Back to the future: Marriage and live-in relationships in ancient India
From the Mahabharata to the Arthashastra, what our literary texts can tell us about how ancient Indian society treated unions of all kinds
Live-in relationships are in the spotlight with Uttarakhand’s proposed laws about the registration of live-in couples. This article does not try to evaluate whether these laws are good or bad. Instead, I delve into what our literary texts can tell us about how ancient Indian society treated unions of all kinds.

In the Sanskrit Mahabharata, Pandu tells Kunti that until recently (that is, until shortly before their own time), women were not confined to their homes; instead, they used to go about and followed their own inclinations, without being dependent on husbands or other relatives. It was then the norm for marriages to be open. This custom had social sanction, and so married women were not thought of poorly even if they had partners other than their husbands (Adi Parva, chapter 122). Husbands were not supposed to show jealousy if this happened. Wives would sometimes leave temporarily with another partner, but they would usually come back. All this changed, according to Pandu, due to a boy named Shvetaketu. Upset at seeing his mother walk away hand in hand with a strange man, the boy complained to his father, who explained that there was nothing to be upset about as this was the prevailing custom. Shvetaketu was not pacified, and when he grew up he did his best to impose a rather asymmetric social reform, which specified that married women should remain monogamous (without imposing any restriction, however, on married men). Pandu goes on to add that even in their times, it was customary for marriages to be open in certain places, like Uttar Kuru. (Interestingly enough, some scholars, like Michael Witzel, a Harvard professor, identify Uttar Kuru with modern Uttarakhand). Of course, it is debatable whether open marriages were the norm across different geographical regions. For instance, a reading of the Ramayana would suggest that marriages in Ayodhya were entered into on definitely conservative lines.
However, open marriages were common enough so that there were provisions for children who might be born as a result of an affair. First, the mother had to identify the child’s father – whether this was her husband, or another partner. Then, the alleged father would bear the responsibility of raising the child. For instance, Tara, the wife of Brihaspati (the guru of the devas) went away to live with Chandra for some time. When she returned, she was pregnant. As she identified Chandra as the father of her child, he had to raise the child. On the other hand, if the mother claimed that the child was her husband’s, he had to take responsibility for it. We see this in a story in the Mahabharata (Adi Parva, chapter 5) about Bhrigu, one of our most eminent sages, and his wife, Puloma. Puloma, one of Bhrigu’s wives, returned home after going away with a lover, someone to whom she had been engaged before her marriage to Bhrigu. However, Bhrigu took care of her child, as he was its biological father.
The Mahabharata also features an amazing variety of marriages. There were “contract” marriages where one party gave up any rights on future children. This was the case in Arjuna’s marriage with Chitrangada, the princess of Manipur. Though this was a love marriage, when Arjuna asked Chitrangada’s father, the king of Manipur, for permission to marry her, the king agreed only on condition that Arjuna give up rights on any children he might have with Chitrangada (Adi Parva, chapter 217). (The result of this was, that their son Babhruvahana became the crown prince of his mother’s kingdom, Manipur, and was not asked to fight in the Kurukshetra war. In sharp contrast, the Pandavas asked all the other sons they fathered to fight in the war. This included even sons with whose mothers they had stayed for an extremely short time.)

A striking example of a case where the mother gave up rights to her future children is the story of Madhavi (Udyog Parva, chapters 114-117). An impoverished Chandravanshi dynasty princess, Madhavi helps a student, Galav, to acquire eight hundred white horses with black ears as guru dakshina for his teacher, Vishwamitra. In the process, she enters temporary “contract” unions with three kings in sequence. Each time the terms of the contract were the same. Madhavi would stay with the king until she bore him a son. However, she would then depart and make no claim on the child. As a bride-price for agreeing to this type of marriage, the king would pay a shulka (bride-price) of two hundred special white horses with black ears. In a moving finale to the story, Madhavi’s sons – each of whom grew up to be extraordinarily good – came together as adults to find their mother. They did find her, and treated her with utmost honour and love.
Finally, the Mahabharata also very clearly deals with polyandry, another relatively unusual type of marriage. Of course, the most famous marriage of the main characters – the Pandavas, with Draupadi – is a polyandrous one. In addition, as Yudhishthir discusses with Draupadi’s family in Adi Parva, chapter 168, there were other examples of polyandry in even older times (he mentions the marriage of Jatila, who came from the Gotama family of sages, with seven brothers, among other examples).
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Ancient texts also discuss issues of divorce. One such text was written by Chanakya (also known as Kautilya), the mentor of Emperor Chandragupta Maurya. He wrote the Arthashastra, a famous manual on political science and law. The Arthashastra (Book 3, chapter 3) allows divorce when both spouses feel a mutual enmity, paraspara dveshat-moksha (literally, for freedom from mutual enmity). It was more conservative regarding issues of unilateral separation or remarriage. Normally, it did not allow unilateral divorce for either sex. However, it maintained that women could abandon their husbands if the husbands turned out to be of bad character, if they were absent for a long time (particularly without any explanations), or if they lost their virility, among other reasons. Men could remarry if their wives had no children, but needed to wait a large number of years to do so. If they remarried before this period (say, 12 years) they not only needed to compensate their wives financially, but also had to pay a fine to the State (Book 3, chapter 2). Women could also remarry if their husbands were absent for a long time (say, 10 months without any news), and so could widows (Book 3, chapters 2 to 4). In fact, even the Rig Veda mentions widow remarriage in its famous “burial hymn” (RV 10.18). Another ancient text, the Kamasutra, also discusses widow remarriage in detail (Book 4, chapter 2) saying that in the author’s opinion, a widow should be free to marry anyone she likes, and that she thinks will suit her.
In spite of all this emphasis on marriage in our ancient texts, getting married was not essential. In fact, many women – and men – were respected greatly despite never marrying. In Harita’s Dharmasutra, he mentions that women either become sadya vadhus or brahmavadinis. While the first category married and lived the typical householder life, brahmavadinis pursued intellectual lives as scholars and (usually, but not always) did not marry. An early Grihya-sutra by Ashwalayana contains a list of highly revered teachers who must be invoked before someone undertakes any course of self-study. There were several female teachers on this list, including Gargi, Sulabha, and Vadava Pratitheyi. As Gargi is mentioned in the Upanishads, and Sulabha in the Mahabharata, we know that they were single. In later times, Lilavati, the daughter of the famous mathematician Bhaskara II, also remained single (she used her knowledge of mathematics to support herself). Ancient texts also tell us about some single fathers. The most famous of these is probably Ved Vyas himself, the author of the Mahabharata. Many Puranas recount how Ved Vyas raised his son Suka on his own, and never married. Drona’s father, who was from the Bharadwaj clan, was also unmarried.

We now come to the gandharva vivaha. This is mentioned in a host of ancient law books (various Dharmasutras and Grihyasutras) as one of eight commonly accepted forms of marriage. While some of these forms of marriage had rituals or ceremonies attached to them, a gandharva union did not require any ceremonies, witnesses, or parental consent. It was simply a union entered into on the basis of mutual feelings. Baudhayana, in his Dharmasutra, discusses the forms of marriage and comments (Book 1, chapter 11.20.16) “gandharvamapyeke prashansanti sarvesham snehanugatvat” meaning that “the gandharva marriage is praised for everyone because it is based on mutual affection.” Vatsyayana also has good things to say about gandharva marriages in the Kamasutra, saying that as they’re based on previous love, they have a greater chance of happiness. Sanskrit literature is full of accounts of such unions; they involved romance, but also some elements of uncertainty and danger. For instance, in Kalidasa’s famous play Abhigyana Shakuntalam, Shakuntala enters into a gandharva union with Dushyanta. However, Dushyanta has to leave soon, and when a pregnant Shakuntala later goes to see him, he publicly denies that he knows her. Gandharva unions also feature prominently in the Brihatkatha (a huge collection of stories within stories), in some plays by the dramatist Bhasa (such as the Avimaraka) and in Dandin’s novel Dashakumaracarita (The Story of Ten Young Men). In most of these situations, the union occurs between a princess, who had the opportunity to live together with her chosen partner, someone of lower status whom her family would not have approved of. She would hide him in her apartments with the knowledge and cooperation of her attendants. Obstacles come up when the girl’s parents somehow find out. They would be reluctant to accept the marriage. Sometimes (as in Avimaraka, where the princess’ partner was a shepherd) they would look for someone else whom they considered suitable. These crises were always resolved happily, usually by the male partner doing something that would prove his worth in the eyes of the woman’s parents. An actual real life instance of such an occurrence is about an eleventh century Kashmiri poet, Bilhana. While he was the court poet of a king, Bilhana and the king’s daughter entered into a gandharva union. The king was furious with this secret romance and initially wanted to execute Bilhana. However, Bilhana then composed and recited a beautiful series of poems called the Caurapancasika (Fifty Verses of a Love Thief) about his romance with the princess. Impressed with the quality of the poetry, the king forgave him and officially got him married to the princess.
While these types of gandharva unions began in secret, there were other types (discussed by Manu in the Manusmriti) in which the woman would ask the man to elope with her, usually because otherwise, her family would pressure her to marry someone else. The Mahabharata contains several such examples. Some prominent ones included the marriage of Krishna and Rukmini (Rukmini writes to Krishna to elope with her, as her family was pressuring her to marry Shishupal), and that of Arjuna and Subhadra (they elope together from Dwaraka, as one of Subhadra’s brothers, Balaram, wanted her to marry Duryodhan). A famous historical example of such a marriage was the one between King Prithviraj Chauhan and the princess Samyukta. Prithviraj was deliberately excluded from Samyukta’s swayamvar, so that she did not have the option to marry him. However, he still appeared, hidden, and the two eloped.
It is interesting that all the law-givers (the composers of the Dharmasutras) recognized gandharva unions, though they happened without parental consent. Even Manu, who is popularly regarded as being ultra-conservative, said in the Manusmriti (9.90-91) that if girls are old enough, they could choose their own husbands, and no blame would attach either to girls who did so, or to the husbands they chose. Rigvedic hymns also make it clear that romantic relationships between unmarried girls and young men existed in Vedic society.

In the Kamasutra, Vatsyayana dedicates an entire book (Book 3) to counsel people (both men and women) who want a love marriage. He advises them, if they go in for gandharva unions, on how to subsequently obtain their parents’ consent. He advises the couple to procure some kusha grass, light a fire, and walk around it. Even without a priest, or any human witnesses, this would then be considered a marriage whose validity the couple’s parents would not be in a position to deny later – as fire would have been the witness (in all Hindu marriages, it is imperative for fire to be the principal witness). In the context of the present debate, we could think of live-in relationships as gandharva unions. The law that prescribes registration might be akin to a step towards formal recognition and validity – the role played by the fire and kusha grass.
While ancient society allowed for a truly impressive complexity of unions, children were sometimes in a vulnerable position in some of these. For instance, fathers in gandharva unions could deny paternity, as Dushyanta did. There were also many stories of children born to apsaras on missions to distract sages from their penances. If their biological fathers refused to take care of them, they were essentially left to the mercy of kind strangers, as apsaras would also not want to raise them. (Shakuntala herself was abandoned by both her biological parents, but luckily, was adopted by Sage Kanva). There were also children born as a result of rape, whom, again, neither parent might want to raise. Society at the time dictated that the rapist raise any children born due to the rape, but this was not always followed in practice. For example, Brihaspati raped a female relative and a child, Bharadwaj was born as a result. Brihaspati then refused to take care of the child. The rape victim also refused, as did her husband. Very fortunately, the baby’s maternal grandparents stepped forward and raised him. He grew up to be a famous sage.
Ancient law-givers seem to have been sensitive to this plight, and so many law-books explicitly recognized two forms of marriage based on force or fraud. These were rakshasa marriages in which a woman was kidnapped, and pishacha ones where the man used intoxicants or drugs on her (similar to date rape in more modern times). Though the authors of the Dharmasutras never approved of these, their purpose in recognizing these as forms of marriage was to provide some legal protection to children born as a result, to legitimize them, and to improve the position of the abducted woman, so that she also had rights. Obviously, there were still loopholes and it was an imperfect system. Interestingly, some provisions of the proposed live-in laws in current times are meant to protect the rights of women and children. For instance, if live-in couples register, any children born would be considered legitimate, and in this case, the woman would also be able to legally claim maintenance from her male live-in partner.
One could say that we have come full circle as a society. In ancient times, our society was obviously very fluid, with different people making very different decisions with regard to their personal lives. An amazing variety of marriages and other unions dealt with this situation. Similarly, it did entail a lot of complex problems, and law-makers and thinkers had to deal with these (for instance, the Arthashastra makes an attempt to safeguard the inheritance rights of children born to a mother who subsequently remarries and who may bear other children afterwards). At some point, society became much more rigid, conservative and homogeneous in these matters. However, now we are again at a point where different people have different lifestyles and beliefs. Not surprisingly, our laws have to adapt to account for the complexity inherent in such variety.
Brishti Guha has a PhD in economics from Princeton and is currently an associate professor at the School of International Studies, JNU.
