HESCAH Lecture | Dr. Jinah Kim “Of Mothers, Wives, and Goddesses: Looking for women in the art of the Himalayas”

Women are active participants in devotional activities around the Himalayas today. Did women play any role in religious pursuits of the Himalayan communities during the second millennium? While we hear of many male monastic teachers, tantric practitioners, and royal patrons in historical records, it is rarer to find accounts of women’s active participation in the pre-modern religious life of the Himalayan region (today’s India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Tibet). Foregrounding visual records as historical evidence, this lecture will survey images of women both human and divine in Buddhist and Hindu art of Nepal, Indian Himalayas and beyond. It will demonstrate how historical women whose names are now largely forgotten played a crucial role in uplifting the spiritual wellbeing of their partners and families as wives and mothers, just as divine mothers like the goddess Prajñāpāramitā and the goddess Vajrayoginī played a foundational role in their spiritual sons’ quests for transcendence. ​