History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v2.c31.s1.1.2

v2.c31.s1.1.2

610-611) that according to Nārada, Parāśara and a few others a woman was allowed to remarry in case the husband died, or was unheard of &c.; but according to the digests and commentaries these rules apply to a former *yuga* (age). Therefore divorce in the ordinary sense of the word (i. e. divorce *a vinculo matrimonii*) has been unknown to the dharmaśāstras and to Hindu society for about two thousand years (except on the ground of custom among the lower castes). Even when the husband was allowed to abandon the wife for her lapse, still she was in most cases entitled to at least starving maintenance. Therefore *tyāga* (abandonment) was not only no divorce *a vinculo* at all but was not even a divorce *a mensa et thoro* (divorce from board and bed). Later smṛtis and medieval digests could hardly conceive of any ground for which the wife could desert her husband altogether, though Nārada and a few others allowed her to desert one husband and marry another if he was impotent, or became a saṁnyāsin or an outcast. The Mit. on Yāj. I. 77 says that a wife is not under the control of her husband as long as he remains *patita* (outcast or excommunicated) and that she should wait till he is purified by penance and restored to caste and that thereafter she again becomes dependent on him. The gravest sins can be expiated by penance (vide Manu XI. 89, 92, 101, 105-106); therefore it follows that a wife could not for ever desert even a *patita* husband.