Note 23 — Chapter One
Reading edition
In the Rig-Veda, a work not committed to writing until after that movement of the Aryans, which resulted in the establishment of Persia and India ... there is nothing more striking than the status of woman at that early age. Then the departed mothers were served as faithfully by the younger members of the family as departed fathers. The mother quite as often, if not more frequently than the father conducted the services of the dead ancestry, which took place three times a day, often consisting of improvised poetry.—Elizabeth Peabody on the Aryans.