Rigveda

[barney]

Rigveda (RV) is the only scripture among those of all religions in which the divine TRUTHS are revealed to women sages and some of these hymns describing the revelation find a prominent place in the Rig Veda Samhita like the hymn 10.125 (tenth mandala, 125 sukta or hymn) attributed to the women sage Vak Ambrini. There are more than thirty women sages in Rig Veda with specific hymns associated with them. In all the Semitic religions like Christianity, Islam etc there is no mention of any revelation to women and no woman is listed among the prominent disciples of the founders or prophets of those religions. For instance the hymn 10.85, the so-called marriage hymn, explicitly states that the daughter in- law should be treated in the family as a queen, Samrajni [queen of Kingdom], by all members especially the mother in-law, husband, father in-law etc. Thus the statement that ' women were oppressed in Hindu society even from the Vedic times' made orally and in popular writings by some analyst is nothing but only propaganda. Some of the quotations given by these critics are from the period of the sutra books, which are dated more than two thousand years later than the Rig Veda. Naturally these critics suppress quotations, which speak of the high status of women in the society of Rig-Vedic period and the period of Upanishads.