Feminist historians have written much about the absence of women from histories. Contributions by women, either in the domestic or the public domain (i.e. as workers contributing to the household income or the overall economy), remain unmarked within the patriarchal register. Even more offensive to women's sensibilities is the merely partial, or worse distorted, inclusion of women in historical spaces. Enforced invisibility or distorted visibility within patriarchal histories can only be challenged through the rigorous study of women's unrecorded presence in the economy of the household as well as the broader domain of production.

This article is an effort to understand the “being” and “doing” of women; in other words, to map the interrelationships of women and work over a vast historical span of time, beginning with women's writings on the theme of women and work and then going on to plot historically the agency of women in labour processes. Special reference will be made to Peninsular India, for the sake of making the historical evidence more cohesive. I will also draw comparisons with the regions to the north of the Vindhya mountains, the geographical and cultural marker of the north–south divide. This article concludes on the threshold of colonialism.

In the context of Indian history, one of the earliest pieces to be written on women and work was by Mary Francis Billington, in the 1890s.Footnote ² Significantly, among the predictable chapters on “Her Marriage”, “Embroidery and Needlecraft” and “Jewellery and Ornaments”, the author also includes a chapter on “Female Life in Field and Factory”, a theme that, ironically, one cannot hope to find in many of the conventional history books of the twentieth century.

There are scattered references to women's work in many Hindu canonical texts. Clarisse Bader picks up some of this information in order to bolster the image of glorious Indian womanhood she promoted in her book Women in Ancient India: Moral and Literary Studies, written in French in 1867.Footnote ³ Bader offers the examples of Vispala, who showed her bravery in battle, and of Brahmanical women who “laboured” in collecting for Vedic sacrifices kusa grass and the soma plant.Footnote ⁴ Buddhist texts, and to some extent administrative tracts such as Kautilya's Arthashastra, make reference to women's labour. A recent book that seeks to assemble some of this evidence is Anil K. Tyagi's Women Workers in Ancient India. Footnote ⁵ Tyagi devotes much space to the paricharika or karmakari (indicating domestic servants) as well as female slaves called dasis, pointing out that perhaps because slaves were expensive, employers preferred free labour.Footnote ⁶ The servant was supposed to do chores such as the sweeping and swabbing, bathe/massage the master or mistress, apply scents, wash their feet, fetch water from the well or the river, clean the rice and wash the dishes. Sometimes the status of the paricharika was almost synonymous with that of the dasi. This female servant literally and figuratively turned into a commodity: in one Buddhist text, a description of Visaka, ithi bhandanam uttamam, could be translated as “this is a high-quality commodity”.Footnote ⁷ The story of Jabala in the Chandogya Upanishad provides another case in point. So many men sexually exploit the paricharika that she is at a loss as to know which is the father of her child. Buddhist literature also contains references to women hawkers, oil and liquor sellers; the text Boghasamharapeta, for example, says that four women hawkers were caught using false weights.Footnote ⁸ Scattered references to women in Jain societies pertain particularly to the lower castes of women, including wet nurses, attendants, messengers and the inevitable courtesan.Footnote ⁹

In the medieval period it is predominantly courtesans or prostitutes (termed sex-workers) that have attracted the attention of scholars of Mughal history. There are some notable exceptions. Shireen Moosvi has given attention to the theme of women and work in the pre-colonial period. As a historian of medieval India, Moosvi studies the theme of women and work in the age of the Mughals via evidence from Persian texts.Footnote ¹⁰ Irfan Habib, in his overview of gender history in Medieval India, has also looked briefly at women and work.Footnote ¹¹ An unusual essay on this theme was Stephen Blake's “Contributors to the Urban Landscape: Women Builders in Safavid Isfahan and Mughal Shahjahanabad”.Footnote ¹²

KITCHEN AS WOMAN'S PLACE: KITCHEN AS WOMAN'S SPACE

What does the kitchen signify for women – as work space and equally their personal and social place? It would be important, if one were to bring together the notion of “kitchen work” and “kitchen space”, to understand ways in which these intimate places have been experienced and understood. A pioneering attempt on space was Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space. Footnote ¹³ Within the house (especially the kitchen) exist “worlds within worlds”, what Bachelard terms “personal cosmoses”. Although Bachelard's book does not explore the tantalizing possibilities of kitchen spaces, his keen observations can be extended to a gendered landscaping of the interior of the household. Historically, the kitchen is a place in which women create dishes, control and direct the pecking order, deftly handle the financial aspects of household requirements such as food provisions and, unsurprisingly, contest the intrusion of other women into that space. Conflicts of this sort typically involve a mother-in-law versus a daughter-in-law, or “co-wives”, i.e. a wife and mistress.

Manusmriti, an ancient canonical text scholars date to a time between the second century BCE and the second century CE, can be regarded as a text illustrating the nature of the work that was assigned to women in traditional societies, work that obviously takes place within the household.Footnote ¹⁴ According to Manusmriti (generally translated into English as the “Laws of Manu”), a woman's main duties were as nurturer and provider, oriented towards taking care of her husband, children and the extended family.Footnote ¹⁵ In addition, she had to perform the physical work of drawing water from the well, churning, husking, winnowing and other such “homely” tasks.Footnote ¹⁶ Interestingly, Manu also credits her with a head for finance. She had to manage the household on a daily basis and balance the family budget.Footnote ¹⁷ As the controller of her husband's earnings she was in charge of domestic finances and also acted as paymaster. Manusmriti points out that collecting and spending money was in the hands of the housewife because she was expected to be capable of exercising frugality.Footnote ¹⁸

The Manusmriti is but an entry point to the nature of women and work in the context of Peninsular India. While it gives an indication of canonical thinking on the prescriptive role of women, in the case of South India contextual variations make it necessary to understand certain trajectories of the Sangam age (roughly datable from 300 BCE to CE 300, as with the Manusmriti); in short, the problem must be regarded as Peninsular rather than Indo-Gangetic.

SANGAM TEXTS ON WOMEN'S WORK AND WOMEN'S ROLE

The “Karpiyal” of the Tolkappiyam is devoted entirely to prescribing the role of women. As with the Manusmriti, this normative text from the Sangam era, roughly contemporaneous with the Manusmriti, also emphasizes chastity, the qualities of mothering and nurturing as expected of an illal or manaivi. The very nomenclature used for a married woman in Tamil firmly locates her within interior spaces. The term for the wife, illaval (also called illa kizhathi and illal), is derived from the term illam,Footnote ¹⁹ for a house. The synonymous term manaivi is derived from the term manaia,Footnote ²⁰ meaning “house”, again referring to the housewife. An even more evocative term is aham,Footnote ²¹ which indicates interiority (for example as in aham poetry like Ahananuru) as well as, specifically, the house site. The word for wife, which is derived from aham, is ahamudaiyal, literally “she who is the mistress of the home”.

Cooking, feeding, cleaning, etc. have been defined as the “unwaged” labour of the housewife. The Sangam text Maduraikanchi Footnote ²² states that illara magalir, literally “housewives”, should wake up at dawn and sweep their homes. The Nedunelvaadai instructs them to light iron lamps with wicks soaked in clarified butter.Footnote ²³ They, also, should commence their household chores at the crack of dawn. Such definitions of the housewife's space and the woman's place have been perceived by early feminist scholarship as a reflection of patriarchal oppression and the undervaluation of the woman's household labour.

More recent feminist debates, however, have opened up fresh ways of perceiving “domestic space”. In managing domestic space, a woman does not merely assert her agency but also achieves control and power. Hermeneutic analysis of the terms used for “housewife” in the Tamil language opens up some very interesting lines of discussion on the nature of power exercised by her, her control over the domestic space; in short, her agency. The potential power implied by Tamil terms for housewife ties these issues to a more general debate on the household space, linking with the work of feminist scholars exploring the notion of the domestic space of the housewife as an empowering space. For example, anthropologist Felicia I. Ekejiiuba, writing about West African society, states:

In contrast to the notion of “housewifization” and the passivity of the housewife, Ekejiuba offers the concept of a female-directed “hearth-hold” as a space that empowers women. The hearth-hold, it should go without saying, centres on the hearth or stove, the site at which a woman is responsible for a home's food security.Footnote ²⁵ This relates especially to the agricultural domain, where the woman controls and probably directs the “sharing of the grain heap” within the domestic space.

NEYDAL – WOMEN IN THE COASTAL ECONOMY

Women living in the coastal terrain have traditionally played an active role in salt panning and salt sales. Women engaged in salt production and sales were known as umanapendir.Footnote ⁵³ The Perumpanatruppadai Footnote ⁵⁴ describes how the umanar couple extracted the salt, loaded it on carts and sold it in the neighbouring eco-regions. The umanapendir also hawked the head-loads of salt from door to door, receiving in exchange paddy and other essentials.Footnote ⁵⁵

Fisheries constitute another economic sphere in which women traditionally played a major role. In early Tamilaham (which includes the regions of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh) women played a key role in catching and hawking the fish. Paradaiyar women caught and sold fish, and young girls of this community kept watch over the fish as they were dried in the sun.Footnote ⁵⁶ The Ahananuru Footnote ⁵⁷ refers to these women as panimagal, literally “working women”, who sat on street corners selling fish. This suggests that the more affluent fisherfolk may have hired women to carry out the actual task of hawking the merchandise. There are also references to fisherwomen who exchanged fish for paddy from the Marudam tinai. The Aingurunuru Footnote ⁵⁸ says that the Valaiyar (another fishing community) women sold viral fish (regarded as a delicacy) and in return received year-old white rice (i.e. high-quality rice).

THE HANDLOOM SECTOR

While in most traditional Indian societies weaving has been a male preserve (the exception being hill regions and tribal belts), spinning has always been exclusively women's work. Vedic texts however, refer to women weavers as vayatri.Footnote ⁵⁹ While the overall number of women weavers vis-à-vis men remains ambiguous, canonical literature such as the Shatapatha Brahmana Footnote ⁶⁰ makes it clear that spinning was the exclusive domain of women.

Sangam literature refers to spinners as parutti pendugal, literally “the spinning women”. In particular, spinning was the occupation of destitute widows and single women, those categories of women, interestingly, who had to sustain themselves through their own earnings.Footnote ⁶¹ The Purananuru, a Sangam text datable to anywhere between the third century BCE and the third century CE, employs the expression parutti pendir paruvalenna for the thread spun by spinstersFootnote ⁶² and says that spinsters spun late into the night with the aid of a lamp.Footnote ⁶³ Another text, Natrinai, refers to widows/spinsters as alil pendir, meaning “women without men”, and notes that they spun fine yarn.Footnote ⁶⁴ A celebrated and more or less contemporaneous text from Northern India, Arthashastra of Kautilya, states that the devadasi, who was too old to perform any service in the temple, was employed to card cotton for her livelihood. Devadasi and old servant-maids were also employed to cut wood and pick cotton, hemp and flax.Footnote ⁶⁵

The Virasaivite movement in Karnataka (which began in the twelfth century) provides a refreshing perspective on professional women spinners. The movement has two prominent vachanakaras from this profession, Kadire Remmavve and Kadire Kayakada Kalavve. Both women have prefixed their names with their profession kadire, meaning spinner, quite in keeping with the social philosophy of Virasaivism. A celebrated dictum of the religion is Kayakave Kailasa, which in idiomatic English would be “work is worship”. Virasaivism holds as its cardinal principle the necessity to work and be self-reliant. In so saying it challenged the Brahmanical notion of mendicancy and alms-taking as a path to salvation. For the first time the working woman gained her own identity and social space, despite the fact that the movement functioned within a patriarchal framework.

Kadire Remmavve used the imagery connected with her occupation to describe not only her faith but her social situation as well. She says:

Kadire Kalavve says that the spindle of spirituality will break if one mixes with vrataheena or persons with faith and devotion. The Charkha Namah (Spinning Loom Songs), popular among Muslim women in the North Deccan during the medieval period, also belong to this genre. The medieval historian Isami, in his Futuhat-us-Salatin, has a very interesting passage on women and the profession of spinning. Talking about the failure of Razia Sultana, the ruler of Delhi Sultanate, Isami writes “a woman cannot acquit herself well as a ruler, for she is essentially deficient in intellect. It is better for a woman to occupy herself with the charkha since the attainment of high position on her part would make her intoxicated.”Footnote ⁶⁷

Spinning continued to be the exclusive professional preserve of women during the medieval Vijayanagar period. Srinatha in the Palnattu Viracharitra (c. fifteenth century) says that in Palnad, while the farmers ploughed the field their wives spun thread. Women spinning thread must have been such a common sight in the region, for Srinatha comments that even if the celestial dancer Ramba were to come to Palnad, she would perforce have to rotate the spinning wheel!Footnote ⁶⁸

In his pioneering monograph on medieval craft and trade during the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, A. I. Chicherov brings together evidence from diverse regions, especially Bengal, to show that spinning was the profession of upper-caste women, more particularly impoverished Brahmin widows.Footnote ⁶⁹ In the pre-colonial period spinning was by and large a part of the informal sector of the economy. Women did the spinning within their domestic space and then either sold the products directly at local fairs or delivered them to middlemen (agents of Master-Weavers or merchants) who collected the spun yarn from them.

In the handloom sector, the bleaching and washing of cloth has also been predominantly a women's activity. The washerwomen came from the lowest caste and were called Pulatti. The Purananuru Footnote ⁷⁰ says that the Pulatti washed clothes in a particular area called kalar, whose mud was a good purifying and whitening agent. Their use of the kalar mud for washing earned them the name Kalayar. The texts describe how a washerwoman prepared starch from riceFootnote ⁷¹ and dipped the clothes in the starchy solution.Footnote ⁷² Finally with her long, tapered fingers she removed the lumpy or excess starch from the clothes.Footnote ⁷³ The Ahananuru also refers to washing and starching of cloth by the Pulatti.Footnote ⁷⁴Natrinai says that the Pulatti worked far into the night, drying or starching clothes, sometimes both.Footnote ⁷⁵

With the Pulaya caste, both men and women carried out the washing of clothes. Washerwomen were called Vannati or Pulatti in the Tamil country and Chakali in Andhra. Sangam texts and early medieval texts repeatedly state that apart from bleaching woven cloth, washermen washed the clothes of people and presumably were paid for it. The Pulatti are clearly mentioned as women who washed impure clothesFootnote ⁷⁶ (rendered impure by neonatal ceremonies following birth or by death). Her male counterpart, the Pulayan, was usually the one who handled the dead body and the Pulatti cleaned the house of death with cow dung, etc. Thus within a traditional social structure dominated by fear of death pollution, it was logical for the Pulayar to be regarded as an “untouchable” caste (located below and beyond the four varnas).

There are a few medieval inscriptional references to these people.Footnote ⁷⁷ It is clear that the washing of clothes was a paid service, but there is no indication of what was the nature and mode of payment. One can only assume that like other menials and professionals of the village community, they were being paid from the grain heap. An isolated piece of evidence is a document from the Mackenzie Collection, which says that, as her wages, a Pulatti was paid three sheep and three rupees collectively by the village community.Footnote ⁷⁸

A sociological facet to the professional and social status of the Pulatti is provided by the medieval twelfth-century hagiographic text Periyapuranam. It refers not only to their drinking habits but says that they frequently went into a state of “possession” and frenzied dance, “jumping about the cattle”.Footnote ⁷⁹ An analysis of “possession” behaviour has shown that it was quite often the means adopted by the disempowered and unprivileged to seek empowerment and social recognition. This logic would certainly hold true in the case of the Pulatti.

WOMEN IN CRAFTS: POTTERY, BASKETRY, MAT-WEAVING, PITH WORK AND GARLANDS

A major poet of the Sangam period called Venni Kuyattiyar (literally “the potter of the Venni region”) became well known for her poem celebrating the victory of Karikala Chola (c. second century CE) at the battle of Venni, in the Tanjavur district. An inscriptional reference to Kumbari, or the potter's wife who assisted her husband in smoothing out the clay and baking the pots, is found from the Andhra region.Footnote ⁸⁰

Basket making and mat weaving have been traditionally associated with women. Both are types of cottage industry and are very poorly paid professions. In the Kalittogai, roughly datable to the sixth century CE, it is said that besides washing, it was the work of the Pulatti to make baskets out of korai weeds.Footnote ⁸¹ In inscriptions there is reference to Medari, meaning female basket weaver.Footnote ⁸² In the Karnataka and Andhra regions the basket weavers belonged to the Medara caste. There is a reference to women basket weavers, whose work is known as kantakara vritti, in the Vallabharaya's Kreedabhiramamu Footnote ⁸³ (c. fifteenth century). The same text also states that many of these Medara women were so poor that out of economic compulsion they took to prostitution. Basketry is the auxiliary craft of the Parava (fisherwomen) of Kerala.

In the south, pith work (called netti) was also done by women, and involved a plant known as sholapith that has spongy cellular tissues in its soft, flexible stems and branches. The Sangam texts refer to the many crafted items made out of netti, including hair decorations and garlands. The Silappadikaram refers to the netti work done in Pumpuhar and the sale of netti products in the markets of Pumpuhar.Footnote ⁸⁴ With netti were made flowers, toys, and hair decorations, especially marriage coronets. Although the text does not specifically state that netti workers were women, one can logically presume so since women are still engaged in netti work in South India. In Karnataka among the Gudagara caste, the men carve wooden figures while the women engaged in pith/netti work.Footnote ⁸⁵ Whether it is basketry, mat weaving or netti working, evidence indicates that while production was dominated by women, their labour was informal and extremely underpaid, and sometimes made all the worse by sexual exploitation.

Making garlands and selling flowers were (and continue to be) predominantly women's occupations. The Ahananuru says that Vettuva (feminine of Vedar, hill tribe) girls gathered the flowers in bamboo pipes and went to the villages to sell them.Footnote ⁸⁶ Devaradiyar usually undertook the task of garland making in the temples. An eleventh-century record from the Abhiramesvara temple in Tiruvamattur (in the South Arcot district) refers to women being employed to pick flowers and make garlands.Footnote ⁸⁷ The same record says that while male workers employed by the temple for drawing water and irrigating the fields were paid at the rate of 8 nalis of rice per day, women workers were given exactly half that, i.e. 4 nalis of rice. The Kreedabhiramamu also refers to women engaged in the profession of garland making and flower selling.Footnote ⁸⁸

“DANCING GIRLS” AS WORKING WOMEN: FROM DEVARADIYAR TO TEVADIYA

The changing phases of the Devaradiyar and the nature of the work associated with the community of temple women are crucial to the theme of women and work. In Sangam literature, dancing girls are called Parataiyar and Madhavi and are cast as rivals to the protagonist of the “chaste” wife Kannagi. In the epics Silappadikaram and Manimekalai (dated roughly between the second and fourth century CE) there appears a well-known dancing girl of Kaveripumpattinam.

It is important to point out that nowhere in early medieval inscriptional records does the term devadasi actually figure. It is only in the nineteenth century that this term, which dominates our understanding of women temple workers, begins to be encountered. In the inscriptions and early texts, they are known by various terms such as devaradiyar, soole, sani, paatra and sometimes ganika or dasika. Historically, temple women seem to have been divided into three categories: devaradiyar, padiyilar and ishtabhattaliyar. There is clear inscriptional and literary evidence that some devaradiyar did get married.Footnote ⁸⁹ The Dashakumara Charita of Dandin refers to this practice.Footnote ⁹⁰ There is even reference to a devaradiyar having married a king of the Velanadu family whose territoriality comes under the Eastern Chalukyas of Vengi.Footnote ⁹¹ The category of women called padiyilar remained single and their name literally means “those who are without husbands”.

Inscriptions suggest that there was a hierarchy of the devaradiyar as well as the nature of the temple work assigned to them, ranging from slaves and prostitutes, at one end of the spectrum, to temple attendants/servants and to affluent, land-owning devaradiyar at the other. Recorded in inscriptions are several instances of the sale of dancing girls to the temple, indicating that their status must have been that of virtual slaves. A record dated CE 1119 states that an army captain called Alagiya Pallavarayar gave the girls of his family to the Tiruvallan temple after branding them on their foreheads with a trident.Footnote ⁹² A similar sale of four women as devaradiyar to the Tiruvalangadu temple for a sum of 700 kasu is reported in an inscription date 1175.Footnote ⁹³ Another record from Tiruvorriyur refers to a gift to the Tiruvorriyur temple of five women and their descendants as devaradiyar, who were employed by the temple authorities in the work of husking paddy.Footnote ⁹⁴ These records indicate that the devaradiyar were drawn from divergent castes ranging from Kaikkolar to Isai-Vellalar.

Inscriptional evidence is, however, equally clear on the point that while slaves may have constituted one rung of female temple servants, another rung consisted of independent women professionals. Even among the professional female temple servants, the work structure was not monolithic but hierarchical. The inscriptional record dated 1265 from TiruvorriyuFootnote ⁹⁵ (Chingleput district) of the period of Rajanarayana Sambuvaraya refers to a strike by the devaradiyar, padiyilar and ishtabhattaliyar as a result of the confusion over the allocation of duties and their ritual hierarchy. A committee constituting of Nattar, Maheshvaras, Sthanathar, Virachola Anukkar and Kaikkolar, headed by a Mudaliyar of Bhiksha Matam of Chidambaram, enquired into the charge, and ultimately allocated the functions of the devaradiyar and regulated their status. The arbitration was necessitated by the fact that the padiyilar were dying of poverty and had become greatly reduced in number. The committee appointed the ishtabhattaliyar to assist the padiyilar. It appears that the devaradiyar may have been at the top of this hierarchy, because they were specifically exempted from such menial chores as taligai vilakku (rice cleaning) and tiruvillakku tirumelugu (cleaning the lamps with cow dung). The devaradiyar were to carry the flower plates pushpataligai and tirunirkappu (?) while the ishtabhattaliyar, the lowest in the hierarchy, made the varikkolam that decorated the temple floor with rice flour and cleaning vessels. Holding the mirror before the deity, fanning the deity with the flywhiskFootnote ⁹⁶ and holding the Sripadam Footnote ⁹⁷ (literally the auspicious feet of the Lord represented in gold) were tasks performed by the “superior” dancing girls. The dispute continued, necessitating another arbitration committee under the aegis of Vittappar of Anegondi, an official of Kampana Udaiyar, and yet another committee three years later under Tunaiyirunda Nambi Kongarayar. The task of dancing and singing in the temples was assigned to the dancing girls, with the ishtabhattaliyar dancing before the god and the devaradiyar before the goddess. The same Tiruvorriyur inscription refers to devaradiyar being assigned the task of singing Tiruppadiyam in Agama marga (style to wake up the deity).Footnote ⁹⁸

Considering the wide variety of economic and social activities engaged in by these “temple-women”, it becomes important to locate them as active agents in the temple economy, whether in a subordinate or controlling capacity.Footnote ⁹⁹ Historical evidence makes it amply clear that not all temple women were slaves or of lowly status. Many of them enjoyed a high status, property and a respectable social position. Inscriptions from the Chola-Pandya period refer to the land holdings of devaradiyar. The eleventh-century Rajaraja inscriptionFootnote ¹⁰⁰ states that the devaradiyar were invited to serve the Thanjavur periya koyil and were given a house site and land near the temple. In 1337 the task of conducting the celebration of an important festival at the temple of Alumelumagamma in Tiruchchanur (Tirupati) was jointly given to the devaradiyar and the Kaikkolar.Footnote ¹⁰¹ The devaradiyar also enjoyed the rare privilege of an exclusive audience with the king.Footnote ¹⁰² Thus these women were powerful, financially independent and apparently socially respected.Footnote ¹⁰³ There are records that attest to them as landowners as well as generous donors of land to the temples.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

The position of dancing girls in the context of the economic domain has to be determined in terms of the data, however sparse, regarding the structure of work and wages. An inscription from the Tiruvorriyur templeFootnote ¹⁰⁵ clarifies that the women employed as garland makers were paid 10 nalis of rice each per day together with 1½ kalanju of pon per annum for buying clothes. One of the earliest inscriptions referring to the grant of house sites and paddy shares to the devaradiyar is the tenth-century record of Rajaraja I, from Brahadisvara temple.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ An undated inscription from Malkapuram states that Kasisvara Siva Ayyamgaru (village community) made a gift of one khandika and ten tumus of land to each of the eleven sanis.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The Srikurmam inscription dated CE 1250 provides us with valuable information regarding the wages paid to the sanis stating “to each of the thirty sanis, 42 puttis of paddy per year, two tambulams every day and three appanas per month”.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ The Chebrolu inscription of Jayappa, the general of Kakatiya Ganapati dated CE 1235, records the construction of double-storied houses for the sixteen best ganikas of the temple of Chodisvara at Tamrapura.Footnote ¹⁰⁹

A very interesting inscription from Mangalore dated CE 1204 states that if the dancing girls did not turn up to perform their specified duties in the temple they were to be fined 5½ coins as penalty.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Of the dancing girls that came under the purview of the Sanula Samayamu (literally, the collective organization of sanis), it was said that any ethical violation of the professional/social code could result in the expulsion of the dancing girl.Footnote ¹¹¹ Medieval inscriptions that refer to the SoolevalaFootnote ¹¹² suggest that this must have been an official specifically appointed to supervise the duties of the dancing girls.Footnote ¹¹³

Prostitution was and continues to be a female preserve. Since this is the only profession that has been recognized as a woman's profession, there is a plethora of literature on the topic. The fee collected by prostitutes for their services was called roya. The non-payment of fees to the prostitute was punishable by law, as was the charging of excess money from the customers by the prostitute. Reference to special courts called Jara Dharmasasanamu, which dealt with issues of justiceFootnote ¹¹⁴ concerning prostitutes, comes from both inscriptionsFootnote ¹¹⁵ and literature.Footnote ¹¹⁶ The Shiva Sharanes within the Virasaiva movement, which originated in Karnataka in the twelfth century but spread over much of Andhra as well, includes a few professional prostitutes such as Gangamma, Soola Sankavve and Virasangavve.Footnote ¹¹⁷ One of them called Soola Sankavve in her vachana speaks of professional ethics:

Perhaps the only professional women's guild consisted of the temple women, and the inscriptions characterize them as Sani Munnuru.Footnote ¹¹⁹ The guild seems to have enjoyed some power, because a thirteenth-century record (dated 1292) from Peddakallepalle in Krishna districtFootnote ¹²⁰ even indicates that the Sani Munnuru, along with the Sthanapatis (also called Sthanathar, i.e. temple trustees) were part of the temple management. In another record the collective organization of the Sani is referred to as Nibandhakaralu in the context of temple managers/trustees.Footnote ¹²¹ Two records from the Narasimha temple at Simhachalam dated 1427 and 1447 respectively refer to them as Sanula Sampradayam literally “hereditary/traditional temple dancers”. The ubiquitous presence of devaradiyar as “professionals” functioning in the public domain makes the trope of these so-called “dancing girls” vital to an understanding of the nature of women and work within and beyond domestic spaces.

MAIDS AND MENIALS

The references to low-caste women employed as domestic workers are fewer in the Sangam period essentially because, while the texts mention the poorer classes and low castes as kadaiyar and kadaisiyar, there is no clear evidence that they worked as domestic labour. Rather, it must be inferred from Sangam texts like Mullaipattu, which refer to the employment of girls for lighting of huge lamps and as handmaidens in war-camps.Footnote ¹²² Maids in the capacity of female attendants or companions do figure in a number of Sangam texts. In the Ahananuru, the maid chastises a philanderer for trifling with the affection of her mistress and then abandoning her “like an evil man who falls out with a friend who has lost his wealth”.Footnote ¹²³ For Northern India, however, there is a plethora of evidence of servant-maids, especially from Buddhist sources.Footnote ¹²⁴ The women employed as servants or menials were both free and unfree (i.e. slaves). According to the canonical text Narada Smriti, “impure work” such as scavenging, cleaning the house of death or the giving of “massage” was to be performed by slaves, while “free” servants were exempt from such socially “demeaning” tasks.Footnote ¹²⁵ Finley describes domestic servitude as “Between Slavery and Freedom”.Footnote ¹²⁶ This would also be an accurate description of the karmakaris in the Indian context.

The twelfth-century Sanskrit text Manasollasa,Footnote ¹²⁷ written in north Peninsular India by the Chalukyan king Somesvara, recommends the employment of women for such menial tasks as drawing water, serving food (women cooks would be of a superior strata), sweeping and swabbing of the premises, washing feet, massaging, hair dressing, etc. In Tamil inscriptions these maids are referred to as atiyar, totti (untouchable caste?) or panimakkal. In Sanskrit the commonly used terms are paricharika or dasi. According to the medieval text Basava Puranamu, carrying water and taking the cattle to graze also seems to have constituted the maid's duties.Footnote ¹²⁸ Women also performed construction labour. One Chola inscription from Tiruvamattur (in South Arcot district) says that at a site where there were both male and female labourers, the women were to be paid half of what the men got.Footnote ¹²⁹ The record specifies the work as lifting water from ponds and canals etc., irrigating the gardens and fields and also gathering flowers and making garlands. For all such labour the male workers were to be paid 8 nazhis of rice per day, while the women workers were to be paid only 4 nazhis. Another inscription similarly states that among daily-wage workers, women were to be paid half of the wages given to men.Footnote ¹³⁰ Servants, including those employed to sing in the temples, were granted lands as service tenures.Footnote ¹³¹ Female musicians would of course be in a slightly higher category of servants than the unskilled maids. However, a record dated CE 1235 states that even female attendants were given house sites.Footnote ¹³² A thirteenth-century Pandyan inscription refers to a curious case involving a murder where the Pandyan state also confiscated the lands of the male and female servants of the murderer.Footnote ¹³³ A remarkable record belonging to the fourteenth regnal year of Rajadhiraja II from AchchalpuramFootnote ¹³⁴ defines the lowly status occupied by workers and servants in medieval society. The record says that workers should not use titles such as Vel or Arasu, should not beat the drums on sad or happy occasions and, further, that even wealthier servants cannot own slaves. The medieval text Yasatilaka refers to the employment of elderly and experienced women as supervisors over the servant-maids of the royal household.Footnote ¹³⁵

Within the Bhakti tradition there is an interesting reversal of this lowly status accorded to servants, both men and women, in secular life. Basavanna, the twelfth-century saint who spearheaded the Virasaivite movement, says in one of his vachanas that “it is far better to be a totti (maid) in a devotee's house than a queen in the palace.”Footnote ¹³⁶

WET NURSES, FOSTER MOTHERS AND MIDWIVES

Throughout the corpus of Sangam literature, wet nurses (termed chevili thai) are important protagonists. Though it is logical to presume that only indigent women took to this profession, the nurse seems to have enjoyed the respect as well as affection of the family she served. The Ahananuru Footnote ¹³⁷ refers to women adopting the profession of wet nurse. The Perumpanatruppadai Footnote ¹³⁸ lists the duties of the nurse as including feeding and amusing the child, soothing the child to sleep, etc. A beautiful poem from the Natrinai Footnote ¹³⁹ expresses a mother's reminiscence about her daughter who had just got married:

In the Kurinjipattu,Footnote ¹⁴⁰ the daughter of the house first confides her love affair to her wet nurse or foster mother, who then convinces the mother and the marriage takes place. Wet nurses also wielded some power in peninsular politics. Devakabbe, the wet nurse of chief Irebedenga, donated seventy dramma and land at Choppadandu, which went towards the construction of a water tank.Footnote ¹⁴¹ The children of wet nurses also came to occupy administrative positions. An inscription dated CE 1235 records grants made by a royal servant, who was the son of the wet nurse of King Kota Manmaketa.Footnote ¹⁴² To provide a significant latter-day parallel from Northern India, wet nurses played a crucial role in Mughal history. Much has been written about the involvement in sixteenth-century Mughal politics of Maham Anaga, the wet nurse of emperor Akbar and her natural son Adam Khan.

It appears that the dhatri referred to by medieval inscriptions and texts indicate the traditional midwife, called dai. An inscription refers to women being employed as midwives in the prasutishala, which can be translated roughly as “maternity home”.Footnote ¹⁴³ The dhatri or dai is referred to in the Vijayanagar period, for instance, in the text Vaddaradhana of Sivakoti AcharyaFootnote ¹⁴⁴ as well as in the Adipurana of Pampa.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ The role of the dai must have been ubiquitous at all births in traditional societies but, because this is a process that involves extreme privacy and secrecy, historical evidence is extremely sparse.

OIL EXTRACTION, TODDY MAKING AND THE CULINARY PROFESSION

The history of early Peninsular India suggests strongly that certain types of work were considered an extension of “the domestic” and therefore classified as women's professions. This included the cooking and hawking of sweetmeats, the extraction and sale of oil, the preparation and sale of liquor made at home from old rice or fruits, and the making and hawking of pickles and pappad. The extraction and sale of toddy also involved labour by women. This equation changed in the later medieval period, when profitability increased in tandem with greater capital input and improved technology. As a result of these developments, the traditional domains of female enterprise were gradually taken over by men.

PROFESSIONAL WOMEN MOURNERS: UNIQUE TO THE INDIAN SOCIO-ECONOMIC LANDSCAPE

One very important dimension of women's work in the Indian context that has now captured the attention not only of feminist historians but also feminist film makers is the occupation of the professional mourner, something which seems to have been a women's preserve. In India, even in early historical times, professional mourners have almost always been women. In fact a thirteenth-century inscription from Pudukottai state records that when death occurred in any household, the Valaichchi women (low caste/untouchables) put a cloth over their heads and mourned the dead with loud wails.Footnote ¹⁶⁸ The singing of these lamentation songs constituted a special repertoire since, for example, songs intended for young wives dying in child birth would be very different from the songs upon the death of the master of the household, or from the almost celebratory tone of the dirges sung at the death of elderly persons. Cleaning of the death-polluted house with cow dung the next day was also their job. They were paid for both. Professional mourning as women's work has no parallel in Western societies, to the best of my knowledge, and has therefore escaped the critical gaze of Western feminist scholars.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

In recent years critiques of everyday life, a key concept within post-colonial discourse, has become women's work and the process of houswifization. This encompasses not only feminist writings on the theme of women's work space but also sociological writings seeking to theorize “Everyday Life”. In Critiques of Everyday Life,Footnote ¹⁶⁹ Michael E. Gardiner has gathered together some of the perspectives on everyday life from sociologists Mikhail Bakhtin to the feminist Dorothy E. Smith. Smith contends that mainstream institutionalized forms of sociology (this would be true of most disciplines) present us with versions of the social world that are systematically exclusionary and distorting.Footnote ¹⁷⁰ She uses the term “malestreaming” for this insidious process of epistemological conditioning. These “malestream” accounts of everyday life effectively rob women of any real agency of understanding and thereby of transforming their world. Smith stresses the immediacy of developing a woman-centred ontology that respects the integrity of every life, and hence the “lived” character of female existence and experience. The challenge lies in steering clear of all abstracted textual forms that feed directly into the requirements of either capitalism or bureaucratic power and control. Such efforts in the context of Indian history must perforce remain very tentative. A panoramic survey of women and work in Peninsular Indian history up to the beginnings of colonialism should be seen as initial steps towards a much more ambitious feminist enterprise. The primary endeavour has been to salvage available data on women's work both paid and unpaid, both visible and less visible, in order to highlight South Indian women's contribution to the work domain and indicate directions of movement and change in women's work/labour history.