| Vedic Women: Loving, Learned, Lucky! | |
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Marriage and married life are ever-important to a woman. What was marriage like in the Vedic age? How was it to be a wife of a Vedic man? Were divorces, remarriage and prostitution allowed in this age? Let's try to seek answers to these questions.
Marriage
Eight types of marriage were prevalent
in the Vedic age, of which four were more prominent. The first was 'brahma',
where the daughter was given as gift to a good man learned in the Vedas; the
second was 'daiva' , where the daughter was given as a gift to the presiding
priest of a Vedic sacrifice. 'Arsa' was the third kind, where the groom had
to pay to get the lady, and 'prajapatya', the fourth kind, where the father
gave his daughter to a man who promised monogamy and faithfulness.
In the Vedic age, there was both the custom of 'Kanyavivaha', where the marriage of a pre-puberty girl was arranged by her parents and 'praudhavivaha', where the girls were married off after attaining puberty. Then there was also the custom of 'Swayamvara', where a girl, usually of a royal family, had the freedom to choose her husband from among the eligible bachelors invited to her house for the occasion.
Wifehood
As in the present, after marriage the girl became a 'grihini' (wife) and was
considered 'ardhangini' or one half of her husband's being. Both of them constituted
the 'griha' or home, and she was considered its 'samrajni' (queen or mistress)
and had an equal share in the performance of religious rites.
Divorce,
Remarriage & Widowhood
Divorce and remarriage of women were allowed under very special conditions.
If a woman lost her husband, she was not forced to undergo the merciless practices
that cropped up in later years. She was not compelled to tonsure her head, nor
was she forced to wear red sari and commit 'sahagamana' or dying on the funeral
pyre of the dead husband. If she chose to, she could live a life of a 'sanyasin'
or hermit, after the husband passed away.
Prostitution
Prostitutes were very much a part of the Vedic society. They were allowed to
make a living, but their lives were regulated by a code of conduct. They came
to be known as 'devadasis' — the girls who were married to God in a temple
and expected to spend the rest of their lives as his maid serving the men in
the society.
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Illustration for this GuideSite by Siddharth Ghosh
