The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c16.86

c16.86

It may be pointed out that this tendency to attribute all real and imaginary faults to women is not confined to the Renunciation School of India alone. The case was the same in ancient Greece. Socrates says, ‘Woman is the source of all evil; her love is to be dreaded more than the hatred of man; the poor young men who seek women in matrimony are like fish who go to meet the hook.’ Similar sentiments have been expressed by Christian saints. It is true that Christ himself has not indulged in any tirade against women. The Apostles and early Fathers, however, have painted the woman in the blackest colours. St. Paul says, ‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman; marriage was a concession, a degradation to avoid fornication’ (I Cor. VII, 1). Tertullian says, ‘Woman is the gate of Hell, mother of all ills. She should blush with shame at the thought of her womanhood and live in perpetual penance for the sins of Eve.’ Another Father has declared, ‘I have not felt any calamity more hurtful to man than woman. Oh assembly of women, verily you are mostly of the hell on the day of Resurrection. You are the Devil’s gateway. You destroy God’s image, Man.’ Marbod, a Bishop of Rennes who lived in the 11th century, delivers himself in the same strain. ‘Of the numberless snares that the crafty enemy spreads for us over all the hills and fields of the world, the worst and the one which one cannot avoid is Woman; sad stem, evil root, vicious fount,.... Who persuaded our first parent to taste the forbidden fruit? A woman. Who forced the father to defile his daughter? A woman’¹.