perceiving the divine reality that lies
behind all things. This power of illusion
is so strong that the only way human
beings can break through it is through
the deity’s grace, the final power. This
grace is an act of divine self-revelation,
in which the deity shreds the concealing
veil of illusion and reveals himself or
herself to human beings.
Divorce
Until the twentieth century, formal
divorce did not exist in traditional
Hindu society. This absence was
undoubtedly rooted in the Hindu per-
spective on marriage. Marriage was
seen as a permanent binding of hus-
band and wife (or more precisely,
assimilating her identity to his), in a
way that ruled out a dissolving of the
marriage while both members were
still living. When a wife failed to bear
children, the husband would some-
times take a second wife, but the origi-
nal marriage would remain intact.
Among the lower social classes, who
were often less concerned with main-
taining group status through appropri-
ate behavior, husbands and wives would
simply abandon their spouses for other
partners, but this was strictly forbidden
among “respectable” people.
Divorce is legally available in modern
India, but social and cultural factors
continue to weigh against it. Various fac-
tors make many women in unhappy
marriages reluctant to sue for divorce:
lack of support from their natal families,
who are often more interested in trying
to make the marriage work; the inability
to earn a living on their own; and the
near certainty that their husband’s fam-
ilies will be awarded custody of their
children, if they have any. Although atti-
tudes are slowly changing, it is also still
difficult for divorced women to remarry.
Divya Prabandham
(“Divine Composition”) Shorter name
for the Nalayira Divyaprabandham,
the collected hymns of the Alvars. The
Alvars were a group of twelve Vaishnava
poet-saints (devotees of the god
Vishnu), who lived in southern India
between the seventh and tenth cen-
turies. In conjunction with their Shaiva
(devotees of the god Shiva) counter-
parts, the Nayanars, the Alvars spear-
headed the revitalization of Hindu
religion vis-à-vis the Buddhists and the
Jains. Both the Alvars and the Nayanars
stressed passionate devotion (bhakti) to
a personal god—Vishnu for the Alvars,
Shiva for the Nayanars—and conveyed
this devotion through hymns sung in
the Tamil language. In the southern
Indian religious community known as
the Shrivaishnavas, the collected
hymns of the Alvars have such high sta-
tus that they are known as the “Tamil
Veda”—that is, the religious texts in
the Tamil language which carry the
authority of the Veda, the oldest Hindu
religious texts.Diwali
One of the most important festivals in
the Hindu religious year, which falls on
the new moonin the lunar monthof
Kartik(October–November). This festi-
val is dedicated to Vishnu’s wife
Lakshmi, a goddess who represents
wealth, prosperity, and good fortune.
According to popular belief, on this
night of the new moon Lakshmi roams
the earth, looking for households in
which she will be welcomed, and which
she will render prosperous by her pres-
ence. People spend the days before
Diwali cleaning, repairing, and white-
washing their homes to make them suit-
able for welcoming the goddess. On the
evening of Diwali people open all their
doors and windows to facilitate her
entry and place lights on their win-
dowsills and balcony ledges, as an invi-
tation to the goddess. In earlier times
these lights would be clay lamps or can-
dles, but today strings of electric lights
are also widely used. It is from these
lights that Diwali gets its name, as a
shortened form of Dipavali (dipa“light”
+ avali“series”). The charter myth forDivorce