Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.572

c7.572

The rules that the Vivāha should take place before puberty, that the bride—this too is often expressly mentioned in this connection—must be *nagnikā*, are common to all the Smṛtis. Many of them however go further and lay down a fixed age for marriage and the later the work the earlier is the age.¹ Thus according to M. 9,94, a man of thirty years of age should marry a girl of twelve, and a man of twenty-four years a girl of eight.² On the other hand according to the Bṛh. the age of the bride in those cases should be 10 and 7 respectively. Dakṣa and Saṃvarta recommend the age of 8. Other authors have prescribed the age of 10 or 12 as the upper limit and the age of 7 as the lower limit. There are also texts in which 4-6 and 8 years form the lower and the upper limits. Many occasional remarks prove that such rules did not remain dead letters.³ Thus in the law of hospitality (M. 3, 114; Y. 1, 105; Vi. 67, 39) the Kumārī has been distinguished from the Suvāsinī or Svarāsinī—now called Suasin⁴—by which term a married daughter is meant who still remains in her father's house, i. e., a bride who is not yet mature. If such a girl dies her blood-relations will have to observe a shorter period of mourning, while otherwise for married daughters their blood-relations do not observe mourning at all (Vi. 22, 33 f.). The rare category of "remarried virgin widows" (akṣatayoni- *punarbhū*, Nār. 12, 46; M. 9, 176; Vas. 17, 20; Vi. 15, 8) may be explained only on the hypothesis that it was considered a marriage if the nuptial ceremonies alone, particularly the act of "grasping hands" (*pāṇigrahaṇa*), took place, even though no consummation followed on account of the tender age of the bride. The expression *kaumārapati* "the bridegroom of youth," whom a *punarbhū* deserts to live with another man (Nār. 12, 47), is significant; here too it is only a bridegroom and not a husband. For that reason in an anonymous Smṛti the husband, i. e., the bridegroom, has been denied the right of having conjugal relations with his bride until she is mature.¹