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The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c17.s2: The Age of the Sūtras, the Epics and the Early Smṛitis (c. 500 B. C. to c. 500 A. D.)

The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c17.s2

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The Age of the Sūtras, the Epics and the Early Smṛitis (c. 500 B. C. to c. 500 A. D.)

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The position of women deteriorated considerably in this period, and its causes may be conveniently discussed here. Some centuries before the beginning of this period, the Aryan rule had become well established over the greater part of India. The Aryan conquest of the indigenous population and its loose incorporation in the social structure of the victors as members of the fourth Śūdra class, had given rise to a huge population of a semi-servile status. We saw that the introduction of slavery revolutionised the position of women in the classical period of Greek history; they became parasites and lost the esteem of society. The same happened in India, when a definite semi-servile status came to be assigned to the Śūdra class within Hindu society, service of the Aryan conquerors being its only and definite duty. Women, however, did not suffer merely because they ceased to be productive members of society. A greater calamity awaited them from the presence of Śūdra women. In the earlier period of their expansion, the Aryans followed the traditions of ruthless warfare. Indra, we are told, trampled upon the Dasyus in their cave retreats. When, however, the Aryans reached the upper Gangetic plain, they found that the indigenous civilisation there was too deep-rooted to be completely wiped out by them. They had to remain content merely with imposing their sovereignty, very often merely a nominal one, over the original inhabitants, variously described as Dāsas, Śūdras, or Nāgas. When the two races proceeded to live together peacefully, inter-marriages became inevitable. In the age of the Ṛigveda, we do not come across any cases of Arya-Śūdra marriages. The Brāhamaṇas and the epics, however, supply ample evidence to show that the Aryan chiefs were freely marrying non-Aryan princesses in the later period. Arjuna married Uḍupī, a Nāga princess-regent. Bhīma married Hiḍimbā, a sister of a Rākshasa chief. The sage Kavasha, who plays an important part in the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa*, was the son of a slave girl. These examples are only typical and would show that in the concluding half of the later Samhitā period (*c.* 1000 B. C. to *c.* 500 B. C.), the marriages of Aryan men with non-Aryan women were becoming common. It is important to note that the early Dharmaśāstra writers have no objection to an Aryan marrying a Śūdra woman, provided he had another Aryan wife; it is only later writers who proceed to interdict such a procedure with a great vehemence¹.

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¹ न ब्राह्मणक्षत्रिययोरापद्यपि हि तिष्ठतोः । कस्मिंश्चिदपि वृत्तान्ते शूद्रा भार्योपदिश्यते ॥ शूद्रावेदी पतत्यत्रेरुतथ्यतनयस्य च । शौनकस्य सुतोत्पत्त्या तदपत्यतया भृगोः ॥ *Manu*, III, 14,16.

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The introduction of the non-Aryan wife into the Aryan household is the key to the general deterioration of the position of women, that gradually and imperceptibly started at about 1000 B. C., and became quite marked in about 500 years. The non-Aryan wife with her ignorance of Sanskrit language and Hindu religion could obviously not enjoy the same religious privileges as the Aryan consort. Association with her must have tended to affect the purity of speech of the Aryan cowife as well. Very often the non-Aryan wife may have been the favourite one of her husband, who may have often attempted to associate her with his religious sacrifices in preference to her better educated but less loved Aryan cowife.

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This must have naturally led to grave mistakes and anomalies in the performance of the ritual, which must have shocked orthodox priests. The first remedy they must have thought of was to declare the non-Aryan wife to be unfit for association with her husband in religious rituals. ‘The black non-Aryan wife may be her husband’s associate in pleasure, but not in religious rituals’ say several authorities¹. But a mighty king, mad with love for his non-Aryan beloved, was not to be dictated to by a priesthood dependent upon him for its subsistence. He would insist upon having his own favourite wife by his side at the time of his sacrifices, no matter her race or caste.

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¹ द्विजस्य शूद्रा भार्या तुँ धर्मार्थं न क्वचिद्भवेत् । रत्यर्थमेव सा तस्य रागान्ध प्रकीर्त्तिता ॥ *Vishṇu*, ch. 26. कृष्णवर्णा या रामा रमणायेव न धर्माय । *V.D.S.*, *XVIII*, 17.

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How then was the situation to be retrieved? Eventually it was felt that the object could be gained by declaring the whole class of women to be ineligible for Vedic studies and religious duties. There would then be no question of rejecting admission to a non-Aryan wife and granting it to an Aryan one; all would be ineligible and none need be offended. It is Aitiśāyana who is seen advocating this view by about 200 B. C. It is however almost certain that he is merely a typical representative of a powerful school reaching back to a fairly great antiquity. It is not impossible that his school may be as old as 500 B. C., if not even earlier.

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The growing complexity of the Vedic sacrifices was another factor that tended to make the wife’s association in religious rituals a more and more formal affair in course of time. In the Vedic age, a young maiden would take a Soma stalk and proceed straight to offer it to Indra in a sacrifice performed by her all alone. In course of time the sacrifice became a very complex affair, and the slightest mistake in its performance or the recitation of its hymns and formulæ was regarded as frought with very grave consequences. It required a long training to get the necessary capacity to follow intelligently the minute details of the complicated sacrifice, and the average woman had not so much time to devote for the purpose. In the Vedic age she was married at about the age of 16 or 17; she could thus devote six or seven years to her Vedic studies before her marriage. During this period a girl could equip herself fairly well for her post-marriage participation in sacrifices, as the Vedic literature was then not extensive and could be studied as popular religious poetry. The sacrificial ritual was also simple. Towards the end of the period of the later Saṁhitās and Brāhmaṇas, a maiden could hardly hope to get a full and adequate knowledge necessary for the purpose, unless she remained unmarried till about the age of 22 or 24. This was an impracticable proposition for the average girl. There were new forces in society which were clamouring for early marriages. The Aryans had settled down in a rich and prosperous country and their political supremacy had become unquestioned. Naturally they took to an easy and luxurious life, and the marriageable age of boys and girls began to be lowered. In the Ṛigvedic age the father was anxious to have strong and numerous sons more for secular than for religious purposes; in the days of the later Saṁhitās, the son became a religious rather than a secular necessity. A man comes to this world, it was pointed out, saddled with a threefold debt; the most important one of these was the debt to the manes which could be liquidated only by the birth of a son. Why then not marry a girl as soon as she attains maturity and is in a position to present a son to her husband? Why wait for three or four years unnecessarily? It may be noted that when Kaṇva learns that his daughter had contracted a love marriage with Dushyanta, a passage later interpolated in the Mahābhārata, represents him as blaming himself rather than his daughter. He practically admits that it was his mistake not to have married his daughter earlier; so many months had passed away uselessly since the time she could have got a son¹.

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¹ ऋतवो बहवस्ते वै गता व्यर्थाः शुचिस्मिते । सार्थकं साम्प्रतं ह्येतन्न च पाप्मास्ति तेऽनघे ॥ I, 95,65.

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Owing to the different causes narrated above, at the beginning of this period (*c.* 500 B. C.), there arose a tendency to lower the marriageable age of girls, and as a consequence, to discourage their *upanayana* and education. Down to about the beginning of the Christian era, in cases of difficulty parents were permitted to keep their daughters unmarried to the age of 16 or 17, but it was emphasised that it would be advisable to get them married soon after the attainment of puberty. The view that women should not be at all allowed to participate in sacrifices was no doubt not accepted by society, but its vigorous advocacy by one school, along with the general lowering of the marriage age, tended to a growing and inevitable neglect of the Vedic education of girls. During the first half of this period a few maidens continued to specialise in Vedic studies and rituals, but the majority of girls used to go merely through the formality of *upanayana* just before the celebration of their marriage. It is doubtful whether they were in a position to recite their morning and evening prayers. At about 200 A. D., it was felt that this meaningless formality should be discontinued. It was declared that marraiage was the substitute for *upanayana* in the case of girls; they need not have any separate sacred initiation.

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*Upanayana* was usually performed at about the age of 9 or 10, and the same age now came to be regarded as the ideal time of marriage for girls. Towards the end of this period (*c.* 500 A. D.), parents could not usually keep their daughters unmarried after the age of 12.

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The discontinuance of *upanayana*, the neglect of education and the lowering of the marriage age produced disastrous consequences upon the position and status of women. Early marriage put an effective impediment in the higher education of girls. Brides being too young and inexperienced, ceased to have any effective voice in the settlement of their marriages. *Svayaṁvara* continued to be in vogue in Kshatriya circles, but it came to be condemned by Brahmanical writers. Love marriages became a thing of the past. Child wives with no education worth the name became the order of the day, and they could not naturally command respect from their husbands. Not infrequently parents had to marry their daughters in a hurry, lest the girls should attain puberty before their marriage. The matches arranged under such circumstances were often ill suited, and women were thus often compelled to spend their lives with unsuitable or unworthy partners. It is painful to find that Smṛiti writers should have come forward to preach the gospel that a wife should always revere her husband as God, even if he were a moral wreck.

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During the first half of this period widow remarriages and Niyoga continued to be permitted, but the volume of public opinion against these customs was increasing, and they came to be eventually interdicted at about 500 A. D. Marriage was regarded as a religious sacrament in the Vedic period also, and yet society was permitting divorce and remarriage in exceptional cases. During the period under review, marriage became an irrevocable union, irrevocable, however, only so far as the wife was concerned. The husband could discard his wife for the grave offence of not being sufficiently submissive. The wife however could not take a similar step and marry a second time, even if her husband had taken to vicious ways and completely abandoned her. This differential treatment was due to the simple fact that women were no longer able to effectively oppose these absurd theories and claims, most of them being uneducated and quite ignorant of their former status and privileges.

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The age of city or small states had gone, and the Hindu kingdoms in this period became fairly extensive. The splendour of royal courts naturally increased, and kings began to keep a much bigger harem than what was ever dreamt of in previous epochs. Their example was imitated by their numerous feudatories and rich subjects. This produced a very unfavourable consequence upon the condition and status of the vast majority of women of the upper classes, and it had its natural repercussions on the status of wives in ordinary families. The dictum, 'The wife ought to revere her husband as a god, even if he were vicious and void of any merit', was probably written with a particular reference to the unfortunate denizens of the harems in rich families; subsequently the advice came to be extended to the whole sex. One can hardly excuse Smṛiti writers for having enunciated this absurd and inequitable doctrine, though one can understand that their motive may have been partly to discourage a hasty tendency to sever the marital tie. They have, however, never dreamt of preaching a similar gospel to the husband; they permit him to discard his first wife on the most flimsy grounds.

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The growing harems of the mighty kings naturally made them jealous, and some of them sought to keep their wives in seclusion. The Purda system, however, was yet confined only to a very small section of the royal families; majority of kings did not care to adopt it.

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The period of 350 years between 200 B. C. and 150 A. D. was a very dark and dismal one for Northern India. The fertile plains of the Punjab and the Gangetic valley were subjected during this period to one foreign invasion after another. First came the Greeks, who under Demetrius and Menander (*c.* 190-150 B. C.) were able to penetrate right up to Oudh and Bihar. Then came the Scythians and the Parthians (*c.* 100 B. C. to 50 A. D.), whose frightful wars of conquest reduced Hindu population by one half, 25 percent. being killed and 25 percent. being enslaved and carried away¹. These barbarians were followed by the Kushāṇas, who succeeded in overrunning practically the whole of northern India by the middle of the 2nd century A. D. Political reverses, war atrocities and the decline of population and prosperity naturally produced a wave of despondency in society. It facilitated the spread of the ideal of renunciation (Saṁnyāsa), which though held before society by Upanishadic, Buddhist and Jain teachers, was meeting with stubborn opposition in Hindu community. Thus Kauṭilya prescribes a punishment for a person who would renounce the world before his old age, and without providing for his dependents². Early Dharmasūtra writers regarded renunciation as a positively anti-Vedic custom³. The despondency prevailing in society at about the beginning of the Christian era began to wear down the opposition to the Saṁnyāsa ideal. There is no doubt a good deal of truth in the observation of Bhīma at one place in the Mahābhārata that renunciation appeals only to those who are unsuccessful in life¹. Just as the renunciation philosophy of the Bhakti school appealed to Hindu society in medieval times owing to the political set-back which it had received at that time on account of the rise of Islam, so also the ascetic ideal of Upanishads, Jainism and Buddhism began to get a real hold over the social mind only at about the beginning of the Christian era owing to the prevailing wave of political and economic despondency.

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¹ चतुर्भागं तु शस्त्रेण नाशयिष्यन्ति प्राणिनाम् । शकाः शेषं हरिष्यन्ति चतुर्भागं स्वकं पुरम् । विनष्टे शकराज्ये तु शून्या पृथ्वी भविष्यति ॥ *Gargasaṁhitā, Yugapurāṇa*, vv. 54, 84.

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² पुत्रदारमप्रतिविधाय प्रव्रजतः पूर्वः साहसदण्डः । लुप्तव्यवायः प्रव्रजेत् । II, 1.

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³ त्रैविद्यवृद्धानां तु वेदाः प्रमाणमिति निष्ठा । तत्र यानि श्रूयन्ते व्रीहियवपश्वाज्यपयःकपालपत्नीसंबन्धकान्युच्चैर्नीचैः कार्यमिति तंविरुद्ध आचार अप्रमाणमिति मन्यन्ते । *A. D. S.*, II, 9, 9. ऐकाश्रम्यं त्वाचार्या अप्रजननत्वादितरेषाम् । *B. D. S.*, II, 6, 29.

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¹ श्रिया विहीनैर्धनैर्नास्तिकैः संप्रवर्तितम् । वेदवादस्य विज्ञानं सत्याभासमिवानृतम् ॥ XII, 10, 20.

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The new development affected the position of the widow adversely in various ways. It strengthened the hands of those who were opposed to Niyoga and widow remarriage. Both the customs therefore fell gradually into disrepute. Niyoga no doubt deserved to be stamped out, but not so the widow remarriage. It however could not escape a similar fate. It began to be argued that the world was a mirage, and its pleasures were mere snares. The fate was undoubtedly cruel to the widow in carrying away her husband. It had however given her a new opportunity to secure spiritual salvation. It is true that the Vedas have declared that a son was necessary for securing heaven; the childless widow, however, should not think of remarriage in order to get heaven through a son. She ought to aim at the higher ideal of salvation (*mukti*) and not at the lower one of heaven (*svarga*). The former can be best attained by leading a pure and chaste life, as was done by hundreds and thousands of monks and nuns, who had entered the Saṁnyāsa stage direct from the Brahmacharya, without passing through the married life¹. The widow should therefore never think of remarriage. This advice was, however, a onesided one; Smṛitis do not offer it to the widower. On the other hand, they permit him to remarry immediately after the death of the first wife, 'lest the sacred fires should remain unlit.'

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¹ अनेकानि सहस्राणि कुमारब्रह्मचारिणाम् । दिवं गतानि विप्राणाम कृत्वा कुलसंततिम् ॥ *Manu*, V. 159.

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A greater calamity that overtook the widow in this period was the revival of the Satī custom. In the beginning it was confined to the warrior class. It however began to spread wider in society in course of time, as the action of the Satī came to be regarded as a great religious sacrifice, which deserved to be imitated. A school of rationalists opposed the custom vehemently, pointing out its utter futility and stupidity. Its efforts partly checked the spread of the custom for a while.

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The only direction in which the position of women improved in this period was in the sphere of proprietary rights. Society had begun to discourage widow remarriages. As a consequence there began to arise a class of childless young widows. In the earlier period, practically speaking this class did not exist, as Niyoga and widow marriages were then in general vogue. Now when both these practices were prohibited, society had to devise an honorable means to enable the widow to maintain herself. She could of course live in the joint family and receive maintenance along with others; but this was not an advisable step in the transition period during which Niyoga was being gradually stamped out. Some writers have laid down that a woman should not be compelled to submit to Niyoga against her wish¹. It is clear that in uncultured families some of the male relations like the brother-in-law would occasionally force an unwilling widow to submit to their vicious wishes under the specious plea of Niyoga. The childless widow could be saved from this calamity by sanctioning her a life estate in her husband’s share, and by permitting her to stay separately.

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¹ नाकाम्या संनियोज्या स्यात् । *B. D. S.*, II, 1, 20.

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It thus came to happen that the proprietary rights, which were not recognised in the Vedic age when women were better educated and enjoyed greater freedom, came gradually to be recognised during this period. It is true that the doctrine of perpetual tutelage of women became popular at this time, and it should normally have proved fatal to the recognition and development of their proprietary rights. But men do not always seriously believe in the solemn theories they haughtily enunciate, nor do they care to draw all possible corollaries from them. Such was the case with the theory of women’s perpetual tutelage. Jurists felt no self-contradiction in declaring that women were unfit for independence, and yet investing them with new proprietary rights. They thought that sufficient regard would be shown to the theory of perpetual tutelage by laying down that women could enjoy only the income of their inheritance, but not dispose of its corpus.

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नाकामा संनियोज्या स्याद् अकामां तु योजयेत् ।
Yama in *SCS.*, p.225.

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It is further true that the tendency to regard women as fragile and of a weak moral fibre was getting stronger in this period. It was, however, only the woman in the abstract that was so regarded. In society, however, the woman in the abstract did not exist; there was the wife or the daughter or the mother, and for every one of them Hindu society felt very tenderly. The daughter and the wife had the father and the husband to provide for them, but there was no such guardian of natural affection to look after the childless widow. A school of jurists therefore arose at the beginning of the Christian era, which advocated that the widow should be recognised as an heir to her husband, if the latter had effected his separation before the time of his death. The new reform was, as usual, vehemently opposed by vested interests, but eventually it began to find greater and greater support in society.

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