Republics in Ancient India, c. 1500 B.C.–500 B.C. c7.511

c7.511

Another significant claim of Professor Sharma is that "women attended the meetings of the *vidatha* and took part in its deliberations", and that it was "a sort of assembly." He further says that in some cases "the *Vidatha* means a family council", which he compares to the council of the Iroquois, which generally served as the "democratic assembly of all adult male and female members of the gens, all with equal voice".³ "In this respect," Sharma continues "the *Vidatha* was completely different from the earliest known Greek Roman and German popular assemblies, in which woman did not find any place."⁴ He infers the antiquity of the *vidatha* by noticing the right of women to take part in popular assemblies according to the old Welsh laws of "not later than the eleventh century A.D."⁵ These institutions of a civilised mediaeval people can hardly be accepted as evidence of women's rights among the earliest Indo-European peoples, except by one who is fully convinced of the absolute accuracy of the Marxist hypothesis that matriarchy invariably preceded patriarchy.⁶