Hilary Petrokubi
Professor Lee
ENG 308J
October 28, 2010
“The word hemisphere, meaning one-half a sphere, has only two common uses: to describe the hemispheres of the brain and to describe the hemispheres of the planet.” (Shlain 159) The earth has two complimentary yet different cultures: East and West. These hemispheres mirror the functions of the left and right side of the brain. The West is outer-directed and dualistic, while the East is more introverted (159). The West’s characteristics embody the left side of the brain while the East characterizes the right. Shlain has talked much about western culture thus far, and Lingam/Yoni is the chapter where we will begin to explore the East, beginning with India.
India has many ancient rituals including sati, where a woman joins her husband’s corpse in the funeral, bride burning a practice a husband will use to obtain his wife’s dowry, female infanticide, and Purdah, the practice of segregating women from men. (Shlain 159). Before these customs there was Mohejo-Daro, a place in the northwest corner of India that was excavated in the 1920s. It shows a highly advanced civilization from2500 b.c. to 1500 b.c. with brick buildings, avenues, and more than 2500 inhabitants. (160) It belonged to the Harappan culture.
The culture came about 500 years later than the Egypt or Mesopotamia. The inhabitants were advanced with irrigation channels and grand palaces and temples. Like all India cultures, they had a deep reverence for all vegetation. Within the excavations were found the first Lingham and Yoni: abstract sacred stone images of a phallus and vulva that represent life force. (Shlain 160) Among the many found artifacts are those depicting the Mother Goddess, which suggests that Goddess-worshiping cultures thrived in India.
The Harappans spoke a form of Sanskirt, which means “sacred and pure”. They invented a unique form of writing with over 500 pictographic characters (Shlain 160). Because it was so complex it was difficult to use. When Aryan warriors invaded India with them they brought letters of the alphabet. The invaders adapted their alphabet to the Sanskirt in India, and thus the Brahmi script matured. (161) During this transition, Vedas, poems about religion and philosophy, carried on. The Aryans took these poems and superimposed their own values on the Harappans, taking egalitarian values and embedding patriarchal and militaristic values. (161)
In the Rig-Veda, the oldest poem, women held power and possessed rights to their own property, and many other freedoms. Although the Aryans changed their Veda creation story, the original still exists. The original Being was a fusion of a male and female and resembled “ a woman and a man closely embraced.” (Shlain 162) Through a series of copulating the being populated the world and said “I, indeed, am this creation, for I emitted it from myself.” (162) The female is coequal with the male.
The Vedas emphasize that all living things are manifestations of god, where in the West, everything is created by God. The Western God manifest Himself through logos, and the god-head of the Hindu appear everywhere in image. (163)
Within India there is also a caste system. The Brahmins, those who gained control over are and writing, controlled the education. Being a somewhat lower caste position before, they began to rise because they controlled all the information. With that many of the freedoms women had disappeared. Women were discouraged from being educated and Brahmins did not allow them to read or write. The practice of Purdah became to go into effect. The Brahmins enforced the first written civil code, the Laws of Manu. (164)
Although the Hindu culture suffered from many outside influences, it has still managed to retain many female characteristics. They still honor their goddess. Through Hindu art and the practice of Karma sutra, there are practices that celebrate sexual union between man and women.
Unlike, many of his other chapters where Shlain draws upon outlandish examples to support his thesis, I feel his logos is very strong in Chapter 17. I am beginning to see his correlations between the brain and the earth hemispheres; the West representing the left and the East representing the right. I think it is very interesting to see his theory thrive as the goddess is still very prevalent in Indian culture and a right/East culture. Where he fails, and where I begin to drift from Shlain, is the understanding of women’s rights in the Western and Eastern cultures. If the Harappans developed their practice of Purdah, essentially from the Aryans, a Western civilization, then why today are women still discriminated in India more so than in ANY Western culture?
Why do you think if Shain claims the Hindu culture is more successful in maintaining female characteristics then Western cultures, that women in India face a prevalent amount of adversity compared to those in Western societies?
Works Cited
"Bee-Hexagon - Vedas." Bee-Hexagon - Start, News. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2010.
Shlain, Leonard. The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image. Boston: Penguin (Non-Classics), 1999. Print.
I think this is a very good question, to me it seems Western Civilization was made leaps and bounds over Eastern Civilization when we are talking about the power and authority of women today. However, I do not know enough about Eastern Civilization to support Shlain in that the Hindu culture is more successful in maintaining female characteristics. But, I think it is a common misconception that all women in India face hard times today. There are many women that hold high positions. On the other hand, women of a lower status do face immense adversity (like anywhere in the world). For example, women in Mumbai “the city of extremes” face immense poverty and wealth and women can experience either great opportunities or great hardships.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the men of the Hindu culture simply cannot equate all females with the goddess that they worship. "A faithful wife must serve... her lord as if he were a god..." said the quote from the Manu Code that Shlain references (159). Sure, they may worship a goddess, but they might see this goddess as unrelated to the females of their culture because she is sacred as a higher power. Therefore, they believe it is okay to view women almost as their property. Or perhaps the goddess that they worship demonstrated the characteristics that they believe all women should, and so women are expected to use the goddess as an example and behave like her. Maybe they worshiped the goddess for her fertility and so they appreciated women for their child-bearing abilities, but still felt it necessary to dominate over the females.
ReplyDeleteI also think that civilization in the West has come a long way compared to eastern civilization when we talk women today. But not having enough knowledge about certain subjects retaining to Shlain can make it indifferen't. All women no matter where you from face adversity whether there from another country or on a economic scale very low.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the Hindu culture often values physical beauty and more feminine qualities as being expected in their culture. Yes there are Goddesses in Hindu cultures, however, I feel that this could actually be setting unrealistic expectations for women in these cultures because they strive to be something more than human. I also feel this could result in the separation between how women and men are valued in these societies. Since the women are "just human" they are not of importance. Which could be why the worshiping of Goddesses could actually be holding women back from gaining equal status in Hindu societies.
ReplyDeleteI think that it mainly has to do with the difference in western and eastern civilizations, and how they look at "adversity" and "respect". Like Marissa said, there are many different women that have a higher position, but it's the lower class women that seem to be the ones that get noticed for their struggles. I think that just because we in western civilization think that women are going through "adversity" in the India, doesn't necessarily mean that people in the eastern civilization would consider it the same thing. Just because we would think that women are going through a troubling time in India, doesn't really mean that people in India would feel the same way. I think that it's mainly just a cultural issue of what certain people think is right or wrong. I can't agree with Schlain, however I can's say that he is wrong. I just think it's up to the reader to decide.
ReplyDeleteI think that the reason women are still subject to great adversity in India and the rest of the East is that there is more to the degradation of women than just the feminization of language and the acceptance of the goddess. In the west, ideas are thrown about more freely, and able to be accepted easier, such as the belief that we are all created as equals and have the right to equality in opportunity, whereas in the Eastern world, ideas are not passed and accepted as easily because of their introvertedness.
ReplyDeleteThe west has offered more opportunities for female advancement than the east. I understand what Shlain is getting at because of the prominence of eastern Goddesses, but how can he argue for a culture that practiced sati. The fact is western cultures seem a little more progressive (left brained) than eastern cultures (right brained), and because of this Shlain contradicts his argument.
ReplyDeleteI do not think that the women in India have a prevalent amount of adversity compared to women in the Western civilizations, it is just different types of adversities. Shlain says that it is a modern practice to burn brides if they upset their husbands, so the husbands could attain the wives' dowry. The Indian women believe that Karma could come back to get them, I believe that a person's actions get them what they deserve. We have not had to overcome that but we have unequal job opportunities than men and that will probably never change. I think that characteristics of women are not that different. "Women held considerable power and possessed the all important role to own property. They participated freely at feasts and rituals. Widows could remarry" (Shlain, 161). This demonstrates that women have a lot of the same characteristics of women of the Western world.
ReplyDelete