LHMP #171 Vanita 2011 Naming Love: The God Kama, the Goddess Ganga, and the Child of Two Women

This article takes up the theme of women conceiving under difficult and or impossible conditions, e.g., virgins giving birth, and how the children of these conceptions are marked out as special. This theme appears in the context of multiple cultural traditions, e.g., Ruth and Naomi in the bible, and the mothers of Bhagirtha, who was explicitly engendered by sexual activity between two women with the help of the God of Love.

Vanita looks at three Indian devotional texts concerning how the god Vishnu and two co-wives of a king ensure his lineage continues, as prophecy requires. Most variants of the tale involve ordinary heterosexual procreation but in several 14th century versions, the king dies without children and his wives ask divine help to give him a son. The stories attribute various other motivations to the women’s actions, including same-sex desire, in which they engage in sex and one becomes pregnant.

Many types of miraculous births occur in Indian texts. The inclusion of female same-sex love is possibly motivated by a 14th century interest in goddess worship and the worship of Kama, a god of love, who blessed female same-sex eroticism. The goddess texts often featured her ability to produce children autonomously.

The figure of Bhagiratha is closely associated with one of the oldest goddesses, the river Ganga. The Rig Veda includes various references to rivers as pairs of co-mothers. The god Kama is depicted as a force of desire and the urge to create. His “energy” allows the sexual activity between the two women to result in pregnancy.

Vanita continues with a discussion of other symbolic themes present in the stories and a discussion of medical texts that show the early Hindu understanding of female sexual anatomy and behavior.