Caste and Race in India c8.98

c8.98

The epics contain some examples of intercaste marriages, but they illustrate the practice prevailing among the aristocracy and the sages. We will leave out the sages as their stories are shrouded in much mystic lore. As for the aristocracy we have already mentioned that Daśaratha had a Śūdra female as one of his wives. But the Rāmāyaṇa does not drop any hint that the children of the union were regarded as in any way different from the Kshatriyas. Santanu married Satyavatī, the daughter of a fisherman. In the story of the Mahābhārata no suggestion is made that the issue would be considered lower than the Kshatriyas. The girl's father extorts a promise from the king that the son of Satyavatī by him shall be the heir to the throne to the exclusion of his other son, not because he feared that the status of the son of his daughter would debar him from his right to the throne, but because the other son of the king, being the eldest, would be entitled to it. As a matter of fact, the Kauravas and the Pāṇḍavas, the heroes of the Mahābhārata, are represented as the descendants of the line of Satyavatī. Though the Kshatriyas were willing to marry females of lower castes and bring up the progeny as their equals, yet they could not tolerate their daughters marrying men of faulty descent. Thus Draupadī at her choice-marriage raised an objection against Karṇa on the ground of his low birth.