Naming Love: The God Kama, The Goddess Ganga, and the Child of Two Women

Abstract

The difficulty of producing a child in many premodern texts is often exceeded only by the extraordinary value of the child conceived first in the mind and heart—in the parents’ longing and divine benediction— and then in the body. From Isaac, Joseph, and Samuel, born to aged or infertile mothers in the Hebrew Bible, to the “impossible” conception of Christ by a virgin, to numerous heroes and heroines in Hindu epics and story cycles who are conceived miraculously, imaginative excess characterizes the birth of the child destined for great things. In some premodern texts, same-sex love constitutes this excess. Plato’s Diotima plays on the double meaning of conception when she refers to books and laws as immortal offspring; Naomi’s neighbors read Ruth’s child (the ancestor of King David) as Naomi’s, because of Ruth’s love for her; and in some Indian texts produced from the fourteenth century onwards, the beautiful and wise hero Bhagiratha is born to two women. The Lesbian History Group notes, “what our critics want is incontrovertible evidence of sexual activity between women”;¹ such evidence is usually hard to find in historical documents, but these Indian texts provide more than enough “evidence” of such activity, albeit of an imaginative kind. Many texts produced in Bengal from the fourteenth century onwards tell the story of divinely blessed love and sexual intercourse between two women resulting in one of them becoming pregnant and having a son.

And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed be the Lord which hath not left thee without a kinsman… And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of thine old age; for thy daughter-in-law, which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath born him.… And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom…And the women her neighbours gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi.

—The Book of Ruth 4:14–17

God’s blessing had enabled the two women to play the game of love

and the energy of the God of love entered the womb of Malavati.

This is how Malavati became pregnant.”

In an auspicious hour a beautiful boy was born.

The fair skinned boy rapidly grew,

his beauty was unequalled in the three worlds.…

Born of mutual enjoyment between two vulvas [bhaga]

he was named Bhagiratha by Brahma. —Krittivasa Ramayana

But creative souls conceive…that which is proper for the soul to conceive or retain.… And what are these conceptions? Wisdom and virtue in general.… And he who in youth has the seed of these implanted in him…desires to beget and generate. And he wanders about seeking beauty that he may beget offspring…and when he finds a fair and noble and well-nurtured soul…he gladly embraces him…and they are bound together by a far nearer tie…than those who beget mortal children, for the children who are their common offspring are fairer and more immortal.

—Diotima to Socrates, Plato, The Symposium, trans. Benjamin Jowett