Beyond the Women in Question: Reconstructing Gendered Identities in Early India

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Beyond the ‘Woman Question’ both revisits and interrogates some of the central tenets of the ‘woman question’ as it emerged in colonial India and shaped (and continues to shape) subsequent historiography. These include issues of women’s access to resources, ritual ‘rights’, and locations within the family, primarily relating to an unmarked category of upper-caste/class women. In terms of chronology, the essays range from the mid-first millennium BCE to the turn of the first/ second millennium CE. Spatially, they deal with regions as diverse as Kashmir, and parts of north and central India. Using a wide range of sources–inscriptional and visual as well as normative and narrative texts–this book contends that gender identities were not monolithic, even as elite women seem to be the most visible/accessible. The issues explored include participation in gift exchanges and their economic, social, political and cultural significance; the construction of gender identities through rituals; and the representation of gender relations in literary traditions. Collectively, the volume contributes to the growing body of historical research on gender relations in early India.