[Advaita-l] Gayatri?

Praveen R. Bhat bhatpraveen at gmail.com
Thu Sep 3 00:11:18 CDT 2009


Hari Om, Sunil-ji,

Apologies for digging out an old post, I'm just catching up a bit.

On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 4:54 PM, Sunil
Bhattacharjya<sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com> wrote:
> One reason for allowing uapanayana for some women in the ancient times could be that the fathersĀ  of such women were vedic rishis themselves

To my understanding, the onus of vedAdhyAyana by the girl rests with
the father, before marriage of the daughter and post
marriage, it lies with the husband. From Jaldhar-ji's detailed
references about brahmacArinis doing vedAdhyAyana seems to be the
case wherein girls who decided to not marry and lost their father did
it on their own.


>
> Secondly I read long ago that the vedic education was strictly for the Brahmanas in the Satya yuga. It was relaxed for Kshatriyas in the Treta yuga. The Vaishyas could learn vedas in the Dwapara yuga. In Kaliyuga the rstrictions were further relaxed. Further even in the ancient times some discretions were also permitted as otherwise how could Sayakama, being a low-born have learnt the Vedas.

Going by general social order existing today, ignoring specifics, one
may have to conclude the other way around because we've
only seen upanayana as well as Veda saMskAra even among Brahmins
decline now, if not across yugas. :)

praNAms,
--Praveen R. Bhat
/* Through what should one know That owing to which all this is known!
[Br.Up. 4.5.15] */



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