The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c6.52

c6.52

The cause of women’s education suffered a good deal after about 300 B.C. on account of the new fashion of child marriage that then began to come into vogue. It will be shown in the next chapter how on account of a number of causes the marriageable age of girls began to be gradually lowered in successive centuries. By the beginning of the Christian era pre-puberty marriages became the order of the day. Naturally this meant a serious handicap to advanced studies, which could not be obviously finished before the age of 12 or 13, which was the new marriageable age. Even the Initiation ritual (*upanayana saṁskāra*), so necessary for endowing women with the proper Aryan status, was first reduced to a mere formality and then dropped out altogether¹. This put an end to their Vedic education. They became unable to recite even the hymns of daily prayer. It is no wonder that they should have lost the status of the regenerate classes (*dvijas*); like the Śūdras they were in course of time naturally regarded as unfit for reciting or even hearing Vedic prayers. By about the 8th or 9th century A. D. the marriageable age of girls was further lowered to 9 or 10 ; this gave practically a death-blow to any education worth the name. No doubt two or three years were still available , when some primary education could have been imparted, but both the girls and their guardians used to devote their attention during this period more to the problem of marriage than to that of education.