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Religion and Rajput Women: The Ethic of Protection in Contemporary Narratives . By Lindsey Harlan. University of California Press: Berkeley, etc., 1992. Pp. xiv, 260.

The religious beliefs and practices of women obviously form a major topic within the study of Hinduism, yet it is a topic which has not in the past drawn the attention it deserves. The reason has been a severely practical one: any serious study of Hindu women's religion can only be carried out by a woman scholar, since only a woman can gain access to the necessary information. The position may have improved somewhat over recent years, but there remains an overall imbalance in scholarly writing on Hinduism, and works such as the present one are thus particularly valuable in helping to rectify the position. Harlan's material is, anyway, fascinating in its own right. She deals with Rajput women's conceptions of what it is to be a good Rajput woman, as articulated chiefly through religious stories, beliefs and practices (her subtitle suggests a narrower focus on narratives than is, in fact, the case). The self-image of Rajput men has historically had much to do with warmaking and pride of race, and it can sometimes seem that the role of women in such an aggressively male society is restricted to that society's two most notable contributions to English vocabulary: a life of isolation in 'purdah', followed by violent death in the rite of 'suttee'. To gain an idea of Rajput women's own self-image therefore promises to be more than usually interesting (especially since that self-image involves strongly positive perceptions of what might apppear, prima facie, to be anti-female practices). The greater part of the work is devoted to a description and discussion oftwo types of female deity that are of special importance in the Rajput context: the kuldevis or familial goddesses, and the satimatas, venerated female ancestors who became satis on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Harlan shows (pp. 52-111) how Rajput kuldevis combine within themselves two apparently disparate sets of functions: the protection of the family (kul) through battle between males, and the protection of household members through acts of 'wifely' intervention. She suggests that this fusion of roles assists women in reconciling the contrasting male and female Rajput worldviews, though she also notes that kuldevis can sometimes be the cause of domestic tension, in particular when a married woman tries to retain loyalty to her natal kuldevi.