Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s21.291

v1.c3.s21.291

Moreover, the wife was a regular participator in the offerings of the husband. In this connexion the term Patnī regularly applies to her in the Brāhmaṇas,¹⁰⁷ where Jāyā designates her in her conjugal capacity, not in that of sharer in the sacrifice. In this respect her position gradually deteriorated: thus the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa¹⁰⁸ describes a certain ceremony in which the wife (jāyā) alone offered the oblation in former times, while later a priest might do so instead. The same Brāhmaṇa shows other traces of a lowering in the position of women, probably due to the growing sense of the importance of ceremonial priority.¹⁰⁹ So in the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā¹¹⁰ women generally are classed with dice and drink as three chief evils, and woman is declared to be ‘untruth,’¹¹¹ and connected with Nirṛti, ‘calamity.’¹¹² A woman too, according to the Taittirīya Saṃhitā,¹¹³ is inferior even to a bad man, and a sarcastic reference is made in the Kāṭhaka Saṃhitā¹¹⁴ to her power of getting things from her husband by cajolery at night. On the other hand must be set the encomia on woman: a woman is half her husband,¹¹⁵ and completes him;¹¹⁶ and in the Rigveda¹¹⁷ attacks on women mingle with the general assumption of their good qualities. None the less, the Brāhmaṇas clearly indicate a gradual decline in their position, which is evident from the rule that requires the wife to eat after her husband.¹¹⁸ Scolds were also known: the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa¹¹⁹ praises the wife ‘who does not answer back’ (*aprativādinī*). Women bore no part in political life: men go to the assembly, not women, the Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā¹²⁰ expressly says. On the other hand, with the advance of education, women shared in the intellectual interests of the day, as is exemplified by Yājñavalkya’s¹²¹ two wives, of whom one was interested in his philosophical discussions, the other not. Other women are also referred to in the Upaniṣads as teachers, but whether they were married is not certain.¹²²