Gendering Praise and Censure of Authority in Pre-modern Indic Tradition

In this essay I have set out to examine one of the most enduring themes of literature, which is praise and censure of the ruling authority. In a way, this ability of humans to judge their superiors pre-dates literature. As Yuval Noah Harari (2014: 26) argues in his magnum opus, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, the ability of the homo sapiens to gossip about their fellow beings, particularly about the integrity and ability of those who were in leadership roles, was crucial for early humanity’s effort at social cooperation in large numbers. To begin with this ability may not have had a gendered lens, but with time and greater domination of masculine authority the paradigms of praise and censure also came to acquire a distinctly masculine character.