Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vatsyayana's Kamasutra c8.s6.t3: The Joint-Family
Social Life in Ancient India: Studies in Vātsyāyana's Kāmasūtra c8.s6.t3
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The Joint-Family
c8.s6.t3.1
The joint family system seems to have obtained in Vātsyāyana’s age. The wife of the householder has to wait upon his parents and to obey them implicitly as we have already seen, and moreover, she has to show proper regard to all senior relations (gurus) and to his sisters as well as to their husbands. But nowhere are her duties to his brothers mentioned, though a woman with many younger brothers of her husband is referred to in one place¹ showing probably that sometimes the brothers lived together, but more often they established separate households when they got married, as it was prescribed in some of the Dharma-śāstras, in Manu for example, that after the death of the parents the brothers might live jointly or they might separate for the sake of increasing the dharma, for, if they lived separate, their spiritual merit would increase and hence separation was sanctioned by dharma: the meaning is that if they lived apart “each of them had to kindle the sacred fire, to offer separately the agnihotra, to perform the five great sacrifices and so forth, and hence each gains merit separately.” This principle had been recognised from very early times as we have it clearly laid down by Gautama, the author of the earliest of the extant Dharmasūtras.²
c8.s6.t3.2
¹ व्युत्थाप्या बहुदेवरिका—Ibid, p. 254 (sūtra 52).
c8.s6.t3.3
² Note by Prof. Bühler on Manu ix. 111, S.B.E. xxv, p. 347. Cf. also सर्वं वा पूर्वजस्य तरां विभयात् पितृवत् । विभागे तु धर्महविः ।—Gautama, xxviii. 3 and 4.
Linked texts (3)
- Mānava Dharmaśāstra — Manu & Bhṛgu, Sanskrit
- Gautamadharmasūtra — Gautama (dharmasūtrakāra), Sanskrit
- Kāmasūtra — Vātsyāyana Mallanāga, Sanskrit