Hindu Law and Custom (Recht und Sitte) c7.610

c7.610

Virginity essential in a bride. The bride must be a virgin. This requirement is mentioned in the laws of marriage in the Gṛhya and Dharmasūtras in general and is self-evident from the custom of child-marriage; it is however so much emphasised that it debars even the *remarriage of widows*. It has now been proved ¹ that the passages formerly quoted to prove the permissibility of widow marriage in the ṚV and the AV are not what they were thought to be. The "woman who has again become (a wife)" (*punarbhū*), is of course mentioned in AV 9, 5, 27 f. in connection with a sacrifice which such a person performs in order to be united with her second and not the first husband in the next world. It cannot be decided with certainty from these words, either directly or by implication, whether the first husband is still living or not. At all events the latter interpretation is possible and gains in probability from the explanations of the term *punarbhū* in the Smṛtis. Thus the *punarbhū*, who is only one step higher than the wanton woman (*svairiṇī* Nār. 12, 45 ff.), is defined to be a woman who, still a virgin, is married to a second husband or a woman who lived before her marriage with another man though indeed not married to him or who left her first husband because he was impotent, excommunicated from his caste or suffered from a mental disorder, or who has been deserted by her first husband, or who has returned to the husband to whom she was married as a child after living in the meanwhile with others, or one who, in conformity with the custom of levirate, has been given over to a distant relation (*sapinḍa*) of her husband on failure of a brother-in-law. M. 9, 175 (cf. 69 f.), Vas. 17, 20, 74 and Baudh, 4, 1, 16 expressly refer to the case where the first husband is dead, but however allow the the remarriage of the widow only if the death of the husband has taken place before the celeberation of the marriage. Moreover the second marriage in the above mentioned Vedic passage appears to be a sin Re-marriage permitted under exceptional circumstances.