Gandhi Before Gandhi

Author(s): Bipin Doshi, Priti Shah
Publisher: Jain Academy Educational Research Center Promotion Trust Mumbai

Page 56

GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
elect lady." Whoever will study the composition of this exalted woman will be inspired to know and to keep inviolable the mutual relations of husband and wife. Indeed, in the ages to which I refer, the wife was the queen of the household, whose word was law to the members of the same, and who, like the mothers of this age, would arouse the household at early dawn and set everyone from the oldest to the youngest to his and her proper task, and whose example was the bright light to which all eyes were turned. I do not mean to say that all women and maidens in that age were virtuous and true. My object is to truthfully set forth the foundation facts, and the dominant purpose. Contemporaneous testimony before the days of Christ, of biggest authority, which are now extinct, proves that the women of India were noticeable for their modesty and chastity. Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador, three hundred years before Christ, found in India, two reasons for great admiration. The first was the absence of slavery and the second the chastity of the women. In a previous lecture and in my classes also, I have given you, in some detail a true account of the marriage customs of my people, and the constitution of the Hindu family, and will not, therefore, at this time enlarge in this direction. But I will describe to you in a short way the sacred ceremony of marriage, leaving out the mere secular, social and incidental exercises. Amongst the hymns recited at that ceremony, some are such as these.
services, the same as performed by men. In those days before my country knew the demands, the tendencies and the restrictions of other civilization against women, there were no restrictions of an unwholesome character, nor were they kept in seclusion, denied education or excluded from the highest positions in society. Wives and brides were veiled often, not by any law or custom imposed upon them, but in obedience to the modest impulses of their own heart, but they had unrestricted liberty to go and come within the limits of self-imposed propriety. Prominent amongst the names of distinguished women, whose examples and wise precepts are embalmed in the sweet and holy measures of many hymns composed by themselves, one amongst is that of Vishapavara, the interpretation of whose name is itself a commemoration of her virtues and learning-which is, the
"May the husband, and the wife be well united," turning to the bride the priest would say, "Oh, maiden, the graceful sun had fastened thee with ties of maidenhood" (which means that up to this time she had lived free from the carnal knowledge of any man). "We release thee now of these ties, we place thee with thy husband in a place which is the home of truth and the
55