Volume 1

Sexual life in ancient India : a study in the comparative history of Indian culture / by Johann Jakob Meyer.

  • Meyer, Johann Jakob, 1870-1939.
Date:
1930
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Sexual life in ancient India : a study in the comparative history of Indian culture / by Johann Jakob Meyer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    71/296 (page 55)
    The kinds of wedlock or marriage are according to the Mahabh. eight all told : the firsT: four or the specifically Brahmanic, under which the father hands over his daughter to the bridegroom 1 free and without any price, although in the Rishi form it is for two head of cattle, looked on as arhana (honour shown, gift of honour) only ; then there is the purchase or demon marriage, the love or Gandharva marriage, the marriage by capture (rakshasa vivaha) and the marriage by stealing, as we may perhaps call it, whereby the man gets tbe woman by some cunning (paigaca vivaha).2 These regular methods are found in i, 73.8 ff., and there the marriage by capture, but not marriage by purchase nor the Pai^aca marriage, is allowed to the warrior ; but on the other hand the Vaigya and the Qudra may marry by purchase. So, too, the eight kinds are seen in the passage in i, 102, shortly to be dealt with. Many observations, however, are noteworthy enough to be farther condition: “if the girl has wooers,” but Baudh. says: even if she has none ; the latter, indeed, like Vasishtha, xvii, 67, is inclined to grant a three years’ grace, but then adds, like Manu’s teaching, the threat juft given. Parapara, vii, 5, says : If a girl has reached her twelfth year, and has not been given away, then her forefathers in the other world are for ever drinking the blood she sheds every month. He has also the well-known verse wherein a girl of ten years becomes a maid (kanya), and with this a physiologically perfedt woman (vii, 4 ; cp. Jolly’s note in SBE [= Sacred Books of the Eaft], xxxiii, p. 170). Vishnu, xxiv, 41, lays down : If a maid in her father’s house sees her monthly courses without having been dedicated (that is, married), she is to be looked on as a Vrishall (more or less = Pariah) ; he that takes her for himself without more ado lays no guilt on himself. Cp. Manu, ix, 93. She has thereby loft the right to marriage, and woe to him that yet takes her. Paragara, vii, 7. Cp. Vasishtha, xvii, 69-71 ; my transl. of Kautilya, 356.6 If. 1 Great is the reward, too, in the other world, for such pious liberality. Cp., for inftance, MBh., iii, 186.15; xiii, 57.25,32. According to Narada, xii, 41, in the Rishi method the father besides the two head of cattle (gomithuna) also gets a garment (vaftra), anyhow for the bride. 2 This is, as is well known, the orthodox lift. Cp. transl. Kautilya, 242.20 ff. Apastamba, ii, 5, 11, 17 ff., and Vasishtha, i, 28 ff. have, however, only six forms, Prajapatya or Kaya, and Paigaca being left out.