Parker, K. M. “‘A Corporation of Superior Prostitutes’: Anglo-Indian Legal Conceptions of Temple Dancing Girls, 1800-1914.” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 32, no. 3, 1998, pp. 559-663.

From the Introduction: “This paper explores changing Anglo-Indian legal conceptions of the temple dancing girls of peninsular India between 1800 and 1914. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, temple dancing girls constituted corps of unmarried temple servants who had been dedicated to temple deities as young girls through rites resembling Hindu marriage ceremonies; they performed a range of ritual services, derived incomes from endowments associated with their offices and enjoyed considerable prestige within ‘traditional’ Hindu society as ‘eternally auspicious’ women ‘married’ to temple deities. By the early twentieth century, temple dancing girls had been criminalized as ‘prostitutes’; strong legal foundations had been established for their complete suppression as a viable group within Hindu society. This dramatic change was produced in large part through the incremental efforts of the Anglo-Indian judiciary, which enjoyed almost unfettered discretion in shaping legal conceptions of temple dancing girls between 1800 and 1914. The legal conceptions of temple dancing girls discussed in this paper are constructed principally through appellate opinions, influential legal treatises, statutes and legislative documents. Although no claim of priority is made on behalf of such materials, it is hoped that the insights they provide will complicate the historiography of social reform relating to women in colonial India.”