An Independent Review of Paul Courtright's book on Ganesa - Chapter 17 part 5

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Ganesha as a Trickster

Courtright cites the British anthropologist Edmund Leach approvingly: Leach sees this characteristic as Ganesa’s closes link to the trickster: Ganesa’s broken tusk and severed head with the long flaccid trunk are the clearest signals of his sexual ambiguity.

Concluding his own estimation of Ganesha as a ‘trickster’, Courtright then likens the deity to a eunuch:

His sexuality remains ambiguous, as his relationship with his mother and father, his detachable tusk/phallus and his similarities to eunuchs all suggest.

All the above passages of Courtright are not only dubious from an academic perspective, they are also plainly offensive, and perverse. Perhaps, Courtright et al always see life through a different aperture than most of us. Perhaps, they always see everything as a cigar, and

the cigar as only a Lingam.

The Worship of Ganesha

Chapter IV deals with the worship of Ganesha in homes, in temples, and during public festivals in Maharashtra. Overall, the description is balanced, readable and nothing out of the ordinary. It is clearly written from the perspective of an observant outsider. A few references to Indian literature on the subject are thrown in, besides some from the works of the Indologists as well, perhaps to give the entire narrative a quasi-academic flavor. For the Hindus, the chapter perhaps does not offer much that is not already known to them in general terms. For the Westerners or even Westernized Indians, the narrative could serve as a useful and informative background on how the tradition of worship of Ganesha is actually practised in our times.

Chapter V titled, ‘Ganesa in a Regional Setting: Maharashtra’ deals with the well-known fact of deep devotion of Maharashtrians to Ganapati. It opens with a strange comment, based on an old work, that in South East and in East Asia he is more often portrayed as demon. Perhaps this has changed in the last six decades since the book referenced by Courtright was written. One of us, who has worked in and has traveled to that part of the world (Thailand, Bali and Java, Singapore)

would clearly question this characterization today. At least in our own times, he is a beloved deity for the Hindus of Bali (and even more so in eastern Java), as well as for the Buddhists in urban Thailand. (For more on the rest of the chapter please read page 242, 243 and 244, chapter 17)

Taking Liberties with Liberal Arts (Courtright’s Ph.D. Thesis)

We had an opportunity to obtain a copy of Courtright’s Ph.D. thesis300 of which the book under review is an expansion. Interestingly, in the Preface of his thesis, the author states:

Nearly ten years ago, while I was teaching conversational English at Ahmadnagar College in central Maharasthra, several of my students invited me to join them and their families for the annual celebrations to the Hindu god Ganesa. At that time all I knew about Ganesa was that he was the elephant-faced deity who Hindus regarded as the god of good fortune. I had seen his picture in numerous shops in the city and had gathered the impression that the good fortune he was believed to bring had largely to do with the financial success and material well-being. Hindus seemed to view him with a compelling light-heartedness which I found quite different from the more somber attitudes my Protestant upbringing had taught me were appropriately religious.

He states that during the Ganesha Festival at Ahmadnagar, the Maharashtrian dancers made him dance with them and as a result, “I had become united with them. It seemed that I had finally experienced India ‘from the inside’.” He expresses his acknowledgements to his informants in the following words:

Although the title page lists me as the author of this dissertation, many others have been involved in its completion. The people of Maharashtra, displaying attitudes of hospitality for which India is famous, welcomed my frequent inquiries about their festival and its traditions, patiently submitted to my interviews, and made my research pleasurable. No scholar could hope to have greater cooperation than I received from them.

Through our analysis of the resulting book, we have seen the manner in which Courtright  expressed his gratitude for the cooperation offered by Maharashtrian Hindus: calling the cherished deity of his ‘native informants’ as something of a eunuch, something like a homosexual, and a pervert harboring sexual fantasies for his mother! Perhaps, it is not out of place to mention that even Courtright’s PhD thesis is so full of errors, that it does not even spell the names of Hindu texts and common Hindu terms correctly. (For more on this please read page 245 and 246, chapter 17)

Conclusion: Academic Scholarship, or ‘Peer-Reviewed Pornography’?

The above examples are but a small specimen of erroneous translations, selective use of Hindu textual evidence, insufficient knowledge of Tantric and Yogic traditions, and the over-sexualization of passages in Hindu texts that characterize Courtright’s book, page after page, and chapter after chapter. It is fair to say that being based on incorrect data, his interpretations and his reconstruction of the Hindu deity Ganesha are by and large invalid.

To conclude then, Courtright’s book may be considered as an example of excellent pornographic fiction, and also as an example of careless academic scholarship. It is therefore surprising that scholars in South Asian and Indology programs in the United States have praised the book and awarded it prizes. It makes one wonder if this is due to the fact that the level of scholarship in Indian and Hinduism studies is really substandard in American Universities.

In an apparent effort to defuse the crisis, Courtright wrote an email to an internet list of scholars in South Asian Studies:

I wrote it over twenty years ago, in a different discursive environment than we have now . . . were I writing that book today I would, hopefully, be more aware of how it might be read by some Hindu readers in both India and its diasporas.

This confession must be quite puzzling to any honest academic. This approach raises questions regarding ethics and honesty in scholarship. Is an academic expected to play to the gallery, as Courtright has confessed he did and perhaps intends to do in the future as well? If so, is it not a violation of objectivity, ethics and honesty? One may understand that interpretations of literature, history, or any other observable phenomenon changes as new proven theories and data

emerge. But why should the interpretation change according to the readers? What kind of academic objectivity is that? Is it not a corroboration of the accusation that there is a deeply entrenched anti-Hindu bias among Wendy’s Children?

Courtright apparently felt that so long as his audience was not Hindu and annoyingly knowledgeable, he could depict Hinduism in an obscene manner—perhaps as an ‘inside’ ethnic joke shared with his white colleagues. One cannot help but recall Doniger’s thigh-slapping, triumphant amusement upon ‘learning’ from Kripal that the Sri Ramakrishna that many ‘moronic’ Hindus worship as the epitome of their religion could be academically tried and convicted as a conflicted, maladjusted homosexual, and a pervert to boot. Those were cozy

times indeed to laugh about the heathen and his blindness, with one’s buddies. Today, with more Hindus constituting the audience, Courtright feels that he has to calibrate his interpretations differently. Strangely, the academic reaction to this bizarre phenomenon ranges from a

deafening silence to showering praises on him.

Books such as those of Courtright and Doniger merely conform to the latest fad in eroticizing ‘exotic’ cultures, just as a few decades earlier it was very fashionable for some Western anthropologists to go ‘bravely’ to some remote island in the Samoa archipelago to study the sexual practices of Samoans. Such studies not just demean the culture that forms their subject. They are like the gaze of a pervert that mentally disrobes a lady standing in front of him. Indeed, the book reviewed by us does not necessarily illuminate its purported subject matter. Rather, it allows us to act as voyeurs of the mind of the author. Hindus and Indians do not need such ‘dedicated’, ‘thoughtful’, ‘respectful’ and ‘loving’ scholars to promote an understanding of our heritage in the West, just as an abandoned orphan would do well without the love of a pedophile.

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An Independent Review of Paul Courtright's book on Ganesa - Chapter 17 part 4

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Courtright’s ‘Limp Phallus’ not attested in texts of Ganapatya Sect

Anyway, his fiction of limp trunks and phalluses is not exactly supported by the Hindu texts. For instance, the Ganesha Purana (Upasana Khanda 12.38) states that the trunk of Ganesha is so strong that it is more powerful than that of Airavata and other elephants who are guardians of the eight quarters of the Universe. Courtright thus misses a good opportunity to discuss ‘Penis-Envy’. The Tantric texts, which Courtright ignores, distinguish clearly between the trunk and his phallus, and the latter does perform its intended functions according to these texts. In short, data from the texts ignored by Courtright completely negates his own fantasy about Ganesha’s trunk.

Numerous depictions of the deity actually show him with a raised or an erect trunk. Courtright has ignored the diversity of the Hindu tradition with regard to the deity and has chosen only those aspects that fit his predetermined thesis.

Courtright should have considered the fact that in Indian culture, the lifted trunk of an elephant represents a salute by the animal. The deity is not really supposed to salute us, which is why He may have a lowered trunk in most of His iconic representations so as to symbolize His benevolence and omnipotence.

Ekadantin of Hindu Tradition—Courtright Castrates Ganesha Thrice

Now we have another curious fact regarding Lord Ganesha. One of the tusks of the deity is broken, or missing. How does Courtright unravel this mystery? As expected, under the subject ‘The Tusk’ in his book, all kinds of disjointed, unrelated, disparate Puranic narratives are brought together in an artificial manner by Courtright to lay the ground for discussions on beheading, decapitation, amorous play and all such sexual, Freudian materials in Chapter III. Ignored of course are the mystical and spiritual interpretations of his single tusk in Hindu tradition (e.g., Mudgala Purana 2.52.13–14) wherein the tusk is related to maayaa.

It is definitely worth investigating what meaning Hindu tradition itself accords to the broken tusk of the deity. To determine the traditional meanings of the broken tusk, we explored a wide range of Hindu texts, from Kaavyas to the Puranas, and found the following explanations. In a major Purana text, Lord Vishnu explains the word ekadanta as follows: The word eka means ‘supreme’ or pradhana, and the word danta denotes strength. “To Him (Ganesha) who is supremely powerful/strong, I (Lord Vishnu) offer homage”.

Far from being a castrated phallus, the broken tusk of Ganesha is a potent weapon. The Ganesha Purana, Kridakhanda (chapters 62–70) describes a battle waged between Devàntaka and Ganesha, the latter assisted by his spouses. Devàntaka uproots the tusk of Ganesha, but the deity uses this very broken tusk to penetrate the demon’s chest and thus kills him. (For more on this please read page 230, chapter 17)

Courtright considers Ganesha’s beheading as a castration, his trunk as a symbol of a limp phallus and now his broken tusk as another castration. It is therefore legitimate to ask if one person can

be castrated and emasculated thrice! And from a psychoanalytical perspective, one may wonder who it is that has actually demonstrated a Penis Envy in this entire episode!

Indian Males in relation to Ganesha’s Sexuality, Celibacy and Incest:

Courtright summarizes his Freudian interpretations on Ganesha in the following manner:

Iconographically Ganesa’s body is that of a plump infant. Although at least one Puranic source has an account of his marriage, Ganesa is generally represented as celibate, a celibacy suggested visually and perhaps caricatured by his exaggerated but perpetually flaccid trunk. Finally, his insatiable appetite for sweetmeats [modaka]—a source of many amusing tales—raises the question (from a psychoanalytical perspective) of whether this tendency toward oral erotic gratification may not serve as compensation for his arrested development at not reaching the phallic stage as well as the severing of the maternal bond he underwent at the beheading hand of his father. Gananath Obeyesekere interprets Ganesa’s celibacy, like his broken tusk, as the punishment he receives for incestuous fixation on his mother.

This generalization of Ganesha is preceded by something even more sinister. Indians as a whole are force-fit into a stereotypical category by Courtright, and then this stereotype is subjected to a demeaning Freudian analysis. Courtright is not alone in treating the stereotyped Indian male as a subject of Psychoanalyses. In fact, he draws upon the works of Sudhir Kakar and the like repeatedly in this chapter.

Courtright says:

Ganesa’s celibacy links him both to his father and his mother, but for opposite reasons. He remains celibate so as not to compete erotically with his father, a notorious womanizer, either incestuously for his mother or for any other woman for that matter.

There is nothing in the tradition to defend this portrayal of Ganesha as an incestuous son. So, anecdotes that none can verify, are used to bolster the case.

Once Parvati asked Ganesa whom he would like to marry; he replied, ‘Someone exactly like you, Mummy.’ And Mummy got outraged by such an openly incestuous wish and cursed him with

everlasting celibacy.

Courtright quotes A.K. Ramanujan, who doesn’t name his source. In any event, Ramanujan’s version is very different from those that other South Indians are aware of. In that version, when Ganesha tells Parvati that he would want a bride just like her, she laughs at him, and jokingly tells him that he may never get married in that case, implying that there is none comparable to Shakti. It seems that Ramanujan has added his own spin to this tale in his amateurish attempt at psychoanalysis. The fact is that in a vast country such as India, with more than a billion people (or 700 million people in 1980s when Courtright wrote his book), there are literally thousands of tales and stories about different deities floating around orally amongst the Hindu masses. Should one bring together these stories with passages of older texts and then construct a psychoanalytical theory on them? Is this methodology sound?

Even though in this unverifiable tale, the child Ganesha alone is pronounced guilty of harboring incestuous thoughts, Courtright is quite eager to indict Parvati too on this count. He has no hesitation in invoking a tale that, by his own admission, does not find any mention in published editions of the Varaha Purana, but is only to be found in the writings of Abbe Dubois, the missionary that never concealed his hatred for Hinduism. In this invented and disparagingly

presented tale, the beauty of the newborn Ganesha fascinates all women and this triggers a supposedly incestuous jealousy in Parvati, who curses his beauties to vanish.

It is very common in India for sons when asked, what kind of girl they want to marry, to say that they would marry someone like their own mother. The Indian ethos emphasizes sacrifice, and the mother is often the embodiment of sacrifice.

Having unfairly declared Ganesha an incestuous son, Courtright proceeds to present even the most innocent events of Ganesha’s life as sordid tales of incest. In a Sri Lankan legend, Ganesha competes with his brother Skanda for a mango. While the latter circumambulates the world, Ganesha simply circumambulates his parents and wins the mango. Courtright quoting Obeyesekere concludes that the mango is a symbol for the vagina, and hence this episode of Ganesha eating the fruit symbolizes his incestuous possession his mother. (For more on this please read page 232 and 233, chapter 17)

In the Song of Songs in the Old Testament, the breasts of a woman are likened to bunches of grapes. Should we, following Courtright-Obeyesekere ‘methodology’, see hidden meanings every time a Christian or a Jew offers wine?

There is a Maharashtrian folk tale that narrates the intrigues between a Mahar soldier and a woman of the palace under Peshwa rule. The illicit liaison is exposed and the soldier, whose name is Ganapati, is punished by death. His spirit, according to the folklore, haunted the king. To propitiate it, he installed the effigy of the slain soldier at the gate of the palace in the form of the deity Ganapati and required everyone to pay obeisance to it. There is nothing in this story to compare with the legend of the deity Ganesha, except the name and the fact that the Mahar’s effigy was installed in the form of the deity, but Courtright sees striking parallels in this tale with the supposed incest of Ganesha with his mother. Such meaningless parallels promote

neither an understanding of the deity, nor do they promote knowledge. Instead they offer an insight into Courtright’s perverse mind.

Ganesha as a Eunuch

Several sacred stories pertaining to Ganesha describe him as a doorkeeper or guard outside his mother Parvati’s inner chambers. Courtright sees in this a parallel to an old Indian practice of posting eunuchs as guards of the doors to harems. He then quotes an Indologist to the effect that

these eunuchs had a reputation of being homosexuals, with a penchant for oral sex, and that they were frowned upon as the very dregs of society, implicitly ascribing the same qualities to the charming Ganesha and reducing his symbolism to ‘an explicit denial of adult male sexuality’. (For more on this please read page 233 and 234, chapter 17)

Courtright then quotes Edmund Leach, an anthropologist, in support of his own interpretations:

This combination of child-ascetic-eunuch in the symbolism of Ganesa—each an explicit denial of adult male sexuality—appears to embody a primal Indian male longing: to remain close to the mother and to do so in a way What will both protect her and yet be acceptable to the father. This means that the son must retain access to the mother but not attempt to possess her sexually. As a child, a renouncer, or a eunuch, he can legitimately maintain that precious but precarious intimacy with his mother because, although he is male, he is more like her then he is like his father. This may explain why Ganesa takes on these qualities through his own choice or why he willingly accepts them as mutilations from others—even from Parvati herself—so long as they will guarantee his continued proximity with her.

The Modaka as a (Sexual) ‘Toy’

Hindus fondly depict Lord Ganesha as devouring a sweetmeat called modaka. Courtright applies the ‘oral’ and ‘anal’ paradigms of Freudian ideology to interpret this in a sexualized manner:

The perpetual son desiring to remain close to his mother and having an insatiable appetite for sweets evokes associations of oral eroticism. Denied the possibility of reaching the stage of full

genital masculine power by the omnipotent force of the father, the son seeks gratification in some acceptable way. As long as he remains stuffed full he is content and benign, like a satisfied infant at its mother’s breast. If Ganesa should go hungry because of the devotee’s failure to feed and worship him first before all other gods, then his primordial hostility is aroused, to the detriment of all. Feeding Ganesa copious quantities of modakas, satisfying his oral/erotic desires, also keeps him from becoming genitally erotic like his father . . . Ganesa’s impatience for food suggests an anxiety, a hunger that is never completely fed no matter how many modakas he consumes. He is the child forever longing for the mother’s breast—that fountain of life-giving elixir he once enjoyed without distress in infancy but is now denied because of the father’s intrusion . . . Ganesa’s story is, in part, the story of maternal attachment, loss, and indirect but incomplete compensation. As a celibate child, and resembling the ambiguous figure of the eunuch, Ganesa is one whose masculinity remains partial, trimmed, and contained. Unable to take full possession of his mother in the face of his father’s beheading/castrating power, Ganesa lives a threshold existence—near but nor far enough— seeking his own fulfillment in dutiful service to his parents and taking pleasure in an endless flow of sweetmeats from adoring devotees. He is the mythical expression of the male wish for maternal intimacy denied in real life in the course of growing up, a fantasy in which the defeats of the son must suffer at the hands the father are compensated indirectly by an orally erotic celibate proximity to the mother. (For story on the moon and Ganesha’s tusk please read page 235 and 236, chapter 17)

As we extracted these and similar passages from Courtright’s book for our review, we felt a lot of mental agony seeing that he could use words such as ‘limp-phallus’, ‘castration’, ‘orally erotic’, ‘eunuch’, ‘amorous play’ and so on in the context of a child, even if it be mythical

for a Christian such as Courtright (but Divine for us). Our American readers could perhaps feel our pain by imagining a situation in which Courtright would use such language for the baby Jesus, or if you are not religious, an all-American anthropomorphic child-character such as Mickey Mouse.

Hindus invoke the presence of and blessings of Lord Ganesha at the start of all our prayers. Mickey Mouse is not worshipped of course, but he continues to delight millions of adults and children all over the world with his delightful antics. If someone were to obsessively and insistently see genitalia and other kinds of sexual stuff in the character or persona of the baby Jesus or Mickey Mouse, we would normally conclude that he is suffering from some pathological disorder requiring medical attention. While reading his book on Ganesha, the thought that kept repeating in our mind page after page was—how could he have written this? Why did he do this?

Sexualizing the Hindu Child: The Initiation Ceremony (Upanayana):

In her two-page Foreword, Wendy Doniger refers to the use of Freudian analysis in the following words:

The episode of beheading by the father cries out for (and has been given by others) a party-line Freudian analysis; Courtright does, indeed, sail through this particular strait, but though he listens with unwaxed ears to the song of the psychoanalytical sirens, he is not seduced. He offsets the Freudian analysis with his own striking model of the parallels between the Ganesa story and the Hindu ritual of the initiation of a young boy . . .

And what are these parallels that deserved a special acknowledgment by Wendy Doniger? While describing his sexualized version of Ganesha and the stories associated with Him, Courtright takes a step forward and transplants erotica onto the solemn Hindu ceremony of upanayana

in which young Hindu males are initiated into their student life. In effect, after demeaning the Hindu male, Courtright targets the innocent Hindu child. The upanayana ceremony involves a symbolic transformation of the would-be teacher of the student into his new father. This father-son relationship between teacher-student is maintained for a lifetime and does not sever the relationship of the student with his biological father. However, Courtright sees something sexual in this whole affair.

This new father/son, guru/disciple. Acarya/brahmacarin relationship creates a new bond of affection in the context of absolute domination by the authority figure and utter dependence of the disciple. The sexual nuances of this relationship are well hidden, but it is significant that in the myth Siva gives Ganesa his weapons and in the ritual the acarya gives the brahmacarin the ascetic’s staff [yogadanda]—symbols, like the broken tusk, of the detached phallus. Carstairs notes further ‘There is also a powerfully repressed homosexual fixation on the father. This is shown . . . in indirect and sublimated form, in a man’s feeling toward his Guru—in one context in which a warm affectionate relationship (although a passive and dependent one) is given free expression.’

So, the scholarly pair of Carstairs and Courtright have debased even the ‘teacher–student relationship’ in Hindu society (perhaps privileging the Western version indirectly) by imparting perverse sexual connotations to it. We are indeed curious to know how Courtright would

psychoanalyze his relationships with his own students. (For more on this please read page 237, chapter 17)

In the Indian ascetic tradition, there is a long-standing controversy on whether the staff should be single or if it should be a triple-staff (tridanda). One wonders what would be Courtright’s perspective on this controversy. Hindu tradition sees the danda as a symbol of chastisement or discipline, whether inflicted or self-enforced. When a young student assumes a danda, he is in effect vowing that he will live according to the prescribed rigors of student life.

It may be pointed out here that Hindus have been performing the upanayana ceremony for their children, often aged five to eight years, for several thousand years now. If there is any reality to Courtright’s imaginative interpretation that danda = penis, then the inescapable conclusion is that millions of Hindu children have been subjected unconsciously (or consciously) to sexual abuse by being handed a pseudo-penis in their hand by a male elder during the ceremony. While we find such sexualized interpretations of the upanayana defamatory and degrading, Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty finds it so apt and insightful that she made a special mention of it in her Foreword to Courtright. The consequences of such essentializing can indeed be grave for an American minority. One wonders how Doniger and Courtright (and the Prize committees that lionize these scholars) view Hindu-American parents who have celebrated their seven year-old’s upanayana—as potential perverts who should be kept away from white children? (For more on the upanayana ceremony please read page 238 and 239, chapter 17)

This interpretation is supported by explanations in numerous traditional commentaries.The staff is seen to be a reminder and a symbol of Dharmic authority, or Dharmic discipline with which the teacher invests the student and motivates him to pursue his divinely ordained duty of studying the sacred texts before he gets married.

The staff is widely used to symbolize authority and discipline in numerous cultures all over the world, and Hindu texts are no exception. Perhaps Courtright could explain to us what the staff of Moses, which parted the Red Sea, stands for in his Freudian world.

Courtright does not even make the pretense of acknowledging how the Hindu tradition itself interprets the staff of a celibate student, something that he could have found out by referring to even basic works on Hindu samskaras or sacraments. He would have found that according to some authorities, studentship was considered as a long sacrifice, and therefore, a student was expected to bear the staff just as a scholar would in a long sacrifice. Paraskara Grihyasutra 2.6.26 suggests that the purpose of the staff was to protect against human and non-human attackers. According to Manava Grihyasutra 1.22.11, the student is a traveler on the long road of knowledge. When this paradigm is considered, the staff assumed by the student then becomes reminiscent of the staff used by a traveler. According to the Varaha Grihyasutra, the staff was the symbol of the watchman. Apararka in the Yajnavalkya Smriti 1.29 states that bearing the staff makes the student self-confident and self-reliant when he goes out to the forest to collect fire-sticks for yajnas, for tending the cattle of his teacher, or when he travels in darkness. In other words, while the Indian tradition takes the staff as a symbol of authority, discipline, protection and so on, Courtright sees just a Penis.

Marriage of Ganesha

Hindu tradition is not uniform on the marital status of the deity. While the dominant view depicts him as a son devoted to his mother and as a bachelor, other traditions state that he has two wives. Courtright expends a lot of energy in depicting the ‘eunuch’ and ‘oral’ nature of Ganesha, in keeping with his Freudian paradigms. So when conflicting textual evidence relating to his marital status emerges, it has to be explained away in some way. Courtright does this with the following

words:

Iconographically he is sometimes represented sitting between Siddhi and Buddhi, but there is little in the way of mythology about his marriage in the textual tradition. These women appear more like feminine emanations of his androgynous nature, saktis rather than spouses having their own characters and stories. (For more on this please read page 240, chapter 17)

Courtright continues:

The celibate character of his marriage is evoked by the seventh century poet, Bana, who wrote of Ganesa and his bride as the fusedandrogyne, lacking sufficient separateness from one another to

engage in the erotic possibilities of marriage. ‘May the single tusked Ganesa guard the universe, who imitates his parent’s custom in that his bride, it seems, has been allowed to take that half of

him wherein his face is tuskless.’

Banabhatta is in fact referring to the concept of ardhnaariishvara283 that depicts Siva and Parvati (who definitely are not a celibate couple) as two halves of one deity, and suggests that the wife of Ganesha, being tusk-less, represents a similar conception with her constituting that side of his which does not have the tusk (since one of his tusks is broken). (For more please read page 241, chapter 17)

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An Independent Review of Paul Courtright's book on Ganesa - Chapter 17 part 3

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Inventing an Incestuous Rape (Devibhagavata Purana 7.30)

Courtright narrates two tales in order to elaborate upon the erotic power of the paarijaata (Coral Tree) flower. He cites the first from supposedly related accounts in the Brahmavaivarta Purana 3.20.41–62 and the Devibhagavata Purana (DBP) 9.403–23. In this tale, Sage Durvasa presents a beautiful paarijaata flower, with the ability to make its possessor powerful and wealthy, to Indra. The Sage says that the powers of the flower are manifest only when it is placed on his head by its possessor with reverence. When the Sage arrives, Indra is busy making love with a heavenly nymph named Rambha. When the Sage leaves, Indra continues his lovemaking and throws the flower on the head of Airavata, his elephant mount. According to Courtright, Airavata immediately transforms into ‘a form of Vishnu’, abandons Indra and runs into the forest, whereas Indra is completely deprived of his power and glory. When the Durvasa learns that Indra has insulted and has defiled his holy gift to him, the sage curses Indra and he loses all his powers.

Courtright then continues his analysis:

This story also concerns the rivalry between Indra and Siva, who here takes the form of  Durvasas. The powers of the sage make short work of Indra’s wealth and sexual prowess. The parijata flower is an emblem of riches and erotic power, one of the flowers from the five coral trees that arose out of the churning of the ocean at the beginning of the cosmic cycle. In another story the goddess gave this flower to Durvasas who in turn gave it to Daksa, who became so aroused by the scent of the flower that he made love to his daughter Sati ‘in the manner of a mere beast’. This shameful action drove her to burn her body, that is, commit sati, and provoked Siva to such a rage that he beheaded Daksa 7.30).

The author thus links the two stories through the supposed common motif of the paarijaata flower. However, when the relevant passages of the Devibhagavata Purana are checked, there is no mention of the paarijaata flower at all. Verse 7.30.28 of the text reads,

tatah prasannaa devesii nijakanthagataam srajam

bhramabhradamarasamsaktaam makarandamadaakulaam |

The verse merely means that pleased with the Muni, the Devi gives him the fragrant garland that is on her neck, attracting clusters of bumblebees with its fragrant juice (makaranda). Now the word “makaranda” is typically used for the juice of the jasmine flower, which is also very fragrant and attracts the bees, wasps, insects, and bumblebees that can be seen in the gardens of India. No other verse in the chapter indicates that the paarijaata flowers were in her garland, and so the artificial linkage between the two stories by Courtright is brought about by an unjustifiable insertion of ‘paarijaata’ flowers into the text by him. (For the story about Daksha’s incestuous behavior as alleged by Courtright, please read page 216. Chapter 17)

Now, the Devibhagavata Purana is a Shakta sectarian text extolling the Devi primarily, and secondarily Shiva, her consort. It narrates this entire episode in a distinctive manner. After Sage Durvasa receives the divine garland from the Devi, he reverentially places it on his head and

proceeds to meet Daksha. In Daksha’s home the Sage offers his homage and Daksha asks for the garland. Sage Durvasa, thinking that Daksha himself is a devotee of the Devi, gives the garland to him. The text then says (Devibhagavata Purana 7.30.34cd–35ab):

grhiitaa sirasaa maalaa munina nijamandire

sthaapitaa sayanam yatra dampatyoratisundaram

(Receiving the garland given by the Sage on his head, in his own chamber, Daksa then places it reverentially on the beautiful bed prepared for the couple.)

It is very important to pay attention to the word ‘dampati’ in this verse because the word normally stands for husband and wife. It seems implausible that he would have placed the garland on a bed meant for Sati and her husband Shiva, whose presence is not even mentioned so far, although verse 23 does mention her betrothal with Shiva – an incident that is clearly not contemporaneous with the yajna of Daksha. It is more likely that it was the bed meant for Daksha and his wife, Sati’s mother. There is no evidence in the text that the bed was meant to be shared by Daksha and his married daughter!

What happens then is very evil (verse 35cd),

pasukarmarato raatrau maalaagandhena moditah |

(Aroused by the fragrance of the garland, Daksa was engrossed in animal-acts during the night.)

There is no hint what these bestial acts were, but it is reasonable to conclude that Daksha engaged in sex, and perhaps other activities such as imbibing liquor. The text certainly does not say that, “he made love to his daughter Sati in the manner of a mere animal” as Courtright claims (Courtright, p.37).

But why is indulgence in sex by Daksha considered a pashukarma? First, he has defiled the divine garland given by the Devi (and remember that the Purana is a Shakta Purana, dedicated to the Devi) by allowing it to act as an aphrodisiac. Second, he is in the midst of a yajna, during which the yajmaana (sacrificer) and his wife are to remain celibate. Sex during the period of a yajna defiles the rite. And the third reason is clarified by the following verse (Devibhagavata Purana 7.30.36):

abhavatsa mahipaalastena paapena sankare

sive dveshamatirhaato devyaam satyaam tatha nrpa |

(O Great King! Owing to (or under the influence of) that sin (of sexual intercourse), Daksa spoke evil of Shiva, and he was filled with an intense enmity for Shiva as well as for his daughter Devi Sati.)

So we come to the standard narrative wherein Daksha speaks ill of Shiva and is filled with hatred for him (and here also for Sati, who is but an incarnation of the Devi).

The beginning verses of chapter 7.30 narrate how Daksha was a pious king who had pleased Devi by intense austerities in the Himalayas. When the Devi appears before him, he requested her to take birth in his family. The Devi granted Daksha his wish, and she was born in his family as Sati. The Daksha, a completely transformed man, insulted the same Devi he had worshipped in the past. He became filled with enmity for Sati, who was not only his own daughter, but also the incarnation of the Devi. Therefore Sati can no longer stay in the body that is born of her sinful father Daksha. The text continues (Devibhagavata Purana 7.30.37):

rajanastenaaparaadhena tajjanyo deha eva ca

satyaa yogaagninaa dagdhah satidharmadidrksayaa |

(O King! Because of Daksa’s crime, Sati immolated her body, that was generated from him (Daksa),with her yogic fire, so as to preserve the dignity of the eternal dharma of devotion to her

husband.)

The crime of Daksha was that he had spoken ill of Shiva and that he was filled with enmity towards him and his own daughter under the influence of sin. The text then states that the shakti of Sati returned to the Himalayas (7.30.38ab), the abode of Devi where Daksha had meditated and had her darsana in the first place. The narrative continues in the standard manner—Shiva was infuriated with the death of Sati and he destroyed the yajna (7.43). Daksha was beheaded and his head was replaced with that of a goat.

So what we see here is a variant of the standard theme in which Sati commits suicide because she cannot bear the insult of her husband by her father.And since the text is a Shakta text, it adds its own details that Daksha had defiled the gift of Devi, and was filled with enmity towards her own essence in his daughter Sati. The text certainly does not say: “This shameful action [of Daksha’s incestuous rape of Sati—reviewers’ addition] drove her to burn her body”. This

‘scholarly’ version is but Courtright’s own invention. The manner in which Courtright gives sexual kink to Puranic passages reminds us of how his gurubandhu Jeffrey Kripal had interpreted the Kathamrita to make Ramakrishna Paramahamsa into a homosexual pedophile. (For more on Wendy Doniger’s mentorship and influence in Courtright’s work, please read page 219, chapter 17)

The Remover of Obstacles or the Creator of Obstacles?

Ganesha is also known as Vighneshvara that Courtright translates as, ‘the Lord of obstacles’. The name is generally understood to mean ‘remover of obstacles’ by lay Hindus. Hindu tradition itself, however, associates some ambiguity with the name. In some Hindu texts, Ganesha is actually stated to be the creator of obstacles. Courtright cites a version of the Skanda Purana (VII.1.38.1–34), according to which the heavens become crowded with people when even sinners start attaining salvation by visiting the temple of Somanatha. The gods then become alarmed and approach Shiva for a way out of this quagmire. He is unable to help them and therefore Parvati creates Ganesha out of the dirt of her body. She remarks that Ganesha will place obstacles before (sinful or undeserving) men so that they will get deluded, and will go to the hell instead of to Somanatha.

The notion that Ganesha creates obstacles without a just cause is merely meant to demonstrate his power, as well as the fact that he does not allow sinners to take short cuts to reach the heavens—this is what the above story from the Skanda Purana also demonstrates. (For more on this, please read page 220, chapter 17)

Courtright too is aware of Shiva Purana 2.4.15–18 in which Parvati declares that Ganesha shall receive the worship of all and remove all obstacles. Yet, how could a deity, whose morality Doniger has judged as ambivalent, and whose father Shiva is labeled by Courtright as a notorious womanizer, be depicted in such an exalted manner? Thus Ganesha is presented as the Lord of Obstacles, turning him into a malevolent deity. Apart from adorning the cover of Courtright’s book, this label is later used as a tool to psychoanalyze Ganesha’s supposed sexual ambivalence. Courtright would portray Ganesha as a jealous deity who inflicts severe punishments on those who dare ignore his immanent manifestations.

In the course of this discussion, Courtright compares Ganesha to St. Peter, who is the keeper of the gate to the heaven as per Biblical texts. The author is quick to point out one difference though: Ganesha is comparable to the devious St. Peter of folklore, not to the sober and austere St. Peter of the New Testament and early Christian hagiography. It becomes imperative for Courtright to differentiate between folklore and literature to present St. Peter in a positive light, but such scruples are dispensed with when it comes to using unreliable anecdotes to taint the Hindu deity Ganesha.

Referring to the story of the Skanda Purana, Courtright suggests that “the pattern of Ganesa’s ambivalent behavior at the threshold links him with the actions of demons . . . ” This is a rather poor choice of words, and an unfair demonizing of the deity. Hindus interpret the deity predominantly as an embodiment of auspiciousness, benevolence and the like.218 He is invoked at the beginning of all endeavors, religious or secular, because He is the remover of obstacles. (For more on this, please read page 221, chapter 17)

The Puranas and Conspiracy Theories

Courtright revisits the theme of the problem of the Vedic origins of Ganesha. It is true that there are not many unambiguous references to Ganesha in the ancient Vedic texts, in contrast with the exalted manner in which he is referred to in the texts of classical Hinduism, the Puranas. To explain this discrepancy, Courtright comes up with a conspiracy theory. He argues that the Puranas attempt to cover-up his demon ancestry and are uncomfortably aware of the discrepancy between the malevolent, obstacle-creating powers of Vinayaka and the positive, obstacle-removing actions of Ganesha. According to him, the Puranas seek to resolve this contradiction by various mechanisms such as “clever use of false etymologies for the name ‘Vinayaka’”.

Courtright says:

In one case, when Siva saw, much to his surprise, that Ganesa appeared out of the mixture of his and Parvati’s sweat and bathwater, he exclaimed to her, ‘A son has been born to you without [vinà] a husband [nàyakena]; therefore this son shall be named Vinàyaka’ (Vàm P 28.71–72). This etymological sleight of hand obscures the association of Vinàyaka with “those who lead astray” which is its etymologically prior meaning, and connects it with another meaning of nàyaka as leader or husband.

The Purana has really not indulged in any subterfuge because in the second half of this very verse (28.72cd), Lord Shiva clearly says that Ganesha will create thousands of obstacles for devatas and others (esha vighnasahasraani suradiinaam karishyati). The meaning of the word vinaayaka given by the Purana is definitely possible grammatically, without any strain at all. The appropriate question pertaining to historiography is whether the meaning ‘creator of obstacles’ for ‘vinaayaka’ was in vogue or the norm at the time the Vamana Purana was compiled. If not, then we cannot accuse the author of the Purana with a proverbial sleight of hand.

It may be noted that creation of such ad-hoc etymologies, mythologies, and cosmologies is seen very frequently in Hindu texts such as the Brahmanas, the Upanishads, and the Puranas, amongst other genres. These ad-hoc etymologies serve various purposes at hand, such as providing impromptu explanations or justification for a ritual act, or thematic completion of the narrative. One need not come up with conspiracy theories, as Courtright has done, to describe this phenomenon.

Maternal Aggression of Parvati against Ganesha—Dubious Passage of Varaha Purana

Courtright writes:

           

The theme of maternal aggression in the myths of Ganesa is more veiled; but it is there—as we have seen in the myth where Parvati curses Ganesa to be ugly and as we shall see in the myth where she places him at the doorway to be cut down to size by Siva . . .

We are not aware of any Puranic text where Parvati curses Ganesha to be ugly. Courtright himself admits that this story is not found in any printed edition of the Varaha Purana. He, however, attributes the above text to a Christian missionary traveler to India, and to an illinformed author writing from the first half of 1800s who may have relied himself on the missionary’s work for this piece of information.

Who is older: Ganesha or Skanda?

Hindu tradition is not unanimous on who is the elder brother of the two. Courtright, however, states that Ganesha is the younger brother in a somewhat absolute manner.

The iconography is clear enough; Ganesa is a child, a baby. So he remains, never growing into the full youthful stage of his elder brother Skanda or the maturity of his father.

Later (p.123), he contradicts himself and states that in most areas, Skanda is considered the younger brother. So we see that even incorrect and inconsistent facts do not prevent Courtright from inventing psychological analyses. The point is that if a matter is not settled within the Hindu tradition itself, then why does Courtright select one version alone to retrofit his preconceived thesis?

Imaginary Blackie in the Matsya Purana

A recent review of his book makes the following additional remarks, which we reproduce below for the benefit of the reader. Further while dealing with the mythology he states, “Once in jest

Siva called Parvati ‘Blackie’ [Kali] because her skin looked black like a serpent. She was offended . . . and so went away to practice asceticism to obtain a golden skin. Viraka begged her to take him with her . . . But she told him to stay at Siva’s door . . . for Siva is a notorious womanizer. The references given to the passage quoted are Skp. 1.2.27–29; cf. Matsya P. 154.542–78. See also Kramrisch 1981, pp. 364–65; O’Flaherty 1975, pp. 252–61.

The reviewer then criticizes Courtright in the following words: The MatsyaP. does not contain the word Kali or any word similar to womanizer. The Skanda Purana has the word krsna for black complexioned one. Similarly what Parvati tells Viraka about Siva is gaurangilampato hyesah…1(2).28.8 ‘enamoured of woman of white complexion’) (as is translated by Tagore), and not ‘a notorious womanizer’ as the author says.

The Cigar Now Becomes a Phallus

The principal cause of the current controversy over Courtright’s book is his abuse of Freudian theories to impart perverse sexual meanings to the otherwise innocuous aspects of the narratives on the deity found in Hindu texts. Courtright’s defense, however, is that his detractors have

taken his quotes out of context. We find this explanation disingenuous because even outside Chapter III, where most of these sexual interpretations are found, one can find other instances where he has hinted at similar aspects. The previous sections of our review clearly demonstrate how Courtright has exaggerated and even has invented sexuality in several Puranic passages.

We have seen in our brief review of the textual analysis in the book how Courtright manages to kink the narratives of the Puranas by giving them numerous sexual twists. Completely unrelated

projectiles, missiles, electric poles, water pipes, tree trunks, elephant trunks, stone pillars, walking sticks, obelisks, spider legs and lotus stems were reduced to ‘cigars’ (to put it facetiously). Now Courtright asks us to see phalluses in all these ‘cigars’. Indeed, such a wide variety of choices that we are given makes his text very ‘insightful’, ‘thoughtful’, ‘wonderful’, ‘scholarly’, ‘objective’, ‘nuanced’, ‘sensitive’, ‘sympathetic’ etc., to use the buzz words of academic Hinduism studies. (For more on this, please read page 225, chapter 17)

One wonders how Wendy’s Children would interpret, using psychoanalysis as a façade, the episode of Parashurama beheading his mother Renuka at his father’s behest. Would they argue that it reveals a possible homosexual relationship between Sage Jamadagni233 and his son, and suggest that the beheading symbolizes the removal of the unwanted mother? Would he liken Renuka’s head to the sexual organ and equate her beheading with genital mutilation?

One may argue that Courtright is imposing Western interpretations on an Indian deity and so there is bound to be some bias. Courtright argues, however, that his methodology is ‘universal’ or ‘objective’ in the following words.

The myth of Ganesa parallels aspects of human experience beyond the restricted world of ritual initiation. It is a tale of family relations and reflects the unconscious ambivalences of early forgotten childhood experience. One need not be an ideological Freudian to see the fruitfulness of raising psychoanalytical questions about a myth that involves such a violent and complex account of father/son relations. The extent to which the myth of Ganesa explores these relations and the sensibilities that attend them, it reaches beyond its Indian context and takes on universal meaning and appeal.

We invite the reader to read our extracts from Courtright’s psychoanalysis and decide for him or herself whether there is anything worthwhile in this perverse verbal-jugglery. It appears that to give a ‘universal meaning and appeal’ to the persona of Ganesha, he started with his unflattering introduction of his protagonist Ganesha, of whom he says: “He appears tainted, trivial, perhaps even vulgar . . . In short Ganesa is too ordinary”. He wrote: “Repulsion at the form of the deity with an elephant head and suspicion that there may be more going on than meets the (Western) eye, is a good starting point for our inquiry . . . ” Ganesha’s mythology is also declared as: “an elaborate rationalization for an invented deity”. Now that really sounds universally appealing and meaningful!

Courtright Invents a ‘Limp Phallus’—Misrepresenting Vedanta and Tantra

Perhaps the most offensive statements made by Courtright relate to his description of Ganesha’s trunk as a limp phallus. Let us reproduce them here, for the information of our readers.

The elephant trunk, which perpetually hangs limp, and broken tusk are reminiscent of Siva’s own phallic character, but as these phallic analogs are either excessive or in the wrong place, they pose no threat to Siva’s power and his erotic claims on Parvati.

That the tradition or the texts never attach any sexual connotation to this legend doesn’t stop Courtright from thus trashing Ganesha. (For more on this, please read page 226, 227 and 228, chapter 17)

While we do not see any mask on Ganesha’s torso, we do get a hint of peek-a-boo pornography in Courtright’s ‘analyses’. We would let the readers decide if it is worth psychoanalyzing Courtright himself, based on his own statements in the book.          

           

Read chapter 17 part 3 from page 215 to 228

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.

Go to Chapter 17 part 4