UCLA Center for the Study of Women

These are just some of the words used to define devadasis in South India over the last century. Recent scholars (Avanthi Meduri, Amrit Srinivasan, Saskia C. Kersenboom-Story, Kay Jordan, to name a few) have attempted to locate historical devadasis (or traces of them) in the contemporary performance of Bharatanatyam, but rarely have they looked to the women who still call themselves by that name, many of whom live in the northern part of the state of Karnataka in south India.