diwakarlala

November 10, 2021

Superstitions Vs Ancient Hindu Ideology

Episode 2:

"Child Marriage -A logical or illogical Scientific concepts in Hinduism"बाल विवाह - तार्किक या अतार्किक वैज्ञानिक हिन्दू विचारधारा

Marriage is social custom which is having much more Importance in Hinduism as compared to any other religion in world, here it said, marriage is knot between two individual which remain throughout life and even in next birth, here is concept of Ardhangini (अर्धांगिनी) which show how a lady is having importance in her men’s life,

The scriptures accord to a wife the status of a queen. Hindu ancestors went even further – they blessed the bride by saying:

“murdhanam patyuraroha”- May your husband keep you on his head, This means, “may he respect you above all”.

There is another question in the Yaksha Prashna episode where this subject comes up:

kimsvid daivakrtaha sakha (Who is a man’s God-given friend?)

Yudhishtira’s answer was: bharya daivakrtaha sakha (A man’s God-given friend is his wife )

Source: https://scroll.in/article/935580/friendship-not-love-is-the-basis-of-a-hindu-marriage-says-a-

Different mythological stories emerged during 3-rd and 4th century which narrated characters of Shiva & Vishnu as common man of who tied in marriage knot, The importance of marriage is not to the extent of one generation but it is an in-depth belief of Hinduism. Without a wife, a person is considered incomplete while performing any rites of Hinduism. It is very important to perform all the rites with the wife.

However, in time travel of society, a taboo associated to our Hinduism or say to our society was Child Marriage, foreign scholar written about this in past similarly various travelers in medieval period glued this taboo to Hinduism, and shown that Indian marriage thinking are obsolete, and In-human custom which show the society was backward with lack of scientific knowledge

Now the question is, our so-called scientific Hindu Society was really favoring Child Marriage?

Let’s discuss

If you go by any religious scripture in Hinduism, you will not find any evidences which support Child Marriages, all such women characters of scriptures got married only after attaining age of adolescence, i.e Sita, Draupadi, Parvati, Shakuntla, even they had rights to choose their life partner through swavamvar (स्वयंबर), Hence it is quite clear by the facts that “Child marriage” system was never existed in Hindu Ideology.

Hence, there are few questions come in mind

• What was Indian marriage system all about

• What was scientific logics of Hindu marriage system

• Most important, if Indian traditional knowledge did not support Child marriage how its embedded in our social system

Let’s try to find some explanation of this (with special reference to Girl Child)- Here I am mentioning concepts of Gauna which often mistaken as child marriage

• Concept of Gauna -गौना

Discussing first point : In our religious roots , marriage was happened in early teen age i.e. 14-15 Years generally or you can say at the age of puberty , however this marriage was supposed as rituals only, even after this rituals bride don’t used to go with her husband and she lives with her parents in her natal home -after 5-6 years, this marriage re-validated by another rituals called Gauna – Gauna is ceremony like marriage and after this bride go with her husband to his home finally – now the day Gauna system is becoming obsolete and only few families in northern India follow this and they are considered backward in modern days.

Let me introduce a social science behind it , Once a marriage happened in teen age, both family united and till the Gauna in next 5-6 year they participate in each one’s family’s joy and sorrow , they deeply get introduced each other family’s culture and observe the progress of boy /girl to whom married , if all the things remained in order finally bride goes to her husband’s house after having Gauna, and if you look in Indian marriage system , this would be most successful marriage custom than any other society or country, reason being ,couples know each other since their critical phase of life and ages hence develop a strong relations and much better understanding – now think how scientific (socially ) they had been- So,

• What was scientific logics of Hindu marriage system

As per our tradition, we often found that in ancient Indian society, marriage age of girls was around 16-20 Years and often child birth age in her 20’s – if we go by scientific facts So, biologically-speaking, the best age for a woman to get pregnant is in her twenties. In the early 20s, a woman has the best chance to conceive with the highest numbers of egg in her whole lifetime. By then, her body is mature enough to actually carry a child—and she's got a solid decade before her fertility starts to decline (that begins at 32 and becomes more rapid after 37)

So it is scientifically proven the early marriage in 18-20 years of age was not obsolete of illogical thinking while this is well comprehended science – you know, as per study child born in the age of 20-25 to their parents , had good time with their grandparents and learned their culture and get benefitted from their worldly experience while their parents remained busy in earning and other life cycles -hence this complete biologically and social science showing how the society was embedded with knowledge

So, from above to stanza, we came to know that concepts of Gauna and it had been /has been differ from child marriage which is infamous concepts of Hinduism and final rituals of marriage in age of twenties had positive effect on society and scientifically proven biological facts with special reference to girls

Now,

• Most important, if Indian traditional knowledge did not support Child marriage how it got embedded in our culture?

As I told earlier, if we go by our Vedic times, there is rarely any incidence of Child marriage occurred, However In case where teen-age marriage happened same is backed by Gauna System as I mentioned-

During foreign invaders entries in Indian in medieval period specially around 10th and 11th Century- specially girls was married at much early age , due to frequent attacks and conflicts around everywhere parents were concern to protect their girl child specially and married her to remain safe and be it on safe place – this taboo safeguards becomes tradition and embedded in Indian culture with the time being as well as India got looted and mass people becomes poor , they started consider their girl child as burden and instead of marrying her in late teen they started marrying in their early teen age or even lesser to dispose of their liability as soon as possible and this way Child Marriage which is totally illogical and unscientific got an association with our culture and we had taken it whatever the foreign writers had told us

In conclusion – Hinduism never supported Child marriage even we had very scientific knowledge regarding marriage and its biological facts

I do not support Child marriage and any such type of custom, Here I wrote to explain, what our ancestor were thinking – how logical was their facts and science and how much importance they had given to marriage which I supposed one of most successful custom of Indian Society or say Hindu Ideology- Child marriage associated in between during medieval times as sins to our scientific ancient society

With the time being a bad practice of child marriage washed out all logical and science of our ancestor and written everything to proof ourselves a backward society.

By:

Diwakarlala

(This is a personal view of the author. He does not wish to pass any form of moral judgement on this controversial issue)