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Re: Question regarding Chanting of Vedas by women

From the Bhakti List Archives

Malolan Cadambi • January 27, 2003 


Dear Members,

It is quite true that stree-s are not allowed to chant vedam. There is a
reason for this. As you know the veda mantara-s are made up of bIja, and
other parts. They have to be chanted within the strict rules of phonetics
(siksha). They have strict prosodies.

The mantara-s of the veda-s evolve from the nAda-brahman. Dr V Varadachari
has written about the nAda brahman in his book "Agamas and South Indian
Vaishnavism". As you would know, there are six chakras through which the
power of the brahman (sakti) is invoked through yogic practices.

The anatomy of a women is much different from that of a man. This is
scientifically true. I wrote about the chakra-s a few days back. You might
want to read about them here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bhakti-list/message/17140

Given this fact, the Siksha or phonetics of a mantra cannot be invoked by a
stree. The chanting of the mantras is not a mere process of utterances from
the mouth. It involves much more than that.

However, as you would know there are exceptions to that. We had vedic women
seers like Maitreyi, Gargi et al. Please note that these sages are not just
mere humans like us, who now live in the dark age of the Kali Yuga.

Indeed, everyone can chant the stotra-s. Sriman Sadagopan Iyengar of
Coimbatore had written an excellent article about that sometime back. It is
in the archives.

Present conditions are something completely different. We would be better
off by understanding the rationale behind the practices of those times
instead of understanding the mud wallow that present day society is in now.
This is of course the case when are thoughts are within the parameters of
vedantic thinking.

There is a good article in this following website which seems to cover some
contemporary issues within the background of hinduism.

http://www.atributetohinduism.com/Women_in_Hinduism.htm

Just a thought: We would be better of discussing this topic in the
sv-general group.

Regards,

Malolan Cadambi




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