Short Essay on Marriage and Family

The rules relating to marriage, formulated in the older Smritis, were not materially altered during this period, but there was a growing tendency to lower the marriageable age of girls. Some authorities make it compulsory for the guardian to marry the girl before puberty.

According to the Vishu Parana the age of the bridegroom should be three times that of the bride, but according to Angras, the difference in age should be consider­ably less. Vatsyayana quotes in one place a text of Apastamata’s Grihya-Sutra forbidding marriage with a girl reaching the age of puberty. However, it appears that girls were married before as well as after puberty.

Like the Smritis, Vatsyayana contemplates marriage as being normally settled by the parents (or other guardians) of the parties. The ceremony of the selection of the bride is to result in one or the other of four forms of marriage known to the Smritis, namely brahma, prajapatya, arsha and daiva.

Vatsyayana’s testimony also shows how a young man could, under special circumstances, apply himself to win the girl of his choice by courtship or even by trickery and violence. It also illustrates the Smriti rule allowing the girl in some instances to select her own husband. Such a maiden is to pay court to a young man who is in love with her.

Methods of wooing are also given. Vatsyayana’s account of the methods of courtship leads natural­ly to his description of the three other forms of marriage known to the Smritis namely gandharva, paisacha and rakshasa.

The ideal form of marriage was that between a bride and bridegroom of the same caste, although it was rather inaccurately called savama marriage. But asavama and intercaste marriages were also known, especially in the royal families. It must, however, be remembered that early works on law appear to have interpreted marriage as including various types of union leading to the birth of children (cf. the gandharva, rakshasa and paisacha forms of marriage).

Some of the practices, prescribed in early works, gradually came to be obsolete and were ultimately called kali-varjya (prohibited during the Kali Age). The Manu- Smriti rather reluctantly admits the validity of mar­riage between a man of the higher vama and a woman of the lower, technically known as anuloma, while the Yajnavalkya does not regard even pratiloma marriages (those between woman of a higher vama and man of a lower) as entirely invalid.

Marriage with a Shudra girl is recognised, though generally condemned. Yaj­navalkya allows the son of a Shudra wife to inherit the property of his Brahmin father, although Brihaspati recognises the right only in the case of movable property but not in regard to land.

The Smritis permit the wife of a lower vama to par­ticipate in religious ceremonies only if the hus­band had no wife of his own vama. It is clear from the attitude of the writers on law that Intercaste marriages often took place in society although they were disliked by the orthodox.

As regards Intercaste marriages of both the pratiloma and anuloma types in royal families, we may refer to the marriage of a daughter of Kakus- thavarman of the Brahmanical Kadamba family with a bridegroom of the non-Brahmanical Gupta family, and to that of the Gupta princes Prabhavati-gupta with Vakataka Rudrasena II who was a Brahmin of the Vishnuvriddhagofra.

Prabhavati became the chief queen of her husband; but she still retained her father’s family name and gotra (her name Prabhavati-gupta and her epithet dharana-sagotra). This shows that there was no sampradana and the consequent gotrantara (change of the wife’s gotra to that of her husband) in her marriage with the Vakataka king.

Prabhavati’s mother Kubera-naga also retained her father’s family name even after her marriage into the Gupta family. But marriages which were not based on sampradana and did not involve a gotrantara went gradually out of use, at least amongst the ordinary people.

The system of niyoga approved of by early writers like Manu became gradually extinct. Yaj­navalkya and Narada were not opposed to niyoga\ but Brihaspati and others were not in its favour. The remarriage of widows was looked upon with disfavour, but its prevalence in society had to be admitted by Manu and other writers. Narada and Parasara (between the seventh and tenth cen­turies) permit remarriage of widows under certain conditions.

Some authors like Vasishtha make a distinction between a woman whose marriage was consummated and another whose marriage remained unconsummated, and prescribe remar­riage only in the case of the latter. But both niyoga and remarriage of widow or of married girl ultimately came to be regarded as kali-varjya.

According to the story of the Devi-Chandragupta, Dhruvadevi or Dhruvasvamini, chief queen of Chandragupta II Vikramaditya, was the widow of his deceased elder brother Ramagupta. Whatever be the historicity of this tradition, such marriages were apparently not regarded as abnormal in the days of the author of this work who seems to have flourished about the close of the sixth century.

But the social position of the remarried widow called punarbhu seems to be clear from Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra which, in its present form, probably belongs to the Gupta Age. It appears that there was no regular marriage for a widow or a married woman deserted by her husband, but that there was no bar for her to ally herself to a man of her choice. The position of the punarbhu was ap­parently nearer to that of a mistress than to that of a wedded wife.

In the royal harem, where separate quarters were allotted to different types of women, thepunarbhus occupied a position mid­way between that of the devis or queens who lived in the innermost apartments, and that of the ganikas or courtesans who were quartered in the outermost.

This seems to be supported by Huen- tsang who says that in India “a woman never con­tracts a second marriage.” Widows, who did not marry again, lived an ascetic life. The custom of sati was quite well known (vide the Kamasutra reference to anumarana and the evidence of the Eran inscription of A.D. 510), but was not popular.

The types of marriages and the categories of sons recognised by the Smritis show that public opinion was not particularly fastidious, at least in the earlier part of our period, about the estab­lishment of sexual relation between a man and a woman.

Such works as the Mriclichhakatika show how a ganika or courtesan could become a rather honoured mistress of a Brahmin. But the social position of the punarbhu and ganika was no doubt normally lower than that of a wedded wife, although in certain cases they might have wielded considerable influence on the husband.

It is reasonable to hold that in a vast country like India society was not everywhere exactly the same, and changes also took place with the passage of time. This is specially to be remembered when one thinks of the position of women in society. The degree of freedom in their movement was probab­ly different in different parts of the country, and in different ages, and also different with different classes of people. The upper class women enjoyed less freedom in our period. Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra depicts the life of a nagaraka’s wife as a round of duties in an atmosphere of control and restraint.

Even greater restraint and seclusion of women are suggested for an earlier period by the Kautiliya Arthshastra. But we have also evidence of queens reigning by their own right in Orissa and Kashmir. Prabhavati-gupta ruled the Vakataka kingdom at least for thirteen years as “the mother of the yuvaraja. Rajyasri is known from Chinese sources to have administered the government in conjuction with her brother, King Har- shavardhana. Girls, at least of the noble families, appear to have received liberal education. But, as Yajnavalkya says, women were ineligible for upanayana (thread ceremony) and Vedic studies.

The theoretical nature of the Smritis seems to be demonstrated by their approach to the ques­tion of the marriageable age of girls. In earlier times post-puberty marriage of girls was general, although pre-puberty marriages also sometimes took place.

The Manu-jm/f/i denounces post- puberty marriage of girls, although it permits a person to keep his daughter unmarried up to any age in case a suitable bridegroom was not avail­able. Later writers on law vehemently condemn marriage of girls after puberty.

It must be admitted that gradually this came to be the regular attitude of society; but there is evidence to show that post- puberty marriage of girls occasionally took place, at least in royal families. Polygamy seems to have been an established custom, at least among the kings and wealthy persons, whose houses had an antahpura or inner suit of apartments where the ladies resided in seclusion. Vatsyayana speaks of a harem “with a thousand spouses”.

The family was sometimes large, as the patriarchs appear to have lived often jointly with their grown-up sons and grandsons, and as brothers sometimes lived together even after their father’s death. Partition of the family in the lifetime of the father was discouraged by the early writers on law. There are, however, cases in the land grants of shares being allotted to the father and sons separately by the kings.

Manu favoured partition of the property among the brothers after the death of the parents. This apparently shows that partition of the family was also not unknown. The father was the owner of the family property, although the right of his sons to their respective shares was recognised. The Smritis denounce a Brahmin forcing partition against his father’s will. But the so-called Dayabhaga system of in­heritance was apparently not unknown in certain areas of the country.

The earlier works like the Manu-swn’f/ recognised twelve categories of sons including those who were begotten on one’s wife by someone else and were technically classified as kshetraja, kanina, kunda, gola, etc.; but with the exception of aurasa (begotten by one’s own self) and dattaka (adopted), the ten other categories of sons gradually lost recognition and came to be regarded ultimately as kali-varjya.

The old custom of the eldest son getting a larger share of the father’s property was not unknown in the earlier part of the period, but it was becoming unpopular and obsolete, and sons were getting equal shares of the family property. The widow of a husband belonging to a joint family was entitled only to maintenance.

In case the husband was separately enjoying his property at the time of death, his widow could enjoy her husband’s share as a life estate according to some writers like Yajnavalkya and Brihaspati, although others like Narada were opposed to it. This difference of opinion, as already indicated, was no doubt based on the difference of time and place, more probably the latter. Kalidasa’s Sakwitala speaks of the property of a childless widow of a mercy ant being confis­cated by the Crown. A girl wl had a brother was not allowed a share of the father’s property, al­though the brother had to spend at the time of her marriage the extent of one-fourth of his share.