Women in Rgveda

This book deals with the status of women in the period of the Rgveda and treats with much learning and discrimination the difficult problems of the morals and manners, of the marriage and education of women as set forth in the Rgveda. With an impressive impartially, the author brings out the exalted ideals as well as the lapses from them. An historical account of the institution of marriage and its forms is likely to induce in us an idea of the relativety of social habits and customs; yet it reveals the prevalence of an unchallenged tradition, an ideal definite, vivid, and well established and profusely illustrated by the stories of famous women, an ideal which our women, who are not ultramodern accept and aspire to live up to. Marriage is not an instinct but an institution based on an instinct. While we are under a biological necessity to mate and perpetuate our kind as birds and animals, we can make it the basis of a marriage of minds, the interplay of the inmost thoughts and feelings of two human beings. The adjustment of two personalities to a common way of life is full of delights and difficulties, reconciliations and disagreements. Marriage is not to be regarded as a temporary association to be dissolved at the fancy of the parties. There is a good deal to be said for the ideal of the wife as ardhāngi. The Greek myth represents that human beings were originally composed of a man and a woman, that some God divided each being in two and these separated halves are continually searching for one another. To look upon husband and wife as complementaries which make up a whole is the true implication of married life.