The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c31.s5.7

v2.c31.s5.7

The first formal step in the procedure, which doubtless was often carried out only after the marriage had been duly arranged beforehand by the parents with the advice of the Brahmans, was for the bridegroom to send wooers, usually his own father and the Ācārya of the house, to the father of the other family: the new-comers announced themselves, and set out the Gotra names—doubtless to show that the relationship was not a forbidden one—and if the other side agreed, all touched a pot filled with grains, fruits, flowers, &c., pronounced a formulae expressing agreement and assurance, and then the teacher of the bride’s family placed the pot on her head. When the girl is to be taken to her new home, she is first formally washed by women of the same caste, and she names her husband in a verse addressed to Kāma, ‘love’. She puts on a red or uncoloured garment and sits behind the fire, and holds on to the priest as he offers to Indra and Indrāṇī: the bridegroom offers similarly to Vaiçravaṇa¹ and Içāna. Thereafter four or eight women dance in the house of the bride, and receive food, and the Brahmans are also fed. The appropriate time for the wedding ceremony is the northern course of the sun and the increasing half of the month, but some authorities allow any time almost to be used: the two months of the cool season and the last hot month are by some excluded. The bridegroom is led to the house of the bride by gay young women, not widows, to whom he must behave with complaisance. On his arrival, he should, according to some authorities, be received with the Argha offering of a cow, but by others this is postponed until the actual consummation of the marriage: a second cow is also later slain in the bridegroom’s own house in honour of his father, teacher, and others. The bridegroom, with the permission of the maidens, gives the bride a new garment, anoints her, puts in her right hand a porcupine quill, perhaps for the ceremony of hair-parting, which takes place after pregnancy, and in the left a mirror. Her relatives then put on her a reddish black cord of wool or hemp with three amulets, and place Madhuka flowers on the bridegroom.