There is another area of contemporary religious practice in which the term Katha is commonly used, seemingly in a very different

context. A vrat Katha is a story connected with a vrat, or disciplined observance, generally involving a full or partial fast kept in fulfillment of a vow. Such fasts are commonly observed on specific days of the week (such as the Friday vratin honor of Santoshi Ma, which has become popular with women in recent years, or the Satya Narayan vrat observed on Thursdays), or of the Hindu religious month (such as the Vaishnava ekadasivrat on the eleventh of a lunar fortnight); they involve, along with abstemious practices, the recitation of a relevant vrat Katha . These stories, together with instructions for the fast and its accompanying rituals, are contained in booklets widely sold in religious bookstalls.[4] Yet in this context too the term Katha does not. refer primarily to a text or even to a story but rather to an interactive performance. Instructions for a vrat usually require that its Katha be recited to someone, and only when the story has been "told" can the requirements of the vrat be considered to have been fully met.[5] Katha is virtually a pan-Indian term, as the act of religious storytelling is a panIndian phenomenon, but the specific performance genres to which it refers vary from region to region. In Maharashtra and Karnataka there is the tradition of harikatha, in which a performer known as a kathakar narrates religious and didactic stories, often to musical accompaniment and with interludes of congregational singing.[6] In Teluguspeaking regions one finds the tradition of burrakatha , and audiences in Tamil Nadu patronize kathakalaksepam[*] (passing time through story) and a related folk genre known as piracankam[*] (from the Sanskrit prasangam[*] , or "episode"). For the Hindispeaking region, Norvin Hein has documented the nearly lost kathaktradition of singing and storytelling accompanied by stylized gestures.[7] All of these genres have arisen

Feeding Hungry Hearts

HIMANI DALMIA, Oct 7, 2009, 12.00am IST

Tags: Women

Once upon a time, a queen was deceived by her brothers into breaking a rigorous fast, as a result of which her husband died; a woman accidentally killed a cub and lost her seven sons; a man murdered a child gifted to his barren wife by Lord Hanuman. These tales of human helplessness have been related during Karva Chauth, Ahoi Ashtami and Mangalvar vrat for centuries, as have hundreds of other such kathas during the varied vrats observed by Hindus. By explaining the origin of a vrat or describing incidents that prove its efficacy, vrat kathas have been an integral and indispensable part of the institution of ritual fasting. With an astonishing ability to fascinate, frighten and compel, they have kept the tradition of vrats alive for generations.
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Vrats are deeply embedded in the spiritual lives of Hindus, offering a means of communicating with the gods, of altering divine forces, protecting loved ones and fulfilling desires. A vrat is a religious ritual observed with strict discipline for a fixed period of time, usually a day, during which the devotee, in addition to partial or complete fasting, undertakes the worship of a deity and hears a relevant katha. Vrats have been passed down over generations, capturing the imagination of Hindu children through fairytale-like kathas, being romanticised by elders in the family, glamourised by Bollywood, and embellished with clothing, jewellery and gifts. Hindus undertake fasts routinely, often with little understanding of their own motivations, driven by custom and a vague notion of being able to earn spiritual brownie points through them.

It is likely that vrats originated in folk religion and primarily amongst women. The practice was transmitted orally and largely ignored by male ideologues until the 5th century A.D., when vrats suddenly begin to appear in late Puranic literature. Thereafter, they are extensively codified in the Dharmashastras and the Dharmanibandhas, indicating Brahmanical recognition of these practices and an attempt to standardise and regulate them. Priestly mediation is introduced and vrats now become the primary vehicle available to women within orthodox Hinduism to pursue religious duties and achieve spiritual liberation. According to scholar Mary McGee's study of vrats in the Hindu law digests compiled between the 12th and 18th centuries, the Dharmanibandhas, the fact that vrats delivered not only spiritual liberation but also a whole host of more immediate, worldly fruits gave these rites an optional character. Women could choose to undertake them based on their desire to fulfil certain aims. However, McGee's study of women in modern India reveals that while women most certainly undertake vrats with material goals aimed at marital and familial happiness, they do not consider them to be optional. They consider vrats to be a part of their stridharma or spiritual duties as women, as well as a ready means by which to protect the welfare of their families. In a patriarchal society, it is not difficult to understand why vrats would have emerged, gained popularity and persisted for centuries. Having access to a rite aimed at fulfilling their desires would certainly give women a (possibly false) sense of control. It is no wonder then that the Dharmashastras forbid women from performing vrats without the express permission of their husbands, fathers or sons. Undertaking a vrat creates a debt and an expectation, from one's husband on Karva Chauth, from one's son on Ahoi Ashtami, and from God every time. Even if they did not feel indebted to their women for making sacrifices on their behalf, men would certainly be unnerved by women gaining a powerful and mysterious agency that could affect the destinies of them all.

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Does the modern Hindu woman need to believe in this powerful, mysterious force that is on her side? Sometimes, she finds the spiritual power of a fast to be unconvincing and supplements it with a rational explanation. Fasting can clean out the system, she says. It builds willpower, self-control and moral character. Such arguments are dubious, of course, for the scientific benefits of fasting can be debated. Even Mahatma Gandhi, perhaps the greatest modern exponent of fasting, wrote in his autobiography that if fasting is not accompanied by a powerful spiritual longing, it can in fact stimulate one's passions, lower one's self-restraint and "end in hypocrisy and disaster". A modern rationalisation is usually exactly that: a rationalisation. It is never the driving force behind the observance of vrats. To find the motivation, one needs to search backwards in history, within the powerlessness of women and the promises made by reassuring vrat kathas.

Is this a powerlessness that modern women want to stay associated with? It is time to understand the exploitative, repressive character of fasting and be done with this antiquated tradition. The modern Indian woman need not put herself through an agonising, humiliating and ultimately harmful ritual that she no longer needs in order to fulfil her desires. After all, this was a ritual born of a hunger for some influence over her own life and, in a rapidly equalising world, there are other means to feed that hunger. The writer is a novelist
POSTED BY ADMIN ON 15TH APRIL 2008

All kinds of vows of fasting and asceticism are practiced on the occasion of diverse religious festivals celebrated during the course of the year. These vows can be performed on the occasion of the Hindu rites, which are related to specific stages in life; such as birth, namegiving, first eating of solid food, puberty, the beginning of Vedic studies, marriage, and cremation. Among these, vratasare incredibly a striking part of the Hindu religion. Even today, millions of Hindus abide by the rituals and implement all kinds of vratas. In Hinduism, the term vrata has been widely known since the early Vedic Period. In theRgveda, one of the oldest classical texts in Hinduism, the word vrata occurs just over two hundred times alone or in combination with other words (Kane 5). This implies that the term itself, effectively, is at least three thousand years old. Furthermore, the word vrata is also referred to in other respected groups of texts such as the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Upanisads and Sutras (Pearson 44). The term vrata has been mentioned in various literatures for several centuries until today, however, many still do not understand the true implication of vrata; even scholars today often debate on the authentic meanings of this word. Vrata is viewed uniquely by the distinct castes and regions in the diverse parts of India. Pearson explains that the concept of vrata in the Rgveda is closely connected with the larger metaphysical concept of the cosmic order, righteousness in the Hindu tradition, and with the governed and governing activity of the gods (Pearson 45). Vratas throughout the Hindu tradition is contemplated as part of dharma (righteousness) for each individual, placing each of the gods to their highest level. Moreover, Pearson defines vrata as a rite that is performed on a regular basis to achieve particular objectives, following respective rules that have been transmitted from one generation to the next (Pearson 45). Vratas have been an important feature of Hindu religious life for a long while; however, the beliefs and practicing of vratas is often associated generally more often with Hindu women. In Sanskrit, more universally, vrata denotes a religious vow. Vratasignifies a set of rules and discipline stemming from the verbal root vrn which literally means to choose. These vows are said to be imperative ritualistic obligations serving on the sacrificer for several reasons.

Many may wonder the purpose of performing vratas. The rationales behind and the kinds of vratas vary depending on the precise caste system or region in India to which one belongs to. Pearson in her study, Because It Gives Me Peace of Mind, states: Some Vratas seem to be related to individual status and primary rolesso that one gods Vrata may be quite different from anothers, or the Vrata of a male cowherd different from that of a female teacher. For instance, Navarata (nine nights) vratas may be common in North India, while Nagpancami vratas may be common in South India [Navaratri literally means nine nights, this vrata is observed in most parts of India from the first
till the ninth day of Ashvin (Brown 230). It commemorates the victory of Durga over a demon. It is also known as Rama Navami, it is popular in northern India. Nagpancami is an old festival common in South India celebrated for the purpose of appeasing snakes (Pearson 291)].

Nevertheless, somevratas do have common purposes. In general, vratas found throughout India are optional ritual observances. Placing the respective deity to its supreme degree, vratas would commonly involve certain rituals such as fasting (upavasas), worship (puja), the recital of narratives (kathas), and the giving of gifts such as money, food items and clothing to specified recipients (Pearson 229). In Northern India, vratas are closely associated to bhakti devotional rituals and comprise a crucial element of many devotional practices (Wadley 147). Wadley further explains that most vratasare also performed to gain moksa (liberation from the cycle of life and death), to recuperate life, to alleviate past karmas, and above all, most prominently and commonly to please the different gods and goddesses (Wadley 148). It is believed by many individuals in India that vratas aim for the improvement of life which may alter destiny, or help maintain rta (the cosmic order). This betterment, nevertheless, requires the abolition of previous sins that have led to current difficulties. Moreover, through observing vratas, one could also expect to gain bhukti (objects of enjoyment),mukti (liberation from life and birth), and the destruction of sins (Mishra 61). The basic aim of avrata, more often than not, is to influence some deity to come to ones support as one traverses the ocean of existence (Wadley 149). Ones faith and devotion signals to the deity the sincerity allied with the vrata. It is then commonly assumed by these loving devotees that the respective deity will reward their faith and service with some kind of boon (reward). Vratas are also undertaken to venerate the birth of a deity; for example, Janmastami (the birth of Lord Krsna), which is held yearly. Furthermore, vratas may also be performed on a certain day of the week for the deity associated with that day which may serve a specific purpose. In India some of the most common such vratas include: Monday Vratas sacred to Lord Siva and Fridays Santosi Ma Vrata conducted for making wishes come true (Brown 252). In Hinduism, the days of the week are ruled by the planetary deities and are also indirectly related to the main deities of Hinduism (Walters 47). Fellow devotees may choose

to fast, or also abstain from certain substances like fish, meat, or even onion and garlic on the day dedicated to the deity they are addressing with their vow. For example, Somavara (Monday) is dedicated to Candra (the moon) and to Lord Siva. Fasting on Monday is directed to all general spiritual purposes. On this day, when one performs vrata, the Somavara Vrata Katha is also heard or narrated. As part of the ritual, milk and honey may be poured to the linga (embodiment of Siva). Also meat, onion, and garlic are avoided for consumption on this day (Subramuniyaswami 111). The rituals and traditions of devotion diverge from vrata to vrata, but most commonly, rites also differ based on the respective deity. For instance, Swarna-Gauri-Vrata is dedicated to Ma Gauri, another name for Parvati Devi. Similarly, the Vara Siddhi Vinayak Vrata is for Lord Ganesha and the Satya NarayanaVrata is for the appraisement of Lord Vishnu. Like these, there are numerous vratas exceptionally frequent throughout India. For Hindus, particularly women, performing vratas is quite essential. From an early age, Hindu girls learn about the procedures, principles, and meanings of Vratas through observation of elder, experienced female relatives and gradual participation in the rites. They are taught that it is their duty and special ability as women to promote auspiciousness and well-being in the family (Kalakdina 22). The performance of vratas is an important part of this process because it involves bringing together special time, place and items considered favorable for keeping an environment charged with auspiciousness (Pearson 1993:233). Although women are the predominant ones to perform vratas, male participation should not be underestimated. Hindus believe that anyone who has faith in a vrata and wishes to perform it as per the rules can keep the vrata. During the Vedic period, sacrifices were strictly restricted to men of the three upper castes, known as the dvijas (twice born) (Timothy, 570). As the generations passed by, the doors of the vratas were thrown open to one and all, thus bringing this aspect of ritualistic Hinduism to the lower castes and women (Timothy 571). Amazingly, women have become the leading ones performing these vratas today. As mentioned earlier, the rituals of each vrata differ depending on the occasion. It is highly believed that these vratas do work; within the limit of their powers, deities are able to reward their devotees. Each vrata serves its own ideal purpose. Some vratas are performed to gain eternal happiness while others promise sons, good health, wealth or even the well being of a specific loved one (Robinson 182). For example, Karva Chautha is a significant vrata kept by many North Indian women to ensure the well being, prosperity, and longevity of their husbands. Karva Chautha provides the opportunity for all married women to get close to their in-laws. Possessing tremendous social and cultural importance, this festival is celebrated by keeping a fast, applying henna, and exchanging gifts. This vrata is

categorized as a nirjala vrata, which literally means without water. During the day, customarily, women from the family gather to carry out a specialpuja (worship) and an elderly woman, usually the mother-in-law, narrates the legend of Karva Chautha (vrata katha) .Women break their fast only after sighting the moon in the evening and after offerings of water are made to it. They then drink water, indicating the end of the Vrata (Sharma and Young 22). Distinct rituals like pujas and kathas are exceptionally essential constituents of these extraordinary vratas. Wadley explains Khatas [i.e. kathas] are manuals detailing ritual rules and associated myths (Wadley 1983:150). Some very popular vrata kathas are the Satyanarayan Katha, which contains the rituals of the monthly vrata and myths of the Lord Satyanarayan. Similarly, the Sukravar Vrata Katha contains the rules and katha for the performance of a vrata in honor of the goddess Santosi Ma, the Contented Mother (Narayan 17). Unlike most vrata kathas, the Santosi Mavrata katha is only read by the worshippers themselves; priests are not involved in the worship of Santosi Ma. Vrata kathas like the Satyanarayan Vrata Katha, on the other hand, can be read by Brahmin priests or the worshippers themselves (Narayan 17). Principally, vratas tend to be incomplete without kathas and pujas. While performing vratas, one must abide by several rules. However, as generations have passed, these rules have loosened considerably and thus embraced larger segments of contemporary society. Some rules, nevertheless, need to be adhered particularly carefully in order to protect the holiness of the ritual system itself. Primarily and most perceptibly, during the period of the observance of a vrata, one should keep clean and pure, observe celibacy, speak the truth, practice forbearance, avoid non-vegetarian food, and scrupulously perform all the rituals connected with the vrata (Subramuniyaswami 156). A vrata should never be left unfinished, nor should a new one be started before completing the old one. Fortunately enough, it is believed that if one is sick or too old, a close relative may perform the vrata on the others behalf. Finally, vratas are typically done at specific auspicious timings, places, and in modes laid out by astrological findings (Subramuniyaswami 156). As the generations have passed there has been a significant decrease in the amount of Hindus that perform this auspicious ritual, nevertheless, the value of vratas has tremendously increased over the past years. As mentioned earlier, to women in particular, performing vratas has become a vital part of life. Vratas have become a daily routine and highly essential ritualistic observance for many Hindus throughout the world. Though in the past vratas were quite essential and many Hindus abided by it each day, many Hindus, with the guidance of elders, continue performing vratas even today.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER RECOMMENDED READING

Brown, Mackenzie C. The Song of the Goddess. Albany: State University of New York Press. Gopalan, Gopalan V. Vrat: Ceremonial Vows of Women in Gujrat, India. Asian Folklore Studies 37 no 1. 1978. Terre Haute: Indiana State University. http://0-63.136.1.23.darius.uleth.ca/pls/eli/ashow? aid=ATLA0001435339 Kalakdina, Margaret (1975) The Upbringing of a Girl. In Indian
Women: Report on the Status of Women in India,

ed. Devaki Jain. New Delhi:

Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Kane, P.V. (1974) History of Dharmasastr. 5 vols. 2nd ed. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriendtal Research Institute. Leslie, Julia I. (1989) The Perfect Wife. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Lubin, Timothy Vrata Devine and Human in the early Veda.
Journal of the American Oriental Society

121 no 4. 2001. Washington: Lee

University.
http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&an=6260350

Narayan, Kirin Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon. US: Oxford University Press Pearson, Anne Aspects of Hindu Womens Vrat Tradition as Constitutive for an EcoSpirituality. Journal of Dharma. 18. (1993): 228-236 Pearson, Anne (1996) Because it gives me peace of mind: ritual fasts
in the religious lives of hindu women.

Albany: State University of New York Press.

Robinson, Sandra P. Hindu paradigms of women: images and values. Women, religion and social change 1985: 181-215. Albany, NY: State University of New York Pr. Rodrigues, Hillary (1999) Because it gives me peace of mind: ritual fasts in the

Religious lives of hindu women. Review in Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 28 no 2. 240-241 Sharma A., and Young Katherine K (eds.) (2003) Her Voice Her
Faith: Women Speak on World Religion.

Colorado: Westview Press.

Subramuniyaswami, Satguru Sivaya Living with Siva: Hinduisms

Contemporary Culture.

India, USA: Himalayan Academy.

Wadley, Susan S. Vrats: Transformers of Destiny. Karma, an Anthropological Inquiry. Berkeley, Calif. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983. 147-162. Walters, Donald J. The Hindu Way of Awakening: Its Revelation Its Symbols. USA: Crystal Clanty Publishers.

Related Topics for Further Investigation

Navaratri Vrata Sivaratari Vrata Ekadashi Vrata Karva Chautha Vrata Nagpanchami Vrata Agni Dharma Karma Rta Santosi Ma Durga Ma Somvara Vrata Dipavali Rama Navami Vrata Kathas Sukravar Vrata Swarna-Gauri-Vrata Vara Siddhi Vinayak Vrata Satya NarayanaVrata Janmastami

Noteworthy Websites Related to the Topic

http://www.brihaspati.net/vratas.htm http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2583/fesinf_f.html

http://members.tripod.com/~esh/fesinf_f.html http://www.svbf.org/sringeri/journal/vol1no4/festivals.pdf http://www.integraldesign.abkstuttgart.de/wildenstein/lectures/BW_2002/pdf/Vrata.PDF http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/db/bk09ch08.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MahaLakshmi_vratha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesh_Chaturthi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rama_Navami Article written by Anju Punjabi (April 20
utgendorf locates the worship of Santoshi Ma as belonging to the Vrata ("vow") tradition which is sometimes described as a form of 'folk' worship that developed in parallel to the mainstream sacrificial and ascetic practices, and which has, historically, been primarily an oral tradition. According to Pupul Jayakar, (The Earth Mother) the vrata tradition has its roots in the Arthava Veda, although many vratas have been influenced by Brahmanic orthodoxy - particularly those that relate to the duties and obligations of women. Jakayar believes that the vrata kathas are a later addition to what was originally a magical tradition involving mantra, ritual, and yantra. Dr. Robert Svoboda, in an article entitled Family vows notes that vrata katha ("vow stories") can take the form of traditional tales from the Vedas or the Puranas, or folktales handed down by families. According to Svoboda, most vratas have tales attached to them, and part of the vrata worship is that the tale is told with devotion and sincerity, and that a vow tales' content is less important to its effect than is the sincerity and fervour with which it is told. Vratas can take many forms, such as fasting, only eating certain foodstuffs, or avoiding particular substances. Santoshi Ma's vrata is observed on a series of Fridays - the film specified a period of 16 weeks for example(1)- or until one's desire is granted. Santoshi Puja involves worshipping an image of Santoshi Ma with flowers and offering her raw sugar and roasted chickpeas and a recitation of the vrat story. Lutgendorf says that these food offerings underscore Santoshi's benevolent character and her accessibility to poor devotees. Following the puja, the foodstuffs may be offered to a cow or distributed as the goddess' prasad. The worship also contains the discipline that the devotee should eat only one meal during the day, and should not eat or offer bitter or sour foods to anyone else. When the devotee's desire is granted by the devi, the devotee should perform a ritual of thanksgiving and serve a festive meal (of sweet foods) to eight boys. Lutgendorf summarises Santoshi's vrata katha as follows: An old woman's seven sons were all hardworking except the youngest, who was irresponsible; hence his mother served him each night, without his knowledge, the leavings of his brothers dinners, food that was jutha or polluted. His wife became aware of this and told him; horrified, he left home to seek his fortune. He found work with a wealthy merchant and became prosperous, but forgot about his wife. Years went by and the abandoned wife was abused by her in-laws, forced to cut wood in the forest, and given only bread made of chaff and water served in a coconut shell. One day she saw a group of women worshiping Santoshi Ma; they told her about the sixteen-week vrat that fulfills wishes. The wife successfully performed it, wishing for her husband's return. As a result, Santoshi Ma appeared to him in a dream and told him of his wife's plight. By her grace, the husband quickly closed his business and returned home with great wealth. Angry at his wife's mistreatment, he set up his own household, where his wife conducted the udyapan ceremony. But his in-laws contrived to have sour food served to the eight boys, offending the goddess; as a result the husband was imprisoned for tax-evasion. His wife

prayed for forgiveness and performed the vrat and udyapan a second time, successfully. Her husband was released from prison and she soon gave birth to a handsome son. Later, Santoshi Ma paid a visit to the family, assuming a fearsome form. The couple's in-laws fled in terror, but the pious wife recognized her patron goddess and worshiped her. Her in-laws then begged for forgiveness, and the whole family received the goddess's blessing. As Santoshi Ma gave to this daughter-in-law, so she will give to all. The film Jai Santoshi Ma is loosely based on this vrata katha. An early scene in Jai Santoshi Ma shows the birth of the Goddess. Ganesha and his family(2) are celebrating the festival of Rakhi (which involves sisters honouring their brothers). Ganesha's sons are pleading with him to give them a sister when the sage Narada appears, and reminds Ganesha that the fulfiller of wishes should not disappoint his own sons. Ganesha is initially displeased, but after more pleading (his wives and his sister Manasa(3) join in) he makes the boon-giving gesture and flames leap from the breasts of his wives where they take the shape of a young girl. Narada says: This mind-born daughter of Lord Ganesh will always fulfill everyone's desires, will cause the Ganges of gratification to flow, and known by the name of 'Mother of Satisfaction', will promote the wellbeing of the whole world. Hail Santoshi Ma! This mind-borne birth narrative, Lutgendorf notes, is not untypical of the praising of deities through their lila (play) - which stresses their human-like qualities - and exists alongside of the formal worship and philosophical of deities which emphasises their greatness and otherness. Other elements of Jai Santoshi Ma which reflect characteristic Indian religious practice are its use of music and gaze. In the film, the heroine Satya sings praises to Santoshi Ma and music becomes the 'place' where devotee and devi meet. In response to Satya's musical praise, Santoshi Ma manifests on earth to assist her devotee with her misfortunes. For example, when Satya's husband, Birju, is lost at sea, she implores the goddess: I am caught in midstream / Steer my boat ashore / Change the course of my destiny / Perform this miracle / If you so desire it, I can be saved. Lutgendorf, in his analysis of Jai Santoshi Ma, highlights the way that the film makes use of the experience of darshan - of seeing and being seen by the goddess: ''The camera repeatedly zooms in on Satyavati's face and eyes, then offers a comparable point-of-view zoom shot of the goddess as Satyavati sees her. Finally, it offers a shot-reverse shot from a position just over the goddess's shoulder, thus approximating (though not directly assuming) Santoshi Ma's perspective, and closing the darshanic loop by showing us Satyavati and the other worshipers more or less as She sees them.'' Contemporary Santoshi Ma devotion also features possession oracles (usually female) known as Kalasis ("helpers"?). See Possession oracles of Santoshi

Notes

1. 2. 3.

Sixteen is an auspicious number often related to the Mahadevi, particularly within the Sri Vidya tradition. For example, the sixteen-petal arvana of the Sri Yantrais inhabited by the sixteen nitya ('eternal') kalas and is known as 'the fulfiller of all desires'. Ganesha's family, in this narrative, consists of his wives Riddhi - prosperity & Siddhi - success, and his sons Kshema - health and Labha - fortune). Manasa is an ancient Bengali snake-goddess, sometimes said to be mind-born of Rudra, or the 'untouchable' daughter of Shiva. She is sometimes associated with the waters of Mount Kailasa, the abode of Shiva. She is commonly worshipped in order to prevent snakebites, and it is believed that disrespect to her will lead to the person so doing being killed by a snake.
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"What's written on the forehead will never fail": karma, fate, and headwriting in Indian folktales.
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Author: Kent, Eliza F. Publication: Asian Ethnology Article Type: Critical essay Geographic Code: 9INDI Date: Mar 22, 2009 Words: 12252 Previous Article: Joost Cote, ed. and trans.: Realizing the Dream of R. A. Kartini: Her Sisters' Letters from Colonial Java. Next Article: The most revered of foxes: knowledge of animals and animal power in an Ainu Kamui Yukar. Topics: Body art Social aspects Body decoration Social aspects Folk literature Criticism and interpretation Folklore Criticism and interpretation Indian culture Analysis Karma Social aspects

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Link to this page A BELIEF widely attested to in the folklore and literature of India is that at the moment of birth, or on the night of the sixth day after birth, a god or goddess comes to write the destiny of the newborn child on its forehead. The destiny so inscribed often takes the form of a set of verses indicating the most important features of a person's life: the kind of birth (that is, what caste and family they are born into), length of life, work occupation, level of poverty or affluence, and so forth. Several Indian languages have expressions for this writing on the forehead: talaiyeluttu ("headwriting") and talaiviti ("head-fate") in Tamil; haneli barediddu ("what's written on the forehead") and hanebareha ("the writing on the forehead") in Kannada; and phalalikhita ("what's written on the forehead") in Sanskrit (RAMANUJAN 1991b, 40). Sometimes the image of writing on the forehead is condensed: either the writing is not mentioned, as in the references to kopal (from the Sanskrit kapala, "forehead") in Bengali, and kapalanti ("what's on your forehead") in Marathi (BROWN 1978, 254); or the location of the writing on the forehead is not mentioned, as in brahmalipi ("Brahma's script") in Sanskrit and in the Hindi phrase hamari kismat men garibi likhi hai ("Poverty is written in my destiny") (WADLEY 1994, 118). Ads by GoogleFind Camera Accessories Innovative accessories for DSLR & DC. Great price and FREE shipping
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When an audience first encounters it in a proverb or folk narrative, the motif of headwriting seems to suggest that fate is inexorable, as in the Tamil phrase talaiyeluttu iruntal atai yar marra mutiyum? ("If it is in the headwriting who can change it?"). Similar in some ways to the well-known Indian concept of karma, the motif of headwriting expresses in a highly condensed fashion that one must bear one's fate, whatever it is, since no amount of effort can alter it. And yet folktales that use this motif often show that fate can be outwitted, or that destiny may be fulfilled in surprising, ironic ways. Such a twist in meaning suggests that tales of the "outwitting fate" type may be read as dissenting opinions which contest the deterministic world view encoded in the karma ideology (BROWN 1978, 15460). The twentieth-century American Indologist, W. Norman Brown, was the first to argue that tales of the outwitting fate variety could be read as challenges to the karma doctrine. Brown's article, "Escaping One's Fate," originally published in 1920, deftly interprets a number of different tales that use the motif of headwriting. But he concludes that the skepticism they express about the immutability of fate is not widespread. He writes, The various illustrations of escaping fate which I have presented in this paper do not represent a frequent mental attitude of the Hindus. Rather, they are in the nature of exceptions that prove the rule, "Fate is inevitable." But they do, I believe, show that there exists in India an indigenous spirit of rebellion against the doctrine of human helplessness, a spirit that undoubtedly finds expression in the actualities of daily life as well as the fancies of fiction. (BROWN 1978, 160) Though Brown concedes that the rebellious spirit communicated through the tales probably found occasional expression in the "actualities of daily life," he treats the tales that employ the outwitting fate motif as quaint expressions of a minority viewpoint that is of interest primarily as a novelty. Through the application of contemporary methods of folkloristics, I would like to show in this article that the tales have a much broader social relevance than Brown perceives. To that end Iretell and analyze five versions of the outwitting fate tale type that use the motif of headwriting to show how these tales probe the possibilities of the many different ways of understanding the predetermination of one's future. When we examine these tales closely, I argue, it is clear that it is not merely "wit" that allows one to overturn the destiny ascribed to oneself, but a rejection of ascribed identities and a willingness to take on great personal risk in pursuit of a larger vision of what is possible. While many scholars have by now confirmed Brown's hunch that the karma doctrine does not go unchallenged in India, I seek here to build on this work to show that such rejection may have been particularly attractive to particular social groups. Specifically, I demonstrate through comparative analysis of the shared structure of the tales that they affirm the risk-

taking ethos characteristic of upwardly mobile trading groups who not only contest the karma doctrine at the level of ideology, but defy its socially conservative implications in their lives. One key insight of a recent collection of essays on the concept of destiny in the world's major religious traditions is that questions of destiny areinextricably linked to questions of identity (BOWKER and BOWKER 1994). On both an individual and a collective level, the question "What does the future hold?" is bound up with who one thinks one is. Character is indeed destiny. At a broad, theological level, expectations of the unfolding events that lead to the ultimate telos or "end" of life are shaped by concepts of human nature. On the individual level, this pattern translates into the belief that a person's expectations for the future depend in large measure on where he or she fits into the larger social order. As Kim Knott has argued, people's exploration of life's central existential questions--"Who am I?" and "What is my purpose and destiny in life?"--are shaped by their particular social location and the expectations that others place on them. Hindu women's subjective understanding of karma and the way it shapes their own personal destiny, for example, evolves within the context of social ideals for women-their stridharma--which entails specific ideas about what constitutes a well-lived life for a woman (that is, marriage, children, and predeceasing one's husband) (KNOTT 1996, 16). In this way, ideas linking destiny and identity serve a socially conservative purpose, encouraging people to accept and embrace the life pattern that has been assigned to them by virtue of being born into a particular body and a particular family. The reverse is also frequently true. Not only does one's destiny flow from one's identity (for example, gender and social location), but people frequently believe that one's identity is what it is so that one can live out a particular destiny. Gana nath Obeyesekere's massive comparative study of beliefs surrounding rebirth in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek religious thought suggests that cultures all over the world affirm that being born into a particular body and family is not accidental. However, he argues that whereas in small-scale societies one gets reborn into a family as "an ancestor returned," in more complex societies rebirth eschatologies are "ethicized" so that the type of birth an individual receives on being reborn is the result of her good or bad deeds in a previous life. One of the crucial differences between rebirth eschatologies that depend on the idea that newborns are the incarnations of deceased ancestors, and those that attribute rebirth to the good and bad deeds done in a previous life, is that in ethicized rebirth eschatologies lineage no longer determines rebirth, rebirth determines lineage. This shift in ideology allows rebirth beliefs to function as a theodicy, justifying the uneven distribution of goods in society by declaring that one deserves one's place in the social order since it is a fitting reward or punishment for behavior in a previous life (OBEYESEKERE 2002, 72-75). It would be interesting to discover whether there are counter-beliefs in the Amerindian and Greek context

comparable to the challenges to the karma doctrine found ubiquitously in the Indic context. For against the idea that one's destiny is intimately bound up with one's ascribed identity, one finds in Indian folktales two challenges to the socially stabilizing ideology of the karma doctrine: first, that events can radically alter the expected outcome of being born into a particular family, and second, that if one is willing to take on enormous personal risk, one can alter destiny with effort and creativity. KARMA AND ITS COMPETITORS In his famous study of religion in India, Max Weber argued that the doctrine of karma was an axiomatic belief among the people of India. Weber distinguished Hindus from the adherents of Jainism and Buddhism by their belief in the existence of an immortal soul and the rational consistency with which karma was linked to the social ranking of castes. If one abided by one's caste duty (svadharma), one earned good karma and was ensured a better rebirth in the next life. But the neglect of duty unfailingly led to the direst of consequences, either in this life or the next. This combination of features made Brahmanical Hinduism,according to Weber, the "most consistent theodicy ever produced by history" (WEBER 1958, 121). The promise of upward mobility across lifetimes was so appealing, and so plausible within the logic of karma, that it effectively "tamed" the lower castes of India into passive acceptance of the status quo. Rebirth can drag a man down into the life of a "worm in the intestine of a dog," but, according to his conduct, it might raise and place him in the womb of a queen and a Brahman's daughter. (WEBER 1958, 122) By promising upward social mobility in the next life as a reward for adherence to social norms, the karma doctrine thus discouraged actual social mobility. This elegant analysis of the karma doctrine by Weber and other nineteenth-century social scientists led to a view of Indian society bound to reproduce itself without interruption, as a society uniquely shaped by a "dread of the magical evil of innovation." Indeed, it is one of the most enduring stereotypes produced by colonialist knowledge about India. Since Weber's day, historians of religion, Indologists, and anthropologists have sought to undermine this stereotype in two ways. Textual scholars and philosophers have clearly demonstrated that the karma doctrine does not necessarily lead to an ethos of fatalistic resignation and have revealed the rich possibilities within it for affirming moral responsibility and free will (KRISHNAN 1997; REICHENBACH 1989 and 1990). In addition, anthropologists and historians of religion have been very cautious in their speculations about the extent to which people in India "believe" in karma. Although it is often represented as something essential to Indic thought, ethnography since the 1950s demonstrates that belief in karma is not uniformly diffused throughout Indian culture. Indians employ many other ways of interpreting misfortune instead of or in combination with karma (NUCKOLLS

1992; KOLENDA 1964). For example, Kathleen Gough reports the mixture of surprise, skepticism, and derision with which a group of untouchable men in the Tanjore district of Tamil Nadu in the 1960s responded to her inquiries about such ideas. One day, sitting in the Adi-Dravida ["original Dravidians," a South Indian terra for untouchables] street, I tackled a group of older Pallars on the subjects of death, duty, destiny and rebirth of the soul. In my inadequate Tamil, I asked them where they thought the soul went after death.... The group collapsed in merriment--perhaps as much at my speech as at the question. Wiping his eyes, the old man replied, "Mother, we don't know! Do you know? Have you been there?" I said, "No, but Brahmans say that if people do their duty well in this life, their souls will be born next time in a higher caste." "Brahmans say!" scoffed another elder. "Brahmans say anything. Their heads go round and round." (GOUGH 1973, 234) Similarly, Bernard Cohn's Chamar (untouchable) informants in Senapur in the 1950s claimed to know nothing about the fate of the soul after death or other ideas related to karma (COHN 1992, 285). Robert DELIEGE (1993) and Michael MOFFATT (1979) have uncovered oral narratives among untouchable Paraiyars in Tamil Nadu through which Paraiyars provide themselves with alternative explanations for their lowly position in the regional caste structure. Rather than the orthodox view that individuals are punished for past bad karma by being born into this lowly caste, these myths explain that in the beginning the ancestor of the caste committed some foolish, rather innocent mistake that resulted in the wholesale demotion of the community. One of the most important findings of ethnography that deals with these questions is that the karma ideology faces a great deal of competition from a range of alternative explanations for misfortune. When confronted by calamities that resist the explanations provided by ordinary practical reasoning, people in India draw on a wide variety of discourses besides karma to provide a meaningful framework within which the event can be confronted and contained, for example, astrology,ancestor worship, witchcraft, village goddess worship, and headwriting (HIEBERT 1983). These theodicies may be broken down into several categories based on the primary cause of fortune or misfortune: a) an impersonal, mysterious force like fate (daiva [divine fate]; vidhi [an injunction that must be followed]; bhagya [one's portion in life]); b) the will of god or the gods (deva; Isvara; kuladeyvam); c) the coming to fruition of past karma (karmavipaka); and, d) human effort (purusakarma; purusakara). In the five folktales that use the motif of headwriting that I examine below, one sees the karma theory combined and juxtaposed with these alternative theodicies in a complex dialogical manner characteristic of Indian religious literature. As A. K. Ramanujan writes, a key feature of Indian creativity is the "dialogic response of one tradition to another, the copresence of several of them in one space, parodying, inverting, facing, and defacing each other, sharing and taking over characters, themes, motifs, and other signifiers

but making them signify new and even opposite things" (RAMANUJAN 1991b, 54). For example, karma is often viewed as a strictly rationalistic system based on a clear cause and effect relationship, and one's actions (lit. karma, from the Sanskrit verbal root [square root of (kr)]) in this life have consequences either in this life or in another. But it possesses many mysterious qualities. The most significant of these is conveyed by the idea that karma "ripens" (karmavipaka) over time. Like plants that emerge from seeds planted in the ground, the results of one's actions gradually become visible over rime, only fully revealing their final form beyond the boundary of death. Although one knows that the actions of the past will inevitably bear consequences, one does not know how or when; thus, the ripening of karma is said to be adrista, "unseen, invisible" (KRISHNAN 1997, 171-204). In this way it comes to have some of the force of fate as daiva, the mysterious efficacy of the devas, the gods of the Vedic sacrifice. Indeed, whole industries of prognostication have arisen in India, astrology chief among them, to undo the ordinarily adrista nature of karma so that it can be seen, enabling the individual to anticipate it and respond more effectively. Some theist philosophers, perhaps uncomfortable with the idea that such a crucial aspect of karma's workings would be left to chance, have reintroduced here the notion of a personal deity (Isvara) who determines how the good or bad deeds of the past will shape the present (KRISHNAN 1997, 151). For example, Srivaisnava theologians view God as the "judge of karma," meting out rewards and punishments depending on whether he is pleased or displeased with the jiva's (individual soul's) action (karma), although they disagree among themselves as to whether God's compassion exceeds and neutralizes the force of one's karma (MUMME 1987). But in other settings, particularly the folktales I will examine below, the mysterious aspect of karma and the invisible and unpredictable nature of its fruition causes karma to be assimilated to the more ancient notion of daiva, which refers to the implacable force of the gods. WRITTEN ON THE BODY: HEADWRITING AND TALES OF OUTWITTING FATE The motif of headwriting occurs in combination with all of these types of theodicies. It can be seen as shaped by gods, fate, or karma, and sometimes by more than one force at a time. This is because headwriting, in essence, functions as nothing more than the medium through which the contents of one's future existence is expressed. It is the nature of the medium itself that is of crucial significance. By suggesting that one's destiny is literally written on the body, that it takes the form of words embedded in the body, the image of headwriting appears to affirm the most deterministic readings of how these causal forces impact future events. And yet, folktales of outwitting fate that use the motif upend the view that one's fate is fixed by emphasizing the ambiguities of the language in which that fate is conveyed. The oldest instance of the outwitting fate tale type that I have found is in Somadeva's Kathasaritsagara [The Ocean

of Story] (TAWNEY and PENZER 1926, 185-86), which was probably composed in the eleventh century CE in northwest India. This is one of the four oldest versions of the famous Indic collection of fables known as the Pancatantra, the Tantrakhyayika, or the Hitopadesa. All of these collections, though redacted in different times and places, share so many stories that they probably have a common ancestor. (1) It is no longer fashionable in folklore studies to search for the "original" archetypal tale, a quest that obsessed nineteenth-century collectors of folktales. But it remains a striking feature of human creativity that what most hearers would recognize as the "same tale" can appear in so many different guises, clothed variously in the garments of the cultures it comes to call home. And yet in all these variations one still discerns a shared structure that is modified by the addition or subtraction of motifs. What I regard as the core structure of the outwitting fate tale type is present in the following narrative, told and retold in India for the last one thousand years. In this retelling, as in all five narratives that I present here, I have drawn on existing published versions of the tale, but have paraphrased them in my own words to make the language less archaic and to highlight relevant themes. I hope in doing so that I am not distorting the meaning of the tale, but rather being explicit about my role as a new link in a chain of retellings. Outwitting Fate I: Kathasaritsagara 2. 119. 157 A poor householder made a living for himself and his family with a single ox. He was so poor that he frequently had to go without food. During one of these involuntary fasts, he went to the shrine of the goddess Durga in the Vindhya hills and threw himself down on the darbha grass to practice austerities until Durga granted the boon of wealth. In a dream, the goddess came to him and said, "Get up! Your wealth shall always consist of one ox, and by selling it you shall live in perpetual comfort." The next morning, after rising and eating, he still could not bring himself to sell the ox for he was afraid that if he sold it he would have nothing left. When he told his dream to a clever friend the friend encouraged him to sell the ox: "The goddess told you that you should always have one ox, and that you should live by selling it. Why aren't you following her commands, foolish man? Go ahead and sell this ox, and use the proceeds to support your family. When you have sold this one, you will get another, and then another." The poor householder

followed these instructions and finding that he received ox after ox, he lived happily ever after in constant comfort. Here the Goddess reveals the double entendre that is a recurring joke in all of these tales: the householder's fate is to live on "one ox." But by changing the emphasis, the meaning of the phrase is transformed from having to live on one ox alone, into being able to live on--at all times--at least one ox. In a sense the man's destiny never changes-he and his family always subsist on one ox. But the goddess hints to him that he can alter the meaning of this by changing his orientation towards the future from fear to confidence. Further, the tale suggests that it is faith, specifically faith in a deity, which helps the householder relinquish his grip on a small measure of security, and in the process gain much greater wealth. As to the cause of the man's initial poverty the tale remains circumspect. It makes no mention of karma. While the poor man seems to have won Durga's intervention through his asceticism, Durga's role seems not to be to change the householder's fate, but simply to reveal it to him, and then show him how he might circumvent it. He does so, essentially, by becoming a trader in oxen. The second oldest version is from the Dharmakalpadruma [The Wishing-Tree of Dharma] 2.4.109, a large collection of Jain stories written in Sanskrit. The twentieth-century Indologist Maurice Winternitz reports that the Dharmakalpadruma was written by Udayadharma in 1450, but others attribute it to Dharmadeva of Purnimagaccha in 1610 (WINTERNITZ 1927, 545; RAGHAVAN and RAJA 1977, 239). Jain story literature displays an intense fascination with karma. This retelling is based on a German version by Johannes Hertel, the prolific German Sanskritist and collector of folktales in Indian literature (HERTEL 1913). Outwitting Fate II: Dharmakalpadruma 2.4.109-139 In the kingdom of Ksitipratisthita there lived a king named Naravahana. His minister, Jnanagarbha, was said to be as wise as Brhaspati [the legendary guru to the Gods]. On the sixth day after the birth of the king's first son, Jnanagarbha hid in the shadow of a lamp until midnight and waited for the goddess Sasthi [lit. "the sixth," the divine personification of fate, which is written on the head of a newborn after six days] to come and write the child's destiny on his forehead. He overheard the deity say as she wrote, "Only by hunting shall he support his life. A single creature shall be his portion daily, never another." When he heard this, the

minister cried out in his heart, "How could such a cruel late come to a king's son?" Later, the queen gave birth to a second son, and, as before, Jnanagarbha hid in the shadows to hear what his future would bring: "This son will become a grass seller with a single beast of burden. Never will he receive another ox." Some years later the minister overheard Sasthi reveal the fate of the king's third child, a girl: "She will certainly become a prostitute. Through fate she will obtain in the end only one man a day." The minister became worried about the terrible karma of these three. After a time, some unscrupulous relatives of the king usurped his kingdom and the king's children had to flee for their lives. While each one sought to make their way in the world, the minister wandered. One day in a particular kingdom he happened to meet the son who had become a hunter. The young man said, "I am only able to make a pitiful living as a hunter, catching just a single beast each day." Hearing that, Jnanagarbha had a thought. "Listen to my advice," he said, "Do not kill any animal, except the Bhadra Elephant, which has behind its frontal lobes great pearls which you can retrieve and sell. Fate must give you an animal every day, as it is written on your forehead." So saying, Jnanagarbha set off in search of the second son. He found the second son at a crossroads, selling his day's load of grass. After he heard the young man's story, he said to him, "Sell your ox every day, my child. When you have sold it, fate must provide another for you, since it is written on your forehead." In the same way the minister went looking for the third child. When he saw her, his eyes filled with tears and he said, "Oh poor girl! How did you come to such a state!" She replied, "It is the fore-ordination of karma. And as it that isn't bad enough, only one man a day comes to me, and from that I can only earn a little." Jnanagarbha advised her as he had

her brothers: "Ask for a hundred dinaras from every man who wants to come in your house, and through the force of fate that will happen." Having given these instructions to the three children, the minister retired to his house. While he slept one night, Sasthi came to him. "You have bewildered me with all these problems. So the tura [a musical instrument] is played with sticks! Release me from this situation, friend. How long can I go on giving an elephant, an ox, and a man willing to spend one hundred dinars every single day?" The minister spoke, "People say, 'a crooked wood drills a crooked hole.' The same applies to you." "What can I do" said Sasthi, "to get out of this quandary?" "Return the kingdom to the king's sons and then go, do as you like," said the minister. The grateful brothers gave their sister to the minister in marriage, and thus the oldest son of the minister became king. (2) As in the variant from the Kathasaritsagara, through the clever advice of an intelligent friend, three children manage here to compel supernatural forces of causation to fulfill their destiny to the letter, thereby transforming an unhappy future into a good one. Karma and late are mentioned separately as causes, although the tale seems to point to karma as the primary cause. What is clear is that the tale emphasizes the inscrutable (adrista) nature of the ripening of karma. The minister expresses several times his astonishment that these children could have received a bad lot in life: "How could such a cruel fate come to a king's son?" As argued previously, it is the imperceptible process by which karma ripens that allows karma to be used interchangeably with fate (daiva), as if referring to a mysterious divine force. The sense of the overwhelming power of karma relative to other forces of causality is reinforced here by the fact that Sasthi, a goddess, is not the determiner of fate, but simply its scribe. That she arranges things in the end so as to restore the good fortune of the king's children is less a sign of her power than evidence that she, as a personification of fate, was outwitted by human ingenuity and courage. We should note that several elements add new inflections to the central story. The motif of headwriting, which did not appear at all in the older version, here takes center stage. It also helps to concretize a second element of the story, namely, that the story begins with the demotion of an infant or youth of high status due to no apparent fault of his or her own. As we will see, a common motif in all but the first of the outwitting fate tales is that a child who seems

initially destined for a comfortable, even luxurious life by virtue of being born into a wealthy or high-status family turns out to have an evil fate. This causes him or her to lose all status and wealth and to become impoverished to the point that he or she must make a living in some humiliating, ignoble way. Such a tragic chain of events is clearly contrary to the ideal pattern of life envisioned by orthodox scriptures in which those born into a particular family do so as a result of having the right karma, and thus the right qualities (gunams) to develop the dispositions and skills necessary for success in the way of life to which their birth entitles them. And yet, these tales may reflect the vicissitudes of real life more accurately than does this ideal scenario, even in a society as theoretically stable as Hindu society. Contrary to the Orientalist image of the social order in India as rigid and unchanging, many avenues of social mobility (both upwards and downwards) that can raise or lower a person's social standing exist, and have always existed, even in a single generation. These include religious conversion, migration, marriage, education, and service to kings and other local rulers. Moreover, in India, as elsewhere, forces beyond people's control regularly compel people to do all manner of things they would not ordinarily do. Famine, drought, accidents, poor health, and the breakup of families--all these can and do radically alter the expected outcome of birth into a particular family. Arguably, the karma ideology, in providing a ready explanation for unexpected shifts of fortune, mitigates against social change. By explaining away all apparent anomalies it affirms the basic plausibility structure of orthodox visions of the social order, and does so while shifting responsibility for misfortune squarely onto the sufferer: one always gets the fate one deserves. And yet, one of the remarkable things about the outwitting fate tale type is its message that through audacity, daring, and wit a person can alter the mechanistic and unforgiving force of karma or fate. One can take a mean and poor fate and through faith in a vision of a better, bigger life, and the courage to stick by that vision, one can transform one's life entirely. Such a transformation requires that one's selfconcept change along with one's vision of the future. The figures in these narratives accomplish this by exploiting the ambiguity in the linguistic expression of headwriting. These tales suggest that while headwriting is unalterable, and what fate has written must be fulfilled, there are a variety of ways in which this could happen. The idea that one's identity and destiny are intertwined is taken quite literally by proponents of karma doctrines, particularly those who see karma (understood literally as "action") not as an abstract, insubstantial quality--as in most Western metaphysics--but as substantial matter (DANIEL 1983, 28). Scholars often attribute Jains with the most materialistic view of karma, but the metaphors used to describe the properties of karma in Hindu scriptures as well as ethnographic evidence suggest that this view is more broadly held. This is seen quite clearly in technical accounts in the Mahabharata that explain the operation of karma. In answer to questions about how karma can attach itself to the embodied soul and move with it from life to

life, sages respond with images of branding, stamping, and marking. For example, in the third book, the Forest Book, Markandeya tells Yudhisthira that those caught in the cycle of transmigration reap sorrow as a result of their evil actions, "marked as they gradually were by their unholy deeds" (MBH 3.181.19, VAN BUITENEN 1975, 575). (3) The word translated by van Buitenen as "marked" is paricihnitah, which may be variously defined as "marked, stamped, distinguished." Another instance of the use of the concept of "marking" or "stamping" in the Mahabharata to describe how karma influences the body occurs in book fourteen, the Book of the Horse Sacrifice. In a dialogue between two Brahmins about the nature of action, one Brahmin says that at the moment of death, "The jiva withdraws from the body and exists enveloped [samavrtah] by his own acts [karmabhih] and branded [or bent, ankitah] by its own auspicious and meritorious acts and sins" (Sa jivah pracyutah kayat karmabhih svaih samavrtah/ankitah subhaih punyaih papaih va api upapadyate) (MBH 14.17.28). While the term samavrtah, "enveloped by, covered with" perhaps conveys the sense that the acts do not necessarily touch the jiva, ankitah, "branded, bent" definitely suggests that the relationship between karma and the body is one of very close contact. In these passages, karma is represented as acting upon the subtle body through a violent transformation of its exterior. The branding imagery suggests that the change is permanent. This heightens the pathos of the predicament of the soul trapped in the cycle of rebirth and thus helps the speaker to persuade his listeners to act in the proper fashion. It is this specific idea--that the effects of action are permanently lodged in one's flesh and bone--that the motif of headwriting also draws upon for its force. One can no more remove the effects of karma than (in the days before cosmetic surgery) one could remove a bodily disfigurement. There is one important difference between the mechanism for fixing the outcome of a person's life described in the Mahabharata's understanding of karma and the mechanism suggested by the figure of headwriting. The information processing and transmission system described by the sages in the Mahabharata is essentially digital: one's deeds are either good or bad, either sins (papaih) or good and meritorious deeds (subhaih punyaih) (MBH 14. 17.28). The proportion of karmic substances produced by good and bad deeds is what ultimately dictates the destiny assigned to the body inhabited by the jiva in its next rebirth. Ethnographic evidence suggests that this kind of digital system for reckoning the outcome of a person's accumulated karma can work in a couple of different ways. When asked about the workings of karma, some people theorize that one can balance out bad deeds by good deeds to result in an overall surplus of good deeds and thus a happy future. Others theorize that good deeds cannot cancel out bad deeds; each good deed results in some pleasant outcome, while each bad deed results in an unpleasant outcome. At most, these people argue, good deeds of an extraordinary nature can only postpone the fruition of bad karma to some later incarnation or minimize the impact of that karma (DANIEL 1983, 39).

Such a system is much more reliable and accurate, it seems, than when one's karma is processed and stored in the form of language. Every deed is measured and weighed and recorded in some fashion, and no deed, whether good or evil, is overlooked. Such is not the case in tales where the headwriting motif is used to show how late may be outwitted. In these tales, it is precisely this weak link in the system that allows someone to seize their destiny by radically reinterpreting the language in which it is articulated. The next version comes from a collection of Tamil folktales assembled by Pandit Sangendi Mahalinga Natesa Sastri (1859-1906), a nineteenth-century Tamil scholar and contributor to the Indian Antiquary. One of the most prominent Indian folklorists of his time, Natesa Sastri was born into a Saiva Brahmin family inTiruchirapalli district in Tamil Nadu. He worked for the Government Archeological Survey under Robert Sewell, who praised his work as a translator of Tamil inscriptions. Many Indian folklorists worked in the shadow of their British or American collaborators, but Sastri gained considerable recognition for his work on his own. He was a member of the prestigious British Folklore Society from 1893, and published numerous books, including a four-volume series called Folklore in Southern India produced by the Bombay Education Society (PRASAD 2003, 436-37). One of Sastri's best known (because it is the most widely distributed) books, Tales of the Sun, or, Folklore of Southern India, was coedited with Mrs. Georgiana H. Kingscote, the wife of a British officer. The prejudicial characteristic of much colonial scholarship is apparent in the fact that Mrs. Kingscote gave little credit to her coauthor, even though research indicates that he contributed at least twenty-five of the twenty-six tales in the collection (PRASAD 2003, 437). (4) Sastri's own version of the outwitting late story, which had been published previously in the Indian Antiquary, is almost word-for-word identical with the version published in Tales of the Sun, with a couple of slight bowdlerizations typical of colonial folklore collections. Ramanujan retells this story in his Folktales of India collection, citing the two variants produced by Sastri (RAMANUJAN 1991a, 81-87; SASTRI 1888, 259-64; SASTRI and KINGSCOTE 1984, 230-47). My own retelling relies mostly on Ramanujan's version. Outwitting Fate III: Natesia Sastri A young Brahmin leaves home in search of knowledge. In a peaceful forest far from civilization be finds a guru living with his wife. The young man serves the guru and learns from him for many years. Then, one day, the guru decides to make a pilgrimage to a distant shrine. Since the guru's wife is eight months pregnant, the guru leaves his wife in the care of his student and a neighbor-woman. On

the night his guru's wife goes into labor, the student stands watch at the door of the natal chamber. At the stroke of midnight be sees a figure attempting to sneak into the chamber and with a shout be halts the stranger's progress: "You old Brahmin, what do you think you're doing, entering my master's cottage without so much as a by your leave?" When he discovers that it is Brahma himself going to write the baby's fate he asks what the deity intends to write. Brahma replies, "Even I do not know what my stylus will write on the forehead of the newborn. As the child comes into the world, I place the stylus on its head and it writes the fate of the child according to its good or bad deeds in its previous life." The young disciple extracts the promise that Brahma will tell him what has been written, but the god warns him that if he tells anyone, his head will split into a thousand pieces. When Brahma exits the chamber, the student learns that the baby is a boy and that he is fated to a very hard lot: a buffalo and a sack of rice will be his only share in life. When the student objects to the injustice of this child's lot, especially considering the high status of its father, Brahma replies, "What do I have to do with it? Such are the fruits of a former life. What's sown in the past must be reaped in the present." Three years pass. The guru again gets an impulse to go on a pilgrimage when his wife is pregnant and the same sequence of events occur, except this time the baby is a girl and the student learns from Brahma that his stylus has written that she has to earn her living as a prostitute. She must sell her body every night. The student lives with the family for three years more, until the boy and girl are six and three, respectively. But be grows more heartsick everyday as he contemplates the sad fate awaiting the children. Eventually he requests permission to leave the ashram in

order to make a pilgrimage of his own, which his teacher grants. After many years of travelling, learning, and pondering the mysterious ways of providence, he returns to his guru's village. He discovers that the old sage and his wife have died and that the guru's son is supporting himself and his family on one buffalo and a single sack of rice, as Brahma's verses had prophesized. The student introduces himself to the miserable young man and, promising a better life, tells him to sell both the buffalo and the sack of rice that day and use the money to provide a feast for his family, the poor, and the best Brahmans in town. "Leave not even a mouthful for the next day. Reserve nothing," says the student. The young man is astonished to hear such advice. "If I do that, how will I feed the four mouths in my own house? You Brahmans are always advising poor people like me to give it all to Brahmans. It's all very well for you. You are on the receiving end." And yet in the end, the young man reluctantly agrees. For the first time in his life he is able to provide a good meal for his family and neighbors; but that night he is filled with anxiety. He tosses and turns wondering and worrying about how he will provide food for his family now. At dawn, he goes out in a daze to feed the buffalo, as was his habit, and discovers to his amazement that another buffalo is standing in the stall alongside a sack of rice. His heart leaps with joy and he runs to tell his father's student of this miraculous occurrence. Impassively, the student instructs him in how to ensure his good fortune: he must sell the buffalo and the sack of rice each day and use the money only to feed his family and others, stinting nothing in his generosity. After staying with the son for a short while, the student goes to see his guru's daughter, who ekes

out a living in the next village as the neighborhood prostitute. Promising her a chance at a better life, he tells her to grant her services that night only to someone who pays her a large measure of pearls of the first water. She follows his advice in spite of her doubts and turns away all her regular clients, who assume she's gone mad. In the wee hours of the morning she obtains Brahma himself as her lover, disguised as a beautiful young man, he being the only person who could pay such an exorbitant price. The student tells her that as long as she sells the pearls each day and uses the money to buy gifts and food for the poor she will have this lover each night. He will be her husband. Before he leaves, he counsels her in this way: "Don't reserve a paisa for the next day. Hoard nothing. The day you fail to do this you'll lose your husband and fall back into your old wretched ways." At dawn, on the morning that the student resumes his wandering, he encounters on the road a beautiful person leading along a buffalo, with a sack of rice on his head and a bundle of pearls hung around his shoulder. It is Brahma, his head nearly bald from carrying out himself the fate which his iron pen had written. Brahma pleads with the student to relieve him of this burden, and the student agrees on the condition that Brahma allow them an ordinary happy life. The god grants his request and thus relieves himself of all his troubles. Here the narrative makes explicit the idea that has only been suggested in previous instances of this tale type--that the fate expressed in headwriting is the sum of one's good or bad deeds in a previous life or lives. In addition, the core elements of the story type are all present here: an infant who seems destined to lead a happy life by virtue of being born into a good family turns out to be burdened with an evil fate, and yet is able to outwit it by forcing a new meaning from the written expression of his destiny. Beyond being a story about outwitting fate, though, this version is also a story about the risks and rewards of generosity, and about the courage necessary to boldly give away all that one owns with the confidence that one will

gain it back again, a point to which I will return. The children transform their ill-fortune by becoming successful traders in oxen and pearls who use their wealth to provide for learned Brahmans and the poor. When it is too much for Brahma to sustain this, they receive an ordinary happy life. There is some controversy over whether or not this is in fact an oral tale or a direct translation from the Jain Dharmakalpadruma. W. Norman Brown accused Natesa Sastri of deceiving his readers by representing this tale as an oral folktale when in fact it had several textual predecessors. Sastri was not the only one engaging in this "deception," however. According to Brown's estimates, as many as half of the three thousand supposedly oral tales that had been gathered and committed to writing in the modern era had definite precursors in a written literary context (BROWN 1978, 123 and 127). And yet, the disapproving tone with which Brown chides Sastri, not just once but on three separate occasions (BROWN 1978, 123, 150, and 157), for translating written narratives as oral ones seems now unjustified in light of Brown's own insight: since time immemorial there has been a near constant exchange across the imaginary borders within Indian society and its cultural landscape, between written texts and oral texts, folk texts and elite texts, men's tales and women's tales. The rise of print media in the nineteenth-century certainly accelerated the process by which written tales were introduced into streams of oral transmission, and vice versa. But even before the modern era numerous vectors caused narratives to cross and recross the porous boundary between oral and written literature (POLLOCK 2003). Professional bards, both itinerant and those settled in a particular village, drew from a large repertoire; travelling dramatic troupes performed localized forms of trans-Indian epics; and literate Brahmans themselves shared their knowledge of the textual tradition orally in both formal and informal settings. This is the sociological context for the dialogic nature of Indian literature in which vastly different traditions of creative expression co-exist, "parodying, inverting, facing and defacing each other, sharing and taking over characters, themes, motifs, and other signifiers but making them signify new and even opposite things" (RAMANUJAN 1991b, 54). Following Ramanujan's dialogical model of Indian literature, these outwitting fate tales can be read as parodies of the karma ideology. Through a kind ofhyperbolic exaggeration of the notion that karma is inexorable, that one must pay for the actions of the past, these tales mimic in a broad fashion the outlines of the karma ideology in a way that criticizes the latter. The humor in outwitting fate tales that employ the motif of headwriting depends on the over-literalization of the prophetic sentences written on each of the children's heads. For example, the most obvious meaning of the poor farmer's headwriting--to subsist on a single ox and a single bag of grain--is that it is an expression of poverty. And yet the clever student manages to force this apparently straightforward turn of phrase towards its denotative meaning by a strong literal reading: the man

will always have at least one ox and one bag of grain, no matter what he does. Similarly, the girl's headwriting, a euphemistic way of indicating her occupation as a prostitute--she will have to sell her body every night--is twisted so that it opens the possibility of her becoming rich without losing her chastity. When the headwriting motif is used in conjunction with the ideology of karma, as it is in these stories, the effects of one's actions in a previous life are represented as taking up residence in the body in the form of words in a terse, descriptive phrase. Outwitting fate tales that use the headwriting motif show that once the possibilities opened by virtue of the inherent ambiguity of language have been recognized and seized, karma or fate (understood here as an inexorable force) can be made to turn against itself. An evil fate can be transformed into a blessing. This thwarting of fate can be seen as a critique of the ideology of karma in that by testing to breaking point the ability of language to generate a one-to-one correspondence between words and things, the narrative seems to question the adequacy of the karma ideology's similar pretensions to supply a one-to-one correspondence between past deeds and present events. While Brahma's assertion that "What's sown in the past must be reaped in the present" implies that the child must have done something dreadful in a former life to receive this destiny, that its evil destiny is a reflection of an evil character, the disciple's strong rereading of the texts inscribed on the children's foreheads recovers the children's original innocence. TRADERS IN GOODS, TRADERS IN STORIES The figures in these folktales move beyond mere survival by cleverly deploying the meager resources that fate has allotted them. How they do so may tell us something about the social strata these tales represent, something about which the folklore collections from which these tales were drawn are completely silent. These narratives took shape in print thanks to the efforts of colonial-era folklorists, both Indian and non-Indian. Beginning with Miss FRERE's pioneering collection, Old Deccan Days, published in 1868, missionaries, colonial administrators, military officers and their wives, along with hundreds of Indian collectors, gathered folktales from all the regions of India, translated them into English, and included them in books whose primary purpose was to introduce English readers to something of India's local character. However, while the nineteenth-century folklore collections remain important as crucial repositories of oral narratives, they are of little use in discerning the power plays at work when tales are actually narrated or performed. Folklore collectors like Sastri rarely gave clues as to the kind of people they heard the stories from, or who their usual audiences were. Were the narrators men or women? Were they Brahmins, dominant landed castes, or agricultural laborers? With the increasing sophistication of the field of folkloristics, these questions have become central to the analysis of oral narrative, as scholars come to see how the meaning of a narrative is shaped significantly by the context in which it is told, varying according to audience, teller, setting, and so forth (APPADURAI 1991, 4).

Even in the absence of such direct statements, however, one can make reasonable conjectures about the people to whom the story would have held the most appeal as an expression of deeply held sentiments. One can hazard guesses about the probable originators of the tale and cautiously identify those whose interests and world view the tale best articulates. To do so, one has to ask, what kind of world does the story envision? Whose dreams and hopes does it give voice to? Whose interests are represented by the narrative in the most favorable light? I would argue that tales of the outwitting fate type seem to articulate best the world view and ambitions of members of upwardly mobile low castes. Like the Paraiyar origin myths that Robert DELIEGE (1993) and Michael MOFFATT (1979) have recorded, through which the Paraiyars represent themselves as kings who have been wrongly demoted, these narratives describe the downfall of a once powerful (or potentially powerful) person through no specific fault of their own. But unlike the figures in the origin myths, each protagonist in outwitting fate tales, whether a hunter, a poor farmer, a grass seller, or a prostitute, parlays his or her meager means into something bigger and better through entering into the world of exchange. I would argue that such a narrative reflects the ambitions of upwardly mobile artisan and agricultural castes who use trade as a means of social and economic advancement. The last two variants of the story that I will consider support this hypothesis by recounting the rise in fortunes of another archetypal figure from Indic folklore--the hunter. Here the figure of the hunter from the Dharmakalpadruma variant reappears in two slightly different guises. Brown located these variants of the tale in modern collections of regional Indian folklore. The first was collected by an Indian scholar named Mukharji whose collection, Indian Folklore, I have not been able to locate. According to Brown, the gist of this tale (Outwitting Fate IV: Mukharji) is that a prince is doomed by fate to earn his living from his fifteenth year by hunting stags. His minister suggests to him that he cease to go to the forest to hunt, knowing that to fulfill his fate Bidhata (another divine personification of fate) must drive the stags to him. At first, he waits on the outskirts of the city, then in his own neighborhood of huts, and finally in the hut itself for Bidhata to come driving along the stag. Bidhata eventually gives up and grants the boy his father's kingdom again (BROWN 1978, 157, footnote 20). The next, and last, variant is in a contribution to The Indian Antiquary by Putlibai D. H. WADIA (1886), an Indian folklore collector from western India, which he entitles "Vemai and the Thieves." Outwitting Fate V: Putlibai D. H. Wadia One night a party of thieves lying in wait for passing travelers chanced to see the goddess Vemai [another female personification of fate] passing by quickly with a golden tray of auspicious items on her head, including rice, red powder, and a pair of dice set with diamonds and pearls. She told the thieves that she was in a great hurry to write the destiny of the king's newborn son. When the thieves refused to let her pass, she promised to tell them

what it was on her return. Returning with a downcast look, she said to the thieves, "Although born a king's son, this boy will lose his parents at the age of twelve, and then be deprived of his kingship by a usurper who will condemn him to spend his life as a prisoner within the castle." "But," she said, brightening, "he will somehow manage to escape and after that he will pass the rest of his life in the jungle, eking out an existence by hunting small game." The thieves were, in spite of their profession, loyal subjects of the king, whom they loved, so they kept an eye on the prince throughout his youth. Indeed, just as the goddess had predicted, the Raja andRani both died when the boy was twelve, and then his uncle usurped the throne and sent him to the dungeon. Luckily, the thieves came to his aid and broke him out of his prison. In the jungle, they provided him with a bow and arrow, but advised him never by any means to kill small game, but only to shoot his arrows at elephants, rhinoceros, and other large beasts. As if acting as instruments to fulfill the prince's headwriting, the rabbits and deer of the jungle would throw themselves in his path. Bur, mindful of his mentor's advice, the prince reserved his arrows only for the large beasts. With the sale of the hides and tusks of these large beasts, killed at a rate of one a day, he managed over the course of time to amass a large fortune. (WADIA 1886, 171-72) These stories about hunters who rise above a subsistence level of survival through trade in skins, ivory, or jewels epitomize the kind of upward mobility through trade that has shaped the fortunes of many groups in Indian society, particularly those who live on the borders between the forest or jungle and the population centers of the plains (GUHA, 1999). Many have argued that the incorporation of such so-called "tribal" groups into Indian society takes place from the very bottom, where they are integrated as outcasts and untouchables into the bottom rungs of the caste system of Indian society. To the extent that such low status communities internalize the building blocks of orthodox Brahmanical Hinduism--varna, dharma, karma-there they stay, at least within the boundaries of this life. Classical narratives, narratives that articulate the point of view of established Hindu elites, provide a ray of hope in an invisible, imagined realm beyond death: they may be rewarded for a lifetime's faithful adherence to their inherited dharma by a step-by-step advancement up the ladder of castes. The tales I have been analyzing here, on the other hand, reveal a shortcut to upward mobility that does not require multiple lifetimes, whereby hunters or herdsman with courage, skill, and luck can amass fortunes by exchanging hides, tusks, and so forth for money. To the extent that the tales celebrate this route for bypassing the expectations of docility and resignation normally placed on low castes, it seems fair to say that the outwitting fate tales embody the values of the upwardly mobile members of such groups who have taken up trade. In the world of trade it helps to have a high tolerance for risk, and a willingness to wager a lot--perhaps everything--in pursuit of profit. One could argue that the tales' valuation of risk, combined with the fact that one of the oldest versions of the tale is found in a Jain collection (the Dharmakalpadruma), suggests that the traders who produced the text were likely

Jains. This is certainly plausible. In fact, Wadia's version comes from "western India" (which may refer to Gujarat), a region with a strong and influential Jain presence for many centuries. Bur each variant of the tale involves the sale of animals, in one way or another, even animal products such as skins, tusks, and "pearls" gathered from the heads of elephant carcasses, and Jains famously avoid occupations such as hunting and trade in animal products because of their adherence to the principle of ahimsa (or nonviolence) (CORT 2004, 80). For this reason, I would argue the trading communities that "authored," or more cautiously, transmitted these tales with the most relish would be non-Brahman and non-Jain (see TABLE 1). While the affirmation of risk-taking--that is, ignoring small game in favor of the chance to bag bigger, more lucrative game--may be clearly seen as characteristic of trading groups, the ethic of generosity and reciprocity advocated by these outwitting late tales may not be so widely recognized as a virtue of traders and merchants, who, in India, are often stereotyped as stingy and deceiving. And yet these tales, especially the variant supplied by Sastri, clearly advocate generosity over hoarding. Besides being stories about escaping one's late, they are also stories about how a spirit of largesse can allow one to overcome adversity. The fearful, hoarding spirit of the guru's son is implicitly condemned; recommended instead is a spirit of openhanded, unstinting generosity that counts on the world to reciprocate. As the son's hesitation makes clear, this kind of advice can be dangerous to follow. If the story has a universal appeal, it is in the way that it captures succinctly a deep-rooted feature of human psychology: anxiety about the future often leads to a self-fulfilling experience of deprivation. Like American jokes about the differences between the eternal pessimist and the eternal optimist, these tales dramatize the outcomes of believing the glass is always either half-empty or half-full. Yet, the outwitting fate tales take on a distinctive meaning when viewed in the context of traditional Indian economic patterns. As has been well documented, dominant communities in India maintain their social and economic position in part by situating themselves as generous patrons and givers in networks of exchange (cf. RAHEJA 1988). By becoming a patron who gives food to Brahmans or employment to artists, even a person born with low status can rise in social rank. This kind of earned status is certainly an important social good in and of itself, but it is also crucial to establishing one's reputation as a responsible leader in a community. By virtue of that reputation, one gains credit and credibility on numerous levels: on the strictly financial level in terms of being able to get loans of money, and on a political level in terms of being able to influence the life of a community. In this light, the Brahman's son turned poor farmer turned wealthy donor in Sastri's version, who expends everything he has for the community, gains it back along with "interest" in the form of prestige for his generosity. CONCLUSION I have argued here, following W. Norman Brown, that these tales should be read as critiques of the karma doctrine

lodged by people who rejected the socially conservative implications of karma at the level of ideology. In concluding, it would be useful to describe more carefully what kind of critique these tales offer. Are they parodies of the karma ideology? Or are they satirical, hyperbolic exaggerations that amuse because they illustrate a widely accepted theory taken to extremes? Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman have offered a useful distinction between satire and parody. They argue that satire depends on a single notion of reality--"a single dominant code and ... clearly articulated boundaries of identity, reality and ethical judgment," while parody "deliberately mingles domains and superimposes or interweaves contrasting visions, including competing notions of the real, while always allowing for the presence of at least two operative codes" (RAO and SHULMAN 1991, 435). If the outwitting fate tales are critiques of the karma ideology, which I argue they are, they do so more through parody than satire because they do not explicitly or directly condemn the karma ideology or the conservative ethic that flows from it. Rather, for the sake of the surprise rereading of the headwriting verse at the end, the story must maintain two alternative readings of the headwriting verse alive at once, keeping in tension two alternate descriptions of reality. The pleasure of "outwitting" a cruel fate supposedly earned by one's deeds in a previous life comes precisely because it thwarts the deterministic view of karma; bur without the latter, such stories would fall flat. Not unlike what scholars have observed about many upwardly mobile groups within India, these narratives work within the dominant ideology without overturning it altogether (MOFFATT 1979). If this is a counter-system, it is not one that seeks to bring down the dominant order with a trumpet call so as to usher into being a completely different order of being; it is one that alters, modifies, parodies, and slyly imitates. I have also sought here to go beyond Brown to hypothesize as to the kind of people who may have "authored" these tales (if such a thing may be said of a genre of literature that is by definition authorless), or at least derived a lot of satisfaction from them. My intention here is to point to further research that could flesh out the concrete ways in which communities and individuals incorporated a critique of karma in their lives. This discussion is relevant more broadly in folklore studies and the history of religions in that it addresses a question much debated in studies of the role of religious ideologies in conflicts between and among interest groups. The question has to do with whether and how dominant ideologies, ideologies that advocate the interests of a ruling elite, are internalized, appropriated and/or transformed by socially and politically subordinated groups. Did American slaves internalize the Pauline endorsements of slavery preached to them by their masters (MARTIN 1998) ? Do Muslim women internalize demeaning representations of their supposedly dangerous and uncontrollable sexuality by conservative Muslim clerics? Do Hindu dalits and members of low castes believe that their social marginalization is deserved as a result of karma earned through the sins of a previous life? Under what conditions do subordinate groups contest the identities ascribed to them and reject the destinies that are assigned

to them as a result? Definitive answers to such questions can only be answered through historical or ethnographic case studies of particular communities at particular moments in time. Perhaps suggestions for more such case studies may be gained from the conclusions arrived at here. When the karma ideology is used to reinforce social norms and structures it suggests that who you are is defined fundamentally by birth, and furthermore that the natural course of your life will flow from that birth-ascribed identity. This is the meaning of the figure who comes at birth, or six days after it (not coincidentally, just days before a baby's naming ceremony, according to Hindu custom) to inscribe the individual's fate on their forehead. The outwitting fate tale upends both of these assumptions. First, the identity of the newborns described in these tales turns out to be quite different from what one would expect given their birth--the king's son becomes a hunter, the guru's daughter a prostitute. Second, their lives do not follow the trajectory expected by either their birth or their downfall. Indeed, the characters' rapid movements up and down the social ladder described in these tales utterly confounds the assumption that one's birth, as determined by karma, in turn determines one's destiny. The tales implicitly advocate the rejection of identities ascribed to individuals on the basis of birth, instead applauding human effort as a means of social mobility. In that sense the tales do not subscribe to a cosmology in which social stratification is natural and static, embedded in the very substance of creation. Moreover, eschewing both belief in a rational, predictable universe governed by karma and belief in random chaos governed by fate, these tales affirm the ability of humans to take bad fortune and turn it into good by embracing risk, following the advice of smart people, and giving generously with the certain knowledge that one will receive back more in return. REFERENCES Abbreviation MBH The Mahabharata: Text as Constituted in its Critical Edition. Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1942. Other Sources APPADURAI, Arjun, Frank J. KOROM, and Margaret MILLS, ed. 1991 Gender, Genre and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. BABB, Lawrence A. 1983 Destiny and responsibility: Karma in popular Hinduism. In KEYES and DANIEL, eds., 163-81. BECK, Brenda E. F.

1983 Fate, karma and cursing in a local epic milieu. In Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry. In KEYES and DANIEL, eds., 63-81. BLACKBURN, Stuart H., and A. K. RAMANUJAN 1986 Introduction. In Another Harmony: New Essays on the Folklore of India, ed. Stuart H. Blackburn and A. K. Ramanujan, 1-24. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. BOWKER, Jean Holm, and John BOWKER, eds. 1994 Human Nature and Destiny. New York: Pinter Publishers. BROWN, W. Norman 1978 India and Indology: Selected Articles. Ed. Rosanne Rocher. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. van BUITENEN, J. A. B., trans. 1975 The Mahabharata. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. CHAPPLE, Christopher Key 1986 Karma and Creativity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. COHN, Bernard S. 1992 An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays. Delhi: Oxford University Press. CORT, John E. 2004 Jains, caste and hierarchy in north Gujarat. Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 38, 1&2: 73-112. DANIEL, Sheryl B. 1983 The tool box approach of the Tamil to the issues of moral responsibility and human destiny. In KEYES and DANIEL, eds., 27-62. DELIEGE, Robert 1993 The myths of origin of the Indian untouchables. Man 28, 533-49. DONIGER O'FLAHERTY, Wendy, ed. 1980 Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. FRERE, Mary 1868 Old Deccan Days: Or, Hindu Fairy Legends Current in South India. London: John Murray.

GOUGH, Kathleen. 1973 Harijans in Thanjavur. In GOUGH and SHARMA, eds., 222-45. GOUGH, Kathleen, and Hari P. SHARMA, ed. 1973 Imperialism and Revolution in South Asia. New York: Monthly Review Press. GUHA, Sumit 1999 Ecology and Ethnicity in India, c. 1200--1991. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. HERTEL, Johannes 1913 [No title]. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft [Journal of the German Oriental Society]. 65: 441-46. HIEBERT, Paul G. 1983 Karma and other explanation traditions in a South Indian village. In KEYES and DANIEL, ed., 119-30. JENSEN, Herman 1997 [1897] A Classified Collection of Tamil Proverbs: A Bilingual Edition. Madras: Asian Educational Services. KEYES, Charles F., and E. Valentine DANIEL, ed. 1983 Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. KINGSCOTE, Georgiana H., and Natesa SASTRI 1890 Tales of the Sun, or Folklore of Southern India. London: W. H. Allen and Co. KNOTT, Kim 1996 Hindu women, destiny and Stridharma. Religion 26: 15-35. KOLENDA, Pauline Mahar 1964 Religious anxiety and Hindu fate. Journal of Asian Studies 23: 71-81. KRISHNAN, Yuvraj 1997 The Doctrine of Karma: Its Origin and Development in Brahmanical, Buddhist and Jaina Traditions. Delhi: Motilal Benarsidass Publishers. MANWARING, Reverend A. 1899 Marathi Proverbs. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

MARTIN, Clarice J. 1998 Somebody done hoodoo'd the hoodoo man: Language, power, resistance, and the effective history of Pauline texts in American slavery. Semeia 83/84: 203-33. MCCULLOUGH, William 1912 Bengali Household Tales. London: Hodder and Stoughton. MENZIES, Robert 2005 Mysterium minimum: The predictable world in Vrat Kathas. Unpublished paper presented at the 2005 Conference on the Study of Religions in India. Albion College, Michigan, June 9-12. MOFFATT, Michael 1979 An Untouchable Community in South India: Consensus and Replication. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. MONIER-WILLIAMS, Monier 1990 [1872] A Sanskrit-English Dictionary: Etymologically and Philologically Arranged, with Special Reference to Cognate Indo-European Languages. Oxford: Clarendon Press. MUMME, Patricia Y. 1987 Grace and karma in Nammalvar's Salvation. Journal of the American Oriental Society 107: 257-66. NAITHANI, Sadhana 2002 To tell a tale untold: Two folklorists in colonial India. Journal of Folklore Research 39: 201-16. NUCKOLLS, Charles 1992 Divergent ontologies of suffering in South Asia. Ethnology 31: 57-75. OBEYESEKERE, Gananath 2002 Imagining Karma: Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth. Berkeley, CA: University of California. POLLOCK, Sheldon, ed. 2003 Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. PKASAD, Neela 2003 S.v. Natesa Sastri, Pandit Sangendi Mahalinga. In South Asian Encyclopedia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, ed. Margaret A. Mills,

Peter J. Claus, and Sarah Diamond, 436-38. New York: Routledge. RAGHAVAN, V., and K. KUNJUNNI RAJA et al., ed. 1977 New Catalogus Catalogorum: An Alphabetical Register of Sanskrit and Allied Works and Authors. Vol. 9. Madras: University of Madras. RAHEJA, Gloria Godwin 1988 The Poison in the Gift: Ritual, Prestation and the Dominant Caste in a North Indian Village. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. RAMANUJAN, A. K. 1989 Where mirrors are windows: Toward an anthology of reflections. History of Religions 28: 187-216. 1990 Is there an Indian way of thinking? An informal essay. In India through Hindu Categories, ed. McKim Marriott, 41-58. New Delhi and Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. 1991a Folktales from India: A Selection of Oral Tales from Twenty-Two Languages. New York: Pantheon Books. 1991b Toward a counter-system: Women's tales. In APPADURAI, KOROM, and MILLS, ed., 33-55. RAO, Velcheru Narayana, and David Dean SHULMAN The powers of parody in Nayaka-period Tanjavur. In APVADURAI, KOROM, and MILLS, ed., 428-64. REICHENBACH, Bruce R. 1989 Karma, causation, and divine intervention. Philosophy East and West: 135-4-9. 1990 The Law of Karma: A Philosophical Study. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ROY, Pratap Chandra 1962-63 The Mahabharata of Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa. Calcutta: Oriental Publishing Company. RYDER, Arthur W., trans. 1962 The Panchatantra. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press SASTRI, Pandit Sangendi Mahalinga Natesa 1888 [No title]. The Indian Antiquary 17: 259-64. 1905 Indian Folk Tales. Madras: The Guardian Press. SASTRI, Pandit Natesa, and Mrs. Howard KINGSCOTE

1984 [1890] Tales of the Sun, or, Folklore of Southern India. Delhi: Asian Educational Services. TAWNEY, C. H., and N. M. PENZER 1926 The Ocean of Story, Somadeva's Katha Sarit Sagara. Vol. 5. New Delhi: Motilal Benarsidass Publishers. THOMPSON, Stith, and Jonas BALYS 1958 The Oral Tales of India. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. TORZOK, Judit, trans. 2007 Friendly Advice by Narayana and King Vikrama's Adventures. New York: New York University Press; JJC Foundation. UPRETI, Ganga Datt 1894 Proverbs and Folklore of Kumaun and Garhwal. Ludhiana: Ludhiana Mission Press. WADIA, Putlibai, D. H. 1886 Folklore in western India: No. IV. Vemai and the thieves. The Indian Antiquary 15: 171-72. WADLEY, Susan 1994 Struggling with Destiny in Karimpur, 1925-1984. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. WEBER, Max 1958 The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism. Trans. and ed. Hans H. GERTH and Don MARTINDALE. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press. WINTERNITZ, Maurice 1927 A History of Indian Literature. Vol. 2: Buddhist Literature and Jain Literature. Trans. S. KETKAR and H. KOHN. New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint. NOTES (1.) Indeed, the Indic Ocean of Story has flowed into numerous other cultural regions beyond India, giving rise to Arabic fairy tales and Aesop's Fables of ancient Greece. (2.) W. Norman BROWN tells a shortened version of this tale in his article, "Outwitting Fate" (BROWN 1978, 15657), relying on Johannes Hertel's German version (HERTEL 1913, 444-45). (3.) The original reads "Klesabhginah/asubhaih karmabhis ca api prayasah paricihnitah" (MBH 3.181.19, vol. 3, 61819). (4.) For a poignant account of a more typical case of an

Indian folklorist falling into obscurity, see NAITHANI (2002). ELIZA F. KENT Colgate University, NY TABLE I: Analysis of upward mobility in outwitting fate tales that use headwriting motifs Divine personification Source of narrative of fate Kathasaritsagara 2. 119 Durga Dharmakalpadruma Sasti (Hertel) 2.4.109 (retold by or Fate (Brown) Brown and Hertel) Natesa Sastri (retold Brahma by Kingscote and Ramanujan) Mukharji, Indian Bidhata Folklore (retold by Brown) P. D. H. Wadia Vemai Source ofnarrative advisor First child Poor farmer with but Kathasaritsagara 2. 119 one ox becomes a trader in oxen Dharmakalpadruma Prince turned hunter 2.4.109 (retold by becomes a trader in Brown and Hertel) pearls Natesa Sastri (retold by Kingscote and Ramanujan) Mukharji, Indian Minister, Jnanagarbha Father Householder Raja

Brahman Guru

Raja

Raja Clever

Clever Friend

Guru's clever disciple Minister

Prince turned hunter Folklore (retold by of stags turned herder Brown) of stags, has kingdom returned to him P. D. H. Wadia Prince turned hunter of small game becomes prosperous big game hunter and trader in skins and ivory Source ofnarrative Third child Kathasaritsagara 2. 119 Dharmakalpadruma Prince turned Princess turned poor 2.4.109 (retold by grass seller with prostitute becomes jewel Brown and Hertel) one ox becomes merchant and highly-paid trader in oxen courtesan with God as a customer Natesa Sastri (retold Brahman's son Brahman's daughter by Kingscote and turned poor farmer turned village prostitute Ramanujan) becomes prosperbecomes ous trader in well-provided-for oxen consort of a God Mukharji, Indian Folklore (retold by Brown) P. D. H. Wadia
COPYRIGHT 2009 Asian Folklore Studies No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder. Copyright 2009 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.

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