Holy and unholy matrimony

So how would you prefer to take your vows? Like the Gandharvas, Devas, Asuras or Pisachas?

Marriage today has become entertainment. In serials, grandmothers and mothers go shrill opposing the wedding of boys and girls on grounds of caste. Children are presented as brides and grooms. Before they are branded regressive, a disclaimer rolls up announcing how the serial is merely highlighting, not endorsing, social issues.

Meanwhile, women are throwing themselves at a former alleged drug-user and wife-beater. He condescends to select one of them and they get married on television. Everyone smiles for the camera. Of course, this is not reality. Everyone knows there is nothing serious going on here.

It is just fun. There is no real exchanging of vows hereu00a0-- it is just a sham. The rituals are just a joke. The wedding dress is but a costume. The couple is nothing but a pair of animated dolls in a media dollhouse.u00a0
And then in the newspapers one hears of a judge who believes marriage can serve another purpose. It can help a woman overcome the trauma of rape, and perhaps get justice, if she is allowed to marry the rapist. Women reacted angrily to this suggestion.



It offered the rapist a way out of a tricky situation. Rather than going to jail he just had to marry the woman who he violated. And since, as television tells us, marriage can be just good timepass, he is under no real obligation to actually be a caring, affectionate husband.

But then what is marriage? For millions of television viewers it is good timepass while for a judge is it an institution that can overpower the trauma of rape. For some, marriage is an institution that can be mocked. For others, marriage is a solution to salvage a distasteful situation. For some, marriage is an option for entertainment. For others, it is an alternative to punishment.

Marriage is, by itself, a manmade institutionu00a0-- a creation of man, for man. Animals don't marry. They mate in the mating season. They can't help it. Sex then is not a choice, it is an instinct that must be satisfied. And since it is not about choice, the notion of rape or marriage makes no sense in the animal world.

In the animal kingdom, animals mate using the law of the jungle. The strongest male gets the females as in the case of bulls, or the female selects the most worthy male as in the case frogs, or she selects the most skilled male as in case of weaver birds. Some animals like scorpions mate and then move on, while others, like the swan, mate and are faithful for their whole lives. Some animals like monkeys claim rights over all females and create a harem and do not let other males come near their harem.

Animal instinct is driven by the desire to procreate, and not (except in case of a few chimps) by the desire for pleasure. Domination and sexual territoriality is not for self-gratification. It is simply nature's way of making way for the best gene.

But for humans, marriage is more than just procreation. It is about pleasure and society. It is about creating a home. A home is a unit of culture. So what goes into the creation of a home matters a lot. In ancient times, the sages were not sure what was the perfect marriage and so came up with a whole range of methods, eight in all.

There was Prajapati's way of marriage, where the boy asks the girl's father for her hand. There was Brahma's way of marriage, where the girl's father offers her hand to a worthy boy. There was the Deva way of marriage, where the father gave the daughter as dakshina to a priest.

This can be read as a father turning a man who worked for him into his son-in-law. She is the payment for the work he has done. Then there is the Rishi way of marriage, where the father gave his daughter to a man along with a cow and a bullock.

Since the cow provided food and the bullock served as a beast of burden, one can interpret this as a marriage where the father gives the groom not just a wife but also livelihood (dowry?). These were the acceptable forms of marriage.

Then there were the unacceptable forms of marriage. The Gandharva form of marriage is basically love marriage that is indifferent to social sanction. The Asura's way of marriage involves buying a wife for a price (prostitution?). The Rakshasa's form of marriage involves abducting a wife. And finally the Pisacha's form of marriage which involves raping the woman, making her pregnant and forcing her into marriage.

Swayamvara was a cross between a Brahma wedding and a Gandharva wedding. The child was allowed to choose a partner, but only from a filtered socially approved subset. The story of Shakuntala and Dushyanta is a classic Gandharva marriage, where the boy and girl choose each other and don't care for social sanction. Savitri, a princess, chooses Satyavan, an impoverished prince as her husband. Sati, daughter of Daksha, chooses the hermit Shiva despite her father's disapproval.

These are genuine Swayamvaras -- the girl selected without paternal interference. In the epics, what's called a Swayamvara is strictly not a swayamvara. In most cases, the daughter is the prize for the winner of a tournament. She has little or no choice.

Perhaps the judge found inspiration in the Pisacha's way of marriage. Pisacha means a ghoul, a ghost, who makes a woman pregnant by frightening her into submission and then gets her to marry him. And as for the marriages on TV, in serials, reality and game shows, they find inspiration in the Gandharva form of marriage. Makes sense because Gandharvas were entertainers of the gods, never to be taken too seriously.