The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c23.44

v1.c23.44

There is one aspect of legal literature which is very significant of the origin of the completed codes. The laws, namely, frequently contradict one another either by implication or directly, not only the laws in general but those of the same code and even the laws placed in juxtaposition. An example of such contradiction is what may be found in Manu’s code respecting the sale of a daughter. In VIII, 204, ‘Manu declares’ that if one girl has been shown to a prospective bridegroom and another is given, he may marry them both for the same price. In III, 51, the same code (presumably the same Manu) says ‘Let no wise father take even a small price for his daughter…for small or great this would be a sale’; and finally in IX, 97, we read: ‘If the giver of the price die after the price for a girl has been paid, she shall be given to the (bridegroom’s) brother if she is willing,’ and immediately after (IX. 98), ‘Even a slave should not accept a price in exchange for his daughter,’ with a couple of verses following in the tone of the passage above, repudiating the ‘sale of a daughter.’ Yet in VIII, 366, under the head of the fifteenth title of law, it is stated that a low-caste man courting a woman of the highest caste deserves death (or corporal punishment); but one who courts an equal shall ‘pay the price’ (and take her) if her father consents. It was an old provision that a fee or price (a yoke of oxen) should be paid to the father, and though this was softened down to a ‘fee’ or ‘tax’ (*çulka*), yet the advanced code objects formally to this business transaction. At the same time the old provision is retained, because it was a part of hereditary traditional law. In the epic also, the rule against selling a daughter is recorded; but so strong is the feeling against violating family-law that the man who purposes to sell his daughter, ‘because it is the custom in my family,’ is upheld in doing so by a saint, who even declares that the sale is justified by the ancients and by God (*Mbh.*, I, 113, 9 f.). Here the girl is bought with gold and elephants and other costly things. On the other hand, as a matter of dignity, the father of an aristocratic girl, more particularly a princess, has in effect heavy expenses. Thus when king Virāṭa weds his daughter he bestows upon his son-in-law seven thousand horses and two hundred elephants (*Mbh*., IV, 72, 36). The didactic epic says that a man who sells his daughter goes to hell (XIII, 45, 18); there is a general Sūtra rule against selling any human being (Gaut., VII, 14)¹.