The figure of the devadasi, or `temple-woman', who entertained Hindu gods at festivals, hardly needs an introduction. Because of her supposed sexual availability, the devadasi became a potent and notorious symbol of the corruption of Hindu society. Together, colonial officials and Indian reformers legislated the devadasi out of existence and sanitized her dance traditions. More recently, scholars have reacted to this legacy by stressing the importance of the devadasi's ritual dance and sexuality in royal and temple ritual. What unites both of these interpretations is their assumption that the devadasi institution as `discovered' during the colonial period reflects an India-wide tradition that stretches back to the early reaches of Indian history.
This book, through an exhaustive and detailed study of medieval inscriptions, effectively challenges the image of the devadasi inherited from modern reform and recent scholarship.
Orr maintains that inscriptions, unlike literary texts and normative representations, reveal the actuality of temple women's lives, as they record specific events involving real people. Orr has examined the entirety of the Chola (c. 950-1250) inscriptional corpus (and a good deal more). The choice justified by the evidence itself, since the Chola records give a more complete profile on `temple women' than north Indian inscriptions, (though other south Indian languages have rich stores of evidence which remain to be tapped).
Orr begins with the problem of terminology, noting that the term devadasi, apparently a Sanskritization of the Tamil word tevara iy  (tevaratiyal) (, was neither ubiquitous nor even widespread in medieval inscriptions, but only gained currency in the last century. In pre-colonial times, the historian encounters a plethora of terms which vary across region, language and period.
In the second chapter, Orr concludes on the basis of her survey of the Chola materials that rather than the modern figure of the devadasi, the inscriptions suggest a more general category of `temple women'. The overlapping of terms like tevara iy  (tevaratiyal), teva÷ r maka (tevanar makal) , patiyil r (patiyilar), and ta iyil r (taliyilar) , along with the mention of functions, privileges and specific associations with temples, indicate, according to Orr, the category of `temple woman' as a coherent social identity.
The author compares temple women to other types of women found in inscriptions, most notably palace women. Orr argues, against the conclusions of other scholars, that during the Chola period there was no close relationship between court and temple. An enquiry into the Tamil terms for temple woman, is equally corrective, according to Orr. The term a iy r (atiyar), often translated as `slave' or `servant', probably instead indicated the idea of a `retainer' for a king. It also carried with it honorific connotations rooted in the south Indian religious ethos of devotion. In comparison with terms from other parts of India referring to temple women, which often meant slave or prostitute, Orr finds that the Tamil terms are more honorific and devotional in meaning.
Temple women appear most frequently in inscriptions as `donors', making gifts of various kinds to the temples themselves, and the third chapter of the book analyses this aspect of the evidence. Compared to other women and men associated with temples, temple women appear as donors in increasing numbers throughout the course of the Chola period, and as time passed, were increasingly implicated in the life of numerous temples throughout Tamilnadu as a consequence of their donations.
Their appearance as donors leads to the question of their possession of property and wealth. According to the dharma§ stras (dharm a sastras), Orr points out, a woman's access to wealth was generally mediated through her husband. But as Chola temple women remained unmarried, it seems, the question of where these women accumulated the wealth to make gifts to temples is both relevant, and given the author's wish to avoid the sacred prostitution theory, a crucial one. Orr speculates that their wealth came from gifts by natal families or inheritances from their mother as well as worship service performed on behalf of other temple patrons.
Whatever their source of wealth, the conclusion is that in relation to married women, temple women seemed to enjoy increasing economic power and prosperity through the Chola period due to their relationships with temples.
The fourth and fifth chapters focus, respectively, on the work of temple women and their identity with respect to geography, religion and kinship. In contrast to their male counterparts, the role of women in temple ritual, it would seem, was often incidental and optional. They were neither ritual `specialists' nor a ritual `necessity' for the temple as some scholarship has recently maintained.
They were most certainly not associated primarily with dance. Of the 304 Chola inscriptions that mention temple women, only four, according to Orr, use terms that refer to `dancer'. More important was their role in menial work (cleaning pots and pans, washing floors), and performance of attendance functions like flywhisk bearing and dancing. Women's role in both of these occupations, one debased and the other exalted, increased throughout the Chola period.
Women in many cases received honoured status in temple ritual as a result of their donations, but in some (about half of the references that mention temple service) they seemed to received minimal living `stipends', which may have indicated that they entered temple service under conditions not of their own making.
For most women, concludes Orr, temple service was not a source of livelihood, (excepting `slaves' acquired by the temple to perform menial services), but was a way `to enhance status that was already theirs' (134).
Temple women, geographically spread throughout the Chola realm, show strong identification in the early Chola periods with deities of particular places, but as time wore on, are increasingly referred to in relation to particular temples, reflecting a general trend to a more temple-based authority structure in the post-Chola period. Women's temple service, according to Orr, was not in most cases hereditary, reflecting what she claims to be a general social fluidity during Chola times.
a couple of months ago MADRAS MUSINGS had reproduced an article on the theppam( float) fetival of mylapore in 1800s. i think it was by olcott or madam blavatsky of the theosophical society. in it the author describes how the fishermen of santhome had the right to build the float in the fashion of catamarans. ( now they use drums to hold it up) in it is also described how temple dancers sway to the nadaswaram music before the procession leading the idol to the float. venketesh