The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c17.10

c17.10

Our readers know already that the position of women in the Vedic age was far from being analogous to what it usually is in early uncivilised societies. In communities that have not yet emerged from barbarism, there hardly exist any checks on the tyranny of man over woman. Ill-usage, underfeeding and overworking are pushed to the greatest limit, compatible with the preservation of the race. Women are divorced, abandoned, sold or killed at the mere whim of men. They have to carry about children, and also serve as beasts of burden, when the tribe moves from one place to another. The treatment thus meted out to them need not cause any surprise; in primitive life the muscle was an indispensable element in success and the man was stronger in it than the woman. He fought with the animals and enemies to protect women and children; he chased the big game to feed the family. Physical prowess, bodily vigour and muscular strength thus naturally established man's permanent superiority over woman, who besides lacking these qualities, was periodically in a most helpless condition a few weeks before and after her frequent confinements. Man had not yet developed sufficient culture and sensibility to make him feel and realise that women undergo these trials and tribulations for the sake of the race, and therefore deserve to be treated with utmost sympathy and consideration. It was taken for granted everywhere that women as such can have no rights and privileges. They were inherently inferior to men and therefore must be always subordinate to them. This was the case, for instance, in ancient Greece; as a writer has trenchantly put it, ‘There was no woman question at Athens because all women were as mere vegetables, and there was no woman question at Sparta because both men and women there were little better than animals¹.’ The archaic Roman law granted to the husband the power over the life and the limbs of the wife, and for many centuries matrons with several children continued to be under the tutelage of their male relations. In ancient Palestine the woman was a piece of property to be bought and sold.