nuns, which are said to be authored by Buddhist nuns. They contain beautiful musings on life, renunciation, and enlightenment.

Vijjika or Vidya, the Chalukyan queen from the 8th or 9th century CE is renowned in all of Sanskrit literature for her beautiful poetry, and no anthology of poetry counts in Sanskrit if it does not cite her work. She was so confident in her writing that she declared, “The famous Sanskrit writer Dandi who described the goddess Saraswati as all white – his words were in vain. Clearly, he had not seen me, with my complexion like the dark lily.”

Rajashekhara from the 10th century is one of the only Sanskrit writers who mentions his wife; he writes glowingly of Avantisundari, a learned critic whose views are repeatedly cited in his Kavyamimamsa. Then we have Gangadevi, the queen of Veerakamparaya in the 14th century, who recorded her husband’s conquest of Madurai in a gorgeous poetic chronicle called Madhuravijayam. We also have the talented queen Tirumalamba in the 16th century, queen of Achyutaraya, the Vijayanagara king, who wrote a beautiful romance Varadambikaparinaya that culminates in the wedding of princess Varadambika and – wait for it – her husband Achyutaraya. Clearly, female poets were a very magnanimous lot; or perhaps they loved their art better than their husbands!

This is certainly true of Vikatanitamba, who was a genius poet that we are told was unfortunately married off to a man who could barely string words together – who, of course, becomes the butt of many funny verses in Sanskrit.

All the way in the 18th century, though, we have a surprising demonstration of sisterhood between co-wives – Sundari and Kamala, the wives of Ghanashyama, the court poet of Tukkoji, jointly author a commentary on the play Viddhasalabhanjika. Imagine how well they must have got along!

These are some of the poets we do know! Who knows how many of them have we lost to time, moth-eaten manuscripts, to lack of education or freedom?