[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915) › v1.c5.270 # Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.270 Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c5.270 - **Language:** English ### [v1.c5.270](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c5.270) ¹ The Gandharva form is only for the warrior nobility according likewise to Manu, iii, 26; Viṣṇu, xxiv, 28 (and he that so gives his daughter away, thereby comes into the blessed worlds of the Gandharvas, 37). On the other hand Baudhāyana, i, 11, 20.13, teaches that the Gandharva marriage is lawful for the Vaiçya and the Çūdra, but according to “others” for all castes, and that because it is based on love. Baudh. himself, however, evidently thinks that maidens who make so free are not of much value after all (see 14 and 15). Nārada states without hesitation that this kind of marriage belongs to all castes alike (sādhāraṇā), while he roundly rejects capture marriage as also marriage by purchase and by fraud (xii, 44). Moreover the holy Kaṇva (MBh., i, 73.27) is also in agreement: “The Gandharva form is according to tradition the best for the Kshattriya.” If the current view of the ethnologists and anthropologists were really the right one—that marriage has grown all over the world out of “hetærism” (and it has much to be said for it)—then the Indian views as to the Gandharva home-bringing, that “survival from the time of promiscuity”, might very well be understood from an “inter-ethnic” standpoint, and even a speculative theory built up on the bare names: on this theory the Gandharvas, the owners of the woman before marriage, would be the symbols of the whole clan or tribal community, every male member of which had a right to all the women, and so on. But such things may be left to others. Moreover there is still found to-day among very many tribes of the primitive population of India not only an exceedingly loose sexual life, but also marriage according to the free will of the two most concerned. So the “Gandharva marriage” thus thrust itself on the Aryan settlers. - [Previous: v1.c5.269](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c5.269) - [Next: v1.c5.271](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c5.271) - [Up: v1.c5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c5) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c5.270](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.meyer-1915.v1.c5.270) · Pramāṇa