We are delighted to be hosting the guest lecture “Unmarried Women in Early Indian Texts: From the Ṛgveda to Buddhist Literature” by Prof. Dr. Mau Das Gupta (University of Calcutta)
The event will take place in a hybrid format:
→ Time:
Monday March 2nd, 16:00 CET
→ On campus:
Lokaal 0.8, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Ghent
→ Online: link via Teams
Abstract
This lecture explores the position of unmarried women in early Indian literature, tracing developments from the Ṛgveda to early Buddhist texts. Ṛgvedic hymns reveal educated maidens engaged in ritual, inheritance, and social negotiation, even while marriage remained the normative ideal—albeit with certain notable exceptions, such as Āmbhṛṇī Vāc and Urvaśī. Buddhist sources—especially the Therīgāthā, Avadānaśataka, and Jātakas—present new possibilities through the saṃgha, where unmarried women from diverse social backgrounds pursued celibacy, learning, and salvation. By comparing these traditions, the lecture highlights both continuity and change: from ritual participation and limited autonomy in Vedic society to more explicit recognition of female spiritual agency in Buddhism, revealing a complex, non-linear history therein.
Speaker bio
Prof. Mau Das Gupta is Professor in Sanskrit at Calcutta University. She was awarded the prestigious Eashan Scholarship and the University gold medal along with many other prizes for her outstanding results in graduate and post-graduate examinations of the University of Calcutta. She did her PhD at Jadavpur University. She is currently serving as Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Calcutta and is, for the second time, the Head of the Department of Sanskrit. A Vedic scholar, Das Gupta has interests in various other fields of literature. A poetess herself, she is also known for writing on various issues concerning Sanskrit and Bengali literature. She is a Sahitya Akademi Awardee (2015) for her translation of Hazari Prasad Dwivedi’s Anamdas ka Potha (2012) into Bengali, and a recipient of the Shivdasani Visiting Fellowship (for the Michaelmas Term, 2019) of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies of Oxford University.