Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.606

c7.606

Privilege of seniority as a hindrance to marriage. The privilege of age is a more important hindrance of marriage, for which reason it is considered sinful in a younger brother to marry before the elder brother and in a younger sister to marry before the elder sister¹. This rule, in a piece with other privileges of seniority, particularly in the law of inheritance, is to be accounted for by the high expenses of the marriage and of founding a new family, which, according to Indian custom remains with the parents of the husband, and it is found already in the Vedic Saṃhitās and the Śrautasūtras and *in extenso* in almost all the Smṛtis as well as in Mah. Yet however the infringement of this law is only a religious transgression and no crime in the worldly sense and it may therefore be expiated for by a penance in which, *inter alia*, the concluded marriage is dissolved but is afterwards celebrated anew (Vas. 20,7—10). Even now it is customary among the South Indian Brahman sects that the elder brother celebrates a mock marriage with a twig of a tree so that the younger brother may marry without incurring any sin². Modern instances of polyandry too, in which the common wife is considered to be the wife of the eldest brother and her children his children³, are based on similar views.