316 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
To disable her from performing such sacrifices Manu prevents her from getting the aid and services of a Bramhin priest.
IV. 205. A Bramhan must never eat food given at a sacrifice performed by a woman.
IV. 206. Sacrifices performed by women are inauspicious and not acceptable to God. They should therefore be avoided.
Woman was not to have any intellectual persuits and nor free will nor freedom of thought. She was not to join any heretical sect such as Buddhism. If she continues to adhere to it, till death she is not to be given the libation of water as is done in the case of all dead.
Finally a word regarding the ideal of life, Manu has sought to place before a woman. It had better be stated in his own words :
V. 151. Him to whom her father may give her, or her brother with the father’s permission, she shall obey as long as he lives and when he is dead, she must not insult his memory.
V. 154. Though destitute of virtue, or seeking pleasure elsewhere, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife.
V. 155. No sacrifice, no vow, no fast must be performed by women, apart from their husbands; if a wife obeys her husband, she will for that reason alone be exalted in heaven.
Then comes the choicest texts which forms the pith and the marrow of this ideal which Manu prescribes for the women :
V. 153. The husband who wedded her with sacred Mantras, is always a source of happiness to his wife, both in season and out of season, in this world and in the next.
V. 150. She must always be cheerful, clever in the management of her household affairs, careful in cleaning her utensils, and economical in expenditure.
This the Hindus regard as a very lofty ideal for a woman!!!
The severity of these laws against Shudras and women show that the phenomenal rise of these classes during the Buddhist regime had not only offended the Brahmins but had become intolerable to them. It was a complete reversal of their sacred social order from top to bottom. The first had become last and the last had become first. The laws of Manu also explain, the determined way in which the Brahmins proceeded to use their political power to degrade the Shudras and the women to their old status. The triumphant Bramhanism began its onslaught on both the Shudras and the women in pursuit of the old ideal namely servility and Bramhanism did succeed in making the Shudras and women the servile classes, Shudras the serfs to the three higher classes and women the serfs to their husbands. Of the black