Vedic Index of Names and Subjects v1.c3.s21.179

v1.c3.s21.179

*Limitations on Marriage.*—It is difficult to say with certainty within what limits marriage was allowed. The dialogue of Yama and Yamī in the Rigveda⁶ seems clearly to point to a prohibition of the marriage of brother and sister. It can hardly be said, as Weber⁷ thinks, to point to a practice that was once in use and later became antiquated. In the Gobhila Gṛhya Sūtra⁸ and the Dharma Sūtras⁹ are found prohibitions against marriage in the Gotra (‘family’) or within six degrees on the mother’s or father’s side, but in the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa¹⁰ marriage is allowed in the third or fourth generation, the former being allowed, according to Harisvamin,¹¹ by the Kāṇvas, and the second by the Saurāṣṭras, while the Dākṣiṇātyas allowed marriage with the daughter of the mother’s brother or the son of the father’s sister, but presumably not with the daughter of the mother’s sister or the son of the father’s brother. The prohibition of marriage within the Gotra cannot then have existed,¹² though naturally marriages outside the Gotra were frequent.¹³ Similarity of caste was also not an essential to marriage, as hypergamy was permitted even by the Dharma Sūtras,¹⁴ so that a Brāhmaṇa could marry wives of any lower caste, a Kṣatriya wives of the two lowest castes as well as of his own caste, a Vaiśya a Śūdrā as well as a Vaiśyā, although the Śūdrā marriages were later disapproved in toto. Instances of such intermarriage are common in the Epic, and are viewed as normal in the Bṛhaddevatā.¹⁵