If we treat the word chastity as divisible, it is said, that the word comes from the root “to learn” and is grammatically transformed just as from the word “to study” to that of studies, into chastity. Besides if we consider it from the proverbial saying, “what is known as chastity is to abide by one’s word”, its meaning becomes, being honest and truthful to one’s promise or not to go against contract made. On the other hand, if the term is considered as indivisible, then it seems to refer to perfection in women. However, it is not clear how this perfection came to be attributed only to women. If we explore the term perfection however, the given meanings are: innocence, steadfastness and of course chastity. Though one does not find any evidence as to why the last meaning “chastity” should apply only to women, one certainly gets its meaning as firmness or steadfastness.
If one looks for the systematic meaning of the term firmness, in the context, it could be understood as pure, that is, unsullied or innocent. In English also it appears that the term pure means unsullied, that is, the term chastity refers actually to virginity. Accordingly, the term not being specific to either male or female, could be seen as applicable generally to the entire humanity in its condition of being pure, that is innocent of sexual intercourse. Therefore chastity refers not only to women and that once sexual intercourse has taken place, man and/or woman, however pure, cannot anymore claim to be chaste. But only when contextualised within the Aryan discourse, my own opinion is that the term comes to acquire the meaning of slave/subject, that is a woman who holds her husband as god, one determined to be a slave to her husband and one who does not regard anyone other than her husband. In addition, this meaning of slave becomes clarified by the term (within the same discourse) used for husband (pati) meaning authority, employer or hero. However, as terms such as heroine (in Tamil) refer to the wife only in the context of actual love between a man and a woman, they are not used in their true sense for women bound within formal family life.
Seemingly egalitarian terms such as hero and heroine mostly refer to the specific reality of male-female love relations in stories and puranas. Therefore when the reference is to love or lust, egalitarian words such as nayaka-nayaki or hero-heroine are deployed and when the condition of chastity is to be explained, the reference is limited to women under control, and the husband (pati) is simultaneously mentioned as having the quality of dominance as god.
In this context, the position even of our Tiruvalluvar makes me a bit confused. That is, in the 6th chapter which speaks of Good Life-partnership, the 9th chapter where joining the Women is explained and also on several other individual contexts, in the matter of women, one is led to think, that slavishness and inferiority are being valorised. For example, it is said that if a woman, who does not worship any other god except her own husband, if she orders it, the very rain would start coming down instantly. And again the husband is referred to as the possessor of the woman. Several passages having such ideas of slavishness are to be found in it (the Tirukkural or Kural). I request those having contrary opinion in this matter, to concentrate on the original twenty couplets of those two chapters, not paying attention to the different commentaries on them. Having so read these two chapters-God Life-Partnership and Joining the Woman if one argues however forcefully, that they are without blame, I would only request him or her to consider at least, whether Tiruvalluvar would have written the same and advocated the same ideas had he been a woman. In the same way I request it to be considered, if the other so-called Dharma Shastras had been written by women and the concept “chastity” defined by them, would they have explained it as meaning “devotion to husband”?
Merely because “chastity” has been defined as “devotion to husband” and also that men having been made more powerful in terms of wealth, income and physical strength, a favourable situation came into existence for the enslavement of women as well as for their own brutalization as though the notion of chastity is not applicable to men.
