Tirthendu Ganguly
Ph.D. Research Scholar, Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Banaras Hindu University . ORCID: 0000-0002-0957-5295. Email: tirthaforyou7@gmail.com,
Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s29n4
Abstract
Discussing women’s sexual desire has long been perceived as a taboo in the East and the West as well. Undeniably, there is a stigma attached to it which, unfortunately, continues even today. However, surprisingly enough, the ancient and the medieval Indians had always been open to female sexuality before their philogynist culture was obliterated and replaced by the ‘zenana culture’ of the Mughals and the ‘Victorian morality’ of the British Raj. Even in the Medieval Era, which is often labelled as conservative and orthodox, people accepted female desire as a biological reality. Composed in twelve cantos, Jayadeva’s magnum opus, G?tagovinda, celebrates sexuality and candidly depicts female orgasm with sheer poetic acumen. Jayadeva has not only eradicated the stigma attached to it, but he has also delineated it from the aesthetical perspectives of the San?tana Dharma which makes it “a unique work in Indian literature and a source of religious inspiration in both medieval and contemporary Vaisnavism” (Miller, 1984). In this paper endeavours to analyze, assemble, and demonstrate how the poet has celebrated female psyche, female sexuality, and female orgasm in the 12th Century CE. The paper deals with the primary aspects of the book which are related to female mind and sexuality. Library method of research has been carried out to substantiate the claims that this research paper makes. As the book is originally composed in Sanskrit, the research paper contains many Indic names and words which are written in accordance with the International Alphabet for Sanskrit Translitearation (IAST) method.
Keywords: Jayadeva; Gitagovinda; female sexuality; female orgasm; female psyche.