Women's Rights and Law Codes in Early India, 600 BCE–570 ACE

Sita Anantha Raman

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429535680
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

This book looks at the first eight Sanskrit law codes written in India, between 600 BCE and 570 ACE. It focuses on the legal, religious and ethical customs which were codified in this period and their impact on the social and political life of women.

The volume analyzes texts such as the Dharma S?tras, the Artha??stra, the Manu Sm?iti, the Y?j?yavalkya Sm?iti, and N?rada Sm?iti, amongst others. It studies discourses on justice, conduct, virtues and duties, and how early laws were used to systematize patriarchy and the varna caste system in South Asia. It examines how patrimonial laws and male property rights highlighted social anxieties about female chastity and varna lineage, which led to the subordination of women and the lower varnas. These anxieties are most evident in codes from the late Vedic and early classical eras when diverse new settlers arrived upon the subcontinent. At this time, kings decentralized governance and allowed local groups to practice communal laws, while they meted out court justice with a specific law code. As the state became prosperous from trade conducted by merchants of diverse castes, sects, and classes, and social peace was ensured by officials from disparate backgrounds, kings began to rely upon a law code that aspired for equity above intolerance. These chapters examine heterodox Ther?vada Buddhism and Jainism, their origins in the oligarchic state, their impact on the royal Sanskritic state, as seen in canonical literature. They especially focus on women's roles in heterodox sects, and the emergence of new spaces for women, as such changes were adopted in disparate ways and degrees by other South Asian communities.

The volume will be a useful resource for students and researchers of history, women and gender studies, social anthropology, sociology, and law. It will also serve as an information guide for readers who are interested in the political, and social life of women in early India

Part I
HISTORICAL PRELUDE

1
Antecedents and preview

Early South Asian civilization was notable for its unique creative endeavors, as well as sociocultural mergers of diverse linguistic and ethnic groups.¹ This feature of immersion and borrowing, yet distinction, remains a feature of the region even today, with women playing a crucial part in the transfer of heritage. Paleolithic sites reveal that hunter-gatherers attributed nature’s fertility to female sexual power, as seen in the discovery of an animistic icon of the vulva-womb (yoni; ca. 6000 BCE) in a cave shrine in Baghor, Madhya Pradesh, a symbol of divine female energy that is still venerated today.² Women were respected as economic producers, as well as for being the reproducers of clans, a trait still evident among some tribes in south India.³ This is evident in Mesolithic caves in Bhimbetka, Madhya Pradesh, and Kurnool, Andhra (30,000–10,000 BCE), whose paintings reveal women working alongside men.

Harappan-Indus civilization

Such religio-cultural beliefs were reaffirmed with the spread of agriculture in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic (Bronze) ages (5000–2800 BCE), as women helped to plant and reap crops for the clan. As the home was regarded as the sacred site of births, women probably also conducted rites to the goddess of fecundity, a practice that remains common even today. Archaeology also provides clues on gender relations in the first urban experiment of the Indus-Harappan civilization (ca. 7000–2700–1700 BCE).⁴ Numerous terracotta and bone icons of goddesses, some of nursing mothers, were strewn across Harappan sites such as Mehrgarh (7000 BCE), Kulli, Zhob, Nal, Harappa, and Mohenjo-dāro (2700–1900 BCE).⁵ Their profusion and the clay lamps unearthed outside street homes indicate the prevalence of matriarchal customs, including domestic rites by women. Yet the small but imposing limestone statue of a contemplative priest-king (‘śramana’) also suggests that the overarching religio-political authority lay in male hands. This civilization was notable for its extensive town planning, granaries, docks, and smaller artifacts such as a bronze dancing woman; beads; and terracotta seals, one engraved with an image of a plant emerging from a woman and another of a male god who resembles Śivā as Mahāyogi.⁶ The prosperity of this large civilization depended on an agricultural, industrial, and mercantile workforce, which must have included women.

Scholars who have tried to decipher the Harappan seals have offered various theories on the language and script. As the earliest Indus sites predate the arrival of Indo-Āryans who spoke Sanskrit (ca. 2200 BCE), some notable epigraphists have proposed that the Indus inhabitants spoke proto-Dravidian, the matrix of later south Indian languages. Finnish scholar Asko Parpola used computers and scientific methods to unravel the Indus script, which he concluded was in a proto-Dravidian language. Epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan, a scholar of Tamil-Brahmi rock inscriptions (200–400 BCE), concurred that the Indus script was proto-Dravidian.⁷ Recent studies strongly indicate that Harappans were descendents of Middle Eastern groups from Elam, where agriculture developed.

The mature phase of the Harappan civilization (ca. 2200–1900 BCE) marked the arrival of pastoral, patriarchal Indo-Āryan clans who spoke Sanskrit (ca. 2200 BCE).⁸ Archaeologists have unearthed settlements of Indo-Āryans near the Caspian and Black Sea region, which was probably the initial Indo/Iranian/European homeland. Linguists favor Eastern Europe as the homeland, as it has numerous Indo-Āryan languages, unlike South Asia and early Iran, each having a single language like Sanskrit and early Persian. Similarities between early Persian and Sanskrit suggest that these two groups initially travelled together into Central Asia before one went to Iran and the other entered South Asia. What is truly significant is that fairly soon after their arrival, considerable genetic interaction between Sanskrit speakers and indigenous proto-Dravidian/tribal ethnic groups forged new communities with shared linguistic heritages.

Teams of international geneticists have done studies on the Y-chromosomes of male subjects from Asia.⁹ These scientific studies confirm that there occurred a significant dispersal of Indo-Āryan male chromosomes from the Caspian and Black Sea region (ca. 5000 BCE) into Central Asia and thence into South Asia (ca. 2200 BCE). As the patriarchal Indo-Āryan clans were predominantly male, they had relations with or married local women, who bore progeny with both sets of genes. Earlier genome studies were inconclusive on Indo-Āryan genetic heritage, as the studies were chiefly of matrilineal DNA that connected subjects to maternal ancestors in South Asia. The arrival of early tribal and disparate caste groups is also being studied by geneticists (see Introduction, fn. 2). These scientific discoveries negate theories that South Asia was the original Indo-Āryan homeland.¹⁰

Although Indo-Āryan arrival coincided with the later stages of the Harappan civilization, it is unlikely that pastoralist warriors, who arrived in trickles, could have destroyed the fortified walls of complex cities. They may have been encouraged by the availability of grain and other wealth, and minor skirmishes were more likely than a military ‘invasion’. The Indus cities also do not appear to have buildings for military battalions or for weapons, but, as they depended on trade of agricultural and manufactured products, they probably encouraged visitors. Moreover, despite Indo-Āryan pride in martial prowess, the small clans would have been unlikely to collide with a vast, urban civilization of great wealth and power. Instead, cooperation and integration would have mutually benefited immigrants and the Indus elite. What is known is sometime after settling in South Asia, Sanskrit-language priests composed the scriptural Rig Veda’s first volume (ca. 1900 BCE), completing its final, tenth volume (ca. 1000 BCE) after the Sanskritic clans reached the Yamuna region. The Rig Veda does not refer to battles between spear-wielding pastoralists and massive armies emanating from Indus fortifications.

In the waning Harappan era, it is likely that Sanskritic brāhman priests shared their religious ideas with the Indus priestly elite, to whom they were now related. This is suggested in the excavation at Kālibangān (ca. 2000 BCE) of large fire mounds, often termed ‘fire altars’, near a large building possibly used for priestly rituals.¹¹ Given the paucity of women in the early Sanskrit clans, it is entirely probable that Indo-Āryan clansmen won access to Harappan women and that mixed offspring expanded the Sanskritic clans. In return, clansmen acquired knowledge on managing an urban empire, with access to vast territories with an agricultural and industrial labor force. The strategic creed to ‘live and let live, and to skirmish with Others only if unavoidable’ now became the established pattern of Indic civilization. Over the next millennium, Sanskrit texts reveal dynamic genetic-cultural medleys in the spate of socioreligious interfaces between Sanskritic and Dravidian/tribal groups, who adopted each other’s languages, beliefs, and practices.

Preview: Vedic era (ca. 2000–300 BCE)

During the early and later Vedic periods (ca. 2000–800–300 BCE), Indo-Āryan clans extended sway over the northern Gangetic regions. Sanskrit became the language of the elite, who publicized their ideals on royal authority, women’s roles, and the functions of the varnas, that is, brāhman priests, kşatŗiya kings/soldiers, vaiśya folk/merchants, and śudra workers. Indo-Āryan territorial and social expansion appears in the scriptural Rig Veda, whose first book was composed (ca. 1800 BCE) after their arrival on the subcontinent and whose tenth and final book (ca. 1000 BCE) shows their initial slow advance to the Yamuna-Gangetic Doab near Delhi. Over the next centuries, Sanskritic groups acquired large territories in the north, west, and east into the Ganges plains, soon dominating earlier inhabitants, including diverse communities who spoke their own languages. Territorial expansion led to the creation of the political state (800 BCE) as kingdoms and oligarchies, whose leaders were kşatŗiyas, some having brāhman advisors. As patriarchal customs allowed polygamy for elite varna men, they took multiple wives from local communities, thus effectively bequeathing Sanskritic paternal lineage, cultural heritage, and norms to their mixed offspring. This was an ongoing process in the Vedic eras, and it continued during the millennia of further occupation across the peninsula. This process explains the subtle local transformations of Sanskritic norms across the peninsula. The connotation of the term ‘Sanskritic’ is thus linguistic/cultural/ethnic, rather than racial, as all humans belong to the race of Homo sapiens sapiens. This study proposes that the formation of the Sanskritic state facilitated the adoption of Sanskritic cultural norms across the peninsula.

Between 1000 and 300 BCE, Sanskritic political and social dominance reshaped local beliefs, languages, cultures, and indigenous practices, which in turn infused Sanskritic society. By 1000 BCE, the Sanskrit Vedic corpus was expanded to comprise four major scriptures, that is, the Rig Veda, Sāma Veda, Yajur Veda, and Atharva Veda, and by 800 BCE, each had four sections, a hymnal (Saḿhitā), liturgy (Brāhmanā), forest texts (Āraņyaka), and philosophical works (Upanişads). The growing power of kingdoms over oligarchies led brāhman priests to the liturgical Brāhmanās, which catered to kşatṛiya kings who wished for large fire rituals upon ascension and victory. Yet these rites burned large forests and destroyed their denizens, including indigenous tribal groups. Two dissident streams of thought then challenged orthodox Brāhmanā ritualism. The less radical appear in the early Upanişads, such as the Iśāvāsyo U., Aitareyo U., Chāndogya, and Taittarīya U. Sage-composers now advocated meditation on the inner Breath (Prāna) and detachment, which give insights into the Truth, that is, the spiritual unity of the individual (Ātman) and the cosmic Being (Brahman).

Devotional movements were inspired by myths of Vedic gods seen through the lens of Vedic-classical society. These deities appear in secondary, or ‘remembered’ texts (smṛitīs) such as the Sanskrit epics Rāmāyana (ca. 800–500 BCE) and Mahābhārata (ca. 900–200 BCE) and the Mahābhārata’s devotional addendum, the Bhagavad Gīta (ca. 300 BCE), which highlights the path of dedicated, selfless acts (karma) and devotion (bhakti) to the Supreme in a deified form. The formation of the royal kingdom is celebrated in the Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata. The Rāmāyana may have originally been an ancient Indo-Āryan myth about a heroic king who rescues his wife, but it was now set in the kingdom of Ayodhya (in Uttar Pradesh), whose heroic king Rāmā rescues his abducted wife Sīta, daughter of the king of Mithila (in Bihar), from the demon king Rāvanā (in Srī Lankā). The core of the Mahābhārata set in the Yamuna-Ganges confluence near Hastināpurā (Delhi) may be older than the Rāmāyana, but it was completed later. The Mahābhārata revolves around a struggle for the throne between two factions, namely the virtuous Pāņdavā brothers led by Arjunā and their ruthless Kauravā cousins. The Pāņdavās are assisted by Kṛşņa, king of Dwārakā (in Gujarat), whose divine intervention saves queen Draupadi from Duryodanā’s clutches. The Mahābhārata’s poetic addendum, Bhagavad Gīta (ca. 300 BCE), is set on the battlefield as a metaphor for life and its struggles. In this highly sacred work, Kṛşņa urges Arjuna to fight bravely, as selfless endeavors in a righteous cause and devotion (bhakti) bear their just rewards. In the early and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Sanskrit law codes and the royal state
• Part I Historical prelude
• Part II Later Vedic era and Dharma Sūtras
• Part III Mauryan–classical era: Arthaśāstra and Manu Smŗiti
• Part IV Later classical era: Yājňyavalkya Smŗiti and Nārada Smŗiti