Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.27

c8.27

After laying down this first requisite about marriage connected with *Dharma*, Vātsyāyana next proceeds to speak of the purely secular circumstances about which a person thinking about marriage should be satisfied. He says that to obtain the full benefits of a marriage, one should seek for mate a girl satisfying the following conditions. She should have both her parents alive, she must be younger than himself by three years or more; she should come of a family of decent and approved conduct, possessed of wealth and rich in adherents, a family, the members of which are numerous and attached to one another, her relatives both on the father’s side as well as on the mother’s, should be large in number; and for herself, she must be a girl possessed of physical charms, of excellent conduct, with lucky marks on her body; she should have neither more nor less than the proper number of teeth, nails, ears, hair, eyes and breasts, nor should any of these limbs have been lost by her; she should be of a sound and healthy constitution; the young man should, of course, be possessed of all these qualities himself and must have completed his studies.¹ Vātsyāyana, perhaps feeling that a girl possessed of all these qualities would be rare indeed, quotes in the very next *sūtra* the opinion of an earlier writer on the subject, Ghoṭakamukha, who simplifies the whole thing by advising that a man should fix his affections on a girl when he would feel himself fortunate and happy in having her and at the same time would not incur the censure of his equals².