Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.144

c8.144

Vātsyāyana has mentioned before⁴ four forms of marriage, approved in genteel society, in the order Brāhma, Prājāpatya, Ārṣa and Daiva, but he has not delineated their distinctive characteristics, taking it for granted perhaps that their connotations were all known to his readers, and he might very well do so, inasmuch as they were exhaustively dealt with in the *Grhyasūtras*, the *Dharmaśāstras*, the Great Epic and the *Purāṇas* and similar other literature. Now he describes the Gāndharva, Paiśāca and Rākṣasa forms; of these, the first he mentions by name, and of the last two forms, he only gives the description and leaves the names to be supplied by the reader. However, thus we see that he mentions altogether seven forms, leaving out the Āsura marriage in which "the bridegroom receives a maiden, after having given as much wealth as he can afford, to the kinsmen and the bride herself, according to his own will"¹. It is rather striking that Vātsyāyana does not advise a young man to purchase his bride by money, though he does not shrink from recommending the adoption of meaner and more violent forms like the Paiśāca and the Rākṣasa. Most probably, it was very much looked down upon in cultured society in his days. Yājñavalkya², however, mentions the Āsura marriage along with the other seven. Now, applying Vātsyāyana's dictum that in his list of the seven forms, one that precedes is superior to one that follows, on account of its being more in accordance with *dharma* or the sacred law³, we arrive at a graded series which is not quite in agreement with the *Dharmaśāstras*. For instance, Manu gives the series thus—Brāhma, Daiva, Prājāpatya, Ārṣa⁴. The other three he has not graded, but taking them in the order in which he enumerates them, they are to be graded as Āsura, Gāndharva, Rākṣasa and Paiśāca the last of which he definitely characterises as the eighth and the worst¹. Yājñavalkya also agrees with Manu with only the slight difference that he places the Ārṣa and the Prājāpatya in the same category². Kauṭilya also mentions all the eight forms of marriage but what is remarkable, is that he, unlike Manu and others, enumerates the first four forms in exactly the same order as Vātsyāyana,³ showing here a point of agreement with the latter, as in many other respects. Most of the authors of the law codes differ from Vātsyāyana in condemning the Paiśāca as the worst, worse than even the Rākṣasa, but the Commentator of Vātsyāyana explains the position of his author by saying that the Paiśāca, though not lawful (adharmya), yet is better than the Rākṣasa, as the latter involves violence⁴.