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The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s6: V. Appendix on the Status of Woman

The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s6

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V. Appendix on the Status of Woman

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Woman is to the Hindu a creature of secondary importance. As the goddesses among the gods, stand the heroines among the heroes of the Epic. But conventional sayings, of which there is a vast number, and the facts that may be inferred, give us together a fair idea of the position of woman in the middle ages of India, and even enable us to see how that position has changed, or was in process of changing, during the growth of the Epic itself.

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Except in legal literature, there is little prior to the Epic that can furnish a satisfactory view of woman's life. What we know from Rig-Vedic literature may be summed up in few words. The girls were allowed their freedom, like the boys. Very early marriages appear to be unknown. At a ripe age the girl was married, and became the one wife of one husband, whom she herself had chosen, giving up her parents' home to enter absolutely into the family of her lord. With that husband as companion as well as lord she shared an equal footing in religious rights, and was not excluded from participation in social enjoyment. She had a separate but not an exclusive apartment. At her husband's death she retired to live with her son or returned to the home of her parents. Only as queen was she obliged to suffer rivals, and then probably as a political necessity. From rather unsatisfactory evidence, we may conclude that female children were liable, however, to be exposed; and that near blood marriages were not interdicted.

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The early law-period is best considered in reference to the Epic custom and law. Much was changed in woman's life ere the conditions under which the Epic presents her were reached. The woman of the Mahābhārata in its completed form is best described in short by negativing most of the description taken from the earliest Vedic age. The position held by her in the time to which we must refer the beginnings of the Epic lies somewhat between these two.

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But in talking of woman we are, so to speak, confounding, from the later point of view, three different beings. The inherent complexity of woman's nature is aggravated in India by the social accident of her relation to men; and we find here, for all social considerations, as great a difference between woman and woman caused by marriage as between man and man caused by caste. This difference is heightened by the fact that women also (though, in less degree than men) were separated by the caste-regulations. But inside the pale of one caste we have always to distinguish sharply between woman, wife, and widow. The first had no value. The second was of exaggerated importance. Again, the widow was a being socially apart from both girl and wife. It is only under these rubrics that we can study the condition of woman at all. For woman in general is but chattel, and receives only the respect due from a sensible man to potentially valuable property.

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We have indeed a number of pretty sentiments in regard to woman, especially in regard to her purity, that seem to place her in another light; and when we read that ‘a woman’s mouth is always pure,’ or that ‘three things do not become impure, women, gems, and water’ (xii. 165. 32; M. v. 130), we are tempted to believe that an ideal position of women has been thus early reached. No greater mistake is possible. The only ideal of the early Hindu in this regard was of practical convenience and sensual gratification. The proverbs quoted above are dry ceremonial statutes; most things render a man at certain times impure, as the sight of a dog, a tear, etc.; but, for the sake of convenience, the rule requiring him to rinse the mouth or bathe on thus becoming impure is done away with in the cases cited; and the whole force of the pretty saying is destroyed when we consider that the author is far from meaning women in general in this verse. He means only women of good caste. A woman of degraded caste was *ipso facto* impure, and to taste of her mouth was to render one’s self liable to the severest penance.*

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We may still consider woman as far as possible apart from her social conditions if we examine the descriptions given by the poet, which, though applied to one specimen, are serviceable as portraying the mental and bodily ideal women—descriptions which do not vary much in law and in Epic. It is thus that the beautiful Krishnā† is described by her husband, after he has gambled her away as a stake in the madness of his dice-playing: ‘Not too short is she, and not too tall; black-eyed is she, and fragrant; her eyes are like the lotus, and her breath like autumn’s wind; welcome as autumn after the summer rain, and loved as autumn is beloved; slender is her waist, broad are her hips; blue-black her hair, and well-arranged’ (i. 67. 158, Draupadī). She is described again, and more fully, in another passage; and adding this to a description of another woman in a later book, we get for the bodily ideal a result that tallies well with the technical enumeration of beauties furnished by still a fourth passage, and is corroborated by the legal works that warn against certain faults in women’s personal appearance.* Blue-black hair seems to have been the favorite color. Red hair must have been well known, since the sages regard it as objectionable to marry a girl ‘with auburn hair,’ which is a characteristic, it is said, of Western girls. Girls so afflicted dyed their hair in later times. The Epic women are dark, and their hair is blue-black, parted in the middle, and the part marked, perhaps, with a pigment.† The eyes should be large and black; the lips, red; the teeth, white; the bosom and navel, deep; the breasts and hips, high. Further particulars, not specially edifying or translatable, but not differing from the Epic ideal, are found in the Bṛhat-Saṃhitā, and in the Purāṇas.‡

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∗ xiii. 126. 25 (= M. iii. 155), *vṛṣalīpati*; by marriage, *yāuna*, xii. 165. 37. Compare Jolly on the legal position of women in India, *Sitz. d. K. Bayer. Akad.*, 1876, p. 423.

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† Where the name does not necessarily indicate her color as black, since she may be merely the feminine to Krishna: the subject involving the original conception of the character. Fair women are attested by the Greek observer: see Ktesias i. 9 in Ind. Ant. x., with notes there.

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Interesting is our next general problem: what character did the Hindus assign to their women? Separate here tale and proverb. For no more tender and delicate types of women are to be found than Sāvitrī and Sītā (I have not so high an opinion of the much-vaunted Damayantī), and to have portrayed such characters is a vindication of the possibility of their historic existence. But on the other hand we have misogynistic sayings enough to show a popular disdain of woman. Only one circumstance is worthy of note: viz., that those who most indulge in these remarks have (in India) least cause to make them. ‘A woman’s nature is always unsteadfast’—this truth is uttered by the scapegrace Nala, who gambled away his kingdom, and ran away from the wife that remained steadfast to the end.§ Part of the wisdom imparted to another king that gambled away his wife is: ‘woman is the root of all evil, for women are always light-minded;’‖ and the hardest blow is given to their virtue in the innuendo that even women of good family are envious of common prostitutes, wishing for the clothes and adornment that fall to the lot of the latter (xiii. 38.

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* The second description of Draupadī is found in iv. 9. 1. Compare with this iv. 37. 1 ff., the technicalities in v. 116. 1 ff., and many incidental references, as viii. 73. 84, pṛthuṣroṇi of Kṛṣṇā: compare also M. iii. 5 ff.

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† i. 44. 3, sīmanta: compare N. Compare Wilson’s Theatre, Vikram., p. 250, note.

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‡ On the strīlakṣaṇa see Ag. P. 242 (puruṣalakṣaṇa, 243); the dramatic ideal corresponds: compare e. g. Vikram., beginning of Act iv.; the king’s remarks on Ҫakuntalā, Act i., etc. In Epic add xiii. 104. 131 ff. (C. omits 132 b). The Bṛh. Saṃ. 70. 16 ff. gives some peculiar tests of women’s correct form, and of their virtue, depending on the length of the toes, etc.; in 23 we find prāyo virūpāsu bhavanti doṣā yatra ’kṛtis tatra guṇā vasanti as a general rule. For minuter norms, see the whole chapter.

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§ iii. 71. 6, strīsvabhāvaç calo loke; literally, varium et mutabile semper femina.

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‖ xiii. 38. 1 ff.; repeated in 12, with ‘no greater evil exists than woman. In vs. 17 we find M. ix. 14.

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19). It is, perhaps, more philosophic reflection than misogynistic spite when the causal nexus of woe is traced back to woman: ‘birth causes evil, woman causes birth, therefore women are answerable for woe’ (xii. 213. 7). Love is a woman’s whole desire. ‘The mass of women hangs on love,’ a wily adviser suggests to a king, ‘and therefore, O king, if thou hast deprived thy subjects of their sons by thy wars, make the girls marry, and they will quit their sorrow’ (xii. 33. 45). Woman’s nature is to injure man: ‘a man should not marry a woman of low caste, for the nature of woman is to injure man; be a man wise or foolish, women drag him down.’* When Father Manu went to heaven, he gave to men women—weak, easily seduced, loving and lying, jealous of love and honor, passionate and foolish—nevertheless respect (married) women.’† The unusual fondness for love characteristic of woman is set forth in another verse: ‘women are blessed with love, and slaves with pity’ (xiv. 90. 14). And woman’s untrustworthiness is recorded again: ‘let not the king take counsel with fools and women’ (iii. 150. 44; xii. 83. 56), a verse often repeated, with the warning ‘never shall that be accomplished which is confided as a secret to the mind of a woman.’‡ The historical reason for woman’s lack of secretiveness is given in the story of a very pious saint, who cursed all women, because his mother revealed a secret: ‘therefore he cursed all women, saying “they shall never keep a secret”; so he cursed them, because he was grieved’ (xii. 6. 11).

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In what then consist the virtues of women in the Hindu ideal? ‘The strength of a king is power; the strength of a priest is holiness; but beauty, wealth, and youth are the strength of a woman—the greatest of all’ (xii. 321. 73). A sentiment found oftener is this, however, that ‘the strength of woman is obedience.’§

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Such passages as these might be multiplied; but it suffices to have learned what the Hindu opinion was on this point. There is, to be sure, an antecedent impossibility of newness connected with the inquiry which robs it of freshness. Yet it is not without interest that we study the doctrine of India in regard to woman’s nature; for in no point could the country for so long have remained original and free from foreign influence of thought. Except for slave girls, their women were their own; the opinions are based on narrow generalizations, and on that account, to those familiar with the same generalizations abroad, the more curious. To the Hindu, woman is inferior because she is weak, because she does not argue dispassionately or clearly, and because she is a creature of emotions, especially of love. For the Hindu Epic warrior is not ashamed to weep; only he scorns, or rather ignores, the sentimentality of love. From two points of view, love is a weakness. The soldier looks upon it as does the boy of to-day; the philosopher looks upon it as the origin of evil, and one with that desire which forms the first link in a chain of unhappy succurrent existences. Love as a passion the Hindu felt, appreciated, and deplored. As a sentiment, it does not exist, till the later Romantic age begins, that age which gives us the tales of good women, and later the lyric poetry. Women, at first free and unguarded, become gradually mere inmates of the inner house; they are watched and kept in ignorance. Outside of the generally pure lives of these guarded respectable women lie the lives of those whose presence preponderates in camp and city life—the ‘women of the crowd,’ mentioned only by groups, the dancing girls, the courtezans, prostitutes, and other vulgarities, who from the records of law and Epic abounded in the early as well as the later times.*

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∗ xiii. 48. 36 ff.; M. ii. 213-14, vv. ll. † Ib. 46. 8 ff. The addition is necessary, as the context shows. In spite of all these faults, a wedded woman should be respected, because she is Manu’s gift to man. ‡ xi. 27. 30; not in C! cf. v. 38. 42. § v. 34.

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⁷⁵ Parallel passages, xiii. 40. 8 ff.

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In strict accordance with this view of women stand the sayings in regard to her treatment. ‘Women (but wives are meant) should always be honored and petted. For when they are honored, the deities rejoice. . . and houses cursed by them are as if infected by magic' (xiii. 46. 5 ff.). To interpret the feeling that causes this, we may say that it is of the first importance that a wife should do as her husband wishes; if she is not petted and made much of, she will grow disagreeable; therefore the husband should keep her in good humor. This interpretation is inevitable, if we study the Hindu rules on the subject.*

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∗ Besides the laws regarding adultery (see below), allusions to prostitutes and loose characters are plentiful. We have seen that city and camp are full of them. The king is advised to avoid connection with (svairiṇīṣu, klībāsu) ‘unlawful women,’ xii. 90. 29-39. So ‘doubtful women’ ought to be avoided, xii. 35. 30. The verse on the ‘non-independence’ of a king says he is not svatantra, may not do as he will, in respect of games, women, council, etc. (xii. 321. 139). The report of Strabo shows that the king was attended regularly by slave-women; but this could have been, in accordance with Hindu law, for only part of the day (see above, p. 130). The ‘loose women’ that frequent the gambling halls are well known, ii. 68. 1. Among the rules for priests are many that show how vague, in spite of vows of chastity, must have been their morals and those of their neighbors in other castes. It is sinful to eat the food of one conquered by a woman, or of one who marries before his elder brother, or the food of a common prostitute (gaṇikā), or of men that suffer an upapati, or of a player (raṅgastri-jīvita), xii. 36. 25 ff. In most of the disgusting tales in the Epic we find a great saint seducing some decent girl, and it is to be remarked that such connections are not condemned; that prostitution itself is not condemned as a profession; that wifely honor was esteemed, but maidenly honor not regarded except on practical grounds; that chastity in a man not particularly bound by an oath is looked upon as a matter of wonder. All the rules for chastity have purely practical reasons for their existence. Passion and love are the same thing, and are looked upon, like sneezing, as a natural impulse, best yielded to at once. Of purely moral censure of indulgence in passion there is no word.

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The woman must be subservient to the man, but in intercourse with her he must obey her desires. In all these rules, and they are many, the woman, however, as woman is not regarded. It is always the practical effect of breaking them that is kept in view. So, too, with the laws that seem to evince a high moral standard: 'three sins lead to destruction—these are theft, adultery, and desertion of a friend.'† 'There are four chief vices—gambling, intoxication, women, and hunting—he that does not foolishly rejoice in these is freed (from error).'‡

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What we may call rules of priestly conduct are so explicit as to suggest a predilection for the faults named: 'one should not (openly) eat or sleep with a woman;'§ 'one should not have carnal intercourse with a woman by day, or (at any time) with a loose woman, or with a woman that has not just bathed.' (xiii. 104. 108). It is said that such intercourse is always allowable if practiced in secret, restricted only by seasons, for practical reasons.‖

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To cast the 'evil eye,' *cakṣur duṣṭam*, on a woman who is another's wife renders one debased; debased, in the next life, are also those that look at naked women with evil thoughts; and those that offend sexually against nature, *viyonāu*. Especially strict, of course, are the rules for students, who were under vows of chastity till their study was ended. Such a student may not even talk to women outside of the family.*

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∗ See particularly Manu iii. 55 ff., ix. 1 ff. The pretty sentiment in the mouth of the Lord speaking to Soma—'Never despise a woman or a priest'—is a fair instance of the danger of rendering too generally, or into our modes of expression. Soma had neglected Dakṣa's daughters, and is commanded to unite with them, at their desire, ix. 35. 82. † v. 33.

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⁶⁵ *Paradārābhimarçin* occurs in xiii. 23. 61. ‡ xii. 289. 26; 59. 60; iii. 13.

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⁷ Compare above, p. 117 ff. § xii. 193.

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²⁴ This may be done in secret, xiii. 163. 47. ‖ xii. 193. 17 (comm. and ib. 9, *ṛtukāle*). On this head, ib. 228. 44-45; 243. 6 ff. If a man receives an injunction (*nirdeça*) from a woman, he should gratify her desire, even if it be the wife of the teacher, ib. 267. 41; 34. 27: cf. xiii. 49. 12 ff. Those that cohabit *rajasvalāsu nārīṣu* incur *brahmavadhyā* personified, xii. 283.

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⁴⁶ The converse in xiii. 90. 28; 104. 150; 163.

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⁴¹ Sex-differentiation depends on the time, ib. 104. 151; females are born from the fifth, males from the sixth day. But in xiii. 87. 10, the girl from second, the boy from third day. Compare *māithuna*, xiii. 125. 24; 129.

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¹ Speculation on this point was common, as in Greece; so Hesiod says sex is determined by the day of procreation. Compare Bṛh. Saṃ. 78. 23-4. As well known, the law of Manu makes sex-differentiation depend on the respective vigor of the parents (M. iii. 49).

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Let us follow out the treatment of women in another direction. It was mentioned above that in the Vedic age there is some evidence to show that female children were occasionally exposed. This had passed by. In the early Epic period, woman lived on probation. She was allowed to live until her father or her husband saw fit to slay her. From all other men, she was, so far as her life went, secure. ‘This verse has been sung of old by Vālmīki, women should not be slain’ (vii. 143. 67). This rule is, of course, not a legal one. Women were tortured to death by law, for instance, if they were faithless. But it is a rule of chivalry, forbidding the strong to kill the weaker. It is one with the advanced code of military rules discussed above, and is universally found.† This rule implies legally so much, however, that the infliction of capital punishment in regular form, *vadha*—that is, by decapitation or smiting on the head—is not in a woman's case to be performed for the many offenses rendering men liable thereto.‡ But the legal penalty for killing a woman is not in any case very heavy, and if she chance to be of low caste, it is very little. If a man kill a married woman (other than the teacher's wife—the teacher and all that belongs to him are all-sacred), he should undergo penance for two years; in the case of the teacher's wife, for three years.§

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There is perhaps an indication of national Aryan superiority of civilization in the legend that ‘Kāyavya laid down a law for the barbarians: he said “thou shouldst not kill a frightened woman; no warrior should ever kill a woman.”’‖

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* xiii. 104. 116; 145. 50. The prohibition against looking at a naked woman (here and in xii. 214. 12; xiii. 163. 47) is extended in xiii. 104. 47 and 53 to a rule forbidding one to speak to an unknown woman, especially one in her courses, *udakyā*. Mutual desire, as a rule, excuses intercourse (see the marriage rules, below), but he that has forcible connection with a girl ‘passes into darkness,’ xiii. 45. 22. The student's rule is given in xii. 214. 12 ff.

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† Killing a woman is reckoned as sinful as killing a priest or a cow, xiii. 126. 28 : i. e. it was a high crime. Moreover, such a deed results in the murderer's being reborn in some despised shape, ib. 111. 112 ff. The use of a king, it is said, is this, that if a man who kills a woman should get applause in the assembly, the king will frighten him (and put him down), xii. 73. 16.

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‡ We have to distinguish the military *na hantavyāḥ* rule, quoted above, and the technical *avadhyāḥ*, i. 217. 4. The latter case is plainly stated in i. 158. 31 : ‘in the verdict of law the law-knowers say that a woman is not to be exposed to *vadha*.’ Compare also ii. 41. 13, *strīṣu na ćastram pātayet*. On the other hand, compare the horrible death-penalty of an adulteress (see below).

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§ xii. 165. 60 (*paradāre*). There is an Epic roughness about this rule. The law-books distinguish with great care between murder and manslaughter.

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‖ xii. 135. 13; *dasyu = mleccha*.

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Among the sins looked upon as ‘without expiation’ (as a variation on the saying quoted above) we find injury to a friend, thanklessness, woman-killing, and teacher-killing. It is quite in accord with the character of the Epic that we find one verse giving the expiation for a crime, and another denying the existence of such expiation (xii. 108. 32). To steal women is also one of the customs reprehended by Aryan law,* and we find it especially laid down for the dasyu that he should avoid union with (Aryan) women of high station, and theft of women.† Nevertheless, the Aryans, as they always carried captured women into slavery, could not have been free from this fashion.‡ Indeed, one of the marriage-forms is simply robbery of the girl, and one of the uses of a king is, it is said, to prevent women being stolen (xii. 67. 8 ff.)—that is, to put a stop to this antiquated form of marriage, of which, however, the Epic affords traditional examples in the case of its chief heroes.

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How closely the legal part of the Epic hangs together in all formal statement of the rules of propriety we may see by comparing with the above the regulations of the dharmasūtras, not to speak of the çāstra of Manu, with which the later Epic stands on an equal footing in many points. Thus, the dharmasūtras are precise in ordering that no breach of chastity shall be risked by contact with, or looking upon a woman.§ The especial sanctity of the teacher’s wife is evinced by the rule that the student shall not mention her name, and shall serve her as well as the teacher (G. ii. 18, 31; Āp. i. 2. 7. 30). Special rules for greeting women are given, and some give even a rule here for colloquial intercourse between husband and wife (G. vi. 6 ff.) The supposed immaculate character of woman is not maintained, but some curious regulations are to be found. Thus, it is said by Vasishtha that only three acts make women impure: becoming an outcast, murdering her husband, and slaying her unborn child;‖ but according to Gautama, abortion and connection with a low-caste make a woman an outcast (Vās. xxviii. 7; G. xxi. 9). Notwithstanding that it is said by Vasishtha that a woman is pure in all her limbs, and is not defiled by her lover (Vās. xxviii. 9, 1–6.), we read in the same work that to make herself pure the woman has to sip water (Vās. iii. 31–34; B. i. 5. 8. 22). Woman was, therefore, in general less exposed than man to accidental theoretical impurities, but crimes of the gravest nature made her impure; and, though not impure for herself from natural causes, she might render the man who associated with her impure. The giving of right of way to a woman seems also to rest on this footing in the law-treatises; for, though given in the form common to the Epic and to Manu in three of the *dharmasūtras*, that of Baudhāyana restricts the gallantry to the case of a pregnant woman.* As to killing a woman, we find in all the law-books that the punishment is in proportion not only to the caste, but to the condition of the woman at the time of her murder.† For an ordinary woman—that is, for women in general—a modified penance is ordained by law, while for the accidental slaughter of an unchaste woman or harlot there is no penance at all, or at the most ‘a bag.’‡

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∗ ‘One must not sell human beings,’ G. vii. 14; ‘females are not lost by possession,’ G. xii. 39; Vās. xvi. 18; M. viii. 149. † Dasyu here is slave, xii. 133. 16–17. ‡ There is a passage in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa (interpolated perhaps) referring to slave girls presented as gifts : Ait. Br. viii. 22. § G. ii. 16; Āp. i. 2. 7. 3, 8–10. In respect of māithuna, no intercourse is allowed ṛtukāle, but the penalty is slight : G. xxiii. 34; M. xi.

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¹⁷⁴ Of course no attention is paid to this rule in Epic legends. One should not eat what is touched by a woman in her courses; and anything handled by women seems impure : G. xvii. 10; Āp. i. 5. 16. 28; Vās. iii. 45. ‖ On modes of abortion, compare i. 177. 46; aҫmanā kukṣiṃ nirbibheda, of the abortiones. Compare the same act in V. P. iv. 4.

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† Penance for the slaughter of a Brahman woman in her courses stands always first. Compare G. xxii. 12; Āp. i. 9. 24. 9; Vās. xx. 34 sq.; B. i. 10. 19. 3; ii. 1. 1. 11; M. xi. 88.

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‡ G. xxii. 17, 26–27; Āp. i. 9. 24. 5.

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But few general rules remain to be considered for women. Legally, they could be witnesses only for women (M. viii. 68; Vās. xvi. 30). Religiously, they had no independent part in Veda-study or in sacrifice, merely helping their husbands in the manual part of the daily service, and (barring accidental representation) being entitled, like the slaves, to merely a perfunctory acquiescent word during religious rites, their knowledge being classed with that of slaves as the last thing that a man should study, and consisting of improper tales, singing, dancing, and mechanical arts.

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The Epic rule agrees with the legal of course in generally excluding women from sacrifice, feasts to the Manes, and fasting,§ and confining their religion to ‘obedience to the husband’; but we find terrible religious austerities undergone by the maid of Kāçī, performed, like those of an ordinary ascetic, with a view of compassing earthly power by religious merit (v. 186. 19).

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§ iii. 205. 22; women have no *yajñakriyāḥ*, no *çrāddha*, and no *upavāsakam*, but their means of heaven is *bhartari çuçrūṣā*.

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Finally, we as cannot suppose for a moment that the Epic represents either chronological or geographical unity, we must always understand that ‘the women of India’ means the Aryan women approved of by the late redaction, when rules for conduct are given; since we read of women whose customs are directly opposed to those allowed by the Epic ideal, women who dance naked, and get drunk, and behave with open and unabashed immodesty;* and though we know that the practice of ‘guarding’ or shutting women up was of comparatively recent origin, yet we have to assume this as the custom for all respectable women of the ‘Epic age,’ the only exceptions being those of older traditional tales, girls in lowly circumstances, and country girls. City women of respectable character were neither seen nor heard. Yet the feasts and rejoicings of a still later epoch† show us women freely commingling with men, and we must suppose that absolute secretion of women was practiced only in the families of kings or of the highest nobles, and that the occasional return to a natural life was a temporary adoption of rules current in lower society.‡ Some women seem recognized as not restricted by the ordinary rules of seclusion.§

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∗ G. vi. 24; Āp. ii. 5. 11. 7; Vās. xiii. 58; B. ii. 3. 6. 30; Mbh. xiii. 163. 38.

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It is now time to draw that necessary distinction in treating of Hindu women to which allusion was made at the outset, and review the three periods of woman’s life, as girl, wife, and widow.

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The Girl.||—Krishnā, the daughter of Drupada, was, considering her beauty and her marital complications, an exceedingly well instructed woman, and was able to argue very cleverly with her sage lord, Yudhishthira. Much of this wisdom she gleaned from him rather late in life, but other sources of knowledge were open to her from an early period. To one of these she refers at the close of a grand discussion on the difficult question of fate, involving subtile questions of human and divine power, with which she is remarkably familiar: ‘this I learned (in childhood) as a sage priest taught it to my brother, while I sat in my father’s lap and listened.’¶ The picture drawn here represents an unusual home scene; for notices of the life of girls except in an epigrammatic or didactic way are rare.

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* The Madrakāḥ, women of Çalya’s country: compare viii. 40. 17 ff. Compare the Bāhīkas in ib. 44. 1 ff.; 45. 19 ff.; v. 39. 80, ‘Bālhīkas are the refuse of earth.’ In B. (the same proverb) Bālhīka and Vāhīka, (sic). † Not alone in the Harivaṅça. In i. 222. 21, the women get drunk at a picnic. Compare above, p. 121. ‡ To see the city sights, processions, etc., the women sit on the roofs, away from the public (i. 69. 1 ff.). § ii. 31. 38; women in Mahiṣmatī by especial permission of Agni are ‘not guarded’ by their husbands and are dissolute (svāriṇyaḥ . . yatheṣṭhaṃ vicaranti). The expression rakṣ, usually used of keeping women secluded, may be used in an entirely unconventional sense, as yoṣit sadā rakṣyā, i. 111. 12, means that one ought never to injure a woman. For fuller treatment, see below.

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|| Parāç. vii. 4 defines a ripe girl, kanyā, as a maid of ten years; one of nine is called rohiṇī; one of eight, gaurī.

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¶ iii. 32. 60-62, the bṛhaspatiproktā nītiḥ is meant, on dāiva, pāuruṣa, and hatha (ib. 32).

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But Drupada was a king, and must have been an unusually affectionate father, for in general there appears to have been no sentiment but contempt for the girl. At least, this is the frequent statement: boys are blessings, girls are a nuisance. Girls, anyway, are no good, ‘but a daughter is a torment,’ it is said.* The care of marrying her and the responsibility she unworthily bears is meant; as Mātali exclaims in another place, against the girls of great families, that a daughter is a constant risk to three families, her mother’s family, her father’s, and finally her husband’s (v. 97. 15–16). But natural affection was stronger than systematic contempt, and we are glad to learn from the Epic’s own words that, in spite of the usual fixed difference in the regard felt for son and daughter, ‘some fathers love the boy more; some, the girl’ (i. 157. 37). A rule of the ‘house-manuals’ says that when a man returns from a journey and meets his son he should kiss him on the head, and murmur ‘out of the heart art thou born; thou art the self called son; O live a hundred years,’ and kiss him three times more, murmuring benedictions—‘but his daughter he should only kiss, without words.’

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But almost all the occasions on which girls are mentioned have to do with their marriage. For the universal rule of Epic and formal law compelled the girl to marry when she was yet immature. Before the time of marriage she appears as a naked child, or, if somewhat older, either as a child-princess whose main interest just before her marriage is to get new clothes for her doll, or as a clever little damsel picking up wisdom on her father’s lap.†

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According to law and Epic usage, and even to a suggestive verse in the Rig-Veda, it would seem that the brother was scarcely less necessary to the girl’s fortune than the father. The brother preserved the sister from a rude fate, since Aryan rule prohibits marriage with a girl that has no brother. Of such a girl the Rig-Veda speaks as if it were a matter of course that she should not be married, but should become a common woman of the streets.

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∗ i. 159. 11–12, kṛcchraṃ tu duhitā, etc. † The princess Uttarā asks Arjuna, to whose son she is shortly married (after he himself had declined her hand when offered by her father), to bring back cloth with which to dress the dolls of herself and girlfriends. Arjuna’s remarks on declining her hand show that she was a mere child, although at least of marriageable age, vayaḥsthā, iv. 72.

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⁴ She appears in full regal attire when ceremony demands it. Compare above, p. 170, and iv. 37. 29 for the doll, pāñcālikā. This seems implied in sūtraprotā dārumayī yoṣā, v. 39. 1, though a puppet, puttikā, may be meant. The first expression is used in the drama for the doll of a princess. Playing with a ball, kanduka, is shown to be a girl’s amusement in iii. 111. 16; and kanduka appears again in Mālavikāg. iv. 17, kandukaṃ anudhāvanti, as fitting play for a princess. The general name for childrens’ playthings is krīḍanaka, which implies dolls, balls, carts, etc., or pet animals, as in the divinity’s case, vyālakrīḍanakaiḥ krīḍate, Vāyu P. ii. 37. 281: compare ib. 36.

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⁹⁴ The usual amusements of the girls, however, singing, dancing, and music, are more corporal exercises parallel to the shooting and riding of the boys.

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The reason for this is not less simple in itself than significant for the late and full development of many customs appearing in the Vedic age that we are wont to regard as peculiar to a later—or, in other words, for the lateness of parts of the Rig-Veda. For the only reason for the Rig-Veda’s speaking of the forlorn condition of the brotherless girl must have been that which causes legal injunctions against marrying such a girl: namely, that the man who had only a daughter might claim that daughter’s son as his own religious representative in offering oblations to the Manes of himself and ancestors. The right of the husband of the brotherless girl in his prospective son would thus be forgone. The dead father ought to receive the funeral cake, but that son could offer no cake to his father’s soul; he must offer it to the soul of his maternal grandfather; and the main object of the father’s marriage would be lost. Without a son, and without a cake, his soul would lie in hell.* The only interest felt for the girl was in the matter of her marriage. Before she becomes a wife, however, two points are to be settled. At what age does she marry, and at what price?

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Now the later tabulated and scheduled wisdom, as we find it in the Bṛhat-Saṃhitā, gives a remarkable statement, to the effect that a woman is not full grown till she is twenty.† On the other hand, the only Epic that specifies the age of the heroine makes Sītā six years old at the time of marriage (quoted above, p. 110, note). But we can trust the law to help out the Epic in this particular. It is not likely that unanimity on such a point would exist among law-books, were there great differences in practice. Suppose we divide life into the four divisions usually accepted by the Hindus: babyhood, youth, maturity, old age. The period of babyhood extends to the time when it is necessary to put on clothes. Now some of the law-givers say ‘let a girl be married before she wears clothes’; one says, ‘before puberty’;‡ and a later (verse) law says, ‘while the girl is still naked let her father give her in marriage.’§

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∗ Rig-Veda i. 124. 7: the girl without a brother runs loosely after men. G. xxviii. 20; M. iii. 11; ix. 136; Yāj. i. 53. † viṃcativarṣā nārī . . arhati mānonmānam (puruṣaḥ khalu pañcaviṃçatibhir abdāiḥ). B. S. 68. 107. ‡ prāg vāsaḥpratipatter ity eke after pradānam prāg ṛtoḥ, G. xviii. 23, 21. § Vās. xvii. 70: cf. B. iv. 1. 11–14 (Bühler). The length of the time the girl should wait to be given away, and at the expiration of which she may make her own choice, is set by some at three months; by some at

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The pseudo-Epic chimes in with the rule that a man of thirty may wed a girl of ten (still clotheless); or a man of twenty, one of seven. In its informal part we find also the same advice, but expressed more indefinitely: ‘a long abode in the house of relatives is not a good thing for women.’* The statement in the Epic ‘they extol a wife whose maturity is past (*gatayauvanā*)’ points to the same view; for it is the married woman whose youthful folly has passed into middle age that renders the house and peace of the husband perfect (v. 35. 69). The law-book of Manu does not specify more nearly than to say that the girl may marry at eight, or before the age of puberty; but it adds a very special injunction that a girl is better unmarried forever than given to an unsuitable husband. The oldest commentator on this law objects to so early an age as eight, saying plainly that in such a case the girl is simply sold by her father. In India the marriageable age is usually reached between ten and twelve.

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We have clearly in the legendary literature, both Epic and dramatic, a reversion to a freer age. Çakuntalā, Subhadrā, Mālavikā, Damayantī, Krishnā, are no babies of eight or ten. They are grown girls conscious of womanhood. The girls of the forests in their fathers’ ascetic abodes, so often met with by kings and priests, are practically well-developed and full-grown.

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Instances of legend and law might be multiplied without increasing our knowledge. We must, it seems, first of all admit that there was a difference of custom within the Aryan order itself; recognize that till the Vedic age is passed (back into the borders of which the Epic story extends), the girls were married after they had reached maturity, not before; acknowledge that the priests in literature prior to that of the Epic had laid down a maxim that girls ought to be married before this age, and that

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three years. The latter seems to be the earlier form, for which later the ‘periods’ are substituted. Compare G. xviii. 20 (*trīn kumāryṛtūn*) with Vās. xvii. 67-68 (*trīṇi varṣāṇi*); and the confusion in çloka-writers, M. ix. 4, 90-92; Vishnu, xxiv. 40, and in the *ṛtu* substituted in the verse of Vasistha (loc. cit. 70) after the prose *varṣāṇi*. Compare also B. iv. 1. 11-14). In the Epic, a month is the formal equivalent of a year (iii. 35. 32), and I have thought perhaps this *varṣa* is responsible for such informal confusion and formal substitution. ‘The rains’ might be interpreted as years or months (rainy season); *varṣe-varṣe* = each rain or each year. The ‘four rains’ means the months. It may be remarked in connection with the following discussion that ‘in the bad age to come’ girls will choose their own husbands and bear children at the age of five or six; boys becoming also mature at seven or eight: iii. 190. 36 and 49.

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∗ xiii. 44. 14 (M. ix. 88-94). In the following Epic verses occurs the law-book rule that a girl ‘after three years’ unwedded may hunt up her husband herself (ib. 44. 16-17); the informal advice, i. 74. 12.

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this generally received maxim expresses a general custom; see in the freer permission of Manu and the objection to child-marriage of his oldest commentator a later protest against such immature marriage; consider the Epic and dramatic legends as expressive of an ideal rather than a custom of the time; make a distinction between the lot of the higher and lower classes, the respectable and unworthy women; presume such a distinction made further by geographical difference in custom; and conclude that we have thus come as near to historical truth as we are able. The line of development in this matter seems steadily directed toward the state of affairs now obtaining, where child-marriages and child-widows are the general curse of the land.

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Necessary and important is the evidence of the Greeks, with which I leave the subject. It proves that seven was regarded as an age fit for marriage. ’Εν δὲ τῇ χώρῃ ταύτῃ ἵνα ἐβασίλευσεν ἡ θυγάτηρ τοῦ ‘Ηρακλέος, τὰς μὲν γυναῖκας ἑπταέτεας ἐούσας ἐς ὥρην γάμου ἰέναι, τοὺς δὲ ἄνδρας τεσσαράκοντα ἔτεα τὰ πλεῖστα βιώσκεσθαι (Arrian, Ind. 23, c. 9). Μεγασθένης δέ φησιν τὰς ἐν Πανδαίᾳ (?) κατοικούσας γυναῖκας ἑξαετεῖς γινομένας τίκτειν (Phlegon, Mirab.).

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The period described by the Epic, and from which its story comes, represents probably an age in every way more happy for women than the later. But the time in which the Epic was composed out of old legends must already have known child-marriages. For this later custom we may give four reasons, if we put ourselves upon the Hindu plane of thought. First, the nature of woman: the objective end of woman’s life is to marry and bear children; let her not, therefore, be kept from the labor the Creator intended should be hers, but undertake it as soon as possible.* Second, the pecuniary advantage: the girl was an expense at home, and was paid for when married; let her bring her price as soon as possible. Third, the fear of impurity: after the age of womanhood, contact with unclean women rendered men liable to impurity, and made it necessary for them to do penance; let her be put out of the way, safe and ‘guarded’: that is, where only her husband shall meet her (for ‘women’s apartments’ can have been only in the large houses of the rich). Fourth, pride: it is an honor to parent and child to have the latter married well and early; and, as the Hindu says, a grown girl may commit indiscretions that ruin the happiness of three families; as women are utterly untrustworthy, they should be ‘guarded’ as soon as possible, even before they are of age; then the parent is free from danger, and the husband is certain that his wife is pure. Climatic conditions make these marriages of children possible: the practice reveals at once the state of society. Yet, with general condemnation, we must not forget the skilful, witty, and learned women of the earlier Brahmanic period, who are indeed often the best in coping with the priests in argument, and are put down by the violence as much as by the logic of their opponents. Like the women of that period appears Kṛṣṇā in the Epic, a well-taught and clever disputant; nor are the others of her sex represented except in pedantic didactic as inferior to men. One might almost conjecture another reason, added to those above, and attribute the insistance of the priests upon child-marriages to a desire to suppress the intolerable freedom of tongue exercised by women in their discussions.

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∗ This is the view bluntly expressed by the Hindus. Compare M. ix. 96, ‘women are created in order to bear children.’

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In the fifth century B. C., at the hands of the Buddhists, women became to a great extent emancipated. Then follows the era of enlightened women; the rise of the nunneries; the freedom from restraint—to be lost with the rise of Brahmanism again, though occasional glimpses show us in the period of our middle ages women that were esteemed as poets and even as lawyers: as witness the work on law by one Lakṣmīdevī, of whom Colebrooke speaks, and the women poets in the Saduktikarṇāmṛtam (composed 1205 A. D.).*

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Before taking up the question of the price paid for the girl, let us consider the kind of a girl one should marry. She should of course be ‘of good family’: the first rule, wherever we find rules on this subject, is always that a man should take care that his son marry a girl whose family is worthy of her; and his daughter, a man of like or higher caste. In this regard, because of caste, no land was ever stricter in its precepts. Legends, however, oppose the laws in showing us as many cases of men of knightly caste uniting with priests’ daughters as men of priestly caste with girls of warrior-caste; and even the women of lower castes are here wedded to kings and priests. To be avoided in marriage are girls personally defective, or afflicted with disagreeable diseases, or with inauspicious names. Too close relations are forbidden to marry in the later law: ‘one should avoid a girl of the same family as one’s mother.’*

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∗ See Notices, No. 1180; Cāṇḍālavidyā, Bhāvadevī, Vyāsapādā, etc. are women among the 446 poets whose verses are here made into an anthology. There is no other language than that of men for the Epic heroines; but, as is well known, in the drama vulgar people and women generally speak Prākṛit, or a patois, while the men of rank speak Sanskrit. Venerable women and even common women do sometimes, however, even here speak Sanskrit, e. g. in the case (Mṛcch., Act iv.) of Vasantasenā.

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As among the earliest rules no such law is found, we may assume that blood-relationship was only gradually introduced as a bar; the early legends of the gods wedding their daughters and sisters seem to me, however, no proof of such custom in man.

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Corporal characteristics are spoken of above.

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The price paid for a woman is called çulka, a price or fee.† Gautama says that the debt does not involve the sons if unpaid by the father, and that the price goes first to the mother, or, if she is dead, to the brothers of the girl, according to some lawgivers; others say, to the brothers with the mother; but he leaves this point unsettled.‡ Tacitly, as well as peremptorily, the early law recognizes the sale of a daughter; later on (as well known, both stages are represented in Manu), the law forbids such a sale. In the Vedic times the sale of a daughter appears not to have been unusual (R.V. i. 109. 2). It is the rule to-day in some parts of India. The law-makers resisted the custom, and would have the fee looked upon as a gift. Nevertheless, it remained sales-money by the name of gift or fee, and was not uncommon, though the kind of marriage implying it is reckoned less worthy. The ‘free-choice’ of the woman must have been affected by it; for it is disputed whether it be legit-

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† This subject has been discussed by M. Léon Feer in Journ. As., vol. viii., Le Mariage par achat dans l’Inde āryenne: mainly devoted to adjusting discrepancies between the marriage-forms in Ādip. and Manu (see below). Feer draws attention to the fact that the election is only a preliminary to the form of marriage selected (p. 476), and concludes that the ārṣa and āsura forms both imply sale.

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‡ G. xxviii. 25-26. The first çulka-quotation from G. xii. 41, like M. viii. 159, is thus interpreted by the commentators.

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* The injunctions are given in xiii. 104. 123 ff.; the parivrajitā, wandering (Buddhist?), is included among undesirable brides (also ayoni and viyoni connection blamed). In verse 130, samārṣā mātuḥ svakulajā; in ib. 44. 18, asapiṇḍā mātur asagotrā pituḥ. In ib. 15, ‘one should avoid a girl that has no brother or father, for she is putrikā ’dharmiṇī.’ See M. v. 60 (sapindas are those related to the seventh degree); iii. 5-11; G. iv. 2; Āp. ii. 5. 11. 15 (Bühler’s note). The first quotation is freer than the second, and means simply, as translated, ‘one should not marry a girl descended from one’s father’s ancestor, or one of the same family as the mother.’ The legal restriction is ‘within six degrees on the mother’s side and not a gentilis or relation on the father’s side;’ in the Puranic law, the fifth on the mother’s side, the seventh on the father’s. The question is involved by somewhat contradictory tradition and by caste, into which the Epic takes us by its usual impartial giving of different views. Thus, samārṣā would appear to restrict the rule anyway to Brahmans. The views of the legal commentators will be found in Bühler’s or Burnell’s translation of Manu. The priest that in i. 13. 29 goes after a wife of the same name (sanāmnī), and refuses (14. 3) to accept Vāsuki’s sister because she did not fulfil this condition, meant thereby not family but proper name, one with the same meaning as his. According to B. i. 2. 2. 3, own cousins may marry ‘in the South.’ For the usage given by the House-laws, see Weber, Ind. Stud. x. 76.

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imate for a father to give his daughter, although engaged to one man, to a better one, if the marriage has not taken place. The frequent denunciation of the custom proves its prevalence: ‘he that sells his son or offers his daughter for a fee goes to hell.’* ‘A gift for a girl is recorded by the good.’† ‘They that dispose of a girl for a fee go an evil course.’‡ The ‘fee’ is sometimes a mere promise to pay.§ A permissible sale is veiled as a free gift, but open selling is condemned. Nevertheless we find the selling practiced.‖ Even the pseudo-Epic records a case of sale. Gādhi did not care to give his daughter to Ricīka, because he thought ‘he’s a poor beggar’; so he said ‘first give me the fee, and you shall then have my daughter.’ The suitor readily assented, and paid the price (xiii. 4. 10). Fee is sometimes implied without express statement. Compare ‘this daughter was disposed of by the king, after the latter had stipulated the marriage-fee’ (i. 193. 23). If a man, it is said, should give a girl to one man and then to another, he would be born a worm—implying payment.¶

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[^ *]: xiii. 45. 18 : compare M. iii. 54 with the following. [^ †]: i. 102. 12; see below, under marriage-forms. [^ ‡]: vii. 73. 42 (equal in sin to one courting a rajasvalā, or to an asyamāithunika, or ye divā māithune ratāḥ (ib. 43). C. omits this). [^ §]: In i. 103. 14, vṛttaṃ çulkahetoḥ is a mere promise on the part of the suitor. [^ ‖]: Compare in i. 221. 4, pradānam api kanyāyāḥ paçuvat ko ‘numanyate, vikrayaṃ cā’py apatyasya kaḥ kuryāt puruṣo bhuvi. The king of Madras says to a suitor who does not offer a price, ‘you suit me exactly, but I cannot transgress our law; whether bad or good, I cannot transgress our family custom, and there is an impropriety in your request; you should not say: “sir, give me (without a price, this sister),” ’ i. 113. 9–13; ib. 10. The suitor paid the price; and he is the greatest saint in the Epic. Not content with paying, he says the rule is a good rule, a rule of God, a law enforced by the ancients, a law without sin; ib. 13. [^ ¶]: xiii. 111. 83: compare also xiii. 44: if one man gives a fee for a girl, another is promised the girl, another abducts her, another offers money, and another actually weds her—whose wife would she be? The answer is, that the Vedic ceremony makes the real marriage, and the promise is invalid in face of the fact that the girl is now wedded: followed, however, by condemnation of one that gives to one man after promise to another; so that the marriage is clandestine (28). In the following the fee-theory is stated in full: ‘the fee does not decide the marriage; it is not the chief thing; a gift (to the bride) of ornaments does not imply that she is sold; eternal law proclaims that the husband should give something; it is of no consequence if one gives a verbal promise of a daughter; a girl should not be given to one she hates; a wife may not be sold; those that maintain that the fee given before or at marriage is really sales-money and the chief thing (and that the woman passes into her owner’s hands solely on account of this) do not understand. For instance, if a man gives the fee for a girl and dies before marriage, the girl does not belong to his family; therefore the fee is not a price paid for chattel. The girl may marry some one else, or form a levirate marriage with the dead groom’s brother (so Manu), or act like a widow (as usual, the Epic puts into the argument what destroys it; the statement that the girl in some cases weds the brother or acts like a widow shows It remains to add of the marriage-money that Strabo attests the fact that a yoke of oxen was given by the suitor as a price for the girl (xv. p. 709). On the other hand, the wife’s dowry is an unpledged sum given by the father to the daughter or son-in-law; in royal marriages the gift is often handsome. ‘A befitting dowry’ is sometimes spoken of; a king gives his new son-in-law a princely gift; Drupada gives gifts to all the knights when his daughter is married, horses, elephants, women (slaves), etc.; and Krishna carries the haraṇam of Subhadrā from her home to that of the Pāṇdus.* Compare the gift of King Virāṭa to his son-in-law when his daughter is married—seven thousand horses and two hundred elephants (iv. 72. 36). It made some difference whether the father gave to the bride or to the bridegroom, as the wife’s property included ‘gifts at marriage’ (M. ix. 194).

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