Goddesses of the Courtyard
The courtyard is where the world authored by men and the world
authored by women converge. Of course, there can be no radical
cultural cleavage between the two domains. Women are so encompassed
by the male world that those domains of women which are not simply
shared with men are likely to be small regions, spatially and
conceptually, overlooked or tolerated or avoided by men. We will
assume, since men do not participate in the wall painting, that the
art is an example of such a domain of women: it is about themselves
and their world.
A look around a courtyard which has been prepared for a wedding,
particularly in the northern villages around Madhubani, tells us
what women as artists are thinking about: here is Sita, presenting a
garland to Rama; here is Durga, flailing weapons astride her tiger;
here is Krishna up in the kadamba tree, luring gopis with his
seductive flute; here is Mahadeva in meditation and Gauri attentive
and adoring. Undoubtedly the dominant figures painted by women on
the courtyard walls are the gods and goddesses. They watch, protect,
and preside over the family and its transformations at marriage and
childbirth. But which divinities are they, and why those and not
others?
The Goddess of Many Forms
In one sense all the goddesses are One Goddess, whose name is Devi
or Shakti. Shakti means literally "power," conceived as generative
power, in human terms the power to bring life into existence, and on
a cosmological scale to bring life to the universe. As Shakti, the
goddess is the greatest divinity of all, greater even than Shiva,
whom she dominates, whose prostrate and inert body she enlivens by
the heat and passion of her play on top of him. In the Puranic
mythology, we find this goddess descending through tiers of
immortality and mortality, taking form as more differentiated
goddesses, first Durga and Kali, then down to gentler female
divinities like Parvati and Radha, married to or consorting with
male gods, then lower to mortal females raised to goddesses, such as
Sita, and finally to ordinary, fully mortal human women whose names,
at least in Mithila, always end with "Devi"--Jayanti Devi, Sita Devi,
Baua Devi