प्राचीन भारत में शिक्षा (डॉ. ए.एस. अल्तेकर - गुरुकुल एवं बौद्ध विहार शिक्षण इतिहास)

IX] FEMALE EDUCATION 213 for boys. We have already seen how this ensured a certain amount of higher education to every Aryan girl. During the period we are reviewing, however, Upanayana began to be gradually prohibited to girls. By about 500 B. C. it had already become a mere formality, not followed by any serious course of Vedic education.¹ The Manusmriti, which was composed at about 200 B. C., goes a step further and declares that girls' Upanayana should be performed without the recitation of Vedic Mantras.² But immediately in the next verse it is stated that it is really the marriage ritual of girls which corresponds to the Upanayana ritual of boys³. It is therefore clear that Upanayana of girls, even as a mere formality, was dying down by the beginning of the Christian era. Yājñavalkya (200 A. D.) therefore takes the logical step of prohibiting Upanayana altogether in the case of girls (I. 13), and all later Smṛiti-writers follow his lead, though some of them like Yama admit that once upon a time girls used to have the privilege of Upanayana and Vedic studies. The discontinuance of Upanayana was disastrous to the religious status of women; they were declared to be of the same status as that of the Shudras⁴ and unfit to recite Vedic Mantras and

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1. तत्र ब्रह्मवादिनीनामग्नीन्धनं वेदाध्ययनं स्वगृहे च भैक्षचर्या । सद्योवधूंनां तूपस्थिते विवाहे कथंचिदुपनयनमात्रं कृत्वा विवाहः कार्यः । Hārīta quoted in V. M. S., p. 402; S. C. S., p. 62.
2. अमंत्रिका तु कार्येयं स्त्रीणामानृदशेषतः । II. 66. Cf. also नास्ति स्त्रीणां क्रिया मंत्रैरिति धर्मे व्यवस्थितिः । IX. 18.
3. वैवाहिको विधिः स्त्रीणां संस्कारो वैदिको मतः । पतिसेवा गुरौ वासो गृहार्थोऽग्निपरिक्रिया ॥ II. 67.
4. वदन्ति केचिन्मुनयः स्त्रीणां शूद्रसमानताम् । Purāṇāntara in V. M. Paribhāshā, p. 40.