[Advaita-l] Women and Vedas

[Siva Senani Nori]

Lathaji

"Women need not bother" maybe the correct position. I am reminded of another
such instance from the campU rAmAyaNa of bhoja. 

rAma meets kaikeyI after coming to know of her two boons and says: "O mother!
you had always been partial to me, and now, yet again, you have demonstrated
that. I am the elder one and by duty supposed to protect the kingdom from all
kinds of dangers, but you out of your love for me, have given me the meagre
responsibility of protecting myself form wild beasts, and have asked the young
bharata to bear this huge burden." The maryAdapurusha understands kshAtra
dharma clearly and sees ruling as a responsibility, not a right, or a luxury. 

In this case as well, if this position is taken, as opposed to "women and
SudrAs are not eligible", it should be fine. In deed, as your guruji said, the
obligatory nitya and naimittika karmas are a way of repaying riNa to rishis,
and this obligation devolves only on caste-men.

praNAms
Senani

--- latha vidyaranya <lathavidya at yahoo.co.in> wrote:

> hari om,
>   namaste.
>   below is the sentence written by sri sriram:
>   "................one has to agree that Women were not eligible to recite
> Vedas."
>   can i please suggest a small alteration in the wordings?
>   it is not that women are ineligible to recite vedas; my guruji always used
> to tell me that women need not learn and recite vedas as they have no "rinas"
> to be paid back to pitris or rishis or to devas. they are a privileged class!
> whereas men have to pay back the pitri, rishi and deva rinas and hence must
> learn vedas and chant it too. when our Shruthi has extended the women such a
> privilege and told them that it becomes futile for women to chant vedas, we
> need to accept what shruthi tells us. if somebody wants to go against it and
> learn vedas just to prove their "equality" to men, it would be foolish and it
> may even boomerang!
>   namaste.
>   hari om 
> 
> sriram <srirudra at md3.vsnl.net.in> wrote:
>   Dear members
> If one has absolute faith in the Vedas one has to agree that Women were not
> eligible to recite Vedas.The why of it we have to admit honestly that we do
> not know.We may speculate only.We may not be able to avoid criticism on that
> count.We need not play a defencive role either.For e.g Lalitha Saharanamam
> has to be recited after purification of the body by taking bath and wearing-
> madi-that is dried clothes not mixed with already worn clothes.But Sri Vishnu
> Sahasranamam canbe recited without restrictions even while journeying.How do
> I know this?My father has told me like this and I accepted that.It did not
> occur to me to question that bidding.So as SriJaldar has pointed out one has
> to go by his/her family elders advice with all humility and faith in these
> matters.So let us accept What our Acharyas have said in interpretation that
> it is only for our good.This does not mean that women are inferior or they
> cannot get liberation etc.If out of curiosity if a woman is really
>  interested to know what is in theVedas she can attend to discourses by
> eminent Vedic scholars.I don`t think any body would object to that.This
> applies to all including Brahmanas.Durimg certain religious functions our
> Ganabadigal used to recite relevant Vedic mantras and also give the meaning
> and reason why certain things have to be done in certainways only.So I think
> this discussion will not take us any far.Before the eyes of God all are
> equal.We have many instances in our puranic stories that all are equqally
> treated by the Almighty,whether one isa scholar or an illiterate.
> Pranams,R.krishnamoorthy. 
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