The Swasthani Vrata Katha: A Secret Vow to the Goddess

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The Swasthani Vrata Katha (The Story of the Ritual Vow to the Goddess Swasthani) is the most widely read, recited, and listened to devotional text among Hindu laity in Nepal. Originating in the late sixteenth century, the Swasthani tradition refers simultaneously to the Swasthani story (katha) and its annual recitation, the accompanying month-long ritual vow (vrat) women undertake to honor the goddess Swasthani, and Swasthani herself, the goddess of ＂one’s own place.＂ The Swasthani story is a collection of widely circulating Hindu myths about gods, demons, and divine dalliances that forefront Shiva, Sati, and Parvati but it is also a local folk story about women’s real and everyday hardships, as well as the rewards of attending to one’s dharma and devotion to Swasthani.

These traditions center women’s roles and expectations and have actively contributed to the construction of Nepali Hindu identity and practice. In Nepal, the Swasthani carries the same social, cultural, and religious importance of the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata elsewhere in the Hindu world. It similarly provides a pervasive local cultural vocabulary through the familiar trials and triumphs of its characters: the mother Goma, her daughter-in-law Chandravati, and their son/husband Navaraj.

This book offers the first full-length scholarly English translation of this important text from the original Nepali. Just like Parvati made the goddess Swasthani and her story known beyond the realm of the gods to the human realm, so, too, this translation makes them known beyond Nepal to a broad English-speaking audience.

Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. She has researched Hindu practices, literature, and women in Nepal since the late 1990s. Her first book, Reciting the Goddess: Narratives of Place and the Making of Hinduism in Nepal (OUP 2018), presents an archival and ethnographic study of Nepal’s local goddess Svasthani, the widely read Svasthani Vrata Katha, and the role both goddess and text have played in the construction of Nepali Hindu identity and practice. Reciting the Goddess earned the American Academy of Religion’s 2019 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion.

Alaka Atreya Chudal is Senior Lecturer in Department of South Asian, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna. Her research integrates anthropology, literary studies, history, religious studies, cultural studies, print culture, intellectual history, masculinity and gender studies with a focus on Nepal and India from the late nineteenth century to the present.