The Position of Women in Hindu Civilisation, from Prehistoric Times to the Present Day c7.s6.11

c7.s6.11

The modern Garbhādhāna or Dvirāgamana ritual, which is performed when the bride attains puberty, is unknown to the Sūtras, which take it for granted that a marriage would be ordinarily consummated on the 4th night, as both the bride and the bridegroom were quite grown up. Writers of a later age, who were acquainted only with child marriages, could not naturally understand this assumption. Some of them, therefore, explain away Chaturthīkarma as a ritual unconnected with the consummation of marriage², while others like Mitramiśra adopt the more convenient course of omitting it altogether from their description of the marriage (*VMS*, p. 843).