Education in Ancient India c11.s2.2

c11.s2.2

Deterioration in religious Status : Female education received a great setback during this period primarily owing to the deterioration of the religious status of women. During the earlier period, Upanayana ceremony was as much obligatory for girls as it was for boys. We have already seen how this ensured a certain amount of higher education to every Aryan girl. During the period we are reviewing, however, Upanayana began to be gradually prohibited to girls. By about 500 B. C. it had already become a mere formality, not followed by any serious course of Vedic education.¹ The Manusmriti, which was composed at about 200 B. C., goes a step further and declares that girls' Upanayana should be performed without the recitation of Vedic Mantras.² But immediately in the next verse it is stated that it is really the marriage ritual of girls which corresponds to the Upanayana ritual of boys³. It is therefore clear that Upanayana of girls, even as a mere formality, was dying down by the beginning of the Christian era. Yājñavalkya (200 A. D.) therefore takes the logical step of prohibiting Upanayana altogether in the case of girls (I. 13), and all later Smṛiti-writers follow his lead, though some of them like Yama admit that once upon a time girls used to have the privilege of Upanayana and Vedic studies. The discontinuance of Upanayana was disastrous to the religious status of women; they were declared to be of the same status as that of the Shudras⁴ and unfit to recite Vedic Mantras and perfom Vedic sacrifices. The wife's association with the husband in the family sacrifices became a formal matter and there were some theologians like Aitiśāyana who were opposed even to this formal participation. (P.M., VI. 1. 2. 2.)