The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c17.s2.8

c17.s2.8

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.