“Can women recite the Vedas?” asks Mr. Arvindan Neelakandan!

https://swarajyamag.com/amp/story/ideas%2Fcan-women-recite-the-vedas-dharmic-reformists-versus-colonised-traditionalists

I became an avid reader and a near-fan of Arvindan Neelakandan after I read the book “Breaking India” which he co-authored with Rajiv Malhotra about a decade ago.

Neelakandan’s journalistic essays and articles on any subject are almost always well-researched, substantive and extremely readable. His recent article above for The Swarajya under the subject title is however a rather mixed bag in the sense that it mish-mashes Vedic faith, Buddhist history and even elements of the wokeist politics of modern discourse witnessed today in the public domain on gender-discrimination against women.

According to Neelakandan, the prohibition on chanting of Vedas by women is a regressive anachronism that has really no basis in Vedic tenets or ethos. It must hence be discredited and discarded at once. His reasoning for saying so is that it was only latter-day Buddhist misogynistic influence on the Vedic religion which brought in such proscription on women chanting Vedas. I am not anyone to question Neelakandan’s bold assertion. But it is my fear that not many scholars — either Vedic or Buddhist — will find Neelakandan’s views very credible or tenable.

Neelakandan also needlessly seeks to posit some kind of an imagined rift between the “sampradaaya” of Pujyasri Sankaracharya of Kanchi Mattam, Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati, and that of the mystic-saint of Tiruvannaamalai, Sri Ramana Maharishi. He recounts an incident of the past when a personal encounter took place between the two great souls and then uses it to label the legacy of the former he says is being perpetuated today in India by so-called die-hard, reactionary “colonial traditionalists“; and then he goes on to contrast them by hailing the legacy of the latter as an inspiration to today’s Hindutva champions who are driven by their social agenda of “Dharmic Reform“.

Arvindan Neelakandan is a deep scholar of South Indian history and society. I cannot pretend to match his scholastic credentials and will not venture to attempt to refute the gravamen of his thesis. I am sure some other equally deep Vedic scholar as he today will probably engage Neelakandan in a serious conversation over his rather controversial dissertation published in the Swarajya.

As for me, I would only like to put forward my view on the matter to the best of my knowledge:

The Vedic tradition does neither encourage nor discourage women to take up Vedic chanting.

Now, that might sound like a conundrum but it is true. The Vedic way of life did not swing one way or the other when it came to allowing or disallowing women to chant the Vedas. It must be remembered that there are exceptional instances in the Vedic past of very ancient times … say, in the era of Rishi Yagnyavaalkya … of women being brilliant adepts in the Vedas and Upanishads. They were neither encouraged nor discouraged from doing what they did.

It is well known fact that Gargi, along with Vadava Pratitheyi and Sulabha Maitreyi are among the prominent females who figure in the Upanishads. Her philosophical views also find mention in the Chandogya Upanishad. Gargi, as Brahmavadini, composed several hymns in Rigveda (in X 39. V.28) that questioned the origin of all existence. The Yoga Yajnavalkya, a classical text on Yoga, is a dialogue between Gargi and sage Yajnavalkya. Gargi was honored as one of the Navaratnas in the court of King Janaka of Mithila.

Then there is Maitreyi, wife of Yagnyavaalkya. Maitreyi was an Indian philosopher who lived during the later Vedic period in ancient India. She is mentioned in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad as one of two wives of the Vedic sage Yajnavalkya; he is estimated to have lived around the 8th century BCE. In the epic Mahabharata, Maitreyi is described as an Advaita philosopher who never married. She is also known as a Brahmavadini (an expounder of the Veda).The Maitreyi-Yajnavalkya dialogue explores the Hindu concept of Atman (soul or self) in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. It is said that her father, who lived in the Kingdom of the Videhas, Mithila, was a minister in the court of King Janaka.

Now, it should be obvious to anyone that women like Gargeyi or Maitreyi could not have become the Vedic adepts they were without, of course, having thorough knowledge of the Vedic chants on which they conducted philosophical inquiry. From their exceptional and extraordinary examples, it would be reasonable thus to conclude that in the Vedic age there was really no discouragement too of women taking to Vedic studies/chants/’adhyaayana‘.

At the same time, it must also be accepted as historical fact that there was no encouragement either to women to take up ‘vedadhyaayana‘ in the formal and traditional format in which Vedic menfolk were trained to practice it. In the “gruhasthaashrama” code of family life, man and wife were each urged to perform their separate but symbiotic duties in life together in a spirit of humble, harmonious cooperation. The man was expected to devote himself to rigorous Vedic study and ritualism. The wife was expected to enable and support her husband in his lofty endeavor. That was the “dharmic” scheme of things which both were enjoined to adhere. There was really no such thing as any gender discrimination or bias there. It was simply an efficient and practical arrangement of the typical average Vedic household.

Barring the few extraordinary exceptions — like women of the spiritual caliber of a Maitreyi or a Gargeyi — neither in Vedic nor pre-modern history of our ancient land do we see women engaging themselves voluntarily, formally or even informally in the rigors of Vedic learning, study or practice. We have, of course, the examples of great saintly women who were souls of tremendous spiritual luster and accomplishment — women like Sri Andal of Sri Villiputtur or Avvaiyaar or Kaaraikaal Ammaiyaar — and yet we see that they neither wished for nor claimed to have acquired any Vedic proficiency of any sort. The focus of such illustrious women was solely to attain union with Godhood. And they attained their goal through Bhakthi. Lack of Vedic knowledge — either because of lack of opportunity or because of any so-called social prohibition or taboo — did not in the least pose any challenge or obstacle to them in their search for the true and larger spiritual goal viz. Liberation.

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Regarding the main question as to why women even in the Vedic times were not encouraged to undertake “vedadhyaana” — including recitation of Vedic mantras and prashnam-s — (let us assume for a moment that there was discouragement!) it is my own personal belief that I would like to share with both Aravindan Neelakandan as well as the general reader. My belief is based on a simple, rational assessment of the matter in question.

It is well known that the entire body of what we call Veda is “shabdha” — pure Sound. This sound is pure acoustics in the same sense in which we know modern scientific theory of physics studies sonic waves, sonar vibrations and frequencies to be found everywhere around us in the astral and cosmic realms. Those “sonic vibrations” were intuited by the human mind as primordial sound through dint of extraordinary Yogic powers possessed by our ancient rishis. The captured sound became a mantra … and a collection of mantras became a Vedic prashna… and a compendium of Vedic prashnas became Vedic “samhita” from which were further derived much longer passages called “braahmana” etc.

If Veda is properly understood and appreciated to be pure “shabdha” then surely it will be admitted that for Sound to be reproduced properly and to emit and generate the same primordial vibrations as it originally created, it will have to be articulated faithfully in terms of the same acoustic quality, pitch, frequency, tone and timber. If the “shabdha” is to produce the same vibratory effect as that which was experienced by the rishi who first intuited the mantra as revelation, then the fidelity of the sound-waves emitted must replicate the primordial acoustic. Any defective reproduction of “shabdha” will not produce the vibratory aural effect. On the contrary defective or irregular reproduction of sound could produce the opposite of the intended effect of the mantra. This is plain science.

It is a well known fact of biological sciences that the voice-box of a man and a woman differ significantly in their respective properties and characteristics. The sound of the feminine and masculine voices are markedly different. There are certain sounds — notes, melodies and cadences — that only a female voice can produce so as to render it pleasing to the ear. A manly voice would only mar such a melody. Similarly, the gamut of sounds and aural-effects that a stringed instrument like a violin can produce cannot be exactly replicated — or perhaps can be only inadequately reproduced — by a wind-instrument like, say, the flute or the shennai. Likewise, there are certain sounds that are best reproduced only by the masculine larynx or vocal chords.

Now, the difference between the innate properties of the male and female voice has been established by many scientific experiments in laboratories e.g. https://bunnystudio.com/blog/male-vs-female-voice-actors-the-differences-and-what-to-choose/

There was a study conducted to separate such differences. The goal of the study was to determine if there are acoustical differences between male and female voices, and if there are, where exactly do these differences lie. Extended speech samples were used. The recorded readings of a text by 31 women and by 24 men were analyzed by means of the Long-term Spectrum (LTAS), extracting the amplitude values (in decibels) at intervals of 160 Hz over a range of 8 kHz. The results showed a significant difference between genders, as well as an interaction of gender and frequency level. The female voice showed greater levels of aspiration noise, located in the spectral regions corresponding to the third formant, which causes the female voice to have a more “breathy” quality than the male voice. The lower spectral tilt in the women’s voices is another consequence of this presence of greater aspiration noise.

Thus, we see that there is whole body of science and physics behind the phenomena of Pure Sound or “shabdha“. Science does not discriminate sound on the basis of gender.

Similarly, Vedic mantra, while it does not too ever really discriminate “shabdha” as either male or female, it does inherently involve the operation of the properties of pure acoustics. If the voice that emits the sounds of the Veda reproduces the original “shabdha” as intuited primordially, then the desired intended effect of the mantra is immediately experienced. If the voice that emits the sounds does not have the capacity to reproduce “shabdha” with the same phonetic fidelity — or produces it defectively — the Vedic recitation is rendered faulty and infructuous… and at times turns out even counter-purposeful in a harmful sort of way.

Our ancient Vedic seers saw merit in recognizing that the most important requisite for Vedic chanting is for the human voice to possess the right acoustic quality and sonic properties. It was thus generally accepted that Vedic “shabdha” was best reproduced by the male voice-box since it possessed the requisite physical or scientific characteristics. There was no question of any gender-bias in this matter. And the fact that sometimes even men with manly voices were disqualified from training in Vedic chants by gurus who judged them unfit is proof that narrow gender considerations were never at all of any consequence. There is the famous Sanskrit quip which listed out the type of Vedic chanteurs who were to be prohibited in fact from Vedic recitation:

geeti sheegree shirah kampi tathaa likhithapaathakaah:

anarthagnya alpa-kantascha sad etath paathakaadhamaah:

Not for the man with a sing-song voice is Vedic chanting suited; and neither for the man who is feeble-voiced…..

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The Vedic tradition is thousands of centuries old. If it had held certain rules of conduct and religious practice to be sacred and violable, it could not be out of just some whim or mindless prejudice — of the sort that we in the modern age base upon gender, age, social status, patriarchy or any other. The chant of Veda-Shabdha was intended to be the careful preserve of only those who were regarded to be best suited to undertake the task i.e. to be committed and devoted to the preservation and perpetuation of its pristine nature and quality — for all ages and generations to come.

It does not behoove a scholar of the superior class of Aravindan Neelakandan to fall into the temptation of purveying popular but half-baked and speculative theories — such as the attribution of gender-discrimination or bias — on such an ancient and time-honored tradition as our Vedas. We must all strive to preserve and respect Vedic tradition which is civilizational in nature… it is not historical. If we begin to fiddle with it, and take liberties with it, we will do so only at our own peril.

Sudarshan Madabushi