The duty of the Vedic Indian to marry is assumed by all the texts, and the domestic ritual gives precise rules for the performance of the legitimate and honourable form of marriage," ignoring as a rule the irregular forms based upon capture, violence, or mere mutual love without parental approval, which are recognized by the law books in various forms, Gandharva, Asura, PaiŚāca, and Rākṣasa, as well as the romantic form of nominal self-choice by the bride of a suitor, the Svayamvara which bears traces of a test of skill of suitors by the king or other parent of high rank similar to that of Kleisthenes. The youth should obtain permission from his parents or his teacher to marry: only one Sūtra prescribes the numbers of brides, three for the Brahman, two for the Ksatriya, and one for the VaiŚya, and in one view a Śūdra for each: this refers clearly to a rule by which each caste could have a wife of its own and one of each inferior caste. The later texts prescribe that the maiden must be of the same caste and land, but not of the same Gotra as the father or a sapindā on the mother’s side, rules which are difficult to define with precision." Maidens with names of stars, rivers, or trees are to be avoided, as are those with names with r or l as the penultimate consonant. The physical marks are most important, but, as it is difficult to be sure of them, the maiden may be given eight or nine lumps of earth chosen from different places, and, as she choses, her disposition can be gauged. The bridegroom should be of good family and character, have good bodily signs, be healthy and learned. As considerations in marriage family ranks above intelligence, beauty, and wealth."
1 PGS. ii. 8.
1ŚGS. iv. 11, 13.
GGS. iii. 5. 24.
GGS. iii. 5. 20; cf. Frazer, Taboo, pp.
392-418.
GGS. iii. 4; ii. 1 ff.; AGS. i. 6 ff.; CGS.
i. 11 ff.; MGS. i. 7-12; BhGS. i. 11-20; BGS. i. 1 ff.; JGS. i. 20 ff.; PGS. i. 4 ff.; ApGS. v ff.; HGS. xix ff.; Haas and Weber, Ind. Stud. v. 177 ff.; Winternitz, Attind. Hochzeitsrituell; von
8
Schroeder, Die Hochzeitsgebrāuche der Esten; Hillebrandt, Rituallitteratur, pp. 63-8; Zachariae, VOJ. xvii. 185 ff., 211 ff.
• PGS. i. 4. 8-11.
’ Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, ii.
258-260.
GGS. ii. 1. 3-9; KauŚ. xxxvii. 7-12. BhGS. i. 11; Keith, JRAS. 1914, pp.
1081 f., confirmed by VarGS. x.
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The first formal step in the procedure, which doubtless was often carried out only after the marriage had been duly arranged beforehand by the parents with the advice of the Brahmans, was for the bridegroom to send wooers, usually his own father and the Acarya of the house, to the father of the other family: the new-comers announced themselves, and set out the Gotra names -doubtless to show that the relationship was not a forbidden one-and if the other side agreed, all touched a pot filled with grains, fruits, flowers, &c., pronounced a formulae expressing agreement and assurance, and then the teacher of the bride’s family placed the pot on her head. When the girl is to be taken to her new home, she is first formally washed by women of the same caste, and she names her husband in a verse addressed to Kama, ’love’. She puts on a red or uncoloured garment and sits behind the fire, and holds on to the priest as he offers to Indra and Indrāṇī: the bridegroom offers similarly to VaiŚravana1 and IŚana. Thereafter four or eight women dance in the house of the bride, and receive food, and the Brahmans are also fed. The appropriate time for the wedding ceremony is the northern course of the sun and the increasing half of the month, but some authorities allow any time almost to be used: the two months of the cool season and the last hot month are by some excluded. The bridegroom is led to the house of the bride by gay young women, not widows, to whom he must behave with complaisance. On his arrival, he should, according to some authorities, be received with the Argha offering of a cow, but by others this is postponed until the actual consummation of the marriage a second cow is also later slain in the bridegroom’s own house in honour of his father, teacher, and others. The bridegroom, with the permission of the maidens, gives the bride a new garment, anoints her, puts in her right hand a porcupine quill, perhaps for the ceremony of hair-parting, which takes place after pregnancy, and in the left a mirror. Her relatives then put on her a reddish black cord of wool or hemp with three amulets, and place Madhuka flowers on the bridegroom.
Other preparations have been made for the wedding. A fire is lit outside the house, water is procured by Brahmans, roast grains and a stone are in readiness. The maiden is formally handed over by the father to the bridegroom, but the place of this rite, the Kanyapradana, differs in the various authorities. The bride and bridegroom sit down on a mat behind the fire, and then butter oblations are offered, and also an oblation by the father or brother of the bride on the head of the bride, with a sword point or a ladle, in order to secure her pre-eminence in the house of her stepfather. Then comes the pouring into the joined hands of the bride of grains by her brother or mother; she is made to stand on a stone, when she receives the grains, and her husband invokes her to be firm as the stone: she offers the grains and her husband leads her round the fire, keeping her right side turned to it: this is all done thrice, the offerings being to Varuna, Aryaman, and Puṣan respectively.
1 I. e. Kubera (AV. viii. 10. 28; CB. xiii. 4. 3. 10; $B. v. 6; TA. i. 81. 6; KauŚ. xxv. 34, &c.).
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375
Then the bride takes seven steps in the north-east direction, the quarter of victory, the bridegroom takes her by the shoulders, and touches heart and navel as at the ceremony of the initiation of a student, and water is sprinkled on her. Then the bridegroom, in the version of Gobhila, takes the hand of the bride as she sits facing east and he stands facing west: this rite is placed differently by other authorities: the manner of seizing the hand depends on what is wished: if he desires sons only the thumb, if daughters the fingers, if both the whole hand. Then gifts are made: the Acarya receives a cow from a Brahman, a village from a royal personage, a horse from a VaiŚya. If he has a daughter, he receives a hundred cows and a car, unless, as is much more probable, the provision really refers to the old practice of purchasing a wife.1 The bridal garment is also given to the knower of the Surya hymn, which is used for the rites, and is apparently hung up on a post.2 The bride is now taken to her new home by a car, horse, or elephant, and formulae are provided for all eventualities, when she cries, when there is a breakdown en route, and so on. If they cross a stream, she is not to look at the crew. Fire is carried with them so that, if the car breaks, it can be mended, and then be sprinkled with butter left over from the offering made. This fire serves also to be the fire used by the householder at the sacrifices which his marriage imposes upon him. Some authorities prescribe the spending of the first night of marriage in the house of an old Brahman woman, whose husband and children are still alive, in which case the bride sits in silence on a red skin, hair upwards, until the stars appear: when this happens her husband offers six butter libations, pours the remains over her head, and shows her the stars Arundhati and the pole star as symbols of constancy. When they arrive at the home of the husband, he unyokes first the right, then the left animal, and Brahman women, with living husbands and children, help her down. She must enter the house without touching the threshold, and sit down on a skin, hair up, but she may be lifted over it and so put down by a strong man. On her lap a male child is placed, fruits are put in her hands, and Brahmans wish her prosperity. Then, if not before, the ceremony of looking at Arundhati and the pole star may take place.
The marriage is not consummated for three nights after it for that time the newly married couple must lie on the ground, avoid spiced or salted food, and, if they refrain from consummation for a year, the birth of a seer son is predicted for them. Between them in this period at night a staff is placed which is clad in a garment: it is clear that it is a symbol of the Gandharva
1 Hillebrandt (Rituallitteratur, p. 67) prefers to take the words as referring to the priest, but sale is quite a recognized Brahmanical form of marriage: Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, i. 484 ff. KauŚ. lxxix. 22.
2
In which-absurdly-a trace of marriage
by robbery has been seen.
• Cf. Macdonell and Keith, op. cit. i. 405,
- For the use of a strew of Ulapa grass over which the pair walk from the chariot to the house, cf. Caland, ZDMG. li. 133; Zachariae, VOJ. xvii. 151; von Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 308; for the hand grasping, von Negelein, Weltanschauung, pp. 157 ff.
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ViŚvāvasu, who is addressed when on the fourth night it is cast away. The exact force of the practice is uncertain: the desire by refraining from consummation to deceive evil demons and cause them to depart is a possible motive. ViŚvāvasu as a Gandharva 1 seems to claim his rights of connexion with women even after the marriage, and must at first be appeased and then formally be banished. But the obvious connexion of the rite with other similar rites over the world down to the ius trium noctium is a warning against any feeling of security in the interpretation of the customs, which are of immemorial antiquity and based on feelings which are perhaps to us no longer psychologically even possible. The Vedic marriage does not contain any hint that by a previous rite of any sort the danger of interference with virginity was removed, and, therefore, the first three nights may have seemed a time of too great danger to allow of immediate consummation of the marriage. In that case there may have arisen the idea that the Gandharva ViŚvāvasu possessed these three nights, and the idea may be due to the rite, not a cause of it.
3
The removal of the period of continence is marked by an offering in the fire to Agni, Vayu, Surya, Aryaman, Puṣan, Varuna, and Prajapati, with Svistakṛt as the eighth. To this list others add Candra and Gandharva. The root of the Adhyāṇḍā plant is pounded, and some of it placed in the nostrils of the wife at the time of the menses, as a rite to secure conception." Before and after the first period of intercourse, formulae must be recited at great length: they are clearly love spells to secure affection and offspring. On the fourth day of the marriage finds place a ceremony mentioned by one Sutra alone : the husband and wife have their hair and nails cut and then go out of the village to pay honour to an Udumbara tree, and to pray for good fortune on their marriage. Fish also are caught in a fresh cloth and offered as a Bali to the water birds."
The rite, which is of course paralleled in innumerable details by the practices of Greeks, Romans, Germans, and many other peoples Aryan and non- Aryan, is on the whole but loosely connected with religion. The Vedic ritual prescribes many verses and offerings, but the great wedding hymn," which
‘This position of the Gandharva is clearly
a relic of more primitive thought than that which makes, as a result of the belief in transmigration, the Gandharva the being which at conception enters the womb, and it is to this popular and ancient belief that we must look in the main for the choice of this name rather than (as does Windisch, Buddha’s Geburt, pp. 13 ff.) to transmigration into a Gandharva.
- Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, pp. 88, n. 2;
249, n. 2.
⚫ Crawley, The Mystic Rose;
Farnell,
Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, vii. 88; Greece and Babylon, pp. 277-81; Hartland, Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, pp. 190 ff.; J. J. Meyer, Das Weib im altindischen Epos, pp. 235 f.; Fehrle, Kultische Keuschheit, p. 40. Cf. BhGS. i. 20; Keith, JRAS. 1914, p. 1088. CGS. i. 18. 2 ff.; PGS. iii. 1.
⚫ Winternitz, op. cit., p. 101.
⚫ BGS. i. 18; Zachariae, VOJ. xviii. 299 ff.;
xx. 291.
’ RV. x. 85; 109. 2 (AV. v. 17. 2).
Chap. 21]
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makes the wedding of Surya, the sun maiden, and Soma, the mysterious god known by the Brahmans, doubtless the moon, the prototype of the human wedding, is clearly a late production, and the outcome of much priestly elaboration. Agni alone is the real object of much feeling, and it is as the living fire on the hearth that he is really worshipped.1
As in the case of the wedding ceremony, it is easy to find parallels for many of the rites of the Vedic domestic life, nor is it in the slightest degree doubtful that the formulae, which are used in the Vedic texts, were in the main invented or transferred, very often very badly, from other rites for use with practices which came into being and developed without any assistance from priestly influence. In many cases, of course, the formulae are merely redactions of the actual words which often must have accompanied these rites in the first instance: in others, as in the wedding service, much new matter was introduced. But in these cases the essential point of interest is rather the alteration by the Brahmans than the primitive rites, which are common to civilized Indians and much more savage tribes, and some of which persist among the highest civilizations of the earth. The case of the initiation of the boys of the people is the most striking instance of the peculiar character given to a rite by the influence of the priests. It is clear that, already by the period of Indo-Iranian unity, the ceremony has assumed a good deal of its present shape, and that a spirit of civilization had been introduced into barbaric rites. The conception of Vedic India saw in the initiation a species of second birth: by it the boy became fully a twice-born person, and failure to undergo initiation as we have seen might lead to inconvenient results for the person so failing. Certain taboos applied to the youth, but most of them had been reduced to reasonable limits, and could be supported by primitive ideas of what foods were suitable, as for example in the case of the interdiction of the use of flesh and honey for a growing boy who was in his studentship. Moreover, the relation of pupil and teacher has clearly been in some degree remodelled on the analogy of human marriage, in order to make it an expres sion of spiritual union.
In other lands and among other peoples strange puberty or initiation rites have been recorded, many of them accompanied by violent physical tortures and applied both to boys and to girls, of which Sparta in historical times still preserved relics, and which are still practised widely among modern savages. The idea of a second birth has often been connected in the minds of the performers of these rites with the practices which they follow and carried to the logical extreme of requiring the newly born people to start life at the infant stage,2 to pretend that they have forgotten how to speak, or to feed themselves. Severe scourgings, the knocking out of teeth, circum-
1 Babylonian religion-which hardly has
a hearth deity-has almost no religion in its marriage ceremony; Farnell, Greece and Babylon, p. 134.
For the Cretan marriage of sun and moon, see Cook, Zeus, i. 2 ft.
Cf. the Vedic Dikṣā, above, Chap. 19, § 1.
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cision, the pouring over the initiated of kindred blood and other agreeable absurdities are recorded of such tribes, and it is natural of course to see in the Vedic rite a deliberate and reasoning reduction of these practices to sensible limits. There must be a certain amount of truth in this, but it is essential to note that we have no evidence to what extent the more violent of these customs ever prevailed among the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans.1 The customs in question agree in the main only in their infinite variety, and it would be impossible to establish any form for initiation. In some cases doubtless the practices often were changed and assumed new forms: the drastic treatment of the Spartan boys may have been seriously intensified with a definite view to discipline character, though the origin may have been merely the driving away of evil influences at a critical time of youth, the appearance of puberty in the case of girls, the Vedic Indians, in accordance with their usual practice as regards women, ignored entirely their claim to be initiated, and therefore prescribed no form of ritual at all for them.
The motive 2 for the doctrine of initiation is not alluded to in the Indian rite: beyond the obvious possibility of it being a mere expulsion of dangerous influences, and an effort by the fiction of a new birth to deceive the demons, there is no suggestion of much cogency. In the view of Sir J. Frazer the whole of these rites and the origin of totemism may be due to the wish to deposit permanently at a dangerous time of life the external soul in some safe object, but the suggestion lacks both external proof and internal cogency.
Of the other domestic rites, that of the parting of the hair raises many problems. Various motives may be assigned: the alteration of the mode of wearing the hair at marriage is known among other peoples than the Vedic Indians.5 It is possible that it must be reckoned as a piece of deception magic, to deceive demons at a time when a woman is certainly exposed to much danger possibly the idea may be to render more easy the entry of the child desired into the woman, if we ascribe to the period the doctrine that a child enters ab extra.
1 Rome had reduced them to very slight traces; cf. Warde Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People, p. 42. * Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda2, pp. 466 ff.
Keith, JRAS. 1916, pp. 548, 540; Reinach’s view is of course totemism pure and simple.
• Oldenberg, op. cit., p. 463, n. 3; Hopkins,
Origin of Religion, p. 119.
KauŚ. lxxix. 14.
It is clearly the later, Buddhistic and general Indian, view (Windisch, Buddha’s Geburt, pp. 9 ff.). It is the Arunta belief, and that of palaeolithic Europe if we believe Reinach (Cultes, Mythes et Religions, iv. 361 ff.), but cf. Cook, Zeus, i. 703.