Marriage: 100 Stories Around India’s Favourite Ritual

by Devdutt Pattanaik

In Hindu temples, gods and goddesses get married. Marriage is as much a divine rite of passage (samskara) as a human one. It marks the union of matter (prakriti) and spirit (purusha). Matter, because it brings in new wealth, status, pleasure, security, and ushers in the next generation, who can inherit the family name and estate. Spirit, because it forces the couple, the family and the community to accommodate new ideas, new emotions, new problems and new solutions. Marriage is described as shubh, mangal, kalyan—full of auspiciousness, goodness and fortune, and not a mere contract. One needs to be vigilant (savadhan) when it happens, as it marks a turning of life, and the world.

Hindu wedding rituals contain many aggregated truths from Harappan and Vedic times, to those that came with the Greeks, Sakas, Kushan, Huns, Turks, Afghans, Persians, Arabs, even Europeans. The ‘sindoor’ and ‘bangles’ originated in Harappan civilization while the ‘mangal sutra’ has Dravidian roots. The ‘seven-step ritual’ comes from Rig Veda, but back then the ritual was for all forms of agreement, not just the wedding union. The ‘Kashi-yatra’ ritual evokes fears of Brahmins that their sons would become Buddhist or Jain monks. The ‘baraat’ comes from the Puranic story of Shiva’s wild hordes accompanying him to Himavan’s house to fetch his bride. The ‘sehra’ of the horse-riding groom, practised by Muslims also, comes from Central Asian custom of preventing the ‘evil eye’ from falling upon the handsome young groom as he sets out to fetch his bride. While ‘haldi’ (turmeric ritual) has Hindu roots, the ‘mehendi’ (henna ritual) has Islamic roots. The popular ‘sangeet ceremony’, once a North Indian practice, full of bawdy songs, is now a family song-and-dance affair around the world, thanks to Bollywood. The ‘engagement ring’ is a Christian idea. The ‘wedding certificate’, though seemingly secular, has roots in Judeo-Christian-Islamic ideas that value the written over the spoken.

God, in Hinduism, is not a judge; he is just an accountant, making sure we always repay our debts accumulated over lifetimes—to our ancestors, our family, our soul, the society, and to nature at large. And the ‘dharmik’ way of doing that is by establishing a household, says Manusmriti.

world. Those who seek liberation must repay debts to those who help them live—and so they must marry and raise children first. Thus was marriage invented.

‘Because,’ Parvati replied, ‘marriage is not just the quenching of desire. It is also about looking beyond one’s own desires at the desires of others. It is about caring and sharing.’ Shiva liked her words and agreed to marry her.

The story draws attention to the role of spouses in balancing the energies of their husbands or wives. Like the Chinese yin-yang, Indian tantra has ida-pingala, or moon-sun, to represent the balanced couple.

The union of three Hindu gods (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva) and three Hindu goddesses (Saraswati, Lakshmi, Durga) is a later Puranic invention to create symmetry and to highlight the importance of marriage in the divine realm. Historically speaking, the goddesses had independent origins. Earliest images of Lakshmi come from Buddhist art, and earliest images of Saraswati come from Jain art. Durga appears in Kushan art for the first time, killing the buffalo.

Shvetaketu,

Kunigarga

Krishna gets wives in many ways: Rukmini asks him to help her elope, Jambavati is given by her father who is impressed by his strength, Satyabhama is given by her father to make amends, Satya is a trophy after Krishna wins a bull fight, Mitravinda chooses him, Lakshman is abducted by him, Bhadra is given to him by her brothers. Then he gives refuge to 16,100 women who were abducted by Naraka, and have nowhere to go.

There are different kinds of wedding as per dharma-shastras: the way of Prajapati (where the groom’s father approaches), the Brahma (where the bride’s father approaches), the Deva (where the daughter is the fee or trophy given to the son-in-law for services rendered), the Rishi (where the father enables a hermit become a householder), the Gandharva (where lovers choose each other), the Rakshasa (where women are abducted), the Asura (where women are bought) and the Pisacha (where women are raped).

What Shantanu did not expect was his wife would kill their newborn babies. When he stopped her from killing the eighth child, she left him and returned to the gods. ‘The son you saved will never be husband, and so cannot be king,’ she said before leaving. ‘That is a fate worse than death.’

Uloopi,

Iravan.

This story comes from the Mahabharata and Bhagavata Purana. This is a cousin marriage. Arjuna’s mother and Subhadra’s father are siblings. Many communities in India forbid marriages between sa-pinda (common grandfathers, great grandfathers) and between sa-gotra (same clan). While North Indians forbid marriage between cousins, it is common in South India, especially in land-owning families, to ensure the land remains in the extended family.

Shambara

Aniruddha,

Satisfaction is not a function of the wife or wives. It is about how much control we have on our minds.

A Wife for Aravan

Bahuchra mata shrine.

In trying to convert Hinduism to a religion under colonial pressure, there has been a desperate rush for homogenizing and standardizing the diverse Hindu rituals and beliefs.