Re: The 'curse' of having a girl in India
Lahore 981, it does not work that way. You dont go about accusing people of rape and murder and ask them to prove otherwise. Anyway, I provided you the link for the Atharvaveda book 6, if you dont want to read it, its not my fault. I just showed you the mirror and showed you how you are talking of Atharvaveda like a stupid.
SSingh, I guess you are not familiar with our scriptures. There are 4 major parts. Vedas, Upanishads, Smritis and Puranas.
The Vedas and Upanishads (also called Vedantas - because they are written at the end of the four Vedas) contain religious hymns and other chants. They are the collection of mantras which have been writted by Seers and Prophets over thousand of years.
The Smritis are books written by rishis and they contain religious, cultural and political sayings.(like the hadiths). The sayings of smritis cannot be applied universally and are only applicable for that point of time.(It is also the Smritis which have the cultural instructions as you mentioned).
Then there are the Puranas which contains stories so that the moral teachings of Vedas could be reached to the common masses in easy to understand way.
Then of course we have the Bhagwad Gita which contains the crux of all Vedas and Upanishads and is like the Bible or Quran to the Hindus.