Education in Ancient India c11.s2.43

c11.s2.43

Female Education and Economic Independence : In ordinary families, literature and the fine arts were usually the favourite topics of female education. This education was of course not calculated to make women economically self-sufficient, but we must note that the theory that women ought to be economically independent is of quite a recent origin.⁵ In the case of emergency, however, the Hindu woman could eke out a humble subsistence for herself and her children by taking to spinning and weaving in her spare time. In Pali literature we find instances of wives imploring their dying husbands to keep composed by pointing out that they could maintain the family by their skill in spinning and weaving⁶. The *Artha-śāstra* of Kauṭilya lays down that the state superintendent of weaving should make special arrangement for sending cotton to and receiving the yarn from those women, who were crippled, or whose husbands were dead or had gone abroad, and who were thus compelled to seek work for their subsistence¹. There is evidence to show that during the 9th century also widows, who were unprovided for, used to have recourse to spinning for their maintenance². This humble but independent means of existence was available to the women in distress in India down to the middle of the last century, when the hand spinning and hand weaving industry was crushed out of existence by the mill competition.