On the “third-nature” – I
Over on Twitter, I’ve been doing a series of threads examining early Indian texts of various kinds and how they present matters relating to non-normative sexualities and gender presentation, as a preamble to getting around to the tricky concept of “third-nature” (tṛtīyāprakṛti) in classical sources. In this series of posts, I will expand on my necessarily brief Twitter comments. It is complex stuff at times, but I shall strive for conciseness.
There is a lot that could be said about colonial-era constructions of South Asian sexualities and how it got wound into racial theory and early discourse about same-sex relations. But for now, I will attempt to go through some of the early material. Firstly, a caveat. South Asian concepts of sexuality (be they contemporary or historical) do not necessarily fit into western categories and I believe we should be wary of attempting to do uncritically. There’s a wide body of activist/scholarly writing on that subject – which I’ll try and get around to exploring in a later post.
The first point I want to address is a distinction between “third-nature” (the term as used in early South Asian texts) and “third-sex” (a concept that arose out of 19th and 20th-century sexologists such as Magnus Hirschfeld). The two terms are not quite synonymous. Wendy Doniger (2016), in her discussion of the “third-nature” in the Kamasutra makes two important points: firstly, those of the third-nature are assigned the female pronoun in that work (the term nature is ‘feminine’ in Sanskrit), and that the author, Vātsyāyana lists them among the kinds of women suitable for sporting with. Burton, in his 1883 edition of Kamasutra, replaced all references to those of the third nature with ‘eunuch’ (see this post for more about Burton and the Kamasutra). It’s possible Burton had Hijras in mind, although there is no evidence that Hijras were a part of Indian culture at the time that the Kamasutra was written, and Vātsyāyana does not mention them.
Whilst the notion of third-sex/third-gender has mounted a challenge to the perceived universalism of the two-sex binary, the problem of its use as a category is that there is a tendency to subsume all non-western or nonbinary practices, identities and lives into a single, catch-all category – another example of how western frames of reference are assumed to be universal. 1 As I progress through this series of posts I hope to demonstrate how wide the range of terms appear in early South Asian taxonomies of gender and sexuality, and – whilst some of them do appear to be dispositional, many are not. As with contemporary indigenous sexualities in cultures that do not subscribe to western frameworks, it is my contention that we need to be extremely careful in attempting to understand or force premodern terms or concepts into familiar, western ones.
The early Indic sources I will examine in this series fall into three broad categories or genres. Firstly there are the śāstras – generally taken to be prescriptive and sometimes of a legal nature. But the śāstras have a wider remit – think of them as organizations of knowledge on a particular subject. Also, their injunctions are often couched as ‘advice’ rather than fixed rules. Then there is kāvya – literary texts, plays, and so forth, and some religious prescriptive texts. I’m going to examine (briefly) two examples of śāstric texts; a dharmaśāstra and a kamaśāstra.
The dharmaśāstra
So then, to the dharmaśāstras. Treatises on moral or “right conduct” (written between 600bce to 300ce) and still influential. The dharmaśāstras sought to establish modes of correct behavior and life – ritual, regulation of households, and how to conduct oneself. Naturally, sexual acts – and acts that were deemed wrongful are dealt with in these treatises. Wrong actions could incur both punishment and penances – practices for removing the “impurity” or moral stain accrued by committing wrongful acts.
I’ll start with Mānavadharmaśāstra (aka the Code of Manu, thought to have been written between 200bce and 300ce). It is seen by some as the foundational text of Hindu society and hated by others for reifying patriarchy, caste, and the subordination of women. It was “discovered” by the British in the 1790s and translated as an instrument for defining Indian legal codes to help the British control the subcontinent. Women’s Rights activists in Rajasthan burned copies of the text in a protest in 2000. Dalit activists have been ceremonially burning Manu’s book each year since 1927. So it is not without controversy.
So what does Manu have to say about same-sex activity? “Let him not have intercourse in a place other than the vagina” is the line that’s sometimes quoted. The term used – ayoni – encompasses oral sex, masturbation, sex with animals, and sex at inappropriate times and places.
It seems fairly unequivocal, doesn’t it? But Manu is more concerned with inter-caste relations. The penances for adultery (particularly cross-caste adultery) and rape are much stiffer than for same-sex activity – at least between men. The penances for male-male sexual activity are mostly fasting and ritual diets or having a ritual bath whilst clothed) – also the same penances that are advised for those caught stealing items of low value.
Ch8 v370: “But if a (mature) woman does it to a virgin, her head should be shaved immediately or two of her fingers should be cut off, and she should be made to ride on a donkey.”
This line is sometimes read as a fierce condemnation of female same-sex activity. However, the punishment is the same for men who “deflower” a virgin. The issue is not so much female same-sex activity as the notion of the loss of virginity – and therefore her marriageable status.
But in general, from my reading of various dharmaśāstras, I’d say that the concern is not over the acts themselves, but who is enacting them, and their status relative to each other.
For more discussion, see Ruth Vanita’s Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriages in Modern India (Penguin 2021).
The kamaśāstra
Kama (pleasure) is one of the four aims of life considered fundamental to a proper life (the others being dharma – duty, artha – wealth, and moksha – release). So I’m going to look at the Kamasutra next (There are 3 posts examining various aspects of the Kamasutra between 2012-2013 that you might find helpful.
The Kamasutra is generally thought to have been compiled between the 2nd-4th century of the common era, in northern India – possibly within the middle of the 3rd century. It is part of an entire genre of works generally referred to as Kamaśāstras – works on pleasure.
In the Kamasutra, the learned Vātsyāyana refers to ‘unusual sex acts’ (citratāni). Of anal intercourse between men and women, he comments that “sex below, in the anus, is practiced among people of the south.” It is unusual as ejaculation takes place “in the wrong passage”. That is all Vātsyāyana has to say on the matter. Oral sex however receives much more attention. There is a lengthy discussion of the propriety of oral sex with one’s wife. Vātsyāyana says it is okay to do it with courtesans, and that ultimately, one should act according to one’s own disposition and local custom. It is within this discussion of oral sex that Vātsyāyana wheels in the term tṛtīyāprakṛti – “third nature”.
There are two kinds of third-natured folk. The strīrūpiṇī, who present as women, wearing women’s clothes and mimicking female modes of behavior and speech, and the puruṣarūpiṇī, who appear as men. The strīrūpiṇī Vātsyāyana says, gain pleasure from performing oral sex and thereby, a livelihood. They are a type of courtesan. The male-presenting puruṣarūpiṇī however, have concealed their desire for men and are often encountered as masseurs or bath attendants. He then gives a description of how puruṣarūpiṇī ‘seduce’ their clients, and 8 specific methods of oral sex performed by those of the tṛtīyāprakṛti kind. It is, in fact, the longest passage in the entire work describing a physical act. The puruṣarūpiṇī are service providers to the wealthy man-about-town (probably a courtier) that the Kamasutra addresses. Vātsyāyana also says, at the end of the chapter that some young men of the town perform oral sex for each other as part of their friendship. The men who act thusly are not of the third-nature – they are nagarakas – the urban sophisticates that are the Kamasutra’s primary audience.
Vātsyāyana also discusses homoeroticism between women; he mentions the use of sex-toys and appropriately-shaped vegetables. However, these acts between women are not a manifestation of a disposition, as in the case of the tṛtīyāprakṛti; women behave like this due to the absence of men. He does mention virgins who lose their virginity – to what we would now term mutual masturbation – with a girlfriend or perhaps a female servant. But significantly, he does not assign such acts to the “third nature” nor does he describe them as women behaving like men.
Vātsyāyana is remarkably laid back about ‘unusual sex acts’. For example, although he follows convention in asserting that in general, men are the active agents in sexual acts, and women are passive, he recognizes that role-reversals do take place and, for example, a woman might climb on top of her male partner, sometimes called viparitam (a perjorative term, associated with negative effects. I’ll say more about that in a future post). Vātsyāyana uses the verb purushayitva ‘playing the man’s role’ when he discusses this. Again, Vātsyāyana often quotes the received wisdom of ‘scholars’ on various matters, but usually ends up disagreeing with them.
We get another glimpse of the strīrūpiṇī-tṛtīyāprakṛti in the Ubhayābhisārikā, a play from around the 5th-century ce. It is a satirical monologue narrated by a playboy figure as he wanders the courtesan’s quarter of a city. One of the persons he encounters is the woman of the third-nature, called Sukumārikā (“tender girl”). The narrator says the sight of her is inauspicious and tries to pass her by without acknowledging her – hiding his face, but she calls out to him and they converse. She is the paramour of one Rāmasena, a relative of the king, but widely considered to be vain and ineffectual – a ‘fop’ perhaps. They have fallen out because Rāmasena has entertained himself with other – female – lovers and maidservants.
Sukumārikā asks the narrator to bring about a reconciliation between herself and Rāmasena. The narrator ironically praises Sukumārikā’s virtues over an ordinary woman, her breasts cause no obstruction to making love; her “period” does not destroy passion each month; she is incapable of becoming pregnant and thus marring her beauty. The narrator promises to act on Sukumārikā’s behalf, and then congratulates himself (to the audience) for having escaped from “this one of the third nature.”
From the perspective of the author of the Ubhayābhisārikā, it would seem that although the strīrūpiṇī-tṛtīyāprakṛti was a known figure, perhaps a familiar sight in the urban culture of the fifth century, they were stigmatized and subject to ridicule, as were their paramours.
That’s all for now. In the next post, I shall examine the figure of the paṇḍaka – ‘queer’ – in early Buddhist texts.
Sources
Daud Ali. 2012. ‘Censured sexual acts and early medieval Indian society’ in Raquel A.G. Reyes and William G. Clarence-Smith (eds). Sexual Diversity in Asia, c600-1950. Routledge.
José Ignacio Cabezón. 2017. Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism. Simon and Schuster.
Wendy Doniger. 2016. Redeeming the Kamasutra. Oxford University Press.
Evan B. Towle and Lynn M. Morgan. 2002. “Romancing the Transgender Native: Rethinking the Use of the “Third Gender” Concept.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. 4: 469-497.
Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwal (eds). 2001. Same-Sex Love in India. Palgrave.
Ruth Vanita (ed.) 2002. Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society. Routledge.
Ruth Vanita. 2021. Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriages in Modern India. Penguin Books.
Image credit
By Jean-Pierre Dalbéra – Flickr: Le Temple de Lakshmana (Khajurâho), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33184549
Notes:
- Towle, Morgan. 2002. ↩
