Tantra — the Supreme as feminine
From roughly the sixth to the sixteenth century CE, two overlapping movements — Tantra and Bhakti — challenged the rigidities that had settled over orthodox society. Both stepped outside Sanskrit's exclusivity into regional language, and both placed women at the centre rather than the margin of spiritual authority.
In the Śākta and Tantric traditions of Bengal, Assam, and Kashmir, ultimate reality is not male, and not formless — it is female, Śakti. The Mahānirvāṇa Tantra explicitly forbids the immolation of widows (satī), on the argument that a woman is the embodiment of the Goddess on earth, and harming her brings spiritual ruin on whoever does it. In Tantric ritual, women act as Bhairavīs — spiritual equals, and often gurus, to men; the Yoginī Tantra states plainly that caste and gender have no bearing on spiritual initiation.
Āṇṭāḷ and Akka Mahādēvi — refusing marriage for the divine
The Bhakti poets rejected the same norms from a different direction — not through ritual theology but through open refusal, composing in regional languages that carried theology straight to ordinary people.
In Tamil country, Āṇṭāḷ (8th century), the only woman among the twelve Vaiṣṇava Āḻvārs, refused an earthly marriage altogether, considering herself already wed to Viṣṇu. Her Tiruppāvai remains a living liturgical text in Tamil Nadu today.
In Karnataka, Akka Mahādēvi (12th century), a Vīraśaiva saint, renounced clothing entirely, covering herself only in her own hair. In her Vacanas she directly challenged the patriarchal saints of the Anubhava Maṇṭapa — the spiritual assembly of her own tradition — and out-argued them.
Lal Ded and Mīrābāī — leaving the household for ecstatic devotion
In Kashmir, Lalleśwarī (Lal Ded, 14th century) composed mystic verse (Vākhs) that fused Kashmir Śaivism with Sufi thought, leaving an abusive household to wander and dance in what she described as divine ecstasy.
In Rajasthan, Mīrābāī (16th century) walked away from a royal household and the strict purdah that came with it, singing devotion to Kṛṣṇa in the open streets and surviving repeated assassination attempts from her own in-laws for doing so.
Continue to Back to the Vedas for the reform traditions that followed, and answered the same patriarchal decay in a different register — doctrine rather than poetry.