"This is proven by the fact that in the Vedic period their women were not placed apart from men in penetralia, or "Zenanas." Their seclusion began when the Mahomedans -- the next heirs to Hebrew symbolism after Christian ecclesiasticism -- had conquered the land and gradually enforced their ways and customs upon the Hindus. The pre- and post-Vedic woman was as free as man; and no impure terrestrial thought was ever mixed with the religious symbology of the early Aryans."