Women in Purana Tradition

The book attempts to make use of nearly all the major and minor Puranas to understand a single, though a significant, limb of Indian family and society, the woman. Beginning enquiry with the female infant yet to be born, the authoress takes it through her childhood, marriage, motherhood, examines her role as a wife, her share in religious duties, and her woes of widowhood; makes an effort to understand her in the role of a prostitute and makes more specific questions relating to her public and private appearance. The inferences summed up at the end of the work, throw interesting light on the changing notions on the age and modes of marriage of women, perception of the principle of pativrata, notions attached to the birth of a daughter in the family; reasons for tonsuring the heads of the widows, circumstances that precluded purda practice, emergence of the institution of prostitutes, etc. As noted by Prof. S. Settar in his foreword of the work “A full-scale study of women based on a single source material such as the one taken by Ms. Roy should be welcomed at a time when gender studies are receiving wide attention……This book would be certainly welcomed by those who adore the classical scholarship of A.S. Altekar, the most notable among the pioneers of gender studies of the twentieth century.”