relatively powerful but always subservient to male deities. 2) They were
mothers; however, divine mothers were usually mothers by adoption – the
male gods remained the primary progenitors. 3) They were attendants,
at the beck and call of such deities as Skanda, to attack or bring the forces
of nature to play on particular situations.^8 These goddesses were often
the bearers of diseases or held the power of healing etc. It is probable the
appropriation of goddesses into classical settings in this period represented
the integration of agricultural village peoples into the purview of the city-
state, but they may also have epitomized something of the role ascribed to
women during this period – an issue to which we shall return later.
Devotionalism
Thanks in part to the emergence of “high gods” in the late urban period,
devotionalism became a third way by which one could attain one’s ultimate
destiny (after wisdom [jña ̄na] and action [karma]). The term given to this
religious practice was bhakti; the term bhaktiwas derived from the Sanskrit
verbbhaj(“divide, distribute, share with or in, grant, partake with, enjoy,
experience, possess, honor, love revere, worship”^9 ).Bhakti, that is, was
partaking of the deity; it was relishing, honoring, sharing the deity. Bhakti
entailed wisdom inasmuch as one understood the deity to be brahman, the
ultimate, the fullness of the cosmos. It was karma(action) insofar as it
entailed acts which reflected this orientation. These acts usually took the
form of ritual addressed to the deity, now housed in a temple (itself a
microcosm) and represented iconographically. The icon/deity was treated
as though it were a king. Whereas ritual acts and libations were addressed
to the fire in the Vedic period and to the king in such rituals as the coro-
nation ceremony (ra ̄jasu ̄ya), by the Gupta period, at least, such libations were
addressed to the deity in the form of an icon. The use of iconography in
worship was consistent with the understanding that brahmanpervaded the
entire universe and hence any material object could embody brahman.
Further, an icon, beautifully carved, and sacralized by priests who ritually
invoked the deity’s presence in it, was deemed an appropriate expression of
divine accessibility.
The directing of ritual toward an icon was called devapu ̄ja ̄(the worship of
god). The term pu ̄ja ̄may have had indigenous origins, meaning literally “the
doing of flowers”. In any case, this form of worship became the most popular
way of expressing one’s religious orientations in circles with vaidika
orientations. While few temples remain extant from this period, it is clear
they have already combined several symbolic roles. They were congruent to
the palace; its inner sanctum was homologous to the “egg” or dome of the
Buddhiststu ̄pa;^10 its “hallway” (man.d.apa) was analogous to the Buddhist
60 The Urban Period