WOMEN AND VEDAS

In many social media discussions among people especially Tamil Brahmins is the subject of whether women can learn Veda and chant the same.  There is a school of thought that has proscribed the women from learning the Veda or chanting the same. There is another argument that the sound 'Om' is to be intoned from the bottom of one's stomach and the women will not able to do that and therefore, they can learn the veda but chant it without adding the word 'Om'.  There is another school of thought and proponents of women equality say that in the Vedic times, there were women vedic scholars like Gargi, Maitreyi etc. who were considered Brahmavadinis and they were able to hold their fort against well learned male scholars; therefore, there is nothing barring the women from learning vedas and chant the same.

With all these conflicting information, the issue becomes much more muddled and confusing than getting a clarity of thought as to whether the women can learn and practice Veda. Be that as it may, traditionally women had been chanting slokas with Om. The women themselves had been refraining from all these activities voluntarily during the days of menstruation.  The women had all along had maintained and continued to do so, the sanctity of devotion and chanting of slokas.  But does this give rise to their qualifying to learn and chant the Vedic mantras is a question that is upper most in the minds of many.  

But there is another side to this.  There is an increasing number of women especially in Maharashtra and UP where the women vedic scholars come forward to help perform the final rites of deceased relatives of poor brahmins, help in performing different worships including havans is gaining currency.  In that background, there appears to be no bar on the women learning the vedic mantras and chant them with the same intonation as required with lot of breath control. There is a vedic school run by brothers in Bengaluru which is teaching the Vedas to all irrespective of gender. One of the disciples there is a daughter of one of the brothers and she is an accomplished Vedic scholar who is able to chant the mantras with due devotion, diction and intonation.  However, there is a section of orthodox people who still look with disdain the women learning the vedic mantras and chant them and propagate that women are not permitted to learn the Vedic mantras and chant them.

Let us look at why this barrier came up.  In the Vedic times, the Brahmavadinis as mentioned above, were able to maintain their physical and spiritual interest towards learning and chanting the Vedic mantras.  But in the medieval times, there was plundering of the nation by the invaders from the Central Asia and Middle east in the name of Islam, and later by the Europeans in the name of trade. The marauding Islamic forces were kidnapping the women irrespective of age and the destroying many Vedic schools and literature. The population in the country was afraid for their women folk.Therefore, there was a practice of marrying off the girls pre-pubescent days as young as five or six and also performing the weddings in the night. The practice of Sati also started with the marauders kidnapping the women after killing the menfolk in the battles.  These resulted in the women folk being confined to the kitchen and house hold chores than getting out to learn the Vedas and become a respected vedic scholar.

The practice that started about a a thousand five hundred years earlier, might have impacted the people so much that they had lost the idea of teaching the Veda to all irrespective of gender. So also is the loss of literature on many subjects other than Veda in Sanskrit.  The Veda was taught by word of mouth and therefore, it survived especially in the south of Vindhyas despite the Deccan Sultans and marauding armies of Malik Kafur.  All the subjects were mostly kept written in palm leaf manuscripts and treasured in various schools and in many cases houses of such scholars. The mansucripts were either lost to the termites or the Islamic fundamentalist marauders like Bakhtiyar Khilji who not only destroyed the Nalanda University but put to fire the entire library containing valuable manuscripts on many subjects. The above may be the reason why the women in the Brahmin family voluntarily desisted from or forced to desist from learning Veda or chanting them.