Through the use of epigraphical evidence, Leslie C. Orr brings into focus the activities and identities of the temple women (devadasis) of medieval South India. This book shows how temple women's initiative and economic autonomy involved them in medieval temple politics and allowed them to establish themselves in roles with particular social and religious meanings. This study suggests new ways of understanding the character of the temple woman and, more generally, of the roles of women in Indian religion and society.
Through the use of epigraphical evidence, Leslie C. Orr brings into focus the activities and identities of the temple women (devadasis) of medieval South India. This book shows how temple women's initiative and economic autonomy involved them in medieval temple politics and allowed them to establish themselves in roles with particular social and religious meanings. This study suggests new ways of understanding the character of the temple woman and, more generally, of the roles of women in Indian religion and society.
The true value of this book lies not in historicism or comparison but in its portrait of women's agency within a "broader context of relationships" during their own time. Journal of the American Academy of Religion This work operates at the highest levels of scholarship and regularly yields gems of insight on problems of South Indian historiography. The text of the substantive chapters clearly stands by itself, regularly summarizing arguments, making the work accessible to more general readers. I have already used its chapters successfully in advanced undergraduate and graduate seminars as examples of methodology, excursions into the history of women, and immersions in the analysis of religious institutions. Journal of the American Academy of Religion This careful and methodologically reflective study does not only enrich our knowledge of a period and an institution that ought to be understood better, but it is also instructive on a thoroughly pragmatical and theoretical point: why and how to use inscriptions. Indo-Iranian Journal Women's history in medieval India is a field still in its infancy, and Leslie C. Orr's Donors, Devotees, and Daughters of God marks an important addition to the handful of monographs on the subject. English Historical Review
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