Chanting of veda-s by women.

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Dear members:

 

Postings from some members continue unabatedly on the issue of

whether women are authorized by SAstra-s to chant veda-s. In fact,

one energetic member has attempted posting the same message at least

six times today. It is obvious that there are two opposing

positions, and people who have shared their views have stated where they

stand on the issue unambiguously. It is also very clear that one

side is not going to successfully change the view of the other side.

Thus, we are not going to reach a consensus in this forum through

continuing these discussions. SrI Ramachandran had presented in

detail some of the reasons on why he believes the sampradAyic

tradition has a basis. Unless anyone has specific information

reflecting the position of any of the well-recognized AcArya-s, I do

not propose to prolong this discussion. In the meantime, my only

advise is that any of you who really want to know how to decide on

this issue when a need for decision arsies, is to check with your

AcArya and follow the AcArya's advice. I can only state that to the

best of my knowledge, no past AcArya, nor any current well-recognized

AcArya that I know of (including the chiefs of the major ASramas and

maTha-s), supports the chanting of veda-s by women. I contend that

these AcArya-s are well informed with respect to GArgi, maitreyi,

etc., and their position is not because they do not have this

knowledge that some of us are so vigorously putting forth as

our "pramANa-s".

 

By the way, this topic is not completely new to the list either. It was

discussed actively once in Oct. 1996 timeframe, and once in Jun, 1998 time

frame. Those interested in some of the previous discussions can go through the

archives. I located two postings that were of interest from my perspective.

One is by SrI Krishna Kalale dated Oct. 12, 1996, and the other is by J.

SrIkanth dt. June 26, 1998.

 

Let us move on.

 

 

-Moderator.