ABSTRACT
This chapter brings out the gender dichotomies and complexities associated with the notion of vratas and other rituals. The vratas carried multiple meanings for different segments of the socio-religious order, depending upon their position. Though both men and women were entitled to perform these vratas, some of them were primarily intended for women – married, unmarried, widowed, and even prostitutes, ensuring happiness and prosperity to them. Thus, in a way, many of these vratas seem to have been a means of keeping women within the fold of the family by giving various assurances of a happy existence.
A study of the vratas in the Purāṇas clearly reveals that there is a marked difference between the early Purāṇas and later Purāṇas that have been examined here. While in the Viṣṇu and Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇas not much space has been devoted to the subject of vratas; the Matsya Purāṇa, however, gives an exhaustive information on 104 vratas. The later Purāṇas like Agni deal with 79 vratas and the Bhāgavata discusses about 20 vratas in which the concept of vratas in an institutionalised form finds concrete expression.
