The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c17.s2.16

c17.s2.16

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.