The Social and Familial Relationships from the Rigveda to the Vedangas (An Old and Rare Book)

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It gives me great pleasure in placing in the hands of scholars the book of Dr. Uma Chakravarty entitled "The Social and Familial Relationship from the Rigveda to the Vedangas".

The Book is an outcome of a series of lectures delivered by Dr. Chakravarty from 9/12/98 to 19/12/98. Dr. Chakravarty has made a thorough survey of the Vedic literature upto the period of Vedangas in terms of social and familial relationship prevalent during that period of the Vedic society. The interpretations and conclusions are supported by her quoting relevant passages from the texts. This has increased the authenticity of the work. This has also provided the readers an opportunity to examine to what extent Dr. Chakravarty is right in drawing conclusions from those texts cited. I am confident that the scholars and general readers alike will find the work interesting. I am also confident that the work will provoke further thinking in terms of various possible parameters of logical analysis.

I am thankful to Dr. Uma Chakravarty for having accepted my invitation to deliver these lectures in our Centre and also for providing us the press copy for publication of the these lectures. I also thank the UGC for providing financial support right from the arrangement of these lectures up to the publication of this book.

Vedic literature is basically religious literature; so for the study of the contemporary society one does not get much material directly from the texts. Very often the imagery in the texts has to be used as reliable treasure house. In places one has also to read between the lines. Despite obstructions caused by nonavailability of sufficient research material, the progress of scholars in exploration of the truths about Vedic Society till today, is remarkable. Heinrich Zimmer's (1879) Altindisches Leben is the first contribution to this sphere of Vedic study.

The present work is an attempt to study Vedic social and familial relationships. Our predecessors have worked on this theme but each of them worked on one or two of the many relationships. We have sought to study the major relationships and present them in one volume. It is, therefore, hoped that this work will fill a lacuna and help readers to have a glimpse into the major Vedic social and familial relationships in one volume.

PREDECESSORS

Before going to other points of discussions we would like to have a look into the names of scholars who contributed to different aspects of the study of Vedic society.

One may have an over all view of Vedic society in the works of Heinrich Zimmer (1879), Hopkins' (1889), Macdonell and Keith (1912), R. C. Majumdar (ed.) (1951), Jogiraj Basu (1969), G.U. Thite (1975) and also in several of R. S. Sharma's works.

The following authors have worked on Vedic sacrifice, the relation between the sacrificer and the officiating priest and on like subjects: Heesterman (1957, 1959, 1993), U. N. Ghoshal (1957, 1959), Louis Dumont (1966, 1970), Charles Dreckmeier (1962), Leopold SJ. Sabourin (1973) and Bruce Lincoln (1981).

Scholars who contributed to the study of Vedic sacrificer's wife and Vedic woman in a general way are: M. Winternitz (1920), S. C. Sarkar (1928) B. S. Upadhya (1933). A. S. Altekar (1938), Indra (1940), M. W. Pinkham (1941), Sukumari Bhattacharji (1974) and Stephanie W. Jamison (1996).

A good number of scholars have been attracted by the ancient Indian educational system. Some of them are: F. E. Keay (1918), S. C. Sarkar (1926), Santosh Kumar Das (1930), A. S. Altekar (1934), R. K. Mookerji (1947), D. G. Apte (1961), Veda Mitra (1964), Arun Kotenkar (1982), Ralph Mark steinmann (1986) and S. M. Rakhe (1992).

Not many scholars have worked separately on different hostile groups in the Vedic age. We may mention the names of V. R. Ramachandran Dikshitar (1944), Sarva Daman Sing (1989) in this connection.

K. M. Kapadia (1958) started his Marriage and Family in India with Vedic marriage and Sarva Daman Sing (1978) dealt with polyandry in Vedic India in his work Polyandry in Ancient India.

Not a single work on Vedic Parents-children relationship has as yet been published. Gonda's (1985) Fatherhood in Veda, however, may be mentioned in this regard. Hans peter Schmidt (1987) has dealt on "brotherless maiden" in his Some Women's Rites and Rights in the Veda.