The Smritis of this period repeat the anti-feminist doctrines and principles of the older law. But these were subject in practice, as before, to important exceptions. Thus the ancient doctrine of perpetual dependence of a woman (her father, husband, and son protecting her in childhood, youth, and old age respectively) is repeated and amplified by Manu and is paraphrased by Yajnavalkya. Emphasising this principle, they declare the food of a woman without male relatives to be unfit for eating.
Nevertheless, as in the earlier law, marriage by mutual choice (gandharva) is not only recognised but approved, in a qualified degree, both by Manu and Yajnavalkya. Again a girl who is without guardians or whose guardians have neglected to give her in marriage is allowed, as by the older authorities, to select her own husband.
According to an old dictum quoted by Manu, the wife, like the slave and the son, has no right to property. Brothers are bound to give a share of their inheritance to their unmarried sister. Above all, the mother, according to Manu and Yajnavalkya, and for the first time the widow in the latter’s opinion, have the right to inherit a man’s property in the absence of his sons. Women again are entitled to own and bequeath their special property or stridhana.
Concerning religious status, the disabilities imposed upon women by the older law are repeated in our present texts. In Manu a woman’s ineligibility for Vedic study and the worship of the sacred fire is masked by the declaration that after her marriage her service to her husband and her performance of household duties are their substitutes.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
In particular, we are told that women’s sacraments are to be performed without recitation of sacred texts, Yajnavalkya making an exception in favour of the marriage ceremony. A married or unmarried girl is categorically forbidden to make offerings of oblation to the sacred fires. As to general treatment of women, both Manu and Yajnavalkya enjoin in the strongest terms that women should be honoured by their male relatives.
In the penal law of Manu and Yajnavalkya, as in the older Smritis, women are liable to capital punishment for a number of serious crimes such as adultery, breaking reservoirs, killing the husband, preceptor or child, poisoning or arson. But elsewhere Manu himself prescribes simply confinement by the husband and the compulsory performance of appropriate penances even for the very corrupt wife and for one who has repeated the offence with a man of equal caste.
Referring to older texts Manu lays down the doctrine of the complete identity of husband and wife, and deduces there from the corollary of the indissoluble union of both. Accordingly, to forsake the wife, except when she has fallen from caste, is held to be a penal offence. A faithful wife, says Manu, is the gift of the gods, and must be constantly cherished by the husband who seeks to please them.
Hyperbolical descriptions of the spiritual powers of the faithful wife (pativrata) occur not only in the Mahabharata, but also in Tamil works like the Kural and the Silappadikaram. When the husband is gone abroad, his wife is required to live a life of studied restraint. The stories of Sita in the Rumuyana, of Gandhari, Draupadi, Suvitri, and Damayanti in the Mahabharata, of Kannagi in the Silappadikaram enshrine imperishable examples of a wife’s deathless devotion to her husband.