The Brahmanical religious sects were strongly patriarchal and were in confrontation with Shramanic sects mainly Buddhist and Jaina. The Brahmanical sects gave little freedom to women in the form of personal choice and social activity. The code of social behaviour as set out in the Dharmashastras and enjoined on Hindu society made it clear that women had virtually no freedom as they were to be controlled by their father, husband, and son, in the three phases of their life as daughter, wife, and mother.
The Shramana sects were much more liberal in the freedom they allowed women. There was an initial controversy about whether women could become nuns. But soon after, this was allowed, although permission from the husband was required of married women. Shramana texts present a picture of women being active in social life.
In the Hindu case there is a curious contradiction where the woman has little freedom as she has to observe Shastric norms, nevertheless the same society observes an intense and almost desperate worship of the female goddess. The deity is all powerful and is adorned by all the symbols of power. The worshipper is abject in his worship of her. Yet this is not referred to as a matrilineal society but one that is asserting patriarchy.
In subsequent history there are variations in degrees of freedom for women. But despite some concessions in special cases the essentials of matriarchy did not exist. The governance and administration of a political entity was not in the hands of women although occasionally women did succeed to the throne, with hesitant control. Lineages recording power going through matrilineal descent were rare. The history of certain Upanishadic teachers identified by their mother’s name was known but not common. Such markers of identities were not the norm. Women do occasionally comment on the morality of ascetics but moral authority was rarely in the purview of women. Property was equally rarely owned solely by women. However some did have a minimal ownership of property because they are known to have made donations to religious institutions, as for example in the construction of stupas. In medieval times royal women or wives of the wealthy donated wealth to temples and some religious buildings. This was charity and not strictly a secular ownership of property. The women had no control over the use that this wealth was put to.
Women at the two ends of the social spectrum possibly had a freer life, but for different reasons. Those of the elite were symbols of status where freedom was in any case more for effect than for actual function. Those at the very lowest occupation where they either laboured themselves or assisted their husbands in their work, such women were also relatively more free except when the mores of the upper castes reached down and their freedom was curtailed. For example, what did rules such as forbidding women to touch the plough or the wheel of the potter do to their self-esteem? Women laboured in various occupations but had no control over the result of the labour. It was the women of the middle castes who loyally followed the rules laid down for all women.
It is thought by some that there was a time, many centuries back, when matrilineal societies were the accepted initial social pattern in the Indian subcontinent. This was in the days before the coming of the Aryans who brought with them a patriarchal culture. Vestiges of the matrilineal system have remained and are met with more frequently in peninsular India or the Northeast, where the impact of Aryan culture is thought to have been less.
Initially, the arrival of the Aryans soon after 1500 bc perpetuated the system of clan societies in northern India. Despite the patriarchal form, the fact that the clans were nomadic pastoralist, moving from place to place with their herds of cattle ensured an equal status for women as is suggested in the early hymns of the Rig Veda. But as the Aryans moved into the Ganga plain, cleared the forests, settled in village communities and changed from being pastoralists to agriculturalists, the patriarchal element was asserted. The unit of Aryan society was now the patriarchal family, with authority invested in the eldest male, and lineage being traced through the males in the family. This was coupled with the fact that property was inherited by the sons and not the daughters. The increase in the status of the male led to a proportionate decline in the status of the female.
First Divisions
The Aryan distancing from existing social norms is clear from the initial division between Aryan and non-Aryan. A carefully formulated theory of dividing society into castes followed. The Aryans were included among the twice-born castes and the non-Aryans were the Shudras and, later, some were the untouchables. Such a total refusal to allow for assimilation, albeit theoretical, prevented the possibility of the earlier kinship system modifying Aryan patriarchal society. In the working out of the social and legal framework, Aryan orthodoxy supported the privileged position of the male.
Aryan orthodoxy did not however dominate every level of society. It had its effective following amongst those who were grouped in the three upper castes. The Shudras and the outcastes were outside the social pale and evolved their own norms of social behaviour, in spite of the fact that they formed a larger percentage of the total population than any of the other castes. In addition, they also formed, from an early period, the majority of the pastoralists and peasants. Shudra society would have retained far more of the pre-Aryan tradition than upper-caste society. This accounts in part for the fact that women in peasant society have a better status within their own society than the women of upper-caste society, both in the rural areas and in towns.
This excerpt from ‘The Future in the Past’ by Romila Thapar has been published with permission from Aleph Book Company.