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Chanting of veda-s by women.

From the Bhakti List Archives

champakam • February 1, 2003 


Dear members:

Postings from some members continue unabatedly on the issue of 
whether women are authorized by SAstra-s to chant veda-s. In fact, 
one energetic member has attempted posting the same message at least 
six times today.  It is obvious that there are two opposing 
positions, and people who have shared their views have stated where they 
stand on the issue unambiguously.  It is also very clear that one 
side is not going to successfully change the view of the other side.  
Thus, we are not going to reach a consensus in this forum through 
continuing these discussions.  SrI Ramachandran had presented in 
detail some of the reasons on why he believes the sampradAyic 
tradition has a basis.  Unless anyone has specific information 
reflecting the position of any of the well-recognized AcArya-s, I do 
not propose to prolong this discussion.  In the meantime, my only 
advise is that any of you who really want to know how to decide on 
this issue when a need for decision arsies, is to check with your 
AcArya and follow the AcArya's advice.  I can only state that to the 
best of my knowledge, no past AcArya, nor any current well-recognized 
AcArya that I know of (including the chiefs of the major ASramas and 
maTha-s), supports the chanting of veda-s by women.  I contend that 
these AcArya-s are well informed with respect to GArgi, maitreyi, 
etc., and their position is not because they do not have this 
knowledge that some of us are so vigorously putting forth as 
our "pramANa-s".    

By the way, this topic is not completely new to the list either.  It was discussed actively once in Oct. 1996 timeframe, and once in Jun, 1998 time frame.  Those interested in some of the previous discussions can go through the archives.  I located two postings that were of interest from my perspective.  One is by SrI Krishna Kalale dated Oct. 12, 1996, and the other is by J. SrIkanth dt. June 26, 1998. 

Let us move on. 

 
-Moderator.



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