How were women educated in the past in Vedic culture?
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question would women go to kurukul in the past otherwise were they educated how answered if we consider the past scriptures do give us some picture of the past it’s not an exhaustive picture, it’s primarily a picture of the times when the lord descended to the world and at that time we do clearly see that the women were also educated Drupadi talks about Dharma and reminds the Kshatriyas about Dharma and there are of course female sages like Karni who are even better at times than male sages so there must have been some mechanical vegetation sometimes we tend to have a very mayavadi idea of India at first that everything was one system not that everything was impersonally one but that all of India just had one homogenous system everywhere no there was in the Mahabharata itself there is diversity described when Bhishma goes to seek the hand of Madri from to her kingdom her brother Shalya says that in our kingdom, in our culture it is the boy who gives, boy’s family who gives gifts to the girl’s family it is opposite to dowry in English word it is the bride price and Bhishma says I know about it and that’s why I brought loving gifts so this kind of cultural diversity was not considered a deviation just except the fact of life except it and you are respected by natural elevation so my understanding as an inference from this is that there must have been some systems for education and in the gurukuls generally the references whatever I have seen it refers to the male gender so do the male students go to gurukuls now females how exactly were they educated maybe they were educated by the older females of the family maybe there was some kind of home schooling just as we see diversity now we can say that there must have been diversity in the past also so the principle in my understanding is that women were protected protected doesn’t mean gifted or deprived protected means that they have a special gift from nature and god that is they are going for the future of humanity they alone are that so for that special privilege that they have for that they need to be protected apart from that how exactly other aspects of their life are managed we see that even the gopis would sometimes go to Mathura or other places to sell butter and other things so were they working women in the sense we have today well not exactly in that sense certainly they were working women so the idea is that people were not deprived just because of their gender and in the name of protection now how exactly what was facilitated for them that is something which we require research and exploration there is no need to demand an absolute homogeneity in the past this homogeneous is everything is one and harmonious is it’s for one purpose so certainly the past was more harmonious with nature and with the source of nature god that people lived in more harmony with the way their bodies and minds were and they lived in harmony with the lord living according to dharma and pursuing bhakti but it’s not that the particular social practices were necessarily homogeneous everywhere