Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa

57. Women dancing in front of a statue of divinity

Dondra (Devundara, Dīnawar)
Title
Women dancing in front of a statue of divinity
Short description
About 500 women dancing in front of a statue of divinity every night. Until 1587, there was in Dondra (Tanavare) a renewed temple called Ishwaram which had several statues of divinities, then destroyed by Portuguese colonisers. Considering the intertwining of Hinduism and Buddhism in Sri Lanka's history, it is still debated if the described temple was at the time a Buddhist devale of Uppalavanna or a "kovil" temple of Vishnu (see Pathmanathan, 2000). The dancers mentioned by Ibn Baṭṭūṭa might have been "devadasis", female artists dedicated to the worship and service of a deity or a temple for the rest of their lives (see Holt, 2004).
Text on source
ورحلنا من هنالك يومين إلى مدينة دينور (وضبط اسمها بدال مهمل مكسور وياء مد ونون وواو مفتوحين وراء)، مدينة عظيمة على البحر يسكنها التجار، وبها الصنم المعروف بدينور في كنيسة عظيمة فيها نحو الألف من البراهمة والجوكية ونحو خمسمائة من النساء بنات الهنود، ويغنين كل ليلة عند الصنم ويرقصن [ص. ٤٣٣]
English translation
We travelled thence for two days to Dīnawar, a large town on the coast, inhabited by merchants. In this town there is an idol known as Dīnawar, in a vast temple, in which there are about a thousand Brahmans and yogis [jūkya], and about five hundred women, daughters of the Hindus, who sing [yuġannīna] and dance [yarquṣna] every night in front of the idol.
Folios/Pages
855
Date
1344 circa
Observations on the events description
Ibn Baṭṭūṭa's use of the Arabic terms "barāhima" (Brahmans), "jūkya" (Yogis) is not definitely indicative of Hindu practitioners as opposed to Buddhist ones, since he would have hardly distinguished between the two.
The dots on the map indicate the places where sound and music events were described. They don't represent travel stages.

Participants
No other participants in this event description.


How to quote
Pintimalli A., "Women dancing in front of a statue of divinity" (Event description), Echos. Sound Ecosystems in Travelogues. Published 2024 07 29.

doi: 10.25430/echos.travels.130

This work is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0