Somadeva

“The Red Lotus of Chastity” is a story about clever women using disguise to achieve their goals. Devasmita and Saktimati are faithful wives, while Siddhikari and Yogakarandika are criminals and tricksters. The contrast of the wives and tricksters is important because the tricksters are punished and maimed, while the wives are applauded. The message is that it is okay to use deception and even violence, if the goal is protecting a husband. 

Devasmita is a disobedient daughter, running away to marry Guhasena. This sets up the probability that she will expect others to be deceptive, too. And indeed, Devasmita does not trust Guhasena to travel without her. “She was a jealous wife and naturally suspected that he would love another woman” (Somadeva 1275). Armed with the red lotus of chastity, which will wither and die if the other spouse commits adultery, Guhasena travels to Cathay, gets drunk and is tricked into telling the story of the lotus to four merchants who “set sail at once for Tamralipti, without telling anybody, to see if they could not undo the chastity of Guhasena’s wife” (1275). The merchants meet Yogakarandika, an unholy nun, who tells the story of her pupil. Siddhikari, and promises to help them seduce Devasmita.

Unlike the faithful wives, Siddhikari is a thief who steals gold from a merchant, kills a drummer, and bites off the tongue of a servant to get away with her crime. Yogakarandika describes her as a “cunning girl” (1276), but trying to outwit Devasmita is the downfall of these two treacherous women: “the chaste wife cut off their noses and ears and tossed them outside in a sewage pit” (1278). Not only does she outwit Yogakarandika and Siddhikari, Devasmita uses disguise to punish and brand the men who would seduce her, and to protect her husband, whose drunken tales put them both at risk. Devasmita tells Saktimati’s story because Saktimati uses disguise to save her unfaithful husband, and it provides justification for her own use of disguise to protect Guhasena.

The relationships between women and men in “The Red Lotus of Chastity” are tenuous at best, requiring the strength of chaste women to maintain them, while weak and unfaithful men create risk. Women are justified in the use of disguise, deception, and even violence, to punish those who threaten their marriage.

Works Cited

Somadeva. “The Red Lotus of Chastity.” The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Edited by Martin Puchner, Shorter 3^rd ed., vol. 1, W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. pp. 1274-1279.