Women Intellectuals and Authors of Ancient & Medieval India: I

(This article is the first in a series by Milind Oak exploring the intellectual and literary contributions of women in India from 1 CE to 1857. The series will cover the status of women’s education across different periods, notable women intellectuals and authors, and their literary achievements in various fields, including poetry, philosophy, and religious discourse. It aims to bring forth the often-overlooked contributions of women to India's intellectual and cultural heritage.)

Literary creativity is a rare thing even today among educated people. Perhaps a few thousand have the capability and even among them, few have the passion. All authors are, therefore, usually included in the term 'intellectuals'. However, it is not the only expression of intellectual capability. A person who is an effective orator or preacher is also an intellectual, as effective oratory requires mastery over a subject or multiple subjects and a lucid interpretation of the same. A teacher, particularly of a specialised subject, is also an intellectual, as the ability to impart knowledge assumes mastery over the subject. A master of performing arts can also be an intellectual if he makes a significant contribution to the subject. Being an author implies being intellectual. Being intellectual does not necessarily imply being an author. But overall, writing a treatise remains the dominant feature of intellectual activity. It is in this sense that the title of this article series mentions women intellectuals and authors. It is an attempt to cover those who have left a significant stamp on history in any of these fields.

The articles are divided into time periods 1757-1857 and 1 CE to 1857. Each section contains the status of education in that period as a separate article. This somewhat artificial division is for a purpose. Being intellectual assumes ability to grasp knowledge, which in turn implies ability to read and write. But about this particular time period, 1757- 1857, the impression 'women did not have access to education' is still very strong. There were no public schools for women in the modern sense, of course, a fact. The role in society was limited, and it is also a fact. But it should be seen from the perspective that such was the situation almost all over the world. Some select quotes from a recent study are sufficient to explain the point.

In England, the educationist and a progressive woman Hannah More (1745-1833) argued that 'the profession of ladies, to which the bent of their instruction should be turned is that of daughters, wives, mothers and mistresses of families', while in France a ministerial ruling of 1820 stressed that 'the sole purpose' of female education was to educate girls for 'their natural and respectable vocation' as mothers. In both countries, numerous authors expounded upon the notion that whereas men should be prepared for the masculine sphere of politics and business, women should be educated for motherhood and domesticity.

In fact, universal centrally sponsored education is itself the idea of the 18th Century for humanity. Even in England, the spread of education among women was essentially a form of home schooling rather than co-education in public schools.

In England, in the nineteenth century, the number of boarding-schools for girls continued to increase. The nature of these establishments, however, makes this increase difficult to quantify precisely. Building on early modern practices of household education rather than being formally constituted institutions, many private schools had simply developed from family schoolrooms. For example, the school kept by the Unitarian sisters Helen and Emily Higginson in Derby in the 1820s had grown from their taking in outside pupils to educate with their younger sister Isabella. This pattern of establishment continued to be common throughout the century. Thus, in the 1870s, the London schoolmistress Mrs Herschell replied to a father's enquiry about her establishment by saying that 'I am educating my younger daughter at home, with a few girls of good family'. Even where there was no such familial basis, future schoolmistresses sometimes began simply by taking pupils into their own homes.

The informality of the arrangements involved in opening a school, their vulnerability to market forces, and the absence of any kind of administrative control over private education, meant that many girls' schools were relatively short-lived, disappearing as rapidly as they appeared. In Salford, only eight of the twenty private girls' schools in existence in 1835 had been established before 1830. This transience and the fluidity of the boundaries between the family schoolroom and the school means that it is difficult to determine exactly how many schools for girls were in operation at any one time.

It is more difficult to assess what proportion of the population made use of these schools. SusanSkedd estimates that in Oxfordshire in 1821, only 4% of girls aged 5-15 attended private schools, a figure which points to the elite nature of these establishments. In Manchester, only 3% of the female school-age population were pupils at private schools.

It is due to this background that the status of education of women has been included in a separate article for each period. Home schooling is difficult to quantify. Therefore, it doesn't appear in any 'report'. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The purpose of these articles is to show that there was always a segment of educated women across sections of society from which the women intellectuals emerged. It serves a useful backdrop for the main subject.

It can be argued that women administrators, queens, regents, those who have ruled successfully, also exhibit intellectual capacity. The woman saints in the Bhakti movement are of course also poetesses. The number of such women in the history of India is sufficiently large. However, I have excluded these two categories from the current series as their field of action is primarily different. Women in Tamil Sangamera literature are also not covered here as I do not have enough study of that literature. Even after limiting the scope, the topic is vast enough to cover. Since the intention of the series is limited to making a delightful reading of a less known subject, I have avoided giving strictly chronological treatment to content and giving references in between the articles. The tables given in the appendix and the end notes should partially fulfill the lacuna. There are numerous Indian words in these articles. To standardize the English spelling of Indian words, some academic transcriptions and transliterations have been developed, but they are not widely used outside of academia. Other option is to use italics or some different font for these words. But they hinder the flow of reading. Therefore, I have avoided both methods and left it to the reader's understanding.

I have also skipped entirely the scholarly debates about the dates of these authors, and in very few cases, doubts expressed by some scholars about their authorship. When covering two thousand years of history, in a country constantly ravaged by foreign invasions, one can not expect perfect documentation of everything beyond doubt. Of course I have tried to verify all information for accuracy. Let me mention two cases where I have not been able to access complete documents and yet I have included them in these articles.

I noticed the name Abhiram Kamakshi for the first time in the introduction of Varadambika Parinay by Lakshman Swaroop. He mentions her in a list of Sanskrit poetesses. However, the name struck me because I could not find her in various anthologies. Then, after a few days, I realized that I had read the name in Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's History and culture of Indian people series Vol. 6, The Delhi Sultanate, edited by R. C. Mujumdar. He just mentions, 'Abhirama Kamakshi, wife of Rajanatha I, wrote Abhinuvaramabhyudaya'. Finally, when reading footnotes of an article by Kashi Gomez, I found reference to ‘An Edition of the Abhinavaramabhyudaya of Abhiramakamaksi’, PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1978, by George Meredith Gibbons. The thesis is yet not available on the University of Toronto website, although they have digitised many theses of the last 20-25 years. But based on these references, I have included it in the article.

Another interesting author is Krishna Kamini Dasi. There are multiple references to her collection of poems, published in 1856, Chitta Vilasini. After Savitribai Phule's 'Kavyaphule', published in 1854, this was the only second reference I have found so far of that decade. However, there is no information available about the person or her life. The book is also not available. I could get a few pages of the book, cover page, introduction, and one poem, in a Facebook group. The post also mentioned that the book was digitised in "The Two Centuries of Indian Print project at the British Library". In an e-mail communication, the British Library has confirmed that they have the print copy of the book. Based on references I have included the author in the article. I have also included the few available pages in the appendix.

This is just a bird's eye view of a vast subject. Of the more than 125 women intellectuals I could notice, I have commented upon just a few. The appendix contains the entire list. Please note that the time period mentioned is, in many cases, just an approximation. I have tried to give the notes and references in a sequence of the content of the articles. The bibliography is given in a random sequence.

This series highlights how Indian women across centuries have made significant contributions to literature, education, and philosophy. Their presence in various fields challenges the notion that women's education and intellectualism were absent in earlier times. In the next part, we will explore the status of women's education from 1 CE to 1857, examining historical records, inscriptions, and literary references that provide insights into how women acquired knowledge and participated in scholarly discourse.