Education in Ancient India c11.s2.7

c11.s2.7

Why Vedic Education was prohibited to Women : The causes of the prohibition of the Vedic education to women during this later period have nowhere been specifically stated; they can only be inferred. When Vedic literature came to be regarded as revealed, it was insisted that it should be very meticulously and accurately committed to memory. The Vedic course also became a lengthy one, requiring a long period of study, and could not be finished till about the age of 24. The marriages of girls, as a rule, were never postponed to this advanced age even during the Vedic period. Usually they took place at about the age of 16 or 17. Girls in well-to-do families therefore could get only about six or seven years for their Vedic studies; they could not therefore carry them out with that exactitude and thoroughness which was insisted upon by the age. In poor families, the exigencies of the household work must have resulted in only very little time being available for Vedic studies after the Upanayana. Girls in such families were often unable to recite even the formulæ in the marriage ritual prescribed for the bride; they had to be recited by the priest or the bridegroom (Go. G. S.. II. 1. 21.; Jai G. S., I. 20). Dilettante Vedic studies were regarded as not only useless, but also dangerous; even the slightest mistake in the recitation of the Vedic hymns was regarded as very disastrous in its consequences. It was therefore probably felt that since women could not study the Vedic literature in the proper manner, its study should be prohibited to them in order to avert spiritual disasters to the family arising out of the mistakes of amateurish Vedic girls-students. Spoken dialect had by this time become completely differentiated from the Vedic speech; women were unable to speak even ordinary Sanskrit and used to express themselves in Prakrits or vernaculars. They must have experienced greater difficulties in correctly pronouncing the Vedic hymns than men, who could speak classical Sanskrit correctly. Leaders of society therefore felt that correct transmittion of the Vedic literature necessitated the prohibition of its study to women. Their Upanayana was therefore also discontinued.