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LIFESTYLES
Eternal India
encyclopedia
5.
Ghandarva
marriage by the consent of the two parties
This-form of marriage was often clandestine without the
knowledge of the parents of the bride and groom.
In addition there were three other types of marriage:
Asura,
marriage by purchase,
Rakshasha,
marriage by capture and
Paishaca
the seduction of a girl while asleep which could not
be considered a marriage at all.
The dowry system had become entrenched to such an extent
that in medieval times enormous dowries were given and have
been mentioned in the works of the period such as
Sursagar,
Ramcharitmanas
and
Padmavati,
Tukaram, the great Mahar-
ashtrian saint, could give his daughter in marriage only after a
dowry had been raised through contributions from the villagers.
Akbar was against high dowries. Abul Fazl in his
Ain-i-Akbari
records that two officials called
tui-begs,
or masters of marriage,
appointed by the Emperor also looked into the economic and
financial circumstances of the bride and bridegroom.
The custom of bride-price was so prevalent in South India
that Deva Raya II of Vijayanagar (1422-29 A.D.) enacted a
decree that all marriages among Brahmanas were to be concluded
by
Kanya-dana
and the father had to give his daughter to the
bridegroom without payment of money. Money transactions on
the occasion of a marriage were declared a legal offence.
The remarriage of widows is not advocated by the
Smriti
writers and the
Puranas.
Manu forbids remarriage except in the
case of widows who are virgins. AI Biruni states that in India
there is no custom of remarrying the widow. The custom of
riiyoga
by which a childless widow could conceive a son through
her brother-in-law, was in vogue in early times but was later
discouraged.
SATI
Under the rules of the
Smritis,
a widow had to lead an austere
life. She took only one meal a day. She slept on the floor and
was not allowed to use a cot. She said prayers every day in
memory of her husband. She could not return to her father as
she was still a member of her husband’s family where she was
always watched to see that she did not break her vows and
continued her observances. Shunned as inauspicious by everyone
who tried to avoid crossing her path she led an extremely
miserable existence. By the 1lth century the practice of shaving
the heads of widows had also begun. In these circumstance,
many widows often preferred to immolate themselves on their
husband’s pyre. The custom was known as
sati.
The word
means “virtuous woman”. A widow who burnt herself on her
husband’s pyre was considered loyal and loving. It was only
later that British officials and missionaries began applying the
word to the act of self-immolation.
During Vedic times
sati
was merely symbolic. This is known
from one of the funeral hymns of the
Rig Veda
: the widow lay
down beside the dead man and his bow was placed in his hand;
the bow was then removed and the wife was asked to rise.
The wife of Goparaju, the general of the Gupta king,
Bhanugupta, is known to have ascended the funeral pyre of her
husband in 510 A.D. This is recorded in a memorial found at
Liran, near Sagar in Madhya Pradesh. The wife of Nagadeva,
a minister of the Chalukya Sathyashraya of the Deccan (10th
century) burnt herself with her husband.
The existence of a large number of
sati
memorial tablets
proves that the practice was in vogue in central India and the
Deccan during the medieval period but evidently was not
universal. Many well-known ladies of this period such as
Prabhavatidevi of the Vataka dynasty of the Deccan and
Mayanalladevi, mother of Jayasimha Siddharaja of Gujarat, did
not observe this rite and at the same time were esteemed for
their devotion to their husbands.
Sati
seems to have been
confined to the upper classes mainly of central and later of
eastern India. Social and family pressure may have made it
virtually obligatory on some high-caste widows, especially those
of the warrior classes like the Rajputs.
Muhammed-bin-Tughlak was the first medieval ruler who
placed restrictions on the observance of
sati
by passing a law
that a licence had to be obtained before a widow could immolate
herself within his dominions. The law was meant to prevent
any compulsion or force being used against an unwilling widow.
The officers of the sultan were always present during a
sati
and ensured that the widow was not being coerced to commit
suicide against her will.
Akbar did not forbid
sati
altogether but issued orders to the
Kotwals that they should not allow a woman to be burnt against
her will. He is said to have sometimes personally intervened
to save unwilling widows from the flames. He rescued the widow
of Jai Mai and imprisoned her son who had compelled her to
commit
sati.
The European travellers Della Valle, Pelsaert and
Travernier testify that the permission could be refused if she
had young children to rear. Aurangzeb was the only emperor
who issued definite orders (1664) forbidding the practice but
despite this it continued to be followed.
The Abbe Dubois, a French missionary, who was in India
for 30 years from 1792 to 1823, observes in his book,
Hindu
Manners, Customs and Ceremonies
:“In 1817 there were 706
suttees in the Bengal Presidency. It is true that this insane
practice is much more in vogue on the banks of the Ganges than
anywhere else. In the southern part of the peninsula of India
suttees are seldom seen. I am convinced that in the Madras
Presidency, which numbers at least thirty million inhabitants, not
thirty widows allow themselves to be thus burnt during a year.”
The Abbe personally witnessed two
sati
ceremonies. One
was in 1794 in a village in Tanjore District, following the death
of a man of some importance belonging to the Vaishya caste.
His wife, aged about 30, announced her intention of
accompanying her deceased husband to the funeral pyre.
The final moments of the ceremony are described: “She was
then made to leave the palanquin, and as she was scarcely able
to walk, her people helped her to drag herself to a pond near
the pyre. She plunged into the water with all her clothes and
ornaments on, and was immediately afterwards led to the pyre
on which the body of her husband was already laid. The pyre
was surrounded by Brahmins, each with a lighted torch in one
hand and a bowl of ghee in the other. Her relatives and friends,
several of whom were armed with muskets, swords and other
weapons, stood closely round in a double line, and seemed to
await impatiently the end of the shocking tragedy. This armed