A marriage (vivaha) is a splendid spectacle, everyone liberated from routines, moving about with the electricity of a holiday outing, brilliant costumes, some outrageous colors, an aroma of spices loading the air as Cooking Brahmans labor to prepare vast quantities of food. And yet a marriage also means solemn rituals with long midnight hours of mantras, fire offerings, seemingly end
less recitations of pedigrees. “Marriage is performed out of paramartha, the highest truth, and it must be continued always with sraddha, faith. Achieving brahma-loka, the heaven of Brahma, is the whole import of marriage. In a mar riage ceremony happiness is not only for the bride, groom, and relatives. It is a matter of joy for the entire community.” This earnest declaration by Duvvuri Yajulu was seconded by others of both genders. Marriage enables the girl to develop into the coveted role of a su-mangali, an auspicious married woman, one who has, in T. N. Madan’s apt phrase, “a beneficent influence on the lives of other people.”7
Always popular in any gathering is a discussion of marriage, afford ing opportunities to explain two important features that only those in Veda require. First, in order to guarantee the purity of a continuing Vaidika lineage the choice of a bride for a Veda pandit must be rajasvala-purva, a pre-pubescent girl who is the daughter of a woman who was married before puberty. This is double insurance that no non-Vaidika, or worse, non-Brahman male might have crept in from the shadows. Second, unlike most Brahmans, Vaidikas insist on a full five-day ceremony, no skimping of ritual details or requisite
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mantras. If sleepiness overcomes many, including bride and groom, no mat ter, the correct mantras have been sounded. Highlighted are liaisons with other Veda lineages guaranteed to be reputable, some of them declaring mul tigenerational allegiance to particular families and villages. And in common with virtually the entire population of India past and present there is enthusi asm for sharing the precise monetary cost of a wedding, dowry being for many the heavy burden of unloading a daughter and consequently going into debt,
thus providing a credible explanation for insufficient funds today. It should be noted, however, that animated pleasure structures most conver sations on marriage, an emotion valorizing positive qualities of relationships that in many cases, given the youthful ages of brides and grooms, have lasted seven or more decades. Lanka and Anasuya were married for seventy-seven years, Baballa and Sundari for seventy-one years, Duvvuri Yajulu and Surya for sixty-seven years, and Kamesvara and Satyavati for sixty-six years. Pandits and patni alike have great delight in detailing their own marriages and those of children and grandchildren. The tradition of a man having a “co-wife” (sec ond wife), sometimes discreetly acknowledged in the wider culture and openly known among Vedic Brahman Namputiri (Nambudiri) in Kerala (M. Parpola 2000: 209-12) is not mentioned.
The guru in charge of a student’s learning has a say in marriage arrange ments only if he is a senior male within the family, matrimonial decisions being the province of parents and grandparents. So important is Veda pandit lineage preservation that marital prospects are often lined up before the birth of a child. In the case of unions not so pre-arranged, rigorous investigations into family backgrounds precede betrothal. Birth horoscopes are consulted and there must be assurance not only of ancestry but also of correct and timely performance of all samskara, life-cycle rituals, prior to marriage. Both purity and character development are said to be cumulative concomitants of the sequence of rites of passage that begin with conception and continue from birth to the age of sixteen. There is hesitation about going too far afield to secure a bride or groom. Background checks prove more difficult at a distance, local villages being safer.
In addition to Vedic branch (sakha), parentage, age, ritual refinement, education, and compatible horoscope, two other qualifications concern gotra, clan, and pravara, ancestral lineage. The term gotra has descended from Indo-Iranian *gautra, cattle place or pen, indicating a close relationship between cattle-herding communities and their herds. In India centuries later, Vedic meanings held social and religious import—tribe, family, clan.8 One must marry inside the subcaste, Vaidika Brahman, and one should marry inside the sakha, Taittiriya, but conversely the choice must be outside both
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gotra and pravara. Every clan claims descent from a patronymic ancestor and each Veda pandit provides the name of his gotra as identification, for example, Duvvuri Yajulu, Atri (Atreya) and Bulusu Kamesvara, Gautama, to name two of the seven or eight ancient Vedic seers. Samavedam’s gotra was Harita and Baballa’s was Srivatsa, two other ancestral lines of import but not among the famous rsi. With regard to this exogamy, “marriage outside,” a bride should not be united with a groom with the same pravara, the litany of ancient rsi con
sidered to be ancestors. Both gotra and pravara (the latter a rapid declaration of three names) are recited twice daily in sandhya-vandana, along with one’s sakha (Taittiriya) and Sutra (Apastamba), and at stated moments in sacrifices. Paternal ancestry is always kept firmly in mind, as is the constant connection with those worthies of ancient days who first intuited the Veda. As Apastamba states in his chapters on pravara (ApSS 24.5.1–10.18) the gods recognize a per
son when he names his rsi ancestors.
Ideally, the groom should follow the approved sequence of upanayana, brahmacarya and Veda study, successful examination, and then marriage. Apastamba prescribed no precise age, but as the period of adhyaya is approxi mately twelve years beginning at age seven or eight, the average age of the groom should be about nineteen, the age of Kapilavayi Venkatesvara, for exam ple. But many boys achieve certification at a younger age. Laksminarayana and Gullapalli Sita Ram Sastri were both married at age sixteen. Some boys who married prior to certification, however, included Lanka at ten and Duvvuri Yajulu at “thirteen or fourteen” he recalled. Recent attendance in modern English-curriculum schools has lengthened education in a direction parallel to Veda study and the age of Veda completion has been extended but not neces sarily the age of marriage. For example, Duvvuri Surya Prakasa was seventeen when married in 1971 to Kanaka Durga, six years younger, and their four sons, all with longer English curricular (not language) public schooling never expe rienced by their father or grandfather, were married at ages fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen, respectively in birth order. What did increase in that generational shift was the age of consummation and cohabitation of bride and groom, that is to say, the departure of the bride from her parents’ home to residence with the groom.
The age of the pre-pubescent bride has remained relatively fixed, usually within a range of three to eight years younger than the groom. When Lanka was ten his bride was seven. When Kapilavayi Venkatesvara was nineteen, Sita Rama Laksmi was eleven. And when Laksminarayana and Gullapalli Sita Ram Sastri were both sixteen-year-old grooms, their brides, Kamesvari and Narasamamba, respectively, were ten and thirteen. Balya-vivaha, child-marriage, proscribed by the 1955 Marriage Act, is proudly affirmed by
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Veda pandits. As one announced: “This is our tradition and we do it openly,” the safeguarding of a lineage being the primary consideration. Consummation, the sexual act that completes a marriage, awaits the arrival of “blossoming” and puberty rituals for the child bride who contin ues to grow up in the home of her parents. After first menses, seclusion in a darkened room or screened off corner is concluded with a ceremonial bath three days later. The rajasvala girl receives a coconut as symbol of fecundity and a sari as adoptive grown-up attire. Puberty rites, not covered in the Sutras, have no mantras or kriya and are transmitted in women’s oral traditions.9 She continues her schooling but otherwise remains in the house, expecting eventual release to her husband for the merit-filled and auspicious act (punya and subha-karya), proper terms for consummation of the marriage. In ApGS 3.8.7-11 the culmination (and definition) of vivaha is “leading” the bride to the home of the groom. Three nights of chastity sleeping on the ground with a clothed staff between them (a third “person” on guard instead of a sword between the medieval knight and his chaste damsel) are followed by first sex ual intercourse, a highly ritualized event late in the fourth night after many hours of delayed gratification. But Apastamba’s schedule was no longer pos sible when pre-pubescence became the overriding desideratum for a bride’s qualifications. Thus a gap of years occurs, sometimes many years, between the marriage ritual and “the auspicious act,” requiring an expiation, prayascitta, to be pronounced during the nuptials. Elder Anasuya, for example, married at seven, was fourteen when she left the home of her parents to live with Lanka and a generation later their daughter Anasuya was fifteen when she joined Mitranarayana in Korumilli.
In the most recent two generations a groom might require time to become “established,” financially secure, which may mean employment in another town until his bride joins him. For example, Duvvuri Sita Ram Sastry mar ried (Gullapalli) Syamala in 1991 when he was sixteen and she was ten. In February 2000 during a visit to her home in Iragavaram where he had arranged research meetings for this book with his maternal grandfather and five uncles (one being his father-in-law), he was twenty-five and she was nine teen. Highly embarrassed and furtive, they found a moment to speak to each other for the first time. Previously he had had only distant glimpses of her during brief visits to Iragavaram. When he finally completed his computer degree program in Hyderabad she could join him there a dozen years after their marriage and today they have a son and a daughter, all of them living in Hartford, Connecticut. Although he is laukika and not “vedam-lo,” at least the marriage rules of the Veda pandits have been upheld and this will no doubt be of significance in marriage arrangements for their children. His life goal is no166 vedic voices
less than to earn enough in the United States to re-establish Sriramapuram as a true Vedic agrahara.
A prominent feature of South India is cross-cousin marriage such as the one just mentioned. In menarika (Telugu) a boy marries his mother’s brother’s daughter; a girl marries her father’s sister’s son. Long-term genetic effects of consanguinity is a subject that elicits no interest, this being a tradition with deep roots in some cultures of Dravidian languages but one proscribed by Manu (11.172–73) and some other legal authorities outside the South. A strik
ing case of serial menarika is the pattern of Duvvuri–Gullapalli marriages unit ing families across the Godavari River over several generations. Among the children of Gullapalli Butchiram Avadhani and his wife Subbalaksmi were a daughter, Surya, who married Duvvuri Yajulu, and a son, Sita Ram Sastri, who married Narasamamba. Both of these couples were featured in Chapter 3. The first pair had five sons and five daughters and the second pair had five sons and two daughters. These new generation sister and brother families with seventeen children between them afforded opportunities to continue Duvvuri–Gullapalli marital connections. Turning to the following generation (Gullapalli) Surya and Duvvuri Yajulu’s third son, Surya Prakasa Avadhani had four sons, grandsons of Duvvuri Yajulu, growing up in Rajahmundry. Each was married to one of the granddaughters of Gullapalli Sita Ram Sastri, these brides being the respective daughters of the first four sons of Gullapalli Sastri. Bride and groom share the same grandfather, FaFa in the bride’s case, MoFa for the groom. Since a male child is often named after his grandfather, in more than a vague sense in Telugu culture reincarnating the old in the young, it is as if a girl has been given to her grandfather. In the example given above, Duvvuri Yajulu’s grandson Duvvuri Sita Ram Sastry (the computer program mer now living in Hartford, Connecticut) is named for his mother’s father (his grandfather), Gullapalli Sita Ram Sastri. In 1991, as just mentioned, he was married to his mother’s brother’s daughter, Syamala, also the grand-child of Gullapalli Sita Ram Sastri. (See Table 5.1 for a chart of marriages between East Godovari Duvvuris and West Godavari Gullapallis.)
Marriages with tight-knit pools of eligible grooms and brides often mean that people are related in multiple and complex ways. Interconnections of the several Veda pandit families surveyed here are legion: one of Duvvuri Yajulu’s sons was married to one of Lanka’s granddaughters and his second daughter married a Bhamidipati relative of Baballa. Even without cross-cousin mar
riage, proximity often produces liaisons, as for example, guru and student. Lanka’s guru was an uncle of Anasuya so they grew up together as children in the same household before they were married at ages ten and seven, respec tively, this union being non-menarika. Maruti, granddaughter of an ahitagni,
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Menarika marriages of East Godavari Duvvuris (D) and West Godavari Gullapallis (G.) DUVVURI GULLAPALLI
D. Sarvesvara Somayajulu
Surya Somapithini
G. Buchiram
AvadhaniSubbulakshmi
Son D. Yajnesvara Paundarika Yajulu
Daughter G. Surya
Son G. Sitaram Sastri Narasamamba
Son 1 Son 4 5 daughtersSon 1: G. Ramakrishna
Daughter 2
Son 3: G.V.
Son 4: G.V. Naga Srirama
Son 5
Son 2
Son 5
Avadhani
Son 2: G.V.
R. S. Ghanapathi
Avadhani
Son 3: D. Surya
Prakasa Avadhani
Son 1: D. Phani
Son 2: D.
Sitaram
Sastry
Daughter 1: G. Kanaka Durga
Surya
Subramanya
Avadhani
Daughter: G.
Nagalakshmi
Daughter: G.
Girija Syamala
Son 3: D. Hari Prasad
Son 4: D.
Daughter: G. Kamesvari
Daughter:
Girija Sankar
G. Pallavi
Table 5.1. Menarika marriages of East Godavari Duvvuris (D) and West Godavari Gullapallis (G)
remembers that the two Kapilavayi brothers, Venkatesvara Sastri and Rama Sastri, came to stay in the house for half the year to study with her grand father. “They spent so much time with my grandfather they felt obliged to take a granddaughter, so I was acquired by the Kapilavayi family as a special request.” She was married to the younger brother.
It was noted in Chapter 2 that Bulusu Cayanulu gave a daughter to Renducintala’s son in direct exchange for teaching that son in his house over a period of years. But Cayanulu had three other daughters and in order to pay dowry for one he had to sell land, including part of the acreage he received in the Sriramapuram grant. Lanka paid Rs. 400 dowry to Mitranarayana for him to marry the younger Anasuya, no land, cash only, and it was a considerable debt for him. Costs on the other side for the hosting family of the bride are also extensive as relatives might stay in the agrahara or village as long as two weeks.
Many of the pandits in this survey have been involved in marriage cer emonies either within their own community or for local folk of the higher castes. Bulusu Cayanulu routinely officiated, as does Duvvuri Surya Prakasa Avadhani in the present. Baballa’s grandson Prasad does muhurta timings by consulting birth horoscopes to determine the most auspicious months, days, and hours, a service regularly performed by Baballa and Lanka in decades
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past. Samavedam picked up honoraria by reciting blessings at marriages, “never less than Rs. 500” being his reward.
The program for the five nights of a Veda pandit marriage, although longer, shares most standard procedures of ceremonies performed throughout India today. ApGS 1.2.12–3.9.11 provides details for Taittiriyins. After some prelimi nary remarks betrothal and marriage are the Sutra’s first topics, with mantras from RV and AV marriage hymns cited in a separate text, the Mantrapatha. Early on, Apastamba observes that it is women who must be consulted for local customs, an admission that it is the oral tradition of the distaff side that keeps track of certain important details laced into the proceedings. He displays knowledge of the ways of men when he recommends a girl who is eye-catching to the groom but not one who has an attractive younger sister.
The groom is welcomed by the bride’s parents into their house with madhu-parka, a dish of honey in curds traditionally offered to a guest. The bride and groom look intently at one another. In some ceremonies he pours water over her as she stands under a sturdy wooden bullock yoke with a piece of gold near the hole. When she has dressed he wraps a darbha-grass cord around her waist and leads her west of the fire to sit down for offerings and mantras. By her right hand he leads her north away from the fire for seven steps, they walk around the fire keeping it on the right, and then together make offerings into Agni during a steady stream of mantras from both sets of family priests, his and hers. Then in another key moment the groom directs the bride to place her right foot on a working grindstone north of the fire with the admonition that she should be as firm and steady as rock (he will remember doing exactly this himself during his upanayana). She clasps cupped hands together and waits for him to sprinkle ghee onto roasted grains that are dramatically poured from his upraised hands into hers at waist level.
Repeated circumambulations of the fire and her foot placed on the stone alternate with offerings, all with continuing mantras. Highlights on agricul tural symbols—the yoke, grindstone, ghee, and grains—are backdrop to sono rous mantras emphasizing the promise of fertility from this new union. These are deep-seated traditions and the symbolism of the hole in the yoke, to take one example, has a long chronicle from Rg Veda 8.80.7 to the marriage hymn of Atharva Veda 14.1.41 down to Apastamba and commentaries a thousand years later. And everywhere in the marriage hymns, of singular import to past, present, and future soma-sacrificers, are celebrations not only of Agni but also of the god Soma as lord of procreation and long-lived lineages.
When nuptials are completed the bride remains in her parents’ home while the groom returns to his village and his guru. She will live through years of schooling until menarche when the couple’s departure from her parental
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home is as dramatic as the escape of newlyweds from a Western wedding. This “leading away” of the bride, the vivaha, is augmented by the carrying of live coals from her parents’ fire in a pot slung from cords, embers that will transfer Agni for the pair in their new residence. Once established on dry kindling, offerings into that fire take priority. At night the groom points north for the bride to identify first the north pole star, Dhruva, its fixed posi
tion in the night sky being a model of unwavering attachment, and then the star Arundhati, Alcor, a dim but traceable star among the seven rsi that make the constellation saptarsi (known in the West as Ursa major, the great bear, or the plow, or the big dipper). Arundhati is the wife celebrated for fidelity to the great rsi Vasistha. The new bride husks rice, he cooks it with ghee in a pot, and together they make this cooked rice offering in the ritual simply called sthali-pakana (described in Chapter 2), first to Agni, then to his alloform, Agni Svista-krt. For many couples this becomes daily observance morning and eve ning prior to eating breakfast and supper, sometimes with the first offering going to Surya.
To those who have witnessed Hindu weddings in India, North America, or Europe many of these procedures are quite familiar. Most have been in place in Grhya Sutras for well over two millennia and some mantras accompany ing specific acts derive from Rg and Atharva Veda hymns composed another millennium earlier. For example, kanya-dana is the gift of a girl from father to groom. Apastamba alludes to this moment without making it the high lighted ritual act it later became. Although he states that she will not return to her natal home (like most dana, ritual gifts, it is permanent) she will in fact visit from time to time, particularly during periods of childbearing. Other Sanskrit terms in use throughout India include the joining of right hands, pani-grahana, taking seven steps, sapta-padi, circumambulating the fire clock wise, Agni pradaksina, placing the bride’s right foot on a stone, asma-rohana, pouring puffed rice from groom to bride to fire, laja-homa. Even the “driv ing,” udvaha, from the bride’s home and village toward the groom’s residence has remained true to ancient practice although the get-away vehicle today is a brand-new rented car rather than a chariot (ratha) drawn by two beasts of burden, and today all five nights are captured on tape by professional videog raphers. The tying of the mangala-sutra, an auspicious thread on the bride’s neck, so important today, and the addition of toe rings to the bride, are both addenda well after the Sutra period.10
In the matter of remarriage, a strict double standard prevails. It is accept able for the widower but unthinkable for a widow to remarry and ApDhS 2.6.13, a discussion of inheritance and paternity, rules widow remarriage sin ful. Bulusu Cayanulu married again only eight months after the death of his
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typhoid-stricken young wife. Fourteen-year-old pre-pubescent Subbalaksmi, purchased in Gangalakurru, became his ritual partner for Renducintala’s paun darika. Of the eight different forms of marriage listed in Asvalayana Grhya Sutra 1.6.1-8, ApDhS 2.5.11-12 mentions six, the one known as daiva marriage pertaining to a girl who becomes daksina, ritual payment by the sacrificer to a priest who is serving in his ritual. In Cayanulu’s case, however, the payment was oblique since the yajamana, Renducintala, was not the father of the girl.