History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c93.445

v7.c93.445

Although the Veda employs the masculine gender (in svargakāmo yajeta, 'one desiring heaven should offer a sacrifice'), yet Jaimini establishes (in VI. 1 6-16) that even women are included and have a right to offer a yāga.²¹⁰² Jaimini further provides that husband and wife should perform a religious right in co-operation (VI. 1. 17-21), but he provides that where the Śruti specifically provides for certain matters to be done by the *yajamāna*²¹⁰³ (the male performer) it is the male alone who can perform them as the wife is not equal to the husband in the knowledge of mantras and is ignorant and therefore she is restricted to the performance of those acts that are expressly enjoined for her such as looking at the clarified butter, observing *brahmacarya* and the like (VI. 1 24 'tasyā yāvad-uktam-āśīrbrahmacaryam-atulyatvāt'.) The wife also performs bath and such acts as applying collyrium, sipping water (*ācamana*), observes silence till the morning or evening *agnihotra* is gone through. She has her waist girt up with a yoktra (a triple cord of *muñja* grass) in Darśapūrṇamāsa and other sacrifices. She has also to look upon the clarified butter in the pot with a mantra (Tai. S II). 10. 3 ‘mahīnāṁ payosyosadhīnāṁ rasossı adabdhena tvā cakusās vek se suprajāstvāya’ (‘thou art the milk of cows, the fluid of herbs, with an invincible eye I look on thee for securing good progeny’). The wife was to learn the mantras she had to repeat in sacrifices from her father or husband before the husband set up the sacred fires (vide H. of Dh. Vol. II. p. 1041 n). Gradually, the wife lost all importance in Vedic sacrifices and came to be a mere silent spectator²¹⁰⁴ of all the weary details that had to be gone through by the sacrificer and the priest.