Editing Content :: Admin Scraper

Chapter

Content type

Position

Value

58 T HEMES IN INDIAN H ISTORY Source 3 and far met to buy and sell their products and share ideas in the urban milieu. This may have led to a Eight forms of marriage questioning of earlier beliefs and practices (see also Chapter 4). Faced with this challenge, the Here are the first, fourth, fiftBrahmanas responded by laying down codes of social and sixth forms of marriage from theManusmriti: behaviour in great detail. These were meant to be followed by Brahmanas in particular and the rest of First: The gift of a daughter, society in general. From c. 500 BCE, these norms were after dressing her in costly compiled in Sanskrit texts known as the clothes and honouring her Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras. The most with presents of jewels, to important of such works, the Manusmriti, was a man learned in the compiled between c. 200 BCE and 200 CE. Veda whom the father While the Brahmana authors of these texts himself invites. claimed that their point of view had universal validity Fourth: The gift of a and that what they prescribed had to be obeyed by daughter by the father after everybody, it is likely that real social relations were he has addressed the couple more complicated. Besides, given the regional with the text, “May both of diversity within the subcontinent and the difficulties of communication, the influence of Brahmanas was you perform your duties together”, and has shown by no means all-pervasive. honour to the bridegroom. What is interesting is that the Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras recognised as many as eight forms Fifth:Whenthebridegroom of marriage. Of these, the first four were considered receivesamaiden,afterhaving given as much wealth as he as “good” while the remaining were condemned. It is canaffordtothekinsmenand possible that these were practised by those who did tothebrideherself,according not accept Brahmanical norms. to his own will. 2.4 The gotra of women Sixth: The voluntary union One Brahmanical practice, evident from c. 1000 BCE of a maiden and her lover onwards, was to classify people (especially Brahmanas) in terms of gotras. Each gotra was named … which springs from desire … after a Vedic seer, and all those who belonged to the same gotra were regarded as his descendants. Two rules about gotra were particularly important: ➲ For each of the forms, women were expected to give up their father’s gotra discuss whether the and adopt that of their husband on marriage and decision about the members of the same gotra could not marry. marriage was taken by One way to find out whether this was commonly (a) the bride, followed is to consider the names of men and women, (b) the bridegroom, which were sometimes derived from gotra names. (c) the father of the bride, These names are available for powerful ruling (d) the father of the lineages such as the Satavahanas who ruled over bridegroom, parts of western India and the Deccan (c. second (e) any other person. century BCE-second century CE). Several of their inscriptions have been recovered, which allow historians to trace family ties, including marriages. Reprint 2026-27