The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c11.s3.5

c11.s3.5

The examples of queens reigning independently in their own rights are, however, few. This is to be attributed to the fact that the school of the political thinkers, which like the Salique law, opposed the accession of women to the throne, was representing the general opinion of society. It held that women should not be made rulers, for on account of their natural limitations, they cannot become efficient administrators¹. We hardly come across any queens like Tribhuvanadevī of Orissa reigning independently in their own right. Megasthenes had no doubt heard of queen rulers in Pāṇḍya country, but that was because of the matriarchal system prevailing in Malabar and the territory around. Hindu princesses, even when entitled to the throne in their own rights, did not usually like to become the legal heads of their states in supersession of their husbands, whom they revered intensely. Their consorts usually became *de jure* as well as *de facto* heads of the government. Thus when Gaurī, a Raṭṭa princess who was an heir to a fiefdom in Karnatak, married a prince of Banahaṭṭa family in the 10th century, her husband became the ruler over her principality (*J. B. B. R. A. S.*, X, p. 77). The Gupta history provides perhaps the only exception to the rule. The founder 'of the dynasty, Chandragupta I, was ruling the kingdom jointly with his Lichchhavi queen Kumāradevī. The names and effigies of both the king and the queen appear on their coins, along with the name of the Lichchhavi clan from which the queen was descended. The same is the case with the coins of William III and Mary II, who were jointly ruling over England from 1689 to 1694. Political reasons, however, were responsible for this joint rule; in the case of the first Gupta emperor the Lichchhavis were too proud to allow their state to be immersed in the Gupta empire on the marriage of their princess with Chandragupta; and so a compromise was arrived at, under which both the king and the queen were regarded as equal and joint rulers of the state. Normally, however, when a princess with her own right to the throne married, her husband became the *de jure* ruler as well.