women's intelligence

[Edwin Bryant]

Thank you Sara, and everyone who responded to my query privately or on the
list.  Perhaps I could make a couple more comments in case anyone is
interested in pursuing this thread.  I have not yet collected all the
references that have come in, some of which might pertain to my specific
point of inquiry. 
	
	Women are often aligned with sudras, vaishyas or children, etc
and referred to in a demeaning fashion (ie Bhagavad Gita 9:32).  There are
also various statements denoting an idea of striipraj~naa, etc and
individual women also often refer to themselves as mandhadhii.h when
approaching spiritual personalities.  But most of these statements seem
explainable by the fact that women were generally denied higher learning
and the focus or object of their intelligence was traditionally associated
with the hearth, home and offspring, etc.  With the rise of the ascetic
Upanisadic/Buddhistic traditions, these domestic chores became relegated
to the samsaric, inferior realm, and therefore, by extension, women's
intelligence that had traditionally been tied up with this realm due to
most women's  social circumstances, was often described as inferior or
particular to women, or dull, etc.  And there are anecdotes as early as
the Upani.sads that reveal that when women are able to step outside of
these circumstances they often surprise the so-called intelligent men with
their intellectual abilities.

	My query is whether there is any indication in the Sanskritic
tradition (at any historical point) that the actual intelligence
itself--the cognitive faculty--of women was considered inferior to men's
(as opposed to the *focus* of the intelligence or the social or cultural 
realm within which it was applied). In other words, regardless of social
circumstance, whether women's buddhi, or dhii, or praj~naa was a priori,
constitutionally and inherently considered to be inferior or lesser than a
man's.  

	Bhagavat Purana 4:4:3 notes that Sati is strai.navimuu.dhadhii.
But this could be explained in the manner outlined above (ie her
intelligence was focused on [bewildered by] her concern for her family).
The same text (7:7:16) has Narada stating that, unlike him, his mother had
forgotten the instructions of the sages due to striitvat.  This would seem
to be an essentialized comment about the memory of women as a gender
group (although memory is not quite the same as intelligence).  Here,
again, it could be argued that as a single mother, Narada's mother had to
focus on rearing her child and the traditional chores of womanhood and
therefore had to relegate other topics to the background.  Is there
anything really specific about women's intelligence that cannot be
contextualized in this fashion?  

	Again, your references may have already thrown some light on
this, but I just wanted to throw this out again before the thread dies.
Many thanks,    Edwin Bryant
      


On Fri, 30 Jan 1998, Sara McClintock wrote:

> Regarding Edwin Byant's request:
> 
> One more example from a Buddhist author is found in Candrakiirti's
> Madhyamakaavataarabhaa.sya ad 6.26. The relevant sentence reads as follows
> (translated from the Tibetan, de la Vallee Poussin, p.105):
> 
> "The Tiirthikas, who wish to attain Suchness, desire to reach the most
> excellent (state) without having definitively and correctly understood such
> things as production and destruction, which are well known by the
> uneducated, up to and including even cowherds and women." 
> 
> The interesting thing here is that unlike the Yamaari passage cited by John
> Dunne, in which the women and zuudras are said to be persons "who lack
> analytical judgment" (Tib., rnam par dpyod pa dang mi ldan pa),
> Candrakiirti's texts mentions that women, cowherds and so on are
> "uneducated" (Tib., ma byang ba = Skt. *avyutpanna). The use of this
> locution implies at least some degree of awareness of the role of education
> in developing "intelligence." 
> 
> Regarding the passage from J~naanagarbha cited by Jonathan Silk, it is
> interesting to notice the combination of the two qualities (being female
> and being a cowherd) into one, i.e., "female cowherds" (Tib. lang rdzi mo).
> It is difficult to interpret this because one doesn't know what assumptions
> the author brings to the two categories, and we don't have the original
> Sanskrit. If I had the text at hand, I would check the reading in the
> subcommentary attributed to Zaantarak.sita. [Perhaps someone else has
> access to it?]
> 
> It seems possible that Indian authors were using two separate tropes: one
> in which women and cowherds (or some other group) were seen as two separate
> categories and one in which they singled out the women from within some
> larger social category. An example of the first trope is found in the
> Candrakiirti passage cited above. The translator, at any rate, clearly
> understood the Sanskrit to indicate two separate groups (the translation
> reads "gnag rdzi dang bud med"); this was probably a compound which the
> translator interpreted as a dvandva.
> 
> An example extant in Sanskrit of the second trope (wife of a cowherd or
> female cowherd) is found in the Tattvasa.mgrahapa~njikaa by Kamalaziila ad
> v.3185 in the Dwarikidas Shastri edition, 3186 in the Krishnamacarya
> edition). The context is a discussion of omniscience, but this time we are
> reading a purvapak.sa attributed to the Miimaa.msakaas. The sentence reads:
> 
> katham abhaavapramaa.nagraastiik.rtamuurtter asatas tasya
> pramaa.nabhuutenaagopaalaa:nganaadipratiitena vedena saamya.m bhavi.syati?
> 
> "How could there by any equality between that non-existent entity that has
> been eclipsed by the instrumental means of cognition for non-existence
> [abhaavaprama.na] and the authoritative Veda, which is well-known even by
> the wives of cowherds and so on!"
> 
> The Tibetan translation, gnag rdzi'i chung ma'i bar, for aagopaalaa:nganaa
> supports a tatpuru.sa interpretation of the compound. I have not located
> the parallel passage in Kumaarila's writings (assuming that there is one).
> 
> As a woman scholar, such passages have understandably irked me whenever I
> have encountered them, but until now I have not realized the ambiguity that
> lies at their heart: do the authors intend "women" to represent those who
> are ignorant, or do they specifically intend women of a particular class
> (in which case the ignorance could be understood as due either to the lack
> of education or to the inherent ignorance of the group). In either case, it
> seems clear that if a cowherd is considered stupid, how much more so is his
> wife or daughter.
> ____________________
> 
> Sara McClintock
> Section de langues et civilisations orientales
> Universit� de Lausanne
> email: Sara.McClintock at orient.unil.ch
>