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In India, culturally boys are preferred over girls as a child by many orthodox families. Such attitude creates kind of deep rooted gender bias and certain wrongful activities like abortion or discrimination.

So I was wondering, how can such culture evolve? Why don't they look towards their god/deity as an example?
While iterating myself on various gods or saints or spiritual supremos, I was bit astonished to notice that many of them did not have a biological girl child (exclude Brahma).
This doesn't infer any bias, but it was naturally the situation. BTW, in old times also, the people used to seek for sons, possibly for Pitru-runa.

In a chronological order (not the full list):

  • Lord Shankara (a Rudra) has 2 sons
  • Lord HanumAna possibly has sons only
  • Shri RAma had 2 sons
  • Vasudeva had all sons from Devaki & another wife
  • Veda VyAsa through Niyoga had 3 sons
  • Shri Krishna had all sons from 8 of his wives
  • Other Mahabharata personalities like Drona, PAndava-s also had son(s)
  • Mahatma Gandhi, a saintly figure of modern era also had 4 sons

Are there any famous godly figures (who are worshipped or revered), who had a daughter?
Though not hard-presses, but non-mythological persons are preferred.

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    Janaka- Sita; Himalaya- Ganga, Uma; Daksha Prajapati- 31 daughters like Sati and Rohini,(Padma Purana hints Lord Shankara too has daughter called AshokSundari), Incarnation of Adi Shakti in various form like sister of Krishna (Yogamaya), Kanyakumari etc... can be examples
    – Tezz
    Jul 5, 2018 at 15:54
  • @Tezz, Janaka came to my mind first as well. But is he (or other examples) considered among the godly figures? Haven't seen people worshipping them. Though there is a mention of similar name in Bhagavad Gita.
    – iammilind
    Jul 5, 2018 at 16:00
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    Ashoka sundari is said to be the daughter of goddess Parvati and eventually Shiva also.- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashokasundari
    – SwiftPushkar
    Jul 5, 2018 at 16:17
  • non-mythological persons but godly figures the combination is rare.
    – SwiftPushkar
    Jul 5, 2018 at 16:25
  • @SwiftPushkar, yes that's why I am not hard pressed on "non-mythical". But still I would be more interested about personalities from the [religious] 'itihAsa'-s like Ramayana, Mahabharata etc. BTW, you may mention the Ashokasundari in the answer if it's considered a godly figure.
    – iammilind
    Jul 5, 2018 at 16:28

1 Answer 1

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From creation chapters of various Puranas, we find that there were more daughters than sons. For example,

  • Svāyambhuva Manu (the father of mankind) had 3 daughters (Ākūti, Devahūti and Prasūti) and 2 sons (Priyavrata and Uttānapāda). (SB 4.1)

  • Daksha Prajapati had many daughters who are mothers of other creation. Although, Daksha had few sons but we don't find their names as they didn't have genealogical table.

So you can see that there was no gender discrimination in the beginning.

Other examples are

  • Indra had daughter named Jayanti
  • Surya had daughter named Yami

  • Lord Ganesh had daughter named Santoshi (though hard to find references in early scriptures)

  • Shukracharya had daughter named Devayani

  • Himalaya had daughters: Uma, Ganga

  • Janka (Rajrishi) and his brother had daughters: Sita and her sisters

  • Vasudev had daughter named Subhdra

Above all are famous godly figures who are either worshipped or revered.

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  • Nice to see that, you have listed many examples. However, are those worshipped? Why citing "sisters"?
    – iammilind
    Jul 5, 2018 at 17:07
  • You mentioned "Mahabharata personalities like Drona" so mentioned Dusla..(I thought of mentioning Kripacharya's sister Kripi and Drupad's daughter Draupadi as they were related to Drona closely:) )...and if Gandhi is in ur example then why not Janka who was known as Rajrishi...other than that who is not worshipped? @iammilind
    – YDS
    Jul 5, 2018 at 17:19
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    Probably you have got the Qn wrong. I am neither seeking for popular goddesses who are worshipped nor famous personalities who are having daughters nor the sisters of gods. I took example for few other Mahabharat characters and Gandhiji, because those were spiritually enlightened or revered. Though this answer has mix of real & mythical characters, I would recommend to put source [link] alongside to evaluate. Btw if you make this a wiki, then you are allowing others to edit to better & to remove irrelevant parts. You may not find it fair. If you are not Ok then, flag to Mod to remove wiki.
    – iammilind
    Jul 6, 2018 at 2:47
  • 'I am neither seeking for popular goddesses who are worshipped nor famous personalities who are having daughters' - then you should remove the word 'famous' from the title. It's misleading. @iammilind
    – Say No To Censorship
    Jul 6, 2018 at 15:15
  • @sv., the question is about "famous gods/spiritual-heads who had daughters" and Not about "famous people who had daughters". For example, as noted in SwifPushkar's comment -- Rishi Renu is a famous person who had daughter, but he is not worshipped in popular culture. Now, if we consider the famous south actor Rajinikanth, who is worshipped by people in an almost god-like way, then he can be listed, because he has 2 daughters. However, an actor like him will be too off-beat for our site. Hope that clears the doubt.
    – iammilind
    Jul 6, 2018 at 16:31

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