Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.33

c8.33

Here he quotes certain verses:—"Social games, such as, for example, filling up 'bouts rimes,' marriages, and intercourse generally, should be with a man's equals, not with those either above or below him. A man marries above him when he marries a girl only to be treated by her and her friends as a servant ever afterwards; no man of spirit will do that. He marries below him when he and his people lord it over the girl, that is a bad marriage; it too is censured by the good. When the love between husband and wife adds lustre to both, and is a source of joy to both families, that is the only marriage which is approved. Let a man, if he will, marry above him, and walk humbly among his wife's relations ever afterwards; but on no account let him do, what all good men disapprove of, marry beneath him."¹