Abstract
This essay explores Oriya Hindu understandings of wellbeing and happiness from the perspective of women who live in the temple town of Bhubaneswar in the eastern Indian state of Orissa. These women tend to discount happiness, preferring instead wellbeing. They believe that only children, unaware of the burdens of this life, can experience happiness; an adult, aware of these burdens, can never enjoy happiness for more than a few fleeting seconds. Based on these women’s conceptualizations of the life course, the family role associated with particular life phases and the levels of life satisfaction achieved during each phase, it appears that mature adulthood provides a woman with the best opportunities for achieving wellbeing. As mature adults, Oriya Hindu women are dominant within their households, they are central to its productive activities and they feel morally and emotionally coherent. Thus, for women in the temple town, dominance, centrality and coherence are the three key elements that constitute wellbeing.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Alter, J. (1992). The wrestler’s body: Identity and ideology in north India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bennett, L. (1983). Dangerous wives and sacred sisters: Social and symbolic roles of high-caste women in Nepal. New York: Columbia University Press.
Brown, J., & Kerns, V. (1985). In her prime: A new view of middle-aged women. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers.
Cohen, L. (1998). No aging in India: Alzheimer’s, the bad family and other modern things. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Copeman, J. (2009). Veins of devotion: Blood donation and religious experience in north India. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Daniel, E. V. (1984). Fluid signs: Being a person the Tamil way. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Datta, A. (2006). The encyclopedia of Indian literature (A to Devo). New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.
de Bary, W. T. (1958). Sources of Indian tradition. New York: Columbia University Press.
Flood, G. (1996). An introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Geertz, C. (1984). From the native’s point of view: On the nature of anthropological understanding. In R. A. Shweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory (pp. 123–136). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gnoli, R. (1956). The aesthetic experience according to Abhinavagupta. Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. Serie orientale.
Lamb, S. (1997). The making and unmaking of persons: Notes on aging and gender in north India. Ethos, 25, 279–302.
Lamb, S. (2000). White saris and sweet mangoes. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mahapatra, M. (1981). Traditional structure and change in an Orissan temple. Calcutta: Punthi Pustak.
Mandelbaum, D. (1970). Society in India: Continuity and change. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Marriott, M. (1976). Hindu transactions: Diversity without dualism. In B. Kapferer (Ed.), Transaction and meaning: Directions in the anthropology of exchange and symbolic behavior (pp. 109–142). Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.
Marriott, M. (1990). Constructing an Indian ethnosociology. In M. Marriott (Ed.), India through Hindu categories (pp. 1–39). New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Marriott, M. (2003). Varna and Jati. In G. R. Thursby & Sushil M. (Eds.), The Hindu world (pp. 357–382). London: Routledge.
Menon, U. (2002). Making sakti: Controlling (natural) impurity for female (cultural) power. Ethos, 30, 154–174.
Menon, U. (2011). The three selves of adulthood. Psychological Studies, 56(1), 23–35.
Menon, U. (2012, forthcoming). Dharma and re-envisioning the Hindu moral code. In G. Misra (Ed.), Psychology and psychoanalysis. New Delhi: Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy, and Culture (PHISPC) and Pearson Education.
Menon, U., & Shweder, R. A. (1994). Kali’s tongue: Cultural psychology and the power of ‘shame’ in Orissa, India. In H. Markus & S. Kitayama (Eds.), Culture and the emotions (pp. 241–284). Washington, D.C: American Psychological Association.
Mines, D. P. (1990). Hindu periods of death ‘impurity’. In M. Marriott (Ed.), India through Hindu categories (pp. 103–130). New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Minturn, L. (1993). Sita’s daughters: Coming out of purdah, the women of Khalapur re-visited. New York: Oxford University Press.
Monier-Williams, M., Sir (1851). A dictionary, English and Sanskrit. London: W. H. Allen and Co.
Pandey, K. C. (1935). Abhinavagupta ; an historical and philosophical study. Varanasi, India: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office.
Panigrahi, K. C. (1961). Archeological remains at Bhubaneswar. Bombay: Orient Longmans.
Reynolds, H. (1980). The auspicious married woman. In S. S. Wadley (Ed.), The powers of Tamil women (pp. 35–60). South Asia series, no. 6. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Seymour, S. (1976). Caste/class and child-rearing in a changing Indian town. American Ethnologist, 3(4), 783–796.
Seymour, S. (1980). Some conclusions: Sources of change and continuity. In S. Seymour (Ed.), The transformation of a sacred town: Bhubaneswar, India (pp. 257–273). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Seymour, S. (1999). Women, family, and child care in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shweder, R. A. (1991). Thinking through cultures. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sreekantaiya, T. N. (2001 [1953]). Indian poetics. Trans. N. Subrahmanya. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.
Vatuk, S. (1987). Authority, power and autonomy in the life cycle of North Indian women. In P. Hocking (Ed.), Dimensions of social life: Essays in honor of David G. Mandelbaum (pp. 23–44). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Vatuk, S. (1990). “To be a burden on others”: Dependency anxiety among the elderly in India. In O. Lynch (Ed.), Divine passions: The social construction of emotions in India (pp. 64–88). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Vatuk, S. (1992). Sexuality and the middle-aged woman in South Asia. In J. K. Brown & V. Kerns (Eds.), In her prime: New views of middle-aged women (pp. 155–172). Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Zaehner, R. C. (1966). Hinduism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zimmermann, F. (1987). The jungle and the aroma of meats: An ecological theme in Hindu medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Menon, U. (2012). Hinduism, Happiness and Wellbeing: A Case Study of Adulthood in an Oriya Hindu Temple Town. In: Selin, H., Davey, G. (eds) Happiness Across Cultures. Science Across Cultures: the History of Non-Western Science, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2700-7_28
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2700-7_28
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-2699-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-2700-7
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)