Caste and Race in India c8.80

c8.80

That restriction on such marriages was being newly put during this period is rendered probable by the fact that the rule clearly enunciated in the works of the next period, viz. that only a wife of equal caste can be a full and lawful participant in the religious ceremonies of her husband, does not find its counterpart in the legal literature of this period. The lawgivers, as we shall note below, disqualify for religious rites only a Śūdra wife. Nay, we have reason to believe that the still older practice contemplated unrestricted marriages of the males of the two highest castes with females of the two lower castes—Kshatriya and Vaiśya. It is said in the Mahābhārata that the sons of a Brahmin born of wives of the first three castes are Brahmins.²