History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c26.46

v2.c26.46

The question of the age of marriage for men and women will now be considered. This is a very interesting and instructive study. The age of marriage for both sexes has varied considerably from age to age, from province to province and also from caste to caste even at the same time.¹⁰³⁸ As regards men there is no special rule as to the age before which a man was obliged to marry. A man could remain celibate all his life, while at least in medieval and modern times marriage has been absolutely necessary for every girl. A man was to marry after he had finished his Vedic studies; but the period of Vedic study was fluctuating (i. e. it could be 12, 24, 36, 48 years or as much time as was necessary to master one Veda or a portion of it). Usually twelve years were devoted to brahmacarya in ancient times and as upanayana ordinarily took place in the 8th year (for brāhmaṇas) a man would ordinarily be 20 years old or more at the time of marriage. It is therefore that Manu (IX. 94) remarks that a man of thirty may marry a girl of twelve years or a man of 24 who is in a hurry to become a householder may marry a girl of eight. Basing on this the Viṣṇupurāṇa¹⁰³⁹ (III. 10. 16) says that the ages of the bride and bridegroom should be in the ratio of 1 to 3. Aṅgiras says that the bride should be two, three, five or more years younger. In the Mahābhārata¹⁰⁴⁰ Gautama is prepared to give his daughter in marriage to Uttaṅka if he could be a youth of 16 years. In another place the Mahābhārata (Sabhā 64. 14 and Vanaparva 5. 15) uses the simile of a maiden not liking a husband of 60 years. That shows that girls were sometimes married to even old men of 60 in those days as rarely in modern times also. In the Mahābhārata (Anuśāsana 44. 14) the respective ages of the bridegroom and bride are recommended as 30 and 10 or 21 and 7; while the Udvāhatattva (p. 123) and S. Pr. p. 766 quote a verse from the Mahābhārata that a man of 30 should marry a girl of 16 (but from the metre and context it appears that ‘ṣoḍaśa-varṣām’ as printed should be ‘daśa-varṣām)’.