R. P. Goldman, Transsexualism, Gender and Anxiety in Traditional India

Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety in Traditional India
Author(s): Robert P. Goldman

Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 113, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1993), pp. 374401
Published by: American Oriental Society
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TRANSSEXUALISM,
GENDER, AND ANXIETY IN TRADITIONAL INDIA

ROBERT P. GOLDMAN
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,BERKELEY
The virtually universal theme of transsexualism, the idea that a person can or should under certain circumstances change his or her original sex has had a particularly long, complex, and productive history in South Asia. From the time of the earliest known Sanskrit texts through the
biographies of medieval and modern religious and political leaders, to contemporary fiction this
theme has been closely connected with some of the region's most central theological, aesthetic, and
social ideologies. In this study I will survey and discuss a number of salient examples of transsexualism drawn from the religious and mythological texts of ancient and medieval India. I will also discuss some signficant manifestations of the theme in cultic practices at various shrines in north and
south India, and in the lives and teachings of several important modern Indian religious figures and
members of organized religious communities. In doing so I will propose an analysis of the theme
and its role in the constructions of gender, power, and authority in a traditional patriarchalsociety.
In Memory of Bimal Krishna Matilal (1935-1991)
se dese e dese anek antar

janaye sakal loke I
se dese e dese misamisi ache
e katha koya na kake |I
"There is a vast difference between this world and the next."
Every one knows that.
This world and the next are really one and the same.
But that is something you should not tell to anyone.1
THE QUESTIONOF HOW A scholar "reads" or ought to

"read" a text, whether it be oral, written, plastic, or perwhen the text is derived from a
formative-especially
culture other than that of the scholar-has
become incentral
to
a
number
of
academic
fields
in recreasingly
cent years. Few disciplines have had to grapple with this
issue more seriously than the cluster grouped uneasily
under such names as "Asian" or "Oriental" studies. The
question has, in fact, grown more complex in the last
several decades by virtue of the introduction of theoretical and methodological approaches in both the humanities and the social sciences that specifically problematize
such reading. Workers in anthropology, history, and literary criticism have sought to demonstrate that reading
a text is, among other things, a political act, especially
when the reader places himself (or herself) in a position
of dominance vis a vis the audience for which the text
was intended. Scholars such as Said, Clifford, Geertz,
Spivak, and others2 in their own ways have contributed
to the erosion of the old orientalists' philological authority and the notion that a text could be studied and interpreted in a social and political vacuum with nothing to
intervene between the author and the translator/editor
and no one to contest the latter's reading.
Sahajiya Vaisnava song attributedto Candidas recorded as

song number 84 in M. Bose, ed., Sahajiya Sdhitya. Cited in
Das Gupta 1969: 131-32.
2 Said
1978, Clifford 1986, Geertz 1973, and Guha and Spivak 1988.
374

GOLDMAN:
Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety In Traditional India
375
sented when we have, as in the case of much Indian literature, texts that are not merely ancient, but have
continued to occupy a central role in the culture in a
variety of forms from antiquity right down to the
present. One such opportunity is presented by the
themes and characters of the Sanskrit epics and major
puranas which have fascinated the peoples of South
Asia from the time of the late vedic bards to that of the
modern television serial. A still greater opportunity is
to be had when major recurrentthemes of these documents are internalized and acted out for popular consumption by highly visible and influential figures in the
religious, political, and artistic realms.
Themes and texts that have attained the kind of longevity and diffusion as these have are of profound
significance to people among whom they are current,
although it does not necessarily follow that the reasons
for their significance are immediately apparent to or
easily articulated either by these people or by scholars.
This distance between the significance of a mythic
theme in any given social or cultural context and the
ability to account for it is especially great when these
materials may speak, in some cases, to deeply and
powerfully acculturated anxieties and fears which, by
their very nature, may be difficult to confront in undisguised form. In South Asia, as in other largely patriarchal societies, these fears, which these texts may
paradoxically both reinforce and partially alleviate,
frequently cluster around a deeply problematized complex of issues involving the body, gender, sexuality,5
power, hierarchy, and subordination.
3 This has been
trueof the majorityof scholars
particularly
A commonplace in the social, performative,and literworkingon the vast corpusof textualmaterialsin Sanskrit.In
ary representations of these anxieties in virtually all
recentyears, however,a few Sanskritistshave becomeinterpatriarchalsocieties has been the expression of a highly
estedin reexaminingsomeimportantSanskrittextsin the light
charged and deeply ambivalent attitude towards women
of psychological,political,andfeministcritiques.See, for exand women's sexuality. In many texts women are ideaample, Masson 1974, 1976, 1980; Pollock 1985; Sutherland lized as pure, spiritual, and nurturantwhen they are
1989, 1991, 1992;andGoldman1978, 1982, 1985, 1986, 1991.
4 Before
to issue a sortof
proceedingit may be appropriate
transsexualismseem invariablyto derive their sense of the
caveat on the subjectof the "meaning"or "meanings"of a
phenomenonfrom the ancient sources which they use as
particulartext, whetherwritten,oral or performative.In what
sources of inspirationand validation.I am indebtedto my
follows I shall be attemptingto extracta certainthreadof asfriend and colleague ProfessorSheldon I. Pollock for the
sociatedmeaningsfroma broadandcomplexfabricof myth,
I do not meanto suggest
belief, practice,and interpretation.
probingintelligenceandgreatlearninghe has broughtto bear
on this aspectof the study.
thatall the materialswithwhichI shallbe dealinghavea sim5
Throughoutthis paperI have triedto maintaina distincple, single "meaning"thatdoes not varywith time,place,and
tion betweenthe conceptof "sex,"whichI use-as in current
the shiftingbelief systems,symbolicuniverses,andpowerreandaudiences. practice-to refer to the biologicalor anatomicalaspectsof
lationsof theirauthors,purveyors,performers,
one's sexualpersonaand "gender,"whichgenerallyrefersto
It is, finally,difficultto know, for example,how ancientInthe complexof constructions,attitudesand orientationsthat
dian texts were originallyunderstoodby their variousaudiences. On the other hand,a certainstrandof hermeneutical defineone's social role as a genderedbeing. In manycases,
continuity is provided by the fact that the contemporary especiallyin the texts with which I will be dealing,this distinctionis significantlyblurred.
groupsandindividualswho articulateand/orperformtexts of
But texts too, no less than our readings and constructions of them, are themselves political in that they have
both prescriptive and descriptive value for the cultures
of which they are artifacts. Yet certain texts, particularly the religious, philosophical, and mythological
texts-both written and performative-of traditional
Asian cultures, have only occasionally been read for
what they can tell us about the inner affect and power
relations associated with specific cultural and social
configurations. This has been particularly true in the
case of traditional India where textually based scholarship has tended to concentrate on philological, theological, and philosophical analysis and has rarely
shown much interest in "reading" traditional Indian
texts as vital elements in the social, political, and psychological matrix of South Asian cultures.3 Nonetheless, to the extent that we fail to examine the cultural
purposes served by specific texts and their recurrent
themes, the ways in which they were intended to be
"read" by their original audiences, and the ways in
which they have been read by successive indigenous
audiences, we may-for all our philological skill and
hermeneutical wit-utterly misunderstand what they
are "about," either in some probably irrecoverable intended meaning or in any of the other meanings constructed by historically particular users and consumers
of these texts.4
A particularly good opportunity for an integrated
study of textual materials in their social context is pre-

376
Journal of the American Oriental Society 113.3 (1993)
de-erotized and placed in clearly defined and sexually

tabooed blood relationships such as those of mother, sister, or daughter. In others, when emphasis is placed on
their sexuality, they are often vilified for this aspect of
their nature and condemned as temptress, seductress, or
whore. Thus although women are objectified and commodified as desirable and coveted male possessions, the
very sexuality for which they are so highly prized is, at
the same time, representedas dangerous and destructive
to men. By such projective devices, male-dominated
cultures have been able to establish a univocal yet hegemonic ideology of gender. A central and defining tenet
of this ideology is that sexuality itself, especially when
viewed negatively, arises chiefly through the agency of
women who are unregulated by the societally defined
constraints of kinship. This can be seen both in the recurrentancient Indian mythic theme of the celibate male
sage who has sex with an irresistible apsaras and then
curses her, and in the popular and even judicial attitude
of the contemporary world that holds women responsible for sexual assaults visited upon them.6
One particular theme derived from this matrix of attitudes and anxieties has occupied a special role in the
literature and religious life of traditional India. This is
the phenomenon of transsexualism, the internalized or
acted-out fantasy or desire (and, with modern surgery,
the fact) of changing the sex with which one was born.
This phenomenon is well attested in most cultures, and,
along with the related phenomenon of transvestism, it
has been the subject of many historical, statistical,
cross-cultural, and psychological studies.7 It has also
often been featured in the various media of popular
journalism.8 In recent years this theme has even become
a staple of mainstream Hollywood movie comedy.9
Few cultures have accorded this phenomenon so
prominent a place in the realms of mythology and reli-
6 Brownmiller 1975.
7 For
example, Bullough 1973, Docter 1988, Vyas and Shingala 1987, Sharma 1989, and Nanda 1990: 128-43.
8 It turns
up frequently both in public television documentaries and on the daytime talk shows that feature provocative
topics, frequently associated with sexuality. Just recently, for
example, the American public television screened a documentary on the life of an individual transsexual ("Metamorphosis:
Man Into Woman," June 26, 1991, KQED, San Francisco)
while the BBC presented a film on the hijras of India entitled
"The Third Gender" (see Prasad 1991).
9 Examples of transvestism would be the films "Some Like
It Hot" and "Tootsie." Cinematic renderings of the theme of
transsexualism may be seen in the more recent films "All of
Me" and "Switch."
gion as has that of traditional India.'0 A study of Indian

traditions of transsexualism will, I believe, provide material both for a clearer understandingof the traditional
literature and culture of South Asia and for a better
sense of the ways in which gender, sexuality, and
power have been constructed in many patriarchalcultures, including those of the contemporaryWest. In the
following paper, then, I will present and discuss a number of salient examples of transsexualism drawn from
the religious and mythological texts of ancient and medieval India, the cultic practices at various shrines in
north and south India, and the lives and teachings of
several important modern Indian religious figures and
members of organized religious communities.
The great preponderanceof instances of transsexualism in India, as in many other cultures, involve the
temporary or permanent transformation of men into
10The
of associatingGodor his representatives
phenomenon
with transsexualism is, however, not entirely unknown to other
major world religions. In medieval Christianity, for example,
certain abbots and other theologians expanded on references
foundin someof thepatristicwritersto developa specificform

of devotion to Jesus or God as Mother. In some cases abbots
such as Bernard of Clairvaux spoke about not only God and
Jesus but of other normally patriarchalfigures such as Peter,
Paul, Moses, and even themselves in feminine terms. See
Cabussut 1949 and Bynum 1982: 110-69. A noteworthy difference between this form of divine transsexualism and the much
more elaborate transformations associated with devotional
Vaisnavism is the almost exclusive Christian focus on the maternal aspects of divine femininity as opposed to the often
heavily erotized characterization of the relationship between
Godandhis devoteein Hinduism.Inonecase,thefeminization

of a male God serves as a metaphorfor the unconditional quality of divine love. In the other, as we shall see, it is the (male)
devotee-not the divinity-who is feminized so as to enable
him to experience fully the erotized love of God. The metaphor
here speaks to the intensity ratherthan the unconditionality of
the emotion. An interesting index to the differing attitudes of
the two cultures concerning sexuality and religion is to be
found in the fact that, while the Hindu form of worship became
the mainstream expression of devotionalism in a number of
Vaisnava sectarian traditions, even the de-erotized representation of God as mother in medieval Christianityhas been almost
wholly suppressed and has been described by one scholar as a
"devotionthatmakestheologianswince"(Rayezcited in Bynum 1982: 110). Other more erotized representations of the

loving relationship between the worshiper and God, so as in the
so-called Brautmystik,the nuptial bond with God, the notion of
nuns being brides of Christ, and the highly erotized mysticism
of Santa Teresa, generally involve no shift of naturalor attributed sex or gender.

GOLDMAN:
women. Moreover, the whole phenomenon appears to

be deeply bound up with a patriarchal culture's ambivalent construction of women and their sexuality. It
will, therefore, be useful to review briefly some of the
principal normative representationsof this construction
as they are articulated by representatives of the various
indigenous South Asian religious traditions.
Expressions of a profoundly antipathetic attitude towards women, their strength, their intelligence, their
fidelity, their chastity, their capacities for independence and spiritual liberation, and their very anatomy
are commonplace in many of the most influential documents of the major indigenous Indian traditions, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, from the time of the
very earliest texts of which we have knowledge.
The Rgveda's assertion of feminine inconstancy and
treachery; the early Buddhist literature'sdwelling upon
the Bodhisattva's revulsion at the sight of the unclothed
female body;'2 the Buddha's reluctance and pessimism
over admitting women to the sahgha;'3 the shrill misogyny of Bhartrhari'ssubhasitas;'4 the prolonged and bitter Jaina disputes over women's eligibility for spiritual
liberation;'5 Manu's often-quoted rejection of female
1" Rgveda 10.95.15 (hereafter cited as RV): na vai straindni
sakhyani santi salavrkdna.mhrdaydny eta, "There can be no
friendships with women for theirs are the hearts of jackals."
Cf. Satapathabrahmana 11.5.1.9.
12 Warren 1896: 60-61.
13
Goldman 1991: xv. A characteristic expression of the
relative moral status of the two sexes as understood by the sramana traditions is to be found in an aside on the part of the
Buddha in the course of telling the story of the Thera Soreyya.
He explains that men who indulge in adultery must, after
suffering in hell for hundreds of thousands of years, suffer the
further indignity of a hundred successive rebirths as women.
Women, on the other hand, who perform meritorious acts with
the desire of escaping their feminine condition or who are
utterly devoted to their husbands can, he asserts, thereby be
reborn as men. See notes 46 and 89 below.
14 stanau mamsagranthi kanakakalasav ity upamitau
mukhamslesmagdram tad api ca sasankena tulitam
sravanmitraklinnam karivarakaraspardhijaghanam
aho nindyam ruipamkavijanavisesair gurukrtam
Satakatrayam 3.21
Her breasts, two lumps of flesh, are likened to golden
pitchers.
Her face, abode of phlegm, is likened to the moon.
Her thighs, damp with trickling urine, are said to rival
the trunks of the finest elephants.
Oh, what a contemptible thing to be made such a fuss
over by the great poets.
15 Jaini 1991.
377
autonomy;16Tulsi Das's famous verse grouping women

with donkeys, drums, and low-caste Hindus as entities
requiringbeating;17and the anthologized verse in which
sexual contact with a woman is said to undermine the
mental, moral, and physical well-being of men'8 are but
a few salient examples drawn from a vast, well-known,
and profoundly influential corpus of textual sources providing an elaborate and ponderous negative counterweight to the equally well-buttressed construction of
women as idealized lover, wife, and mother which the
tradition also articulates.19
Such texts both reflect and reinforce a set of deeply
ingrained attitudes in the traditionalpatriarchalcultures
of South Asia and indeed the cultures of many, if not
most, regions. As such they are of central importance to
our formation of a clear understandingof these cultures,
their attitudes towards women and sexuality, and the
very real consequences these attitudes continue to have
for the societies that have adopted them in general, and
the women of these societies in particular. They have,
however, already been discussed in a number of scholarly contexts, both indological and feminist, and I do
not intend to treat them in any detail here. Rather, I have
alluded to them in order to provide a context in which
the textual materials from ancient and modern India that
I will be addressing in this paper may be situated.
These well-known passages must be kept clearly in
mind because the thrust of the materials upon which I
will focus may seem, in many respects, to be contradictory, even diametrically so, to the spirit that animates them. And, having presented the substance, or at
any rate the outline, of some less well known textual
passages that may at first reading appear to project a
positive valuation of women and femininity, I shall
return to the better-known passages and attempt to
resolve, or at the least illuminate, this seeming contradiction. In doing so, I hope to be able to shed some additional light upon one of the sources of traditional
India's characteristic configuration of attitudes concerning women, sexuality, and gender.
16
Manusmrti 5.148.
7 Rdmcaritmdnas5.58.6.
8
Subhasitaratnabhdnddigdra,no. 9, p. 348.
darsanad dharate cittam sparsanad dharate dhrtim
mithunad dharate viryam nari pratyaksaraksasi
The sight of her carries off your mind, her touch your
fortitude.To have sex with her is to lose your man

hood.Truly,a womanis an ogressin the flesh!
19 For a useful survey of the ambivalence of the traditional
Indian attitude towards women as both nurturantand destructive, as beneficent mother and devouring demoness, see Kakar
1981: 79-112.

378
The episodes with which I will be dealing here are

drawn from both ancient literary and religious documents as well as from the biographies of modern spiritual leaders and ethnographic descriptions of monastic
communities; yet they have one common central
theme. Unlike many of the better known passages in
which the issues of sex and normative gender role are
engaged, episodes such as the Savitri legend, the crisis
between Dasaratha and Kaikeyi, the touching devotion
of Sita, Rama's fateful encounter with the raksasi
Surpanakha, or Srikrsna's play among the gopikas of
Vraja, these texts rarely concern themselves chiefly
with the transactions, positive or negative, between
members of the opposite sexes. Instead, the focal moment in the materials upon which I will concentrate involves the transformation of a person from one sex to
the other through the exercise of some supernatural
power or as the result of a powerful wish.
I will not attempt to provide a comprehensive treatment of all references to transgenderism and transsexualism in the vast, diverse, and copious literary,
religious, and folkloric traditionsof India. I will not, for
example, be dealing with instances where, whether in a
single life or over the course of a person's transmigrational history, a change of sex is merely an index of a
change in moral stature or degree of spiritual merit, nor
with those where such a transformationis deliberately
undertaken on a temporary basis through the use of
spells or magical articles, usually for the purpose of
deception in connection with a romantic involvement.
Rather, I will be concentrating on those religious, literary, and historical texts in which, I believe, this theme
most powerfully illuminates the complex set of attitudes
concerning sexuality, hierarchy, deference, and power
relations characteristicof traditionalSouth Asian culture
and society. The majority of these episodes relate variations on the theme of the transformationof a man into a
woman, although a few represent the reverse metamorphosis. And yet, although it is of frequent occurrence in
significant contexts in the mythological and religious literatures of South Asia and has not seldom been remarked upon by scholars, this motif has generated little
in the way of analytic or theoretical discussion to date.20
20
The themeis an extremelycommonone in folkloric,reli-
gious, and literary texts from many parts of the world, and it
occurs in a wide variety of such texts in South Asia. European
legends and alleged case histories of sexual transformation
tend to associate such change with a person's acting like or associating too intimately with members of the opposite sex or to
explain the change naturalistically. For a discussion with a
number of examples, see Laqueur 1990: 124-29. Perhaps the
Although tales of sexual transformation are attested

from the literatures, oral and written, of many cultures,
South Asia appears for some reason to have provided
unusually fertile ground for texts informed by this
theme.21 Indeed, in several forms and contexts, the
theme may be discovered in a wide variety of traditional
and modern contexts of Indian cultural history. The
question of such transformationand of complete or partial sexual and gender ambiguity is readily observable
in a number of widely familiar manifestations such as
the ubiquity of the curious hijra phenomenon,22 the
common iconographic representationof Siva in the hermaphroditic form of Ardhanarisvara-a representation
treated quite playfully by some devotional poets,23the
most comprehensive treatmentof the theme in India is that of
Brown 1927. Here the theme is catalogued-in keeping with
the "motif typology" of folkloric and mythic themes popular in
the 1920s-according to whether the change is from male to
female or female to male, whether the change is regarded as a
curse or a blessing, whether it is expected or not, and according
to the mechanism through which the transformationis effected.
For another listing of examples of the "Change of Sex Motif"
in Indian and other Oriental folklore and literature, see Penzer
1927, 7:222-33. Like Brown's, Penzer's account is basically a
catalog. With the exception of a few works, such as that of
O'Flaherty on the related phenomenon of androgyny (O'Flaherty 1980), scholars have made little effort to understand or
explain the significance of transsexualism in India. Brown provides a perfunctory section, entitled "Origin of the Notion of
Sex Change," which, after a few sketchy allusions to hijras,
cross-dressing to avoid superhuman malevolence, the religious practices of some Krsna cults, and the phenomenon of
hermaphroditism,concludes, somewhat lamely, "We need not
press too far to find a source for the idea. From all these
spheres of thought and experience fiction has taken the notion
and then with a freedom that is of its very nature it has adapted
the idea to its varying needs" (Brown 1927: 22-24).
21 The phenomenon of transsexualism has taken on new
significance in the modern world with the advent of the techniques of sex change surgery in Germany during the 1920s.
Popular and psychological interest, however, received its
greatest stimulus in the wake of the media coverage of the celebrated Christine Jorgensen case in 1952. For a brief discussion see Docter 1988: 7-8. Transvestism and transsexualism
have thus by now a considerable bibliography in the psychological, psychoanalytic, and general literature. See Bullough
1976: 60-73, 150-60; Bullough 1977: 74-89; and Docter
1988: 39-71, 235-42.
22 Nanda 1990 and
Shetty 1990.
23 See, for
example,the charmingandplayfulliterarytreat-
ment of Siva's androgyny in verses 85 and 90 of Vidyakara's

GOLDMAN: Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety In
complex and highly charged erotic devotionalism characteristic of the Bhagavata literature and the performative traditions of the Krsna cult,24 and even the
Buddhist literature.25I will return to some aspects of
these figures later on, but to begin I should like to turn
to some less well known but still widely disseminated
legends in which we see unambiguously articulated
the notion of complete and literal transsexualism.
One of the oldest such legends of which we have a
record and the one most frequently recounted in the traditional literature is the tale of King Ila.26Variants of
this legend are found in both of the Sanskrit epics27and
many puranas.28 It is closely bound up with the ancient
and widely disseminated cycle of tales centering on
Ila's son Pururavas,ancestor of the Lunar dynasty, and
his ill-fated love for the apsaras Urvagi.29This cycle is
well established in the vedic literature,and although the
episode involving Ila's transformation is not fully developed there, it is detailed in an account quoted at
length by the commentator Sayana30as providing the
historical context for the birth of Pururavas. According to this version, the prince Ila, out hunting, inadvertently enters the trysting spot of the Goddess (devikrida)
at a moment when her husband, the Lord Siva, is making love with her. In order to prevent any other male
from seeing his wife in his embrace, the God, through
his divine power, had ordained that any male entering
this forbidden spot would be turned into a woman. The
king undergoes a transformationinto a woman, which is
the source of acute shame. The woman Ila implores the
anthology the Subhasitaratnakosa, translatedby Ingalls (1965:
89-90).
24 Hein 1972 and
Hawley 1981.
25 For a discussion of some stories of sexual transformation
in the Buddhist literatureof India and China, see Brown 1927:
19-21.
26 Hertel (1911: 153-86) provides an extensive treatmentof
the story and its numerous variants in a paper which is, in
turn, discussed by Keith (1913: 412-17).
27 Rdmayana 7.78-81 (hereafter cited as Ram), Mahabharata 1.70.16 (hereafter, MBh), and Harivamsa 10.615-37.
Unless otherwise indicated, Ramdyana and Mahabharata references are to the critical editions.
28 Bhdgavatapurdna 9.1, Brahmapurdna 7.1-23, Lingapurana 1.65.19-32, Markan.deyapurdna111.8-18, Matsyapurana
10.43-11.14, Vayupurdna85, and Visnupurana4.1.7-16. For
furtherdiscussion of the theme, see note 95 below and Brown
1925: 13-14.
29 RV 10.95, Satapathabrahmana 11.5.1, and Kalidasa's
Vikramorvasiya.
30 RV 10.95
(vol. 4:639-40).
Traditional India
379
God to reverse this transformationbut is told that she

must propitiate the Goddess. She throws herself upon
the Mother's mercy, and the Goddess grants that Ila will
be restored to manhood at the end of six months. It is
during his semester of femininity that s/he is wooed by
King Budha by whom s/he is impregnatedand to whom
s/he bears a son, the prince Pururavas.
In the first book of the Mahdbhdrata, there is a genealogy of the Candravamsa in which we find a terse
reference to the birth of Pururavas,of whom it is enigmatically stated that he was born to Ila who was both his
mother and his father.31The fact that such a startling
statement goes unexplained in a text not noted for its
aversion to prolixity may perhaps be seen as an indication that the poet assumed that the tale was quite familiar
to his audience. A fairly elaborate version is related in
the Uttarakanda of the Vilmiki Ramdyana32where the
motif of the feminization of the masculine in the face of
the Mother's sexuality is carried so far that, in order to
please her, Siva turns not only all other male beings in
the vicinity into females but effects this regendering
upon himself as well.33Here too, Ila is representedas being both distressed by her loss of manhood and is rebuffed by the God in her request for its restoration. She
once more throws herself upon the mercy of the Goddess
who grants her only half her wish, so that the king is
permitted to alternate between the two genders on a
3
pururavds tato vidvdn ildydamsamapadyata

sa vai tasyabhavan mata pita ceti hi nah srutam
MBh 1.70.16
32 Ram 7.78-79.
33
tasmims tu devadevegah sailardjasutam harah
ramaydmdsadurdharsah sarvair anucaraih saha
krtvd stribhitam atmdnam umeso gopatidhvajah
devydh priyacikirsuh sa tasmin parvatanirjhare
ye ca tatra vanoddese sattvdh purusavddinah
yac ca kimcana tat sarvam narisaamjiambabhiva ha
Ram 7.78.11-13
This is, so far as I know, the only instance in the mythological
literaturein which a figure assumes the same sex as his or her
beloved in an explicitly erotic context. Normally, one assumes
the opposite sex for sexual purposes or the same sex to eliminate the suggestion of sexuality in proscribed circumstances.
In the elaborate version of the tale found in the Gautamimdhatmya of the Brahmapurana (38.33-35), the Goddess, in requesting Siva to set aside a forbidden woods, the Umavana, for
their lovemaking, specifically exempts the males of her household, Ganesa, Karttikeya, Nandin, and Siva himself, from the
effects of the spell. This, of course, mirrors the exclusion of
unrelated males from the inner apartments of the women's
quartersof a traditional South Asian upper-class household.

380
monthly basis. During her first month as a woman, she

falls in love with Budha and conceives Pururavas.S/he
then shifts back and forth between the genders on a
monthly basis alternatingaccordingly between the erotic
dalliance of a woman and the manly exercise of kingly
duty until, having performedthe Asvamedha rite, he permanently reverts to the male sex and is thus restored to
his previous state of happiness.34
An interesting variant of this motif may be found in
the widely known Mahabharata episode in which the
virile hero Arjuna, visiting the heavenly court of his
father Indra, rejects the sexual advances of the apsaras
Urvagi precisely because her well-known liaison with
his ancestor Pururavas places her in the position of a
"mother"to him.35The nymph is furious at being thus
spurned and curses Arjuna to lose his manhood and
become a napumsaka, a feminized transvestite of ambiguous sex and feminized gender. But, like the curse
of his forefather Ila, this one too is modified so as to
have its effect restricted to only a limited period. Indra
intervenes on his son's behalf and sets the term of the
curse at one year. It is Urvagi's curse, thus modified by
Indra, that provides the underlying explanation for the
necessity of Arjuna's having to adopt the humiliating
guise of the feminized transvestite Brhannada during
the Pandavas' year of enforced concealment at the
court of Virata.36
Without question the most complex and elaborate
single instance of a case of sexual transformationin the
34Ram7.79-81. Therearea numberof curiouselementsin
of his maleform.
this versionaside fromSiva'sabandonment
Oneis its repetitionof thetheme-stated moreexplicitlyin the
tale of BhafigfivanaandseveralJainatexts-of
Mahabhdrata
womenas constitutionally
predisposedto eroticactivityandincapableof acts of fortitude.Anotheris the interestingapplication of the virtuallyall-purposeAgvamedharite to eliminate
almostany undesiredconditioncausedby sometransgression.
Forthe firstpoint,see Carstairs1961:156-60; for the second,
GoldmanandSutherland1984:298 (note 11.2).
35MBh3, app. I, no. 6, 11.125-29. Also suggestedif not
completely explicit here is a more immediate overdetermina-
tion of the incesttaboo.ForUrvagi,as a celestialcourtesan,is

alwaysavailableas a sexualpartnerof Indra,who is Arjuna's
biological(bijapati)as opposedto legal (ksetrapati)father.
36MBh3, app.I, no. 6, 11.132-35, 143-52=Citrashala
Press
edition3.46. The ostensiblereason,adducedby Arjunain the
Virdtaparvan, is that only this disguise-with its flamboyant
clothes and its multitude of wrist bangles-will enable him to
conceal the bowstring scars that would otherwise reveal his
identity as the mighty and unique ambidextrous archer (savyasdcin) (MBh 4.2.25-26 [Citrashalaed.]). Like other legends
literature and one of the few significant accounts of

female to male transsexualism37is the strange minisaga of Amba, the princess of Kasi, who, having become unmarriageableas a result of her abduction at the
hands of the Bharata prince Bhisma, performs fearsome penances in order to be reborn as a man so that
she may kill him in retaliation.38Here too, the god Siva
intervenes, promising that Amba shall obtain the desired transformation and be reborn as the warrior son
of King Drupada. Accordingly she immolates herself
with this as her final all-consuming wish.
Amba's metamorphosis into a man, however, is not
to be so easily accomplished. Drupada, the tale continues, was at this time performing austerities of his
own for the more conventional purpose of obtaining a
son and heir. Siva instead grants him a daughter, in
whom Amba is reincarnated,promising that she will in
the end become a man. Thus the girl is raised as a boy
and the king, relying on the infallibility of the great
god's promise, agrees to find a wife for her. The bride
is greatly astonished-not to say dismayed-when,
upon her wedding night, she discovers that her new
husband is also a woman.39The bride's father threatens
to kill his deceitful brother-in-law, and the girl-groom
Sikhandini, in despair, sets out to kill herself yet again.
of regendering as a result of a sexual sin of commission orin this case-omission, the tale of Arjuna and Urvagi is a
multiform of the larger motif of castration as retribution for
Oedipal transgressions. For a detailed analysis of this theme in
the Indian epics, see Goldman 1978.
37 But compare also the Bhdgavatapurdna's Sudyumna/Ila
version of the Ila/Ila legend, discussed in note 95 below.
38 MBh 5.170-93. Bhisma, of course, occupies a principal
role in a central thematic nexus of the epic that deals with the
desexualization of the son in deference to the father's sexuality. Bhisma indeed derives his charisma, his power, and even
his defining epithet from his voluntary renunciation of sexuality, an act that, in the Jaina Pdndavapurana, is rendered as an
act of literal self-castration. See Jaini 1984: 111. This theme is
of enormous importance to the Mahabharata poets and is one
of the characteristic features of the epic narrative and of the
dynasty whose history it records. Thus, in addition to Bhisma,
many of the most important Bhfrata dynasts and heroes including Ila, Yayati, Puru, Pandu, and Arjuna are forced, either
through a curse or as an act of filial devotion, to lose or suppress their virility temporarily or permanently.
39 The
episode is, at least in this respect, an elaborate multiform of a common tale-type in which one of a pair of newlyweds is in fact secretly a member of the same sex as the other.
Several Indian literary and folkloric variants are discussed by
Brown 1927: 10-12.

GOLDMAN:
This time, however, she encounters a yaksa who,

through his superhumanpowers, effects an exchange of
sexes with her.40 This is the origin of the "woman"
warrior Sikhandin who, true to the death vow of Princess Amba, will be the cause of Bhisma's destruction.
For it is s/he who will serve as a shield from whose inviolate shelter Arjuna will shoot down his unresisting
"grandfather."41This entire strange complex of episodes, a mere fragment of which I have mentioned
here, has important implications for our understanding
of the constitution of the primal triad of father, mother,
and son in traditional India, and I have discussed this
passage and its consequences in the Mahabhdrata
more fully elsewhere.42Interestingly, the story makes a
sort of detour, in keeping with the tenor of the Ila/Ila
tale, to report on the fate of the yaksa/yaksi Sthunakarna who, by virtue of his switch with Sikhandini,
has become female. S/he is disgraced by what is regarded as a form of degradation and is cursed by
his/her lord Kubera to remain female. This curse too is
modified, however, to permit the recovery of his original male sex upon the death of Sikhandin.43
A somewhat more illuminating episode of sexual
transformation,one that focuses more directly upon the
question of sexuality than the Mahabhdrata tale of
Sikhandin, is related in the Anusasanaparvan of the
same poem. Bhisma, responding to Yudhisthira'squestion as to which sex, male or female, derives greater
pleasure from the act of sexual intercourse, narratesthe
"ancient tale" of King Bhafigaivana.44
40 Yaksas or sometimes
raiksasasare often represented in In-
dian legend and literatureas having the power to exchange

theirsex withpeople.Brownincludesthetaleof Sikhandinunderhis heading"Exchanging
Sex witha Yaksa"andcites similar stories from the Pancatantra and the Rose of Bakawali. See
Brown1927: 14-16.
41 MBh 6.103.75-79. The underlying "karmic" reason for
Bhisma's death in this peculiar fashion at the hands of his
"son"is to be tracedto his transgression

in facinganddefeathis
own
in
Rfma
their
battle
ing
guru,
Jamadagnya,
protracted
over the fate of the sameAmbawho, as Sikhandin,will be his
undoing.See MBh5.170-93. Arjuna,too, will pay thepriceof
killinghis guruwhenhe mustsufferdeathat the handsof his
own son Babhruvahana
at MBh14.78-82. See Goldman1978:
330-33.
42 Goldman 1978: 334.
43 MBh 5.193.40-48.
44 MBh 13.12. The episode is, in fact, ancient in that it is a
better known epic variant of the vedic tale of Rtuparna
Bhafigasvina, king of the Saphalas, that is tersely narrated at
Baudhdyanasrautasitra 18.13 (pp. 357-58). The older ver-
381
According to this story, the king who, like so many

epic monarchs, is distraught over the lack of a son to
succeed him, chooses, in an effort to procure an heir,
one of the several remedies the texts hold forth as options,45 in this case the performance of a ritual whose
purpose is the propitiationof a specific divinity. He performs the Agnistut rite to propitiate the god Agni. This
performance, although it is effective in producing no
fewer than a hundredsons for the king, has also the undesired effect of antagonizing another powerful and
vengeful patriarchalfigure, Indra, king of the gods. In
his jealousy, Indra seeks some opportunity to punish
Bhaigasvana and finds one when the king, again in
keeping with a common epic schema, becomes separated from his retainersand loses his way while hunting.
Exhausted, hot, and thirsty, he refreshes himself in a
forest pool only to discover, to his shame and horror,
upon emerging that he has become a woman.46In this so
sion is translatedin Caland1903a:21. Theroleof this version
as the sourcefor the Mahabhdratastory of Bhafgasvanais
discussedin Caland 1903b: 351-55. For a synopsis of the
vedic version,see Brown1927:6-7. Brown(1927:6) regards
the Rtuparna
tale as "theearliestexampleof Indianliterature
of a humanbeing experiencingchangeof sex." The two stories are quitesimilarin substanceexceptthatthe muchmore
concise vedic variantlacks the discussionof the intensityof
the pleasure the different sexes take in intercourse that forms
the frame for the epic narrative.
45 Other remedies include the practice of levirate (niyoga)
as in the case of Kalmasapada(MBh 1.113.20-25), the performance of a specific rite to address the lack of a son (Putrakamesti)-with or without the performance of a larger srauta
rite, as in the case of the Asvamedha performed by Dagaratha
(Ram 1.13)-or the adoption of a specific expiatory procedure
as in the case of Dilipa's govrata (Raghuvarmsa1.74-95).
46 By virtue of this detail, Brown (1927: 6-9) classifies the
tale under the heading "Bathing in EnchantedWater."He then
offers some variants found in ancient and modern Hindu and
Muslim texts. Allusions to this folkloric motif can be found
even in contemporaryIndian fiction. Thus Rushdie (1981: 195,
also cf. p. 424) describes one of his supernaturallyendowed
"Midnight'sChildren"as follows: "from Kashmir, there was a
blue-eyed child of whose original sex I was never certain, since
by immersing herself in water he (or she) could alter it as she
(or he) pleased. Some of us called this child Narada, others
Markandeya, depending on which old fairy story of sexual
change we had heard."The transsexualismof the celestial seer
Narada is well known to the puranas and indeed in most
versions his transformation into a woman and subsequent
reversion to manhood is accomplished through successive immersions in a body of water. At Ndradapurana 2.87 the seer,

382
new and weaker form s/he is barely able to remount his

horse and ride back to his capital, wondering what on
earth to tell his wives, courtiers, and subjects. Once
there s/he realizes the unfitness of a woman to rule and
plunging into a pool, becomes a woman named Naradi who
then experiences the bliss of erotic love with Krsna. At Devibhdgavatapurdna 6.28-30 she becomes the wife of the Talajangha monarch, with whom she dwells for many years
immersed in erotic joy and to whom she bears twenty sons. She
becomes a man again only after experiencing the joys and sorrows of a wife, mother, and mother-in-law. Sidheshwar Shastri
Chitrao (1964: s.v. Narada) refers to a version of this story at
Padmapurdna,Pdtalakhanda 75. He also summarizes a version
at Brahmapurana 228 in which Narada, having been transformed into a woman named SuSila through the power of
Visnu, marries Sugarma, the king of Vidarbha. Brown fails to
mention the Narada story either under his heading, "Bathing in
EnchantedWater,"or elsewhere in his article. Another interesting example of the immersion motif similarly overlooked by
Brown involves not only a change of sex but of species as well.
In the praksipta sargas, the interpolatedchaptersof the Uttarakdnda of the VdlmikiRdmdyana(crit. ed., vol. 7, appendix no.
3, lines 1-114), Rama, saying that he knows that the monkey
Rksarajaswas the father of Valin and Sugriva, asks Agastya to
tell him who their mother was. The sage tells him that the monkey Rksarajas, who was born from the tears of Brahma, was
once afflicted with thirst while roaming on the northernmountain Meru. Coming to a beautiful pool, he sees the reflection of
his own face. In his monkey's foolishness, he thinks that he has
seen an enemy and jumps into the water to fight. When he
emerges, he has been transformednot into a female monkey but
into an extraordinarilybeautiful woman. The gods Indra and
Surya see her and are instantly infatuated.Indra,without touching her, ejaculates on her head. Surya does so on her neck.
Since great beings like the gods are supposed to have infallibly
productive semen (amogharetas), the woman bears two sons.
Because Indra'ssemen fell on her hair (valesu), his son is called
Valin; while Surya's, having fallen on the woman's neck (grivdydm), produces a son named Sugriva. When the sun rises on
the following morning, Rksarajasturns back into a male monkey. Brahmathen sends him and his sons to rule over the monkeys of Kiskindha. The narrativeconcludes by indicating that
Rksarajas, in a somewhat different manner than Ila, Bhafigasvana, and Soreyya, was both the father and mother of his sons.
Although Brahma'srole in this strange episode is implicit, the
tale differs from most of the others I have seen in offering no
clear explanation-whether a spell, a curse, or a boon-to explain either the central figure's transformationto femininity or
his reversion to masculinity. It is interesting to note that although Rksarajasappearsto become physically a humanfemale
s/he seems to remain genetically a monkey, as evidenced by the
natureof his/her sons. The immersion motif in anothertale cen-
so confers the unambiguously phallic rod (danda) of

sovereignty upon his one hundred sons collectively and
retires to the forest to take up the life of a religious recluse. But there, like the similarly transformedIla, s/he
meets a male ascetic to whom s/he bears a second set of
one hundred sons. S/he brings the second set of sons to
the capital and persuades their elder brothers to share
power with them. At this, Indra, perceiving that he has
only increased the felicity of the man (now a woman)
who had so provoked him, intervenes once more to stir
up a deadly feud between the two sets of sons so that
they annihilate each other. Then, taking the form of a
venerable brahman, the god approaches the grieving
woman to savor his triumph. He gently inquires as to
the cause of her suffering and, when Bhaigasvana tells
him, the god reveals himself and gloats over his enemy.
The woman humbly begs Indra's pardon for an offense
committed only to gain sons, and the god, relenting,
grants as a boon the restoration to life of whichever set
of sons s/he may choose. S/he chooses the younger
group and, in response to the astonished god's question,
replies that she has done so because a mother feels
greater love for her children than does a father. Indra is
delighted with her answer and is moved not only to restore both groups of sons to life but to let her choose the
sex in which she would like to remain. Without hesitation she chooses to remain a woman. The god is again
astonished and demands an explanation. Bhangasvana
explains that she prefers being female because as a
woman she derives greater pleasure from sex. The god
is satisfied and departs. Bhangasvana's choice provides
a unique empirically derived confirmation of the belief-found in a variety of Indian sources-that a woman's pleasure in the sexual act is greater (usually eight
times greater) than that of a man.47
Another illuminating story, and one that echoes the
Bhafigagvanasaga's empirical demonstration of the superiority of maternal over paternal affection, is the tale
of Thera Soreyya, attributedto the Buddha in the commentary to the Dhammapada.48As the story begins, a
prosperous young householder named Soreyya is on
tering on Visnu and his mayd is also, according to Dange
(1989: 1283), illustrated by the stories of the brahmansKamadamana (Brahmapurana 228.69) and Somasarman (Vardhapurana 125.57-88). I am unable to trace any puranictales of
transsexualism involving the rsi Markandeya.
47 Garu.dapurana109.33, Schmidt 1911: 132, Bohtlingk 1868:
412, and Meyer 1930: 380.
48 Norman 1909, Dhammatthakathd3.9 (on Dhammapada43).
The story is translated-with subtle bowdlerization-in Burlingame 1921: 23-28. Aside from this very interestingstory, with its
the Budstriking affinities to the tale of Rtuparna/Bhafigasvana,
dhist literaturemakes only scatteredreference to the change of

GOLDMAN:Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety In Traditional India
383
his way to bathe with a companion when he happens to

catch sight of the Buddhist elder Mahakaccayana, who
is dressing at the bathing spot. When he sees the
monk's exquisite golden body, the young man suddenly
conceives the desire that the Thera might become his
wife or that his actual wife might come to have a body
as splendid as that of the holy man. No sooner does
this illicit fantasy cross Soreyya's mind, however, than
his genitalia vanish,49only to be replaced by those of a
woman. Like Ila and Bhangasvana, Soreyya is said to
be humiliated by this transformation,but unlike the latter, does not return home but flees without a word.
Falling in with a caravan bound for Taksasila, Soreyya, now the beautiful young woman Soreyya, becomes the lover, or perhaps wife, of a man of that city.
In the course of a few years, she bears him two sons. As
Soreyya was already the father of two sons in the city of
Soreyya, he thus becomes, like Ila and Bhanigasvana,
both a mother and a father. One day Soreyya happens to
see his old friend from the city of Soreyya who, having
heard the woman's strange tale, manages to bring Mahakaccayanato her house for alms. The friend intercedes
for Soreyya, begging the monk to pardon the offense.
The Elder consents and Soreyya is instantly restored to
his original sex. Taking leave of his sons, Soreyya declares his intent to quit the householder's life and is
initiated into the Buddhist order under Mahakaccayana.
Now known as Thera Soreyya, he is questioned by curious townsfolk as to which pair of his sons are dearest
to him and-just like Bhaiigiavana when questioned by
Indra-he replies that he is fonder of those of whom he
is the mother. Later, reflecting on the transience of existence, he attains true detachment. After that, whenever
the question is repeated, he replies that he no longer retains any emotional attachment whatever.
Other traditional texts allude, sometimes elaborately,
to a change of sex that a person experiences either as a
fantasy or full-fledged delusion through the power of
sexual desire. The most productive source for this motif

is, of course, the often repeated and embellished legend
of Krsna Gopala, the adolescent lover of the gopis of
Vraja. In several versions of this story, one finds references to the love-maddened gopis who, in their frenzy at
being abandonedby the mischievous Krsna, project fantasized sexual transformations upon themselves and
engage in love play with one another.50Similarly, one
comes across references to the gopas' wish to become
women so that they may directly experience the madhuryabhdva,or state of erotized bliss, generally regardedas
the highest expression of bhakti. An analogous phenomenon related to this may be seen in the contemporary
performanceof the Raslila in which the adolescent boys
who play the roles of the gopis exaggerate the conventionally effeminate speech and gestures that their roles
and assumed gender demand.51Even in the generally
more straitlaced atmosphere of the Rama cult and the
general de-erotization of this avatdra of Visnu, compared with the paradoxical mixture of chastity and unbounded sexuality in the Krsnalegend,52this theme may
surface. Thus, for example, the learned Sri Vaisnava
commentator Govindaraja, treating the verse from
Valmiki's Riamyana in which Rama is described as
"ravishingthe eyes and heartsof men throughhis virtues
of beauty and generosity,"53explains this description as
follows: "Or [it may refer to] the desire, on the part of
men who see him, which takes the form of the thought,
'If I were to become a woman, I could enjoy him sexually.' This is similar to the thought expressed in the verse
that runs, 'The women who watched lotus-eyed Draupadi
bathing her deep loins experienced the fantasy of becoming men.'"54This theme of a change in sex, actual as well
as fantasized, resulting instantaneouslyor in anotherlife
sex motif. Some provocativeexamples are to be found in the Mahayanatext, Vimalakirtinirdesa.At one point a goddess, debating
with the venerable Sariputrathe possibility of changing her female sex, actually exchanges sexes with him as partof a forensic
strategy to prove that in reality there is no such thing as gender
(Thurman 1976: 61-62). Later in the same text, Vimalakirtiindicates that one of the many forms adoptedby bodhisattvasover
the eons to help bring about the enlightenmentand liberationof
beings is that of the female prostitutein which form they use the
lure of sexual desire to bring men to Buddhaknowledge:
samcintya ganikam bhonte pumisamdkarsandyate
ragdnkuramca samlobhya buddhajndnesthapayantite
(Thurman1976: 71, 130 note 33).
49 Cf. the reference to Ramakrishnain note 59 below.
bhi brahmacdri,"He has sixteenthousandwomenandyet he
50
E.g., Bhigavatapurdna 10.30.

51 For an accountof the Raslila, see Hein 1972: 129-51
et passim.
52 Cf. the Hindi riddle about Krsna:solah sahasra ndri phir
remains celibate."
53 Ram 2.3.12 (=
Gujarati Printing Press edition 2.3.29):
rupauddryagunaihpumsam drsticittapahdrinam.
54
Govindarajaon Ram 2.3.39 = Gujaratied.: yadva pumsdm
rimam
api
pasyatdm stribhutvdham amum anubhaveyam ity
abhildso bhavati yathdhuh:
pdacalydh padmapatrdksyih
sndyantydjaghanam ghanam
ydh striyo drstavatyas tdah
pumbhdvammanasa yayu.hiti
The association of a powerful homoerotic desire with the fantasy of changing sex so as to reclassify the desire as heterosexual finds an interesting illustration in the Dhammatthakatha,

384
from powerful homoerotic desire, recurs in a number of

interesting contexts in Vaisnava and Buddhist texts.
The theme of a man's turning into a woman or of
being both a mother and a father is not, however, restricted to myths and legends drawn from ancient
sources. It occurs widely in the biographies of several
modern Indian spiritual figures and in the beliefs and
ritual practices of contemporary groups, ranging from
the flamboyantly transsexual hijras to south Indian
cultic priests and established north Indian monastic
orders. Indeed there is also a body of evidence suggesting that this fantasy is a particularly common one
among Indian men, and one that is deeply implicated in
the attitudes and anxieties concerning women and sexuality that psychiatrists have found in the course of
their work with Indian patients.55I shall be referring to
where the author of the fantasy is punished by being actually
transformed into a woman (Norman 1909; Dhammatthakatha
3.9 on Dhammapada 43). The story is translatedin Burlingame
1921: 23-28. For furtherdiscussion of this episode, see Brown
1927: 21. For a discussion of the theme as it is raised by Govindaraja, see Sutherland 1989.
55 In the course of a
correspondence with Freud concerning
differences Bose had perceived in the anxieties of his Indian
patients concerning castration compared to those reported in
the European psychoanalytic literature, Dr. Girindrashekhar
Bose, the founder of Indian psychoanalysis, noted, "The desire to be a female is more easily unearthed in Indian male
patients than in European" (quoted in Kakar 1989: 129). This
preoccupation is reported by Bose in a number of early case
histories which appeared in the journal of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society, Samiksa. In one of these case studies, as
reported by Kakar, a patient, a middle-aged man, manifests
shifting sexual fantasies towards his parents, sometimes as a
man and sometimes as a woman, while in another a patient
frequently fantasizes the replacement of his genitals with
those of a woman and ties a handkerchief over his eyes while
engaged in sexual intercourse with his wife in order to make
himself feel like a veiled bride (Kakar 1989: 130-31). This
fantasy of being a bride is reminiscent of those reported in the
cases of Ramakrishna and Schreber which are discussed below. An interesting aspect of the connection between transsexualism and a heightened eroticism is pointed out by the
recurrentclaim on the part of hijra prostitutes that men prefer
them to female prostitutes. Thus Prasad quotes a marriedman
who also keeps a hijra "wife" as saying, "Once you have experienced a hijra, all women seem insipid" (Prasad 1991: 44),
and a hijra who says, "We hijras are the most popular prostitutes; we make a lot of money" (Prasad 1991: 49). This claim
is also supported by some of the hijras quoted by Nanda
(1990:64, 75-76).
a number of instances, some well known in the West,

in which this idea goes far beyond the mere suppression of male sexuality and beyond even the biophysical
changes reflective of this that are, for example, traditionally numbered among the characteristic signs of a
Buddha.56Two such well-known figures are Paramahamsa Sri Ramakrishna, the great nineteenth-century
spiritual master of Dakshineshvara in Bengal, and
Paramahamsa Swami Yogananda, founder of the Self
Realization Fellowship and one of the first Hindu swamis to settle and establish a lasting movement in the
United States.
One of the most noteworthy and often recurring
themes in the various accounts of the miraculous life of
Ramakrishna57is that of his constant desire to dress,
behave, and experience the world as a woman. From
his biographers' fond reminiscences of the young
Gadadhara'spranks, such as cross-dressing to infiltrate
the women's quarters in the home of a prominent villager, to their accounts of his later efforts to be alternately the mother and the "spiritual consort" of Lord
Krsna, during which he would wear women's clothes
and mimic women's gestures for up to six months at a
time, the theme of becoming a woman assumes tremendous importance in these accounts. Great emphasis is
placed on the Master's being able to assume both genders and especially on his periodic loss of male consciousness and the difficulty of recognizing him as a
man at such times even on the part of his most intimate
associates. Indeed, it is argued that it was not only the
outer appearance, voice, and gestures of the Master
that changed when the "mood" came upon him. His
biographers are fond of telling us that he underwent
genuine biophysical changes during those periods and
that, for example, "drops of blood oozed out from his
skin from the pangs of separation from Krsna." In
some places it is even suggested that this phenomenon
represented a sort of menstruation.58There is also
considerable evidence that, although Ramakrishnafrequently fantasized about being or becoming a woman
56 Buddhacarita 1.60.
57A
Sri
good anddetailedexampleis SwamiSaradananda's
Sri RdmakrsnaLild Prasanga, translated by Swami Jagadananda (1952) as Sri Ramakrishna: The Great Master, of which,
according to McDaniel (1989: 305) the original English title
was The Play of the Divine Mother as Sri Ramakrishna.Other
importantsources for the life of Ramakrishnaare Gupta 1980,
Rolland 1960, and Mueller 1974. See also Kakar 1981: 11112, Masson 1980: 33-50, and McDaniel 1989: 92-103.
58 Saradananda 1952: 233-34, Bose 1953: 206, and
McDaniel 1989: 92.

GOLDMAN:
and often even appeared to lose himself in elaborate

fantasies of being reborn as one of the gopis of Vrindavan or a brahman child-widow of Vraja who would
then know only Krsna as her lover,59he simultaneously
entertained a powerfully phobic attitude towards the
female body whenever it was represented as an object
of male sexual interest. He is thought never to have
had sexual relations with his wife, to whom he always
referred as the "Holy Mother," and on occasion even
the thought of touching her body was enough to cause
him to faint and lapse into a trancelike state.6? Once,
when a prostitute was sent to him in an effort to cure
what was seen as an insanity caused by sexual continence, he said that he saw the Divine Mother in the
woman and that "his genitals became contracted and
entered completely into his body, like the limbs of a
tortoise."61Indeed, he was quite explicit about his phobic reaction to women whom he viewed as threatening,
devouring, and-as this last incident suggests-castrating ogresses, the dread of whom could be allayed
only by concentrating upon their maternal aspect. MahendranathGupta quotes him as follows:
I am very muchafraidof women.WhenI look at
one, I feel as if a tigresswerecomingto devourme. Besides,I findthattheirbodies,theirlimbs,andeventheir
poresareverylarge.This makesme look uponthemas
she-monsters.I usedto be muchmoreafraidof women
thanI am at present.I wouldn'tallowone to come near
me. Now I persuademy mindin variousways to look
uponwomenas formsof the BlissfulMother.62
59 Saradananda
1952:235-39 andMcDaniel1989:97.
60 Saradananda
1952:290, 209-10.
61 McDaniel 1989:
96, quoting Saradananda1952: 172.
Given traditionalbeliefs valorizingsexual continenceas a

meansof avoidingwhatareperceivedas thedeleteriouseffects
of sexualintercourseuponthe healthof men, this notionthat
Ramakrishna's
"madness"
is a resultof chastityandcanonlybe
curedthroughthe releaseof intercourseis interesting.If it has
a folkloricbasis,it maybe akinto the ancientmotifof the necessity of seducinga chasteasceticthroughthe use of prostitutes in orderto releasethe pent-upwaterscausingdrought.
Thismotifis best andmostwidelyknownin the legendof the
seductionof the virginsage Rsyasrnga.On this, see Goldman
andSutherland1984:75-77. The idea thatprofoundandperfect sexual abstinenceitself can lead to the inversionof the
malegenitaliaor even theirconversionintobreasts,in thecase
of great yogis, is occasionallyencountered.On this, see the
interestingdiscussionat O'Flaherty1980:44.
62 McDaniel1989:
99, quotingfromGupta1980, 2:595.
385
On the other hand, throughout his life Ramakrishna

made every effort to identify himself with women in
dress, attitude, and behavior. Gupta also records the
following quote:
Howcan a manconquerpassion?He shouldassume
the attitudeof a woman.I spentmanydaysas thehandmaidof God.I dressedmyselfin women'sclothes,put
on ornaments,andcoveredthe upperpartof my body
witha scarf,just like a woman.Withthe scarfon I used
to performthe evening worship before the image.
Otherwise,how couldI havekeptmy wife withme for
eight months?Both of us behavedas if we were the
handmaidsof the DivineMother.63
Ramakrishna'spowerfully ambivalent attitude towards
women, expressed both in his phobic flight from them
and in his counterphobic desire to become one, at least
to the extent of a kind of protective mimicry, is in a
way paradigmatic of the interplay of desire and the
anxiety generated by that desire which underlies much
of the mythic and cultic material under discussion.
Let me turn now to the case of Yogananda. The information we have of his life is, as in the case of
Ramakrishna, largely derived from his own accounts
and those of his disciples. But unlike Ramakrishna,
whose autobiographical anecdotes are invariably mediated by the pen of a devotee, Yogananda's career is
most fully reported in the form of an autobiography,
Autobiography of a Yogi, a remarkable and widely influential work. Since its first appearance in 1946, the
book has gone through numerous printings and may
have been the most widely read introduction to Indian
spiritualism among at least one generation of Americans. The book and the many strange and remarkable
events it purports to chronicle provide us with considerable insight into both the formation of the spiritual
personality and some of the darker aspects of the gurudisciple relationship. I will, however, confine myself to
those that bear directly on the question of sexual ambiguity. From what Yogananda tells us of his childhood
as Mukundlal Ghosh, we can clearly perceive his profound and vital bond to his mother, a woman whom he
depicts unambiguously, very much in the manner of
Ramakrishnaand his wife, as identical with the Divine
Mother. Upon learning by means of telepathy at the
age of ten of his mother's death, he began to think
about suicide and entered a state of profound depression from which he emerged only upon seeing a vision
of the Divine Mother who comforted him with the
63 McDaniel1989:
99, quotingfromGupta1980,2:595.

386
revelation that his earthly mother was but a manifestation and that she had not abandoned him. It is also at
this point that he resolved to abandon the world and
become a yogi in the Himalayas.64
Yogananda's relationship to his father was much less
close. Bhagabaticaran Ghose's children regarded him
with a "certain reverential distance" and not even Yogananda's idealized and sentimental memoir quite succeeds in concealing the portrait of his father as a stern,
self-righteous, miserly, and pious disciplinarian. Given
this austere, distant patriarch whose attitudes towards
human sexuality were such that they permitted him intercourse only once a year and then only for the purposes of procreation,65it is little wonder that young
Mukundlal grew up, like Ramakrishna, obsessed with
the notion of women as manifestations of the desexualized Mother, and of men as all-knowing and potentially
menacing gurus. It is also not surprising that all of this
was accompanied by an irresistible impulse to flee the
world.
It is interesting, too, in the present connection to note
that, no doubt as a result of his particularconstellation
of relationships and anxieties, the mature Yogananda
and his disciples after him tended to resurrect and revalorize the fantasies of sexual transformation and the
androgynous parent that occur so frequently in Indian
myth, legend, and theology. His own father, his guru,
and he himself came to be characterized in his writings
and those of his disciples by a prevailing and cherished
ambiguity regarding sex and gender: a belief that these
men have or could somehow become women.66
To his own flock in Los Angeles, Yogananda, like
his own widowed father, would become "both father
and mother" not merely by virtue of a dual role nor
even through a metaphor derived from his tenderness
and compassion, which are frequently regarded as
"womanly" characteristics. For, as in the case of Ramakrishna, the femininization of the guru was something that, at least in the eyes of his disciples, entailed
perceptible biophysical changes. Consider the way in

which Yogananda's closest disciple and successor
Kriyananda, born Donald Walters, repeatedly refers to
his master in feminine and maternal terms. Describing
the scene as Yogananda's disciples view the body of
their late Master immediately following his death in
Los Angeles in 1952, he remarks:
They brought Master's body to Mt. Washington and
placed it lovingly on his bed. One by one we went in,
weeping, and knelt by his bedside. "Mother!"cried Joseph, "Oh, Mother!" Indeed Master had been a mother
to us all, and how much more than a mother.67
That this maternal quality of
to have an actual biophysical
from Kriyananda's caption to
what androgynous photographic
the Master was thought

manifestation is clear
an undoubtedly somelikeness of Yogananda
reproduced in the book. In it he states:

Master exemplified the androgynous balance of the perfect human being. He had the compassion and love of a
mother, and the wisdom and will power of a father. In
this picture we see exemplified the mother aspect of his
nature.68
The notion that real, as opposed to mythological,

figures can actually or symbolically change their sex is
not restricted to these two purely spiritual masters.
Powerful indications of it continually surface, for example, in the life and works of one of modern India's
most powerfully influential figures, Mahatma Gandhi,
and in those of his followers. Not only did Gandhi
share many of Ramakrishna's phobic attitudes about
women and his culturally normative anxiety about the
negative consequences for men of engaging in sexual
activity,69 he clearly inspired in at least some of his
followers something of the mother fixation that we see
in the case of Yogananda. This is perhaps best illustrated by a memoir of one of his disciples entitled
Bapu, My Mother.70
64 Yogananda1974: 17-18.
65
Yogananda1974:4-8.
66Thus,for
example,Yogananda,writingof his fatherafter
the deathof his motherremarks,"I noticedthenthathis gaze
often metamorphosed
into my mother's"(p. 16). Elsewherehe
says of him, "outwardlythe grave father,inwardlyhe possessed the meltingheartof a mother"(p. 238). The firstthing
his guru Sri Yukteswar promises the young Mukundlal Ghose
is the unconditional love of a mother (p. 94). In writing of his
own role as the founder and head of a school in Ranchi, he
muses on the way in which he was the "father-mother"to his
charges (pp. 255-56).
Gandhi's lifelong struggle with his sexuality is extremely well documented in his autobiography, as well
67
Kriyananda 1977: 539.
68
Kriyananda 1977: 313.
69 Kakar 1989: 122-25. Carstairs
(1961: 82-84) discusses

the widespread South Asian anxiety regarding the allegedly
negative consequences, spiritual and physical, of the loss of
semen. For a more elaborate discussion of some common anxieties in India concerning the sexuality and sexual physiology
of women, see Kakar 1981: 92-96.
70 Manubehn Gandhi 1949.

as in his other copious writings and the numerous

works of his biographers.71 This continuing conflict
culminated near the end of his life in his controversial
and public "brahmacaryapariksas,"
his experiments
with celibacy, and was, if we are to accept the testimony of his personal secretary, Nirmal Kumar Bose,
closely tied up with the spiritualized fantasy of becoming a woman. Bose writes:
In order to follow more fully the discipline known as
brahmacarya,Gandhi adopted a curious mental attitude
which, although rare, is one of the established modes of
subordinationof sex among spiritual aspirants in India.
It was by becoming a woman that he tried to circumvent one of the most powerful and disturbing elements
which belong to our biological existence.72
Central to Gandhi's somewhat phobic attitude toward
women when they were viewed as objects of male sexuality are his complementary and overdetermined struggles to desexualize them by bringing them within the
confines of the incest taboo and so to regender his male
self as to obviate the possibility of heterosexual desire.
Like Ramakrishna he regarded-and
urged others to retowards whom they might normally engard-women
tertain sexual feelings as their "mother." Thus he urged
those who would write literature praising women's
beauty and desirability:
I suggest that before you put your pens to paper think of
women as your own mother, and I assure you the chastest of literature will flow from your pens.... Remember that a woman was your mother, before a woman
became your wife.73
In discussing Gandhi's attitude towards women and
sexuality, Kakar makes the following observation:
Whereas desexualizing, idealizing, and perceiving only
the "milky" mother in the woman is one part of his defensive bulwark which helped in preserving the illusion
of unity intact, the other part consists of efforts at renouncing the gift of sexual desire, abjuring his own
masculinity. Here we must note that the Hindu Vaishnava culture, in which Gandhi grew up and in which he
remained deeply rooted, not only provides a sanction
for man's feminine strivings, but raises these strivings
71 Gandhi 1957: 28-31, 71-72, 204-11; Bose 1953: 189207; Erikson 1969: 120-23, 402-6; and Mehta 1976: 179-213.
72 Bose 1953: 1.
73 Kakar (1989: 127) quoting from M. K. Gandhi, To the
Women (Karachi: Hingorani, 1943: 102).
387
to the level of a religious-spiritual quest. In devotional

Vaishnavism, Lord Krishna alone is the male and all
devotees, irrespective of their sex, are female. Gandhi's
statement that he had mentally become a woman or that
he envied women and that there is as much reason for a
man to wish that he was born a woman, as for women
to do otherwise, thus struck many responsive chords in
his audience.74
Similarly, the transformations of sex that are associated with the legendary companions and devotees of the
principal avataras of Visnu, particularly Krsna and to a
lesser degree Rama, are widely known. Among the

various emotive
values
(bhava) associated
with the
worship of Krsna and analogous to the various types of

human affectual relationships, maternal, friendly, servile, etc., it is clear that the most powerful and heavily
invested in the bhakta tradition is the so-called mddhuryabhdva, the emotive state of "sweetness," that is, of
passionate, all-consuming erotic love. Indeed this rasa-
raja, or "king of emotive states" as it is sometimes

called, is unquestionably the driving force behind several of the various Krsna-oriented sampraddyas, margas, and panths of the Vaisnava tradition. Given the
preeminence of mddhurya and the unambiguousness of
the heterosexual erotic imagery that drives it, it follows
that for a man to partake of it he must, in some sense
and to some degree, "transform"himself into a woman
to fully experience the love of God. Indeed, such transformation is in many cases textually mandated as necessary for the "properattitude of the worshiper towards
Krsna"which is that of the gopis. This transformation,
according to Dimock, was accepted quite literally by
the followers of at least the Sahajiya tradition.75In at
74 Kakar 1989: 126-27.
75 Dimock 189: 158-61. Dimock
quotes a Sahajiya text, the
Vivartavildsa of Akiiicanadasa, as follows, "assume the Gopibhva ... and incessantly [let the mind] dwell upon the body
of Krsna. Each in his own way will enjoy the pleasure of coition. The Gopi-bhdva does away with maleness in sexual relationship" (pp. 158-59). He also briefly treats the Sahajiyas'
theory of how such sexual transformationis possible in terms
of their sense that sexuality is determined by the relative balance of purusa and prakrti in the individual human body
(pp. 159-61). For an excellent overview of the background
and doctrines of Sahajiya Vaisnavism, see Das Gupta 1969:
113-46. The use of this notion to justify the indulgence of homoerotic desire has been alleged of the controversial Anand
Marg cult in India. In one rather propagandistic publication
put out by the Government of India, which has proscribed the
organization, it is alleged that the tendency of homosexuality

388
least one historical instance, a woman was able to

use such a theologically constructed sexual transformation to break down, at least temporarily, the socially
grounded taboo on certain male religious figures having
contact with women. The poet-saint and Rajput princess Mira Bai, whose behavior was not infrequently
cause for scandal in her highly patriarchal society, is
said to have once come to Vrindavan in order to meet
Jiva Gosvami, one of the great Gaudiya Vaisnava acaryas of Vrindavan. The acarya was scandalized and refused her request for an audience saying that it would
be highly improper for him, as a man, to meet with her
as he had taken a vow never to set his eyes upon the
face of a woman. Undaunted, Mira sent back a message
stating that she had heard that Krsna was the only male
in Vrindavan. Whence, she inquired, had this second
man come? The dcarya was shamed by this and thus
had no choice but either to assent to the interview or, in
essence, admit the fictive quality of the sexual and gender transformation that lies at the heart of Gaudiya theology. The interview was granted.76
Indeed, according to some authors, the desire of the
male devotee to mask or eliminate his maleness as an
obstacle to union with Krsna may go beyond emotional
transformation to involve varying degrees of modification to both one's costume and even anatomy. Summa-
on the part of its founder Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, or Anandamurti, was "justified as being in accordance with secret 'Tantrik' practices which would spiritually elevate the disciple.
The doubting disciple himself was also satisfied with the explanation that the act of homosexuality was a result of the disciple's wish in the past life to worship the 'ParamaPurusa' in
the form of 'Radha'and that this unfulfilled desire was acting
as a barrier to his ultimate liberation" (Kishore 1976: 16).
V. S. Naipaul, who had evidently heard similar rumors about
the cult, has a somewhat different version. He claims that recruits to Ananda Marg desired by the leader "were persuaded
that they had been girls in previous lives" (Naipaul 19761977: 62). If these charges are true, this would be a particularly sinister exploitation of what would then have to be seen
as a widespread and deeply rooted cultural notion. Even if
they are false, it is apparent that people would not contrive
them unless they were sufficiently culturally syntonic to be
deemed plausible. Compare the passage cited from the Padmapurana in note 76 where this is precisely the argument
stated to explain the gopis' amorous involvement with Krsna.
76 I am grateful to my colleague Professor Usha Nilsson, of
the University of Wisconsin, for having called this anecdote to
my attention. She informs me that the original reference is to
be found in the Bhaktirasabodhinitikd on the Bhaktamdla of
Priyadasa. Reference to the story can also be found in Prabhat
1965: 189 and in Hawley 1987: 59.
rizing a few of these writers, Serena Nanda, in her

study of the hijras of India, notes:
Several esoteric Hindu ritual practices involve male
transvestism as a form of devotion. Among the Sakhibhava (a sect that worships Vishnu) Krishnamay not be
worshiped directly. The devotees in this sect worship
Radha, Krishna's beloved, with the aim of becoming
her attendant: It is through her, as Krishna's consort,
that Krishnais indirectly worshiped. The male devotees
imitate feminine behavior, including simulated menstruation;they may also engage in sexual acts with men
as acts of devotion, and some devotees even castrate
themselves in order to more nearly approximate a female identification with Radha.77
That this desire on the part of a man to become
woman, in order to experience to the full the love of
77 Nanda 1990: 21. Nanda cites Bullough 1976: 267-68,
Kakar 1981: 102-3, and Spratt 1966: 315. In some cases
transsexualism may play a significant role in quite public ritual performances. Thus, for example, Shetty provides a journalistic report of the annual thali festival performed on the
full-moon night of Caitra at the temple of Aravan at Koovagam in Tamil Nadu. According to the local legend, the Pandavas were told by Sahadeva that they could insure victory over
the sons of Dhrtarastraonly through the immolation of a perfect male. Finding that the only three such men in their ranks
were Arjuna, Krsna, and Aravan, a son of the former, and that
the first two were otherwise indispensable, they resolve to sacrifice the third. Aravan accedes but asks that he first be married. As no woman can be found who is willing to be widowed
so soon, Krsna agrees to transform himself into a woman,
marry Aravan, and spend a night of marital bliss with him.
When Aravan is beheaded in the morning, Krsna spends a
short time as a widow and then reverts to his male form. This
festival is largely patronized by hijras who identify themselves with this female form of Krsna. They are marriedto the
deified Aravan on the eve of the festival when the priest invests them with a yellow thread (the thali of the ritual's name,
a kind of mahgalasutra). They spend a night of wild revelry
and sexual promiscuity until dawn when, being widowed
through the sacrifice of Aravan, they dress in white and lament (Shetty 1990). Nanda, too, apparentlyrefers to this festival when she describes the legend and events surroundingthe
ceremonial marriage of hijras in Tamil Nadu to the god
Koothandavar, although her account appears to be somewhat
garbled (Nanda 1990: 20-21). O'Flaherty (1980: 334) cites a
passage from the Mahabhdgavatapurdna,a gdkta text of Bengal, in which Siva and Kali incarnate themselves as Radha and
Krsna, respectively, and so enjoy sexuality from the perspective of the opposite sex.

GOLDMAN: Transsexualism,
Gender, and Anxiety In Traditional India
the Lord, arises from a powerfully homoerotic impulse

is strongly suggested in many episodes, not the least of
which is the Vaisnava legend that the original gopis,
the cowherd girls of Vraja, were female reincarnations
of the male sages of the Dandaka Forest who, ages before, had experienced sexual desire for the exquisite
body of Rama, himself an earlier manifestation of
Visnu. This connection is explained as follows in a
puranic text:
When the cowherd women saw Acuyta (Krsna) who
surpassed in beauty the curved tip of the Love God's
bow, they were all smitten by the arrow of the god of
desire. For long ago when the great sages dwelling in
the Dandaka Forest had seen Rama, who is Hari, with
his splendid body, they desired to enjoy him sexually.
And later, having all been born as women in Gokula,
they at last made love with Hari and thus were released
from the ocean of existence.78
This assumption on the part of a man of the sexuality
and gender role of a woman, either to intensify the love
of a male God through the metaphor or emotional
equivalent of heterosexual longing and passion or to defuse or deny any such suggestion of sexuality in the case
of the female divinity, is not only undertaken by individuals but may be a group phenomenon as well. An interesting example of the latter has been observed in the
activities of the subgroup of the Ramanandi monastic
order of Ayodhya whose members refer to themselves
as rasiks. This group, also known as sakhts or "female
companions," organizes its communal life around a special form of temple worship and devotion to both Sita
and Rama known as madhuropdsand, or "sweet worship." But the intimate physical operations involved in
the daily routine of serving the female divinity present
certain problems to these monks. The social anthropologist Peter van der Veer, in his elaborate study of the
Ramanandis, describes the situation as follows:
In the common seva of the Ramanandis it is Ram, the
Ultimate Being, who is served by the worshiper. In the
78
avadhiritakandarpakotilavanyamacyutam
sarvd gopastriyo drstvd manmathdstrenapiditdh
purd maharsayah sarve dan.dakdranyavdsinah
drstvd rdmam harim tatra bhoktumaicchan
suvigraham
te sarve stritvam dpanndh samudbhdtds tu gokule
harim samprdpya kdmena tato muktdbhavdrnavdt
Padmapurdna 6.272.165-67.
Compare the alleged exploitation of this notion on the part of
the leader of the Ananda Marg, as discussed in note 73 above.
389
rasik tradition it is the divine couple, Ram and Sita,

what they call the yugal sarkdr, 'the royal couple.' The
worship of Ram and Sita together creates a problem.
Male sadhus cannot serve Sita; they cannot, for example, bathe her. Therefore when serving Sita they
must think of themselves as women who are female
friends (sakhis) of Sita.79
This practice is regarded as having had its precedent
in the actual story of Rama and Sita.
According to the rasiks this idea originated when Ram
and Sita returned from their exile to Ayodhya. Hanuman, among others, had asked to be allowed to serve
not only Ram, but also Sita. They became the first
sakhis of Sita. As sakhis they also got new names as
follows:
[Male]
Hanuman
Lakshman
Vibhishan
Sugriv
Bharat
Jambavan
Shatrughna
Angada
[Female]
Charushila
Lakshmana
Padmaganda[sic]
Vararoha
Subhaga
Sulocana
Hema
Kshema80
The provision of these very feminine names to the

heroic brothers and allies of Rama suggests that, as in
the other mythological episodes discussed above, the
transformation from male to female is not thought to
be merely a change of mental attitude but a genuineif not necessarily permanent-biophysical
metamorphosis. This is, I think, both confirmed and replicated,
in some of the more esoteric practices of the rasiks as
reported by van der Veer. The sddhus, like Ramakrishna, are not averse to dressing as women and even
associate themselves with the processes of the female
reproductive cycle. According to van der Veer:
Nevertheless, rasik practices do take things rather far.
The female identification of the male devotees is very
strong. During the temple worship the sadhu puts on a
female dress (sdri) and female ornaments. Some of the
rasiks even wear these dresses and ornaments in public
like transvestites. There are personal differences among
the rasiks as to the extent of their identification as well
as to the openness with which they behave. An esoteric
feature of their life as females is that they sometimes
79 Van der Veer 1988: 162.
80 Van der Veer 1988: 162.

390

observe the Hindu taboos of the menstruation period.
These things are never openly discussed with outsiders,
so that it is hard to go deeply into these matters. The
relationship between sakhis and Ram is also a matterof
esoteric secrecy. Although the rasiks emphasize that
they are acting as unmarriedinnocent girls (mugdha), I
found that in at least some temples a part of the Hindu
marriage ceremony (karagrahan) was performed as a
rasik initiation. In this way the sadhu was symbolically
"taken by the hand"by Ram who was subsequently not
officially married with "her," but could enjoy "her"
body. In this initiation the devotee identifies with one
of the sakhis and enters into an erotic parakiya relation
with Ram. These practices are, however, kept "back
stage" and could only be found out with considerable
difficulty. The common "front stage" view is that Ramanandi rasiks do not enjoy real erotic love for Ram,
but help the divine couple to enjoy it.81
81 Van der Veer 1988: 169. These episodes do not by any

means exhaust the legends and practices involving transsexualism and transvestism that are associated with Visnu and his
principal incarnations. There are, for example, the well-known
versions of the legend of the churning of the primal ocean in
which Visnu, in order to distract the asuras from their quest for
the amrta, assumes the guise of the temptress Mohini, "the
Infatuator." Cf. MBh 1.16.40-1.17.10 and Visnupurana 1.9.
Visnu, both in propria persona and as Krsna, is also closely involved in the tales of the transsexualism of the rsi Naradadiscussed in note 44 above. Even Krsna'sson Samba has a curious
association with transvestism and mock transsexualism. Thus it
is Samba who, at the beginning of the eerie and chilling Musalaparvan of the Mahabhdrata, dresses as a pregnant woman
in a bizarre effort to mock itinerantholy men. The resulting inevitable curse not only insures the destruction of the Vrsnis and
the Andhakas, but does so in a way that furtherambiguates the
question of biological sex and social gender. For as a consequence of his affront, Samba is made-like a real woman-to
undergo an actual pregnancy and birth. Yet the product of this
weird gestation is not a child but a phallic club that will be the
instrument of the destruction of the Yadava clans (MBh 16.28). In an episode of the Lingapurana (1.65.19-24), as cited at
Dange 1989: 1282-83, such imposture results in a less ambiguous change of sex. There it is related that two friends, brahmans, attempt to take advantage of the hospitality of the
Nisadha queen Simantini, whose practice it was to feed a brahman couple each day as a mode of worship of the divine couple
Siva and Parvati. As a consequence of this deception, the man
impersonating the wife is actually transformed into a woman
who then in reality marries her companion. A number of additional instances of sectarian divinities changing sex for one
purpose or another are adduced in O'Flaherty 1980.
This kind of ritualized transsexualism on the part of

male devotees and officiants of a divinity is not confined
to the Vaisnava movements of north India82 but occurs
in a variety of ritual contexts in the south as well. Aside
from the interesting ceremony surrounding the group
marriage of hijras along with Krsna to the hero Aravan
in Tamil Nadu described by Shetty and Nanda,83 there
are examples involving a variety of cults centering on
shrines in various other regions of the south.
A particularly interesting cultic worship involving
transsexualism in Karnataka has been described by
Nicholas J. Bradford.84 This is the cult of the goddess
Yellamma, identified with the epic-puranic figure of
Renuka as well as with other representations of the
goddess, as she is worshiped at her shrine near the
town of Saundatti in Belgaum district of northern
Karnataka. According to Bradford, many men who are
possessed by the goddess are thereby changed into
"sacred female men" or jogappa. These transgendered
acolytes adopt female names, hairs'tyles, and dress and
take on feminine occupations and modes of ornamentation.85 Unlike ordinary women, but like hijras, they
flaunt an exaggerated "female" sexuality. They also
engage in both flirtation and sexual intercourse with
men.86 Like the transsexuals who participate in the
Aravan cult of Tamil Nadu, the jogappa of Karnataka
are also ritually married and "widowed" at the same
time as these events befall their indwelling divinity.87
Another example of such a cult, for which I am
indebted to J. Richardson Freeman of Harvard University, occurs in Kerala. According to Freeman, in a
recent unpublished conference paper,88 and in personal
correspondence, a class of low-caste priests of the teyyam cult, who are said in Malayalam to be veliccappatu
or "illumined," must, before entering the shrines to
which they are attached, take a ritual bath and receive a
ritually purified waistcloth from a low-caste washerwoman." Freeman notes that the same bath and change
of waistcloth was traditionally required to purify mid82
For a suggestive, if not very penetrating,discussion of the

use of transvestites in temple ritual in Orissa and its connection
with the role of the hijra, see Marglin 1985: 49, 51-53.
83 See note 75.
84 Bradford 1983: 307-22.
85 Bradford 1983: 311.
86
Bradford 1983: 311.
87 Bradford 1983: 312-14.
88 Freeman, "Sex, Death, and Social Identity in the Goddess
Worship of Northern Kerala," presented at the Fifth Annual
South Asian Studies Conference at the University of California at Berkeley, February24, 1991.

GOLDMAN:
dle- and high-caste women after their periods of menstrual seclusion. Indeed, he notes, the term for the
change of garments in both cases, marru, is most generally understood to refer to the ritual of purificationafter
menstruation. Moreover, he adds, local people recognize that during these ceremonies the priests' dress is
"more like a woman's than a man's." The priests, it
should be noted, resist their identification with menstruous women, but Freeman notes that the fact of the ceremonies for the priest being carried out monthly on the
Tuesdays sacred to the goddesses further suggests a
convergence.
These beliefs and practices, some of which represent what van der Veer and others have called the
"Krishnaization of Rambhakti," like the ancient legends and beliefs of some modern "saints" and mystics,
clearly speak to the same underlying and evidently
powerful fantasy. In most cases, whether mythical or
associated with historical personages, transsexualism,
which overwhelmingly occurs in the direction of male
to female, takes place as the consequence of a desire to
avoid or defuse a potential sexual liaison with a prohibited female seen as the property of a powerful and
revered male and/or the desire to be passively enjoyed
sexually by such a male. Thus Ila is made female because of the sages' visual transgression in casting their
erotized male gaze upon the Mother Goddess engaged
in the sexual act with the powerful phallic divinity
Siva. Sri Ramakrishna began playing at being female
and dressing as a woman in his youth as a way of gaining sexually unthreateningaccess to the women's quarters of a wealthy and powerful neighbor's house. Later
in life he appears to have often "become" a woman in
order to indulge in romantic fantasy about Krsna and
to engage in intimate but de-erotized, and therefore not
anxiety generating, contact with the Mother Goddess
both in her proper representations and in the form of
his own wife. A similar dual purpose can be clearly
seen in the adoption of the personae of sakhis on the
part of the rasik sadhus of the Ramanandi order. Even
the feeling on the part of the disciples of Yogananda
and Gandhi that their masters were in some sense their
"mothers"may be viewed, in part, as a consequence of
an attempt to deny the element of passive homoeroticism that informs many manifestations of the gurudisciple relationship.89
In those mythic instances in which the change of sex
is the result of a curse, as in the tales of Ila, Bhaingagvana, and Soreyya, it appears that we have a multiform
of the sort of Indian "Oedipal" pattern that I have
89 Goldman 1978 and 1982.
391
treated at length elsewhere, the pattern in which a real

or surrogate son is punished, typically by castration or
impotence, for intruding upon the sexual life of his
"father."90In all of these cases, however, the victims
actually become biological females and can legitimately enjoy sexual intercourse with and even be impregnated by the kind of powerful forest sage that
functions, in the more typical legends, as a standard
father-surrogate.91
The saga of Amba-Sikhandin, the major instance of
female to male transsexualism, appears to be more
complex in its formulation and signification than the
others. For one thing, the process of transsexual metamorphosis it describes is far more complicated, gradual, and overdetermined than those recounted in the
others, taking place, as it does, over the course of two
lifetimes and functioning as a significant element in
three complex and interconnected narratives. Moreover, the object and quality of the transformationseem
somewhat different. For although Amba's ultimate sexual transformation,like those involving religious devotees, is volitional on the part of the central figure, it has
as its purpose neither the avoidance nor the facilitation
of an erotic relationship. Instead, its goal is vengeance.
90 Goldman 1978.
91The
storyof Soreyyais interestingin severalrespects.It

shows
thatsuchfantasiesare not restrictedto the colclearly
orfulworldof the Hinduepics andpurdnaswherethe miraculous and extraordinaryare the norm but can be found in-and
made to serve the ends of-the canonical literatureof the sramanic traditions as well. Then too, the tale presents a curious
variant of the theme. Here, the young man's homoerotic desire
is unambiguously and directly focused upon a father figure, in
this case the powerful monk Mahakaccayana,not on the "guru's wife," a figure who could hardly appear in this particular
tale. Nonetheless, the ambiguation of both gender and sexual
roles is signaled by the compound nature of Soreyya's fantasy,
according to which either the monk can become his wife or
his wife the monk. In any case, the outcome is the same: the
effective castration of the Oedipal youth and his transformation into a woman who can be possessed sexually and even
impregnated by the father figure or his surrogate. Noteworthy
here is the text's explicit statement that it is sexuality improperly directed toward an elder-here the effort to turn the guru
into a woman-that results in the swiftness of Soreyya's punishment. For the Buddha observes that ordinary sexual transgression, for example the unlawful possession of an ordinary
man's wife, results in feminization only in the distant future
through reincarnation. One is reminded of the special strictures and punishments the Hindu law texts enjoin for gurutalpagamana as distinguished from ordinary adultery.

392
Then too, while the cases of male to female transsexualism may involve only temporary or periodic transformation, the transformations themselves appear to be
thoroughgoing and accepted as such by the associates
of the central figure. In the case of Sikhandin, however,
the desired acquisition of a male body is achieved, despite the ruined princess' penances and dying wish
(nidana), the ritual acts of her father, and the promise
of Siva, only through the intercession of a sort of deus
ex machina in the form of the yaksa Sthunakama and,
even then, only through an exchange of genders that
balances her shift to maleness with his more typical
shift to femininity. The transformation is, moreover,
not accepted as fully genuine; for after all, the entire
narrativerationale for the episode in the central story of
the Mahabharata is that Bhisma, the great patriarchof
the Kurus, will not fight with a woman and so submits
to death at the hands of his surrogate son Arjuna rather
than take up arms against Sikhandin.
Still, the issues and relationships underlying this
carefully hedged and evidently more problematic female-to-male transsexualism are not entirely different
from those involved with the variants of the more common type of transsexualism. At the heart of the whole
elaborate episode is the traditional culture's powerful
investment in the rigorous definition of genderappropriate roles and its profound disquiet when such
roles are questioned. In essence it is Bhisma, the archetypal renouncer of his own male sexuality in deference
to that of his father,92who prevents Amba from fulfilling her culturally determined roles as wife and mother.
Only when he has abducted the princess to make her the
bride of the Kaurava dynast does Bhisma realize that
she has already been betrothed to, and so become the
"used property" of, another man. Her suitability for
marriagethus destroyed, he attempts to returnher to her
originally intended husband. But he too is forced by the
patriarchal code of honor to reject her, for from his
standpoint she has now been sexually "used" by the fact
of her abduction. Caught in this impossible bind, the
princess attempts to compel Bhisma himself to marry
her.93But Bhisma too is constrained. For having made
his famous vow of celibacy in deference to his father's
sexuality, he is no longer able to function as a sexual
being. Bhisma's own act of self-degendering,94 then,
leads inevitably to a corresponding functional degendering of Amba that is merely actualized through her
transaction with the yaksa. Amba can now no longer be
92 Goldman1978:338-40.
either a virgin or a wife. She has, therefore, no socially

viable alternative to the death she chooses. It is this that
gives rise to her strange vow to inflict upon the author
of her dilemma the consequences of his theft of her
womanhood.
But the result of this episode, the death that Bhisma
must himself suffer, cannot come simply at the hands
of the woman-become-warrior.Instead, it must be situated in the context of the Mahabhdrata's ubiquitous
concern with the central but often disguised triangle of
father, mother, and son. As the immediate consequence
of his rejection of Amba, Bhisma is forced to fight his
own guru, the dreaded brahman martial arts master
Rama Jamadagnya, in an odd reconfiguration of the
Oedipal triangle in which the young girl, whose name
means 'mother,' takes the mother's role. Although he is
victorious here in the role of the defiant son, he must
still pay the price. In a later reconfigurationof the primal triad he will assume the role of the father and will
be slain by his "son" Arjuna hiding, as it were, behind
the skirts of his "mother"Amba in her sexually ambiguous form of Sikhandin. Arjuna, as noted above, the
victim of another case of degendering in his feminized
form as the transvestite Brhannada, will later suffer a
similar death at the hands of his own son Babhruvahana only to be resurrected through the intervention of
the boy's mothers, Citrafigadaand UlUpi.95Throughout
this complex episode and the events that both lead up
to and follow from it, the themes of degendering, regendering, and the powerful tensions underlying the
Oedipal triad are clearly foremost in the minds of the
authors.
From its prevalence and broad distribution in the
other epic and puranic episodes and accounts of the
lives and practices of spiritual masters and religious
communities discussed above, the fantasy of a man's
becoming a woman thus appears to be of considerable
significance to traditional Indian culture. In some contexts this transformation is regarded as a demeaning
punishment for some kind of Oedipal transgression
against a powerful and dreaded male figure, while in
others it is represented as a deeply longed for metamorphosis that makes possible an erotic liaison with a
powerful and desired male. In a few cases, such as that
of the legendary king Bhahgas'vana,elements of both
situations may be found.
What are we to make of this powerful and recurrent
theme? What, if anything, links the vedic and epic legends of transsexual metamorphosis with the deep concern with transsexualism expressed by modern Indian
93 MBh 5.170-77.
94Jaini 1984: 111.
95 MBh 14.78-82 and Goldman 1978: 330-33.

monks and mystics? How are we to explain this endless fascination with the idea of a man's turning into a
woman in a profoundly patriarchal culture where both
literary and religious documents, as well as deeply
ingrained social usage, so frequently reflect the most
radical misogyny? In order to begin to answer these
questions, it will be helpful to recapitulate briefly.
Clearly a number of powerful and closely interrelated
concerns run through much of this material. One is the
frequent portrayal, in plain or disguised form, of a man
confronted with the sexual activity of a powerful couple
and/or the looming presence of a dominant and potentially malevolent male. In one of the oldest surviving and
most widely distributed complexes of tales animated by
this theme, the story of Ila/Ila, there are repeated and
sometimes quite explicit references to the most primal of
primal scenes, the lovemaking of the parents of the entire universe.96 As indicated above, the king inadvertently stumbles into the trysting spot of Siva and Parvati
and therefore must be punished by his "father," the
rightful "owner" of the mother's body.97 The nature of
96
The portrayalof the divine couple, Siva and Parvati, as the

parents of the whole world is well established in the Indian tradition, as may be seen, for example, in Kalidfsa's homage to
them in the opening stanza of his Raghuvamsa, as jagatah pitarau, parents of the universe. The potential of this characterization for a universal involvement in a genuinely primal scene
was not perceived by the authors of the ancient legends alone.
Medieval authors on literary criticism, for example, raise this
question in the context of their discussion of the propriety of
Kalidasa'selaborate description of the lovemaking of the divine
pair in the eighth sarga of his Kumarasambhava.I have known
contemporarypandits who would refuse to read this sarga with
students on the grounds that it would be tantamountto watching
the loveplay of one's own parents. For a discussion of the rhetoricians' treatmentof this matter, see Masson 1971: 199-202.
97 In one version of the tale, which traces the sexually transformative power of the grove to an earlier intrusion by a group
of rsis, there is explicit reference to the sight of the goddess'
naked body. It is to prevent a recurrence of such an event that
Siva endows the forest with this power. In this version (Bhagavatapurdna 9.1.13-40), as a result of an error on the part of a
priest, Manu has a daughter instead of a son. The girl is called
Ila. Through a boon of Visnu, she is transformedinto the prince
Sudyumna. One day the virile young man goes hunting and
strays into the trysting grove of Siva and Parvati where he is
transformedinto a woman and his horse, a stallion, into a mare.
The puranic narrator,Sri Suka, when asked the reason for this
miraculous change, explains that once some rsis, desirous of
having the darsana of Lord Siva, came to that forest where they
surprise the divine couple in the midst of making love and see
393
the goddess naked. She leaps up from Siva's lap to cover herself with her garment. The seers retire, after witnessing the divine couple's love play, to the ashram of Narfyana, but to
please his wife the Lord places the sexually transformative
spell upon the woods which men then tend to avoid. Ila falls in
love with Budha and bears him the son Pururavas.Finally, she
remembers her family priest, Vasistha, who takes pity on her
plight and intercedes with Siva on her behalf. The god, once
propitiated,restores Sudyumna'smanhood on the familiar condition that it shall alternate with womanhood on a monthly
basis. The Gautamimdhatmyaof the Brahmapuraina(38), in
providing the origin of the Ilatirtha, gives a lengthy and complex version of the saga of Ila/Ila. According to this version the
hapless king is deliberately led into the Umavana by a yaksini
who has taken the form of a deer in order to rid her husband of
the powerful monarch who has been occupying his forest cave.
After bearing Pururavasto Budha, Ila unburdensherself of her
secret sorrow (her loss of manhood) to her son who, along with
his father, intercedes with Siva and Pfrvati. When the divine
couple is duly worshiped and propitiated, Siva tells Ila that she
may recover her lost manhood by bathing in the Gaiga. She
does so and thus is permanently restored to her original sex.
This version is interesting in that it combines the three most
common narrative motifs involving changes of sex in Indian
literature:the enchanted grove, the intercession of a yaksa, and
the immersion in a sacred pool. Compare also the version of
this story at Matsyapurana 10.43-11.14. A quite different and
somewhat enigmatic account of the transgenderism of Ila is
found at Brahmapurdna7.1-23. There Manu, having as yet not
fathered his nine sons and being desirous of obtaining one, performs an isti, making the offering to a portion of Mitravaruna.
As in the Gautamimdhatmyaversion (Brahmapurdna108), the
rite somehow produces a daughter instead of a son. Manu
names the splendid woman Ila and bids her follow him. Unwilling to contemplate such a violation of dharma, Ila goes to
the dual divinity from whose portion she was created. The gods
praise her for her virtue and promise her that she will become
a son of Manu's named Sudyumna who will carry on the lineage. She then bears Pururavasto Budha, subsequently turns
into Sudyumna, and fathers three sons. Sudyumna does not inherit his father's kingdom, because he had been a woman, but
does carry out the duties of a king in Pratisthana.He goes to
heaven, praised as one who had borne the characteristics of
both a woman and a man (stripumsor laksanair yutah). This
version makes no reference to the enchanted grove of Uma and
has none of the repeated alternation between sexes found in
many of the other versions. The historical point of this episode,
like the others, is that this enigmatic bi-gendered figure is the
common ancestor of both the Solar Line (as the son of Manu
Vaivasvata) and the LunarLine (as the wife of Budha) of kings.
A variant of this version which is largely identical in wording
occurs at Vayupurdna85.

394
the crime can be judged from the form of the punishment.98Thus we can see that the visual transgression of
Ila is regarded as the equivalent of actual Oedipal intercourse from the fact that his punishment, literal or functional castration, is very much the same as that meted out
to Indra when he seduces the venerable Brahman sage
Gautama's wife or to Pandu when he unwittingly assaults a powerful holy man engaged in the sexual possession of his wife.99 In other words, the transgression
in word, thought, gaze, or deed upon the sexual property
of the father is inevitably punished with the destruction
of that which makes the transgression possible, the
transgressor'smaleness.
But what we have here in the tales of Ila, Bhangasvana, Thera Soreyya, and other figures from ancient
mythology and, I would argue, in the biographies of
Ramakrishna, Gandhi, and Yogananda and in the behavior of the Ramanandirasiks, represents a more fully
realized and somewhat less menacing response to
the negative Oedipal castration anxiety that I have
discussed at length in another paper.'1? Here-most
clearly in the tale of Bhafigasvanaand also in the teachings of some Vaisnava groups-we see an extension of
the theme. For in actually becoming a woman, and
98 For a discussion of the
relationship between Oedipal
crimes and the specific forms of punishments administered by
curse, see Goldman 1985 and Hopkins 1932.
99 Indra's punishment varies in the different versions of this
widely distributed cautionary tale. In one, Ram 1.47.26-27, he
is literally castrated by the enraged brahman; in others, he is
subjected to what can only be seen as a highly exaggerated
version of forced sexual transformation,in that he is given not
just one set of female genitalia-like Ila or Bhafigasvana-but
a full one thousand of them all over his body. It is these organs that, in some versions, are turned into eyes after Indra's
horrified protest and so provide an explanation for his common epithet sahasrdksa, "thousand-eyed" (MBh 13.41). In
Pandu's case, as in that of Yayati, the castration or degendering is functional, the imposition of either impotence or a curse
of death as a consequence of sex. Cf. MBh 1.109.25 and
1.78.30-41. The significance of this can be seen from the fact
that this punishment is not merely to be adduced from myths
and legends but is in fact part of the prescribed retributionfor
the Oedipal sin of gurutalpagamana, or adultery with the
guru's wife, as set forth in the traditional law texts (dharmasastra). This sin, which is held to be as serious as killing a
brahman (brahmahatyd), constitutes with that crime one of
only four transgressions (mahdpataka) regarded as virtually
inexpiable. On this, see Manusmrti 11.54 and Goldman 1978:
328-29.
100Goldman 1978.
thereby identifying wholly with the Mother, one can

fulfill a powerful fantasy of sexual possession by the
very father the fear of whom lies at the root of the focal
anxiety centering on one's own maleness. Bhaigagvana's decision to remain a woman and his assertion of
a heightened erotic pleasure in a female body can be
seen-like Ramakrishna's elaborate fantasy of being
the bride of Krsna or the rasiks' semisecret tradition of
being sexually enjoyed by Rama-as a form of displaced homoerotic desire for a figure that is at once
beloved and terrifying. Certainly this set of deeply
conflicted emotions can be seen at work in Yogananda's
reminiscences of his parents. This theme represents, I
believe, an effort to master a powerful complex of anxieties that is generated by specific features of traditional
South Asian family and social life and is heavily reinforced through the use of literary and religious texts
whose contents, in the form of myths and legends structured as cautionary or exemplary tales, deeply inform
the consciousness of the cultures of the region.101
Such fantasies do not, I believe, represent either a
contradiction or a genuine counterforce to the prevailing misogynistic tenor of the traditional literature of
the indigenous patriarchal cultures, Hindu, Buddhist,
and Jaina, of India to which I alluded at the beginning
of this paper. Rather, I would suggest, they are on one
level reflexes of a carefully acculturated male dread of
the autonomous power of women, especially as it is
seen as a consequence of their physiology and sexuality. For along with the professed desire to be a
woman and to be treated sexually as a woman comes
the clearly expressed fear of erotized contact with the
female body. Whether it is expressed in the cliches
about the loss of physical, spiritual, and mental powers
that men are said to suffer through sexual intercourse
with women,102the legends about loss of manhood on
the part of those who intrude upon or witness the sexual life of their elders, or the lapsing into a transic state
101The
epics, Ramayana and Mahabhdrata, are undoubtedly
the most importantand widely pervasive of the traditionalperformance media to diffuse such seminal psycho-social messages. The importance of these texts to the culture is to be seen
in the constant adaptation of the tales to the regional, subcultural, and linguistic diversity of the Indian subcontinent. That
they have not lost their power to fascinate and deeply move all
sectors of South Asian society has recently been dramatically
demonstratedby the reception of the serialized television versions of the epic stories. In some question, however, are the implications of the incapacity of the fixed videotaped versions for
further adaptation.
102Carstairs 1961:
83-87, 225-26.

(samddhi) at the very thought of touching the female

body, the fear is the same.
But what, after all, is the source of this fear? Much
of the evidence of the texts we have been considering
suggests that the fear of women and their sexuality is
at least in part a kind of screen. No doubt the manifest
content of this screen is very significant and maledominated cultures have not scrupled to exploit it fully
at the expense of women. And yet a careful study of
the relevant documents of traditional Indian culture
suggest that underlying the fantasized fear of harm deriving from women and sexual intercourse with them is
a more deeply rooted but far less explicitly stated anxiety derived from the coercive and potentially castrative power of dominant males such as fathers, older
brothers, gods, gurus, and sages. It is on this point that
I would wish to extend the prevailing explanations of
myths, fantasies, and acts intended to extirpate a person's maleness and assume-to a greater or lesser degree and for a greater or lesser period of time-the
emotions and the physiology of a woman.
Aside from the spiritually oriented explanations of
the phenomenon of transsexualism such as we have
seen in the writings by and about figures like Ramakrishna, Yogananda, and Gandhi, there have been a
number of efforts to provide explanations of the phenomenon in South Asia. These range from modem
Hindu apologia which essentially reformulate traditionalist hermeneutics through attempts to validate
what is represented as a specifically Hindu ability to
tolerate ambiguities and even outright contradiction to
psychoanalytic studies.103Thus Nanda, in her quite interesting study of the hijra community in contemporary
India, puts great store in traditional India's recognition
of a "third gender" as evidenced by her title, Neither
Man Nor Woman. Thus she argues, "where Western
culture strenuously attempts to resolve sexual contradictions and ambiguities, by denial or segregation,
Hinduism appears to allow opposites to confront each
other without resolution."104In this she follows the
lead of O'Flaherty, whose 1973 work on the polar contradictions built into the representation of Siva as both
terrifyingly ascetic and boundlessly erotic similarly
argues for the nonexclusivity of traditional Indian
thought.105
Yet while it may be true that traditional Hindu mythological texts appear to be more tolerant of ambiguity
than their Western counterparts and, although the cul103 An
example is Kakar 1989: 129-40.
104Nanda1990:23.
105
O'Flaherty 1973: 318.
395
ture has, at least since the epic period, allowed that

there are three genders analogous to and homonymous
with the three grammatical genders of Sanskrit,106these
facts alone do not provide a very penetrating analysis,
whether in the terms of the traditional culture itself, or
in those of modern students of that culture, of the pervasive and deeply invested phenomenon of transsexualism that we have been examining.
Writers with a psychological or psychoanalytic bent
such as Lannoy, Spratt, Carstairs, Kaker, O'Flaherty,
and Nanda have been aware of traditional India's fascination with transsexualism and the shifting of gender
roles and have tended to see it-no doubt correctlyas an artifact of powerful unconscious forces at work
in the individual psyche. These forces, it is argued, are
greatly strengthened by the patterns of mother-son interaction typical of the traditional Indian family.'07The
argument, most elaborately articulated by Kakar, is
that the traditional family, in discouraging the overt
expression of erotic love between a man and wife and
in enforcing the cultural premium on bearing a son,
creates a situation in which a mother's affectual and
erotic energies are concentrated disproportionately
upon very young male children. The powerful emotional and physical bond that this forges, it is further
argued, is abruptly shattered when the child reaches the
106 The
grammatical genders are pumlinga (masculine),
strilinga (feminine), and napumsakalinga (neuter). The prob-
lem is how to understand

the sense of napumsakaas it is applied to humanbeings. In the Mahabharata,Arjuna,in his
is saidto be experiencing
guise as the transvestiteBrhannada,
the "thirdnature"(trtiyaprakrti)MBh4.2.59* (Citrashala
ed.
4.2.27). But this is in any case an imposturewhichappearsto
approximatethe state of what Nanda'shijra informantscall
zanana,literally"women,"whichin theirparlancedenotesanatomicallynormalmaleswhodressas womenandact as hijras
(Nanda 1990: 11-12). Vatsyayana uses the term napumsaka in
his Kamasutraapparentlyto referto a typeof maleprostitute,

but he says little aboutthe napumsaka's
dress and anatomy.
in the millennium-long
Jainadebateover the eliParticipants
gibility of women for spiritual liberation introduce an interesting and quite modern construction of gender and sexuality,
according to which people of any of the three sexes may possess any one of three libidinal orientations or "genders," which
they designate by the term veda. But here too, it is not clear
whether by the term napumsaka, which appears to refer to a
malehomosexual,also suggestsemasculation,
or
transvestism,
both.Fora discussionof the Jainaconstructionof gender,see
Jaini 1991: 11-13, 162-64.
107Carstairs1961: 163; Kakar1981: 79-112, 158; Nanda
1990:34-36; O'Flaherty1980:280; andSutherland1991.

396
age of six or seven. The child's response to what is represented as the sudden deprivation of a devouring and
erotized mother-love is, it is urged, a self-protective
withdrawal reinforced by the psychic construction of
women as insatiable, devouring mother figures, contact
with whom drains a man of his physical and spiritual
resources.108One resolution to the tension thus created
between incestuous desire and fear of abandonment,
this line of argument concludes, is the culturally reinforced shift, in fantasy or reality, from the male to the
female or "third"genders.
This line of reasoning is doubtless based upon both
observation of the acculturative and child-rearing practices of the Indian family and analysis of the relevant
literary, mythological, religious, and sociological materials. Indeed it may well explain at least some aspects
of the powerfully ambivalent attitude towards women
expressed in the traditional literatures of India and in
iconic form in such representations as the antipodal
renderings of the Goddess as sometimes nurturant,
beneficent, and maternal and at other times as wrathful,
bloodthirsty, and terrifying. It does not however, in my
opinion, fully explicate either this attitude or the fascination with and even yearning for the extirpation of
maleness that we have seen expressed in the mythological literature and in the writings, teachings, and actions of some Indian religious figures. For one thing,
the case studies of Bose and Kakar are, after all, case
studies. That is to say that they represent in most instances the fantasies and behavior of people who feel
themselves to be sufficiently out of harmony with their
social and cultural milieux and are sufficiently Westernized in their thinking to present themselves to a
psychoanalyst for treatment. It is risky, perhaps, to
generalize from such cases, as they probably tend to
represent the extremes rather than any norm of the society. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the fantasies these patients report are wholly syntonic with
those that can be adduced from the traditional literature
and the lives of several of the outstanding religious
figures discussed above. In my opinion, it is the omnipresent examples represented by the popular mythology and the very visible and widely known lives of
saints, mystics, and others, that serve-for the vast
majority of people-as the means of reinforcing the
acculturation carried out in the normal, as opposed to
the pathogenic, family.
It seems to me that these texts, if they are to be more
fully understood, must be read in the context of the
108Kakar1981:79-90 andCarstairs1961:158-61. See also
note 112 below.
other texts of the culture that deal with the matter of

actual, symbolic, or functional emasculation. I have
dealt with many of these texts elsewhere;109in them, as
in many of the texts addressed in this paper, the principal anxiety expressed by the central figures is directed
not principally at women at all, but rather at the menacing, implacable, and punitive representations of the
father that so heavily populate the myths, legends, and
literatures of traditional India. In the majority of those
texts the woman, in the role of actual or symbolic
mother and the focus of the possessive erotic energies
of both father and son, becomes objectified as the prize
in an endlessly repeated contest that the son can win
only at the price of his sexuality."?0The only alternative the traditional culture holds out in such cases to
castration at the hands of the father is a kind of voluntary preemptive castration or renunciation of sexuality,
such as is represented in the well-known Mahabhdrata
legends of Bhisma and Puru." This act of degendering
serves to eliminate the sexual conflict inherent in the
Oedipal drama by removing the mother/woman as an
object of sexual desire while pacifying the father. In
this way one is able to retain the de-erotized love of
the former and the newly re-erotized love of the latter.
One strategy for accomplishing this is to renounce
sexuality entirely, a project facilitated by a carefully
cultivated gynophobia with its negative obsessive focus on the female body and its reproductive functions.
Another is to cultivate a familial regard for all women,
to view them all as sisters and mothers, and so invoke
the aid of the powerful incest taboo. A third strategy
is to abandon male sexuality and gender entirely and
"become" a woman either in emotional/libidinal terms
alone or more completely through the outward appearance of a transvestite or the more profound physical
metamorphosis of a hijra or true transsexual. With this
last strategy, the emotional resolution of the conflict
would appear to be most thorough, for along with the
retention of the mother's love, the transsexual can now
become, in fantasy or reality, the passive recipient of
the now heavily erotized love of the "father."1"2
109Goldman 1978.
10
Paradigmatichere would be the frequently occurring cau-
tionarytaleof thecastrationof Indra,kingof thegods,through

the curse of a cuckoldedfatherfigure,the rsi Gautama.See
Goldman1978:360-61 andRam1.49.19-34.
111Goldman 1978:
338-39; MBh 1.94.86-88, 90; and MBh
1.79.27-29.
112It is thus thatwe may understand
the powerfulfantasy,
so frequentlyelaboratedin the variousVaisnavacontextsdiscussed above, of the devotee being "enjoyed" by the God.

GOLDMAN: Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety In
In short, I believe that much of the fascination with

becoming a woman that we find in the Indian tradition,
as well as the seemingly contradictory misogyny that is
another of its recurrent features, proceeds not from a
primary anxiety about women but rather from a deep
and, in many cases, well-founded anxiety about men in
the form of culturally validated authority figures. Although it is abundantly clear that a variety of voices
from the "great"and "little" traditions genuinely inculcate and seek to bolster the phobic attitude towards
women as sexual beings and towards heterosexual intercourse in general,'13 it would appear that here, as
elsewhere, both the indigenous tradition and contemporary psychoanalytic scholarship have tended to "blame
the victim" in portraying women-whether constructed
as the sexually voracious apasaras/raksasi or the "devouring mother"-as somehow responsible for what
Kakar has so aptly termed a "vicious circle" that leads
eventually to "adult men who fear the sexuality of mature women.""4 In a real sense, South Asian women
have been casualties, caught in the middle of a male
power struggle, a struggle whose real issues are only
rarely fully articulated and are generally camouflaged
by a screen made up of profuse and varied pronouncements and "speculations" on the biological, intellectual, moral, and spiritual capacities of women.'15
It is in this sense that women often function as
pawns in an occult male game that in the end emerges
113Carstairs 1961: 72-74, 83-88, 117, 167-68, 237, and
314.
14 Kakar 1981: 95.
15
of the
Examples
tendencyto blamethevictimof thismale
powerstruggleor to use womenas a coverforit arenotdifficult
to findin the literatures
of India.Theclassicformulation
of the
themewouldbe, of course,theheartlesstreatment
of bothDraurerenpadiandSiti in the nationalepics andtheirinnumerable
themein whicha
derings.Morespecificwouldbe the recurrent
woman,oftenanapsaras,orderedby Indrato seducea holyman
andso preventhimfromacquiringthroughhis asceticismpower
greaterthanthatof thegodhimself,is cursedby thesage.Cf. the
storyof theapsarasRambhaas toldat Ram1.62-63.Theuseof
womenas a screenfora powerstrugglebetweenmalesis perhaps
best illustratedby the bitter and prolonged dispute between the
two majorJaina sects over the capacity of women to attainspiri-
tualliberation.Althoughthe impassioned
rhetoricof thisdebate
focusesupontheallegedcapacitiesandincapacities
of women,it
wouldappear,as I have suggestedelsewhere(Goldman1991:
xx), that what is really at stake is the Digambaraclaim that
Svetimbara monks, who like Digambara "nuns" must remain
clothed, are for that very reason ineligible for spiritualliberation.
Traditional India
397
from a thoughtful reading of the tales and practices of

transsexualism that I have discussed above. Many of
these texts-the legends of the popular epics and the
word and actions of monks and spiritual masters-provide importantkeys to an understandingof the cultural,
psychological, social, and ultimately political transactions that lie at the heart of all forms of human intercourse, in India as elsewhere.
The kinds of myths, legends, and fantasies cited in
this paper, and the social, psychological, and political
realities of which they are expressions are by no means
restricted to South Asia. The simultaneous disempowerment of women and the construction of them as
agents rather than victims of such disempowerment is
an unpleasant feature of most of the societies and cultures-ancient
and modern-of
which we have knowl-
edge. Innumerable examples of this can be adduced

from European, East Asian, Islamic, and other traditions. Let me offer, however, only one instructive parallel from the literatureof modern Europe in which the
overwhelming anxieties generated by a truly terrifying
father led his son to the creation of powerful myths and
fantasies centering around his being transformed into a
woman for the sexual use of God.

The bizarre,fantasy-filled memoirs of the GermanJurist Dr. Paul Daniel Schreber,"6analyzed by Freudin his
"A Case of Dementia Paranoides,""7presents a strange
and moving example of a combinationof transsexualfantasy and religious fervor strongly reminiscent of the case
of Ramakrishna.Dr. Schreber,whose centralfantasy was
that he was, as part of the divine plan, being turned into
a woman by and for the enjoyment of God, can now be
more clearly analyzed in the light of informationthat has
become known since the publication of Freud's paper.
For it is now clear that Schreber's paranoid delusions
were rooted in at least two elements of reality. First, we
now know that Schreber's father, the great nineteenthcentury authority on child pedagogy, had subjected his
son to an especially oppressive version of the cruel and
obsessive discipline he preached.18 Second, it has been
revealed that Schreber'spsychiatrist, Dr. P. E. Flechsig,
who was in charge of his treatmentand of the asylum in
which he was confined, the very person whom Schreber,
in his delusion, regardedas the agent whereby his transformation into a woman was to be effected, was among
those medical authorities of his era who advocated and
116 Schreber 1955.

117 Freud
1958.
118 Masson (unpublished) "Schreber and Freud," Schatzman
1973, and Israels 1989.

398
even practiced both castration and extirpation of the ovaand female respectivelyries on those patients-male
whose sexuality and general behavior they saw as transthe
gressing societal norms.119 Here we have-through
unusual coincidence of the father's systematization and
publication of his rigid and obsessional beliefs about
child rearing and the son's insistence on publishing the
119That
Flechsig actually advocated and even practiced what
he called "castration,"at least in the case of female patients, is
clear from one of his own articles, "Zur gynaekologischen Behandlung der Hysterie" (On the gynecological treatment of
hysteria), published in Neurologisches Centralblatt 1884,
3:457-69 and quoted in Niederland 1968. Further,in an autobiographical essay (P. Flechsig, Meine myelogenetische Hirnlehre [mit biographischer Einleitung] [Berlin: Verlag von
Julius Springer, 1927]) quoted in Masson's unpublished piece,
Flechsig returns to a discussion of the outcomes of this procedure in various kinds of cases. For all references concerning
Schreber and his father, I am indebted to the scholarship and
unstinting generosity of Dr. Jeffrey Masson.
memoir of his delusional illness-an

all but unique opportunity to see how the unmanageable anxieties generated by the unhappy combination of two repressive and
tyrannical patriarchal figures, a disempowering father
and a literally castrative doctor-keeper, are partially alleviated through the creation of an elaborate system of
myth and religion whose focus is the transformation of
the subject into a woman who will then be sexually enjoyed by the supreme patriarch, God.
Whether in the East or the West, there can be few
paranoid fantasies that are not grounded in some real
and painful reality to the identification of which they
are the occult signposts. The myth or fantasy of a
man's being turned into a woman for the sexual enjoyment of some more powerful male which has persisted
in many forms for at least two-and-a-half millennia is
unlikely to be an exception. The investigation of the
complex nature of the reality that has animated this
particular fantasy for so long both in literature and in
the lives of historical figures of unusual prominence
unquestionably merits the collaborative attention of
scholars in both the social sciences and the humanities.
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Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety in Traditional India

Author(s): Robert P. Goldman

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GENDER, AND ANXIETY IN TRADITIONAL INDIA

se dese e dese anek antar

THE QUESTIONOF HOW A scholar "reads" or ought to

Sahajiya Vaisnava song attributedto Candidas recorded as

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Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety In Traditional India

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 113.3 (1993)

de-erotized and placed in clearly defined and sexually

gion as has that of traditional India.'0 A study of Indian

foundin someof thepatristicwritersto developa specificform

Godandhis devoteein Hinduism.Inonecase,thefeminization

"devotionthatmakestheologianswince"(Rayezcited in Bynum 1982: 110). Other more erotized representations of the

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Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety In Traditional India

women. Moreover, the whole phenomenon appears to

autonomy;16Tulsi Das's famous verse grouping women

fortitude.To have sex with her is to lose your man

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 113.3 (1993)

The episodes with which I will be dealing here are

The themeis an extremelycommonone in folkloric,reli-

Although tales of sexual transformation are attested

ment of Siva's androgyny in verses 85 and 90 of Vidyakara's

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GOLDMAN: Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety In

God to reverse this transformationbut is told that she

pururavds tato vidvdn ildydamsamapadyata

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 113.3 (1993)

monthly basis. During her first month as a woman, she

tion of the incesttaboo.ForUrvagi,as a celestialcourtesan,is

literature and one of the few significant accounts of

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Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety In Traditional India

This time, however, she encounters a yaksa who,

dian legend and literatureas having the power to exchange

"son"is to be tracedto his transgression

According to this story, the king who, like so many

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 113.3 (1993)

new and weaker form s/he is barely able to remount his

so confers the unambiguously phallic rod (danda) of

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GOLDMAN:Transsexualism, Gender, and Anxiety In Traditional India

his way to bathe with a companion when he happens to

sexual desire. The most productive source for this motif

bhi brahmacdri,"He has sixteenthousandwomenandyet he

E.g., Bhigavatapurdna 10.30.

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 113.3 (1993)

from powerful homoerotic desire, recurs in a number of

a number of instances, some well known in the West,

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and often even appeared to lose himself in elaborate

Given traditionalbeliefs valorizingsexual continenceas a

On the other hand, throughout his life Ramakrishna

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 113.3 (1993)

perceptible biophysical changes. Consider the way in

the Master was thought