The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 2/Reports in American Newspapers/Ideals of Womanhood
IDEALS OF WOMANHOOD
(Brooklyn Standard Union, January 21, 1895)
Swami Vivekananda, after being presented to the audience by Dr. Janes,
president of the Ethical Association, said in part:
"The product of the slums of any nation cannot be the criterion of our
judgment of that nation. One may collect the rotten, worm-eaten apples under
every apple tree in the world, and write a book about each of them, and
still know nothing of the beauty and possibilities of the apple tree. Only
in the highest and best can we judge a nation — the fallen are a race by
themselves. Thus it is not only proper, but just and right, to judge a
custom by its best, by its ideal.
"The ideal of womanhood centres in the Arian race of India, the most ancient
in the worlds history. In that race, men and women were priests, 'sabatimini
[saha-dharmini],' or co-religionists, as the Vedas call them. There every
family had its hearth or altar, on which, at the time of the wedding, the
marriage fire was kindled, which was kept alive, until either spouse died,
when the funeral pile was lighted from its spark. There man and wife
together offered their sacrifices, and this idea was carried so far that a
man could not even pray alone, because it was held that he was only half a
being, for that reason no unmarried man could become a priest. The same held
true in ancient Rome and Greece.
"But with the advent of a distinct and separate priest-class, the
co-priesthood of the woman in all these nations steps back. First it was the
Assyrian race, coming of semitic blood, which proclaimed the doctrine that
girls have no voice, and no right, even when married. The Persians drank
deep of this Babylonian idea, and by them it was carried to Rome and to
Greece, and everywhere woman degenerated.
"Another cause was instrumental in bringing this about — the change in the
system of marriage. The earliest system was a matriarchal one; that is, one
in which the mother was the centre, and in which the girls acceded to her
station. This led to the curious system of the Polianders [polyandrous],
where five and six brothers often married one wife. Even the Vedas contain a
trace of it in the provision, that when a man died without leaving any
children, his widow was permitted to live with another man, until she became
a mother; but the children she bore did not belong to their father, but to
her dead husband. In later years the widow was allowed to marry again, which
the modern idea forbids her to do.
"But side by side with these excrescences a very intense idea of personal
purity sprang up in the nation. On every page the Vedas preach personal
purity. The laws in this respect were extremely strict. Every boy and girl
was sent to the university, where they studied until their twentieth or
thirtieth year; there the least impurity was punished almost cruelly. This
idea of personal purity has imprinted itself deeply into the very heart of
the race, amounting almost to a mania. The most conspicuous example of it is
to be found in the capture of Chito [Chitor] by the Mohammedans. The men
defended the town against tremendous odds; and when the women saw that
defeat was inevitable they lit a monstrous fire on the market place, and
when the enemy broke down the gates 74,500 women jumped on the huge funeral
pile and perished in the flames. This noble example has been handed down in
India to the present time, when every letter bears the words '74,500,' which
means that any one who unlawfully reads the letter, thereby becomes guilty
of a crime similar to the one which drove those noble women of Chito to
their death.
"The next period is that of the monks; it came with the advent of Buddhism,
which taught that only the monks could reach the 'nirvana', something
similar to the Christian heaven. The result was that all India became one
huge monastery; there was but one object, one battle — to remain pure. All
the blame was cast onto women, and even the proverbs warned against them.
'What is the gate to hell?' was one of them, to which the answer was:
'Woman'. Another read: 'What is the chain which binds us all to dust?
Woman'. Another one: 'Who is the blindest of the blind? He who is deceived
by woman.'
"The same idea is to be found in the cloisters of the West. The development
of all monasticism always meant the degeneration of women.
"But eventually another idea of womanhood arose. In the West it found its
ideal in the wife, in India in the mother. But do not think that the priests
were altogeher responsible for this change. I know they always lay claim to
everything in the world and I say this, although I am myself a priest. I'll
bend my knees to every prophet in every religion and clime, but candor
compels me to say, that here in the West the development of women was
brought about by men like John Stuart Mill and the revolutionary French
philosophers. Religion has done something, no doubt, but not all. Why, in
Asia Minor, Christian bishops to this day keep a harem!
"The Christian ideal is that which is found in the Anglo-Saxon race. The
Mohammedan woman differs vastly from her western sisters in so far as her
social and intellectual development is not so pronounced. But do not, on
that account, think that the Mohammedan woman is unhappy, because it is not
so. In India woman has enjoyed property rights since thousands of years.
Here a man may disinherit his wife, in India the whole estate of the
deceased husband must go to the wife, personal property absolutely, real
property for life.
"In India the mother is the centre of the family and our highest ideal, She
is to us the representative of God, as God is the mother of the Universe. It
was a female sage who first found the unity of God, and laid down this
doctrine in one of the first hymns of the Vedas. Our God is both personal
and absolute, the absolute is male, the personal, female. And thus it comes
that we now say: 'The first manifestation of God is the hand that rocks the
cradle.' He is of the 'arian' race, who is born through prayer, and he is a
nonarian, who is born through sensuality.
"This doctrine of prenatal influence is now slowly being recognized, and
science as well as religion calls out: 'Keep yourself holy, and pure.' So
deeply has this been recognized in India, that there we even speak of
adultery in marriage, except when marriage is consummated in prayer. And I
and every good Hindoo believe, that my mother was pure and holy, and hence I
owe her everything that I am. That is the secret of the race — chastity."