The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c16.61

c16.61

agreed contract. Another passage in a later Saṁhitā observes that women are falsehood incarnate; the context, however, shows that the reference is to women of bad character¹. In the Rāmāyaṇa Lakshmaṇa observes that women are cruel and malicious by nature, but that was because he was quite unjustly rebuked by Sītā, who compelled him to go in search of Rāma against his better judgment². In another passage in the same epic, it is stated that women are wicked and selfish, but it is immediately added that the remark is intended to apply only to Kaikeyī (II, 12, 99). In a third place in the same work the sage Agastya says that women combine the fickleness of the lightning, the sharpness of the weapon and the swiftness of the eagle³; the sage makes this observation, not because he genuinely believed in its truth, but because he wanted to emphasise that Sītā, whom he was praising,, had none of these defects and drawbacks. The Buddha in one place holds up for admiration the wife of the slave type; we must however remember that he is there giving advice to a recalcitrant daughter-in-law (*Aṅg. Nik.* IV, p. 91).