Ingesting menstrual blood: Notions of health and bodily fluids in Bengal

Ideas about seed in food, mantras, music, and bodily emissions are important to Vaishnava Bauls. Among these, menstrual blood is central, the wellspring of emotional and mental activity. When the power of a woman's flow is moderated through dietary practices, contact with it leads to commensality. This essay examines the strategies pursued by a female Baui called Tara, her conflicting notions about social growth, and bonding relating to menstrual blood. (Person-centered ethnography, renouncers, music, health, emotion) ********** A husband and wife in Bengal sing and beg for a living. Rising at dawn, and taking their instruments and begging bags, they follow the road leading out of their village, walking until they reach the railway station. They always sing on the same train, a local full of people taking produce to the market. They prefer this train, as they know the passengers. The woman, Tara, has been singing on this train since she was a girl. She is in her early thirties. Her husband is ten years older. Although their caste identity is that of untouchable leatherworkers, they also term themselves Vaishnava Baul, which entails that they are orange-clad mendicants who beg for alms while singing. Some songs are about the blue-complexioned god Krishna and his lover, the goddess Radha. Other songs address notions of procreative seed, thought to be present in bodily fluids, including menstrual blood. Rivers rising once a month are a woman's monthly flow. A flower blooming after twelve years signifies a young girl starting to menstruate. To drink the honey from the flower or to go swimming in the river is to ingest a woman's flow in order to be nourished. Ingesting menstrual blood is the focal point of Vaishnava Baul ideology, a tradition sustained by means of recruitment. Yet many converts continue to reside in their natal village, thus maintaining daily contact with their kin and neighbors. This fact has been insufficiently emphasized. Instead, previous accounts have tended to describe the adherents as marginal wanderers, "renouncers," opposed to society at large (Capwell 1974; Dimock 1989; Salomon 1995:187). In keeping with this binary framework, it might easily be surmised that ideas of menstrual blood as a beneficent fluid are inversions of orthodox norms and practices, where the substance is thought to be polluting. Yet the situation is more complex than a model based on dichotomies implies. Notions held about this substance play across boundaries. Perceptions gained prior to becoming a renouncer continue to be relevant and ideas gained later feed back into the community in which Vaishnava Bani renouncers live. For instance, the lyrical imagery of their songs alluding to a woman's flow does not comprise a separate code language as might be assumed. For though the underlying meaning may seem veiled and enigmatic, as Salomon (1995:196) has noted, this does not mean that it is inaccessible, since if it were it would hold little appeal for ordinary villagers, who enjoy listening to Vaishnava minstrels sing. Indeed, the observations made by some authors working in South Asia suggest that flowers and rivers are recognized as symbols of female procreative powers throughout the entire region (Daniel 1987:189; Feldhaus 1995:40, 84, 85; Gold 1988:62, 79n, 189, 198). Yet while the meaning of the lyrical imagery of songs and stories has received notable attention (Narayan 1997; Gold 1992; Raheja and Gold 1994), the meaning of melodic sound has not. Studies of sonic performances, Qureshi (2000) observes, tend to be limited to small-scale societies, while those carried out in stratified societies highlight the complexities of formal structure, lacking in dimensions such as affect and communion. Writing of sarangi performances in Lucknow, Qureshi (2000:810) notes that "the physical sound not only activates feeling, it also activates links with others who feel. …