the gift of a virgin woman who has begun to menstruate (kanya dan). In the end, all the world’s impurities converge on the Brahmin, and for that he receives goods and prestations.35
Giving a virgin with dowry to a Brahmin is, according to the Dharma-sastra, the second of the four forms of dharmya marriage that are a sign of virtue and a source of merits for the girl’s father and her family. This marriage is called daiva, a word derived from deva, meaning ‘gods’, and consists, for a rich man who has embarked upon a cycle of major sacrifices, of giving one of his daughters to the Brahmin who performs these sacrifices for him. The gift of his daughter is added to the material gifts and prestations normally given a priest for fulfilling this role.
Without suggesting in the slightest that the forms of marriage practised in India today correspond to the eight forms listed and ranked by the Laws of Manu, it is still worthwhile examining these forms briefly in an attempt to glimpse a cultural and social world with which we are not automatically familiar. They are listed in descending order starting with the first, which we have described, the so-called Brahma marriage, from the name of the great god of all the worlds. The second form is Daiva. The third is named Arsa, from the term that designates the rsi, or seers, the sages of old. In this type of marriage, the father gives his virgin daughter but receives in exchange from his future son-in-law a few head of cattle for ritual use. The fourth form of marriage is called Prajapatya, from the name of the god of procreation, Prajapati. It differs from Brahma in that the gift of the girl is solicited.
Next come the four forms of marriage placed under the sign not of the gods but of the demons or spirits inimical to the gods. Asura – a term designating spirits that personify evil nature spirits – by which a man requests the gift of a woman and makes a marriage payment (sulka) to her family, and gives the woman herself goods which constitute a sort of dowry. The Gandharva marriage – from the name of the heavenly musicians who play dance music for the nymphs – is the union of a man and a woman who desire each other and marry without their families’ consent.36 Rakasa – from the name of the highly dangerous nocturnal demons (raksas) – is marriage by the forcible abduction of the girl from her family.37 And last of all, in Paisaca – from the name of the carnivorous demons that haunt cremation grounds – a man has sex with a woman he has found in an inebriated state or asleep and makes her his.
| Under the sign of the gods | Under the sign of the demons |
| 1. Brahma | 1. Asura |
| 2. Daiva | 2. Gandharva |
| 3. Arsa | 3. Raksasa |
| 4. Prajapatya | 4. Paisaca |
Several remarks are called for concerning these ‘demoniacal’ forms of marriage (it must not be forgotten that demons, though below the gods, share the same nature).
In Asura, a woman is exchanged for wealth. This form is encountered in Africa and in New Guinea, among the Melpa, for example. In India, it is also called by the names of local tribes, as though it were still marked by the forms of marriage exchange practised by tribal groups subsequently absorbed into the caste system. But even more interesting is the fact that this marriage has negative connotations in India because it does not appear as a gift but as the sale of a daughter, a materially interested gift, which thereby loses its gratuitous character. The father and mother are held equally responsible for ‘selling’ their daughter because they subsequently share the goods received in exchange. It is as though giving a woman in exchange for wealth was already, at the time of the Laws of Manu, assimilated to a commercial transaction in which the parties negotiated the price of a commodity. This view partakes of a world vision and a value hierarchy that associates buying and selling, and more generally all commercial activities, with defilement. It is therefore not because the parents decide for their daughter without her consent that this form of marriage is censured. It is because this marriage is not a gift but a sale, and a sale can be concluded with whoever offers wealth for a woman – whether he is from the same or, worse, from a lower caste. In short, according to this viewpoint, commercial relations have their place in the logic of caste hierarchy but never beyond. It must also be stressed that, in this view, the parents of a girl who has been abducted or forced to marry always have the right to demand material compensation after the fact. This payment is not bridewealth but atonement for a wrong.
Another interesting fact is the recognition expressed in these texts of the woman’s right to marry whom she will if her father has not found a husband for her within a certain lapse of time after her menarche (Gandharva marriage).38 In this case, she is free to marry; however, although she is not at fault she loses her right to any dowry. She no longer represents her family and no longer has a right to their support or to their assets. Last and above all, these ancient texts leave room for the love marriage. To be sure, this is considered a bad form of marriage because it does not respect paternal authority, but it is accepted as a possibility. Moreover, it is this form of marriage that for centuries has nourished a whole poetic, lyric, even ‘romantic’ literary genre. Today its importance in people’s imaginary and aspirations has not ceased to grow and it now passes for the ‘modern’, non-traditional form of marriage, shifting desire and individual wishes to the fore, rather than the authority of one’s kin, who continue to pursue their marriage strategies in view of maintaining or raising their position in the caste hierarchy.
Today, too, the extreme monetarization of the dowry, the consequence of a distortion of ancient customs, resulted in a law being passed in 1961 in India which forbids a girl’s parents to pay a dowry to the parents of the future husband on pain of as much as six months in prison and a fine. The law also stipulates that, if a brideprice is paid, it should go to the woman or be used by the newlyweds to set up house, but should not be paid to the father of the bride. This now-banned dowry or brideprice is called vara-dakshina, from vara (future husband) and daksina (gift made to the household priest for performing the life-cycle sacrifices). It actually functions as a groomwealth, as a payment demanded by the parents of the groom for allowing their son to marry. The vara-daksina is widespread and has taken on a modern form linked to the expansion of commercial and monetary relations. Instead of the young woman arriving at her husband’s house decked in her traditional finery (gold, jewellery, clothing, etc.), she now comes bearing several hundreds of thousands of rupees, the sum her future in-laws have demanded to accept her as a daughter-in-law. More than ever in India it is better to have sons than daughters to marry.
Thus in Brahmin marriages, although the givers of a virgin do not receive a woman or wealth in return, on the spiritual level they receive a sort of indirect gift from the takers, since the latter take responsibility for the pollution their daughter bears and bears away with her. But there are also societies in which wife-takers give nothing in return. An example is provided by the former marriage practices of the Sioux Indians.
In Sioux society, where the men divided their time between making war, hunting buffalo and taking part in large-scale rituals, and where all of the material goods belonged to the women, to the wives, the rule was to marry outside the band. The ideal wife was a prisoner of war, and the adoption of children or adults was just as important as descent. Their kinship terminology was Dravidian, but they had no specific term for husband or wife. The word for ‘to marry’ was ‘to abduct’, to capture (a woman). Moreover, a man was forbidden to speak to his in-laws, who were treated as, or really were, enemies. Sisters lived under the very strict supervision of their brothers, and it was the latter who made the decisions concerning their marriage and the size of the brideprice (in horses or other forms of wealth) that the suitor was to pay. Warriors gave their sisters enemy scalps, and it was the women who tortured prisoners, sometimes to death. Ideally the brother-in-law should be killed in order to capture his sister. We are at the far pole from the practices and values of the Baruya, for whom sister exchange between two men binds them for the rest of their lives and draws them into a cycle of exchanges of goods and services that ceases only with their death. Ultimately, in Baruya society,
