Girls Dedicated to Temple Service: Devadasis and The Ancient Indian Fine Arts

In ancient India, temples were cultural centers where artists performed their art in front of a live audience who congregated in the temple precincts in the evenings. Art for the common man. You didn’t have to be rich to attend concerts. Music and dance were considered divine arts that would help a common man experience God. Musicians would sing compositions in praise of God and stories from the epics would be recited as musical discourses. This would create an environment of devotion, love and tranquility.

In these temples, prayers are offered six times a day and sixteen offerings or services, which are known as ‘Shodasopachara‘ are made to the deities. Apart from instrumental music, dance was also offered in the ancient days during some of these prayers. As normal housewives were home-bound and would not be permitted to dance especially in public, it was customary to invoke the services of ‘devdasis’, who were women ritualistically married to the gods and had undertaken to serve them. Some of them were attached to royal courts, where they would perform on special occasions.

It was a tradition waiting to be misused. Though the women were intended to serve God and lead celibate lives, they were exploited by priests and the royalty for sexual favors. Many people, driven by poverty (and religious beliefs), offered their girls for this service.

 Source: Wikipedia

Temple dancers from the 1920s and 30’s; Source: Flicker Celeste33

Raja Raja Cholan who ruled south India from 985 AD to 1014 AD built the famous and the tallest Brihadeeswarar temple. Devadasi system flourished during his time.

Brihadeeshwara temple; Wikipedia

There were about 400 women dancers then, and they lived as a community outside the village and were called Thalichery Pendugal. The families of nattuvanars (male dance teachers and conductors) from the temples of Pandanallur, Thiruvidaimarudur, Vazhuvoor, Vaideeswaran Koil, etc, used to live there.

Silappadikaram, one of the five epics of Tamil literature mentions Madhavi, a courtesan well versed in the art of music and dance.

Devadasis nurtured dance and music and have preserved the art for posterity. Bharata Natyam is mainly a renewal of ‘Sathir‘, the dance form that the temple dancers practised. 

Though the devadasis had a fairly decent lives during earlier times, their condition detriorated slowly. They wer considered more as prostitutes than as respectable artistes. During the British rule, the custom of dedicating devadasis to temples was abolished by the Devadasi Act of 1929. Many educated and influential Indians from the upper caste strove hard to take these art forms from the temple, compiled them under various names and forms, and popularised it. As a result, music and – more so – dance became more acceptable to upper caste Brahmins, and many came forward to learn it.

Bharata natyam; Source: Flickr

Of the many artistes from devadasi families who struggled to free themselves from the devadasi stigma and propagated art are well known personalities like Balasaraswati(dance), M.S. Subbulakshmi (music), Veena Dhanam and Bangalore Nagaratnamma (music).

The legendary M S Subbulakshmi  (M S refers to mother’s name: Madurai Shanmugavadivu)      

Despite the ban on Devadasi system, devadasis still exist in several parts of the country. In a subsequent article, I shall talk about how devadasis live in the present and how they continue to be exploited.