History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c26.36

v2.c26.36

The Mānava gṛ. I. 7. 8, Manu III. 11 and Yāj. I. 53 require that the girl to be chosen must not be brotherless. This requirement which has been not in force for centuries has a long history behind it. In Ṛg. I. 124. 7 it is said¹⁰³¹ ‘as a brotherless maiden comes back towards her male relations (her father’s family)...so the dawn reveals objects (or her beauty).’ In the Atharvaveda I. 17. 1 we read ‘like brotherless women let them sit still with their splendour gone’. Both these passages are quoted and explained in the Nirukta III. 4–5. In ancient times when a man had no son, he could make his daughter do for a son (i. e. she herself became putrikā) and stipulate with the person marrying her that the son born of her would be his (i. e. the girl’s father’s) son and would offer piṇḍas as a son to his maternal grandfather. The result would be that the son of such a girl would not offer piṇḍas to his father and would not continue the line of his father. Ṛg. III. 31. 1 (a very obscure and difficult verse) has been explained by the Nirukta (III. 4) as referring to the practice of declaring a daughter to be one’s son¹⁰³². Therefore, brotherless maidens were not chosen as brides and the Ṛg. speaks of spinsters growing old in their parental home (Ṛg. II. 17. 7). Vas. Dh. S. 17. 16 refers¹⁰³³ to Ṛg. I. 124. 7 and quotes a verse about a brotherless girl. Such a daughter at whose marriage the father made the stipulation stated above was called putrikā and according to Gaut. 28. 17 some ¹⁰³⁴ teachers went so far as to say that a daughter became a putrikā by the mental resolve of the father alone (without there being an express agreement with the bridegroom). It is therefore that Manu (3. 11) ordains that one should not marry a girl that has no brother, as there is the danger of her being a putrikā. The Nirukta (III. 5) quotes another ¹⁰³⁵ Vedic passage 'one should not marry a brotherless woman, for she becomes the son of him (her father)' and remarks that in this passage there is a direct prohibition against marrying a brotherless maiden (while in the passage of the Atharvaveda it is indirect, being involved in a simile) and it is also expressly said that she becomes the son of her father. In medieval times this prohibition against marrying a brotherless girl gradually was ignored and in modern times the pendulum has swung the other way, a brotherless girl being a coveted prize if her father be rich. In course of time popular feeling changed and no girl could remain unmarried if she wanted heavenly worlds. There is an interesting story in the Śalyaparva chap. 52 of the daughter of Kuṇigarga who, when told by Nārada that an unmarried woman could not secure heaven, married for one day Śṛṅgavat and then went to heaven.