The Social and Military Position of the Ruling Caste in Ancient India, as Represented by the Sanskrit Epic c2.s6.71

c2.s6.71

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.