In this article we will discuss about Marriage:- 1. Meaning of Marriage 2. Reasons for Marriage 3. Forms.
Meaning of Marriage:
It is only through the establishment of culturally controlled and sanctioned marital relations that a family comes into being. The institutionalised form of these sex relations is called marriage. Marriage may, therefore, be regarded as a part of the institution of family.
Marriage and the family are two aspects of the same social reality, viz. the bio-psychical-cum-social drives of man. Without the family there could be no preservation of the species and culture and without marriage there could be no family.
Reasons for Marriage:
Marriage ensures a biological satisfaction (that of sex) and a psychological satisfaction (that of having children) on the individual plane. On the wider collective plane, it ensures a survival of the species (or of the group) and a survival of its culture.
This aspect may be discussed from three points of view. To begin with, a human baby requires a considerable period of time to be mature or self-reliant. It has, therefore, to be fed, protected and nursed during early years of childhood.
The obligation to feed and protect the child must be clearly assigned to someone. Otherwise, there is the possibility that the responsibility may not at all be carried out with disastrous consequences upon the child.
The institution of marriage prescribes that sexual activity be confined to the married partners only so that the responsibility of rearing up a child, born of a particular married pair, may vest on that married pair alone. No society, therefore, approves of illegitimacy, i.e., the birth of a child to an unwed mother.
Secondly, at birth a human baby is no more than a biological organism. Through persistent efforts, it has to be transformed into a social being. Here also the responsibility for introducing the child into the culture of the group must be assigned specifically to someone during the first few years of childhood.
The institution of marriage enables the society to assign this responsibility of socializing a child to the parents.
The problems of socializing an illegitimate child are pointed out by Goode in these words:
“The child whose parents are not married does not belong to the father’s family, and neither the father nor his family needs to meet more than minimal legal obligations to the child. The child’s position is ambiguous, and its socialisation experience is likely to be inadequate”.
Thirdly, in the interest of social stability it is necessary to assign a social status to a child during the early years of childhood, so that he knows clearly about his role-obligations and his relationship with other members of society.
Assignment of social status also gives him a sense of security. He feels secure in the thought that like others he has a place in society. This is possible only in the case of children who are born of duly marriage parents.
Malinowski’s observations on the need for legitimacy from this point of view are very pertinent:
“No child should be brought into the world without a man—and one man at that —assuming the role of sociological father, that is, guardian and protector, the male link between the child and the rest of the community”.
The rule of legitimacy, which is as universal and fundamental as the familial institution itself, ordains that “a father is indispensable for the full status of the child and its mother. Otherwise the child is illegitimate and the mother disesteemed”.
The principle of legitimacy implies obviously the control of sex relations. If there is any case of conception outside marriage, “it is likely to be eliminated with abortion or the resulting offspring may be eliminated through infanticide”
These two courses could be avoided if the concerned man and woman decide to marry. Davis has therefore pointed out that liberty of sexual intercourse is not identical with liberty of parenthood. Malinowski observed that “Marriage cannot be defined as the licensing of sexual intercourse, but rather as the licensing of parenthood”.
In matrilineal society in which descent is traced through the mother, there would be less concern about the exact identity of the biological father so long as the mothers were married. But even in such a society, an illegimate child is as much a problem as in a patrilineal society.
“The rules of marriage—i.e., who is permitted to marry whom— determine the social placement of the child, guarantee its socialization, and thus define both illegitimacy and legitimacy. The illegitimate child is a burden, with no benefit to its mother’s kin since his lack of a secure place in the kinship line means that his obligations to them are not firm or definite.
They receive no gifts from the other kinship line, since there has been no marriage. The child represents, in some societies, a violation of the elders’ power to decide and execute the marriage itself. Usually, there is no father to assume the social and economic care of the child, and the child is not an extension of the kinship line”.
We thus see that marriage is as much significant to an individual as to society. In order to impress upon all the new roles that the newly-wed couples would play as husband and wife, a ceremony is generally arranged in which relatives, kinsmen and friends are invited to witness the wedding.
Anderson and Parker bring out the significance of wedding ceremony in these words:
“The wedding is the recognition of the significance of marriage to societies and to individuals through the public ceremony usually accompanying it such a ceremony indicates the society’s control. The pageantry impresses upon the couple the importance of the commitment they are undertaking”.
Marriage as a tie between two kin groups:
In a lineage system marriage is regarded not so much as a relationship between two individuals as a relationship between two kin groups. The way of assessing its importance in a particular society is to examine the wedding ceremony and the pattern of gift-giving that accompanies it.
In our society, the couple generally gets presents from their respective families and friends. But in many small-sized societies, very little is given to the couple themselves. It is the two sets of relatives who exchange gifts.
Our type of gift-giving emphasis’s the individual aspect of marriage—i.e., the marital relationship of husband and wife. The exchange of gifts between two sets of relatives, on the other hand, marks the marriage as a contract between two kin groups.
Some societies have the custom of the dowry. Apart from being a form of inheritance for the daughter and the daughter’s children, it also gives the girl’s relative a way of providing for her and her children after her marriage. Some societies, on the other hand, have the custom of paying bride wealth.
It is particularly common in societies with patrilineal lineages, though it does occur in some matrilineal societies. According to this practice, the husband’s family is required to give cattle or other goods to the bride’s family.
The bride-wealth is often so great that a man has to take the help of other men in his lineage in order to pay for his bride. Among the Nuer, for instance, 20 to 40 cattle must be paid to the father of the bride by the bridegroom’s lineage. The bride’s father then distributes the cattle according to strict rules among his daughter’s relatives.
One common misconception should, however, be dispelled. Although the bride is paid for, she is not a chattel. She cannot be resold. Her social status remains high after marriage. It is said that there are two ideas behind the practice.
First, the bride’s lineage should be compensated for the loss of a working member. Second, the payment of bride-wealth transfer’s control of the woman’s offspring from her father’s to her husband’s lineage. That is, it is the children rather than the wife whom the husband’s family buys.
Forms of Marriage:
There are several types of marriage. If we make a cross cultural study of marriage practices in different societies, we shall come across rules laying down preferences, prescriptions as well as proscriptions in deciding the form of marriage.
Before we take up different forms of marriage, we may refer to universal taboo on sexual relations between closely related kin like parents and children and between siblings. This is known as incest taboo.
We may consider below some of the classifications of marriage:
(a) On the basis of the number of mates, marriage is classified into two broad types:
Monogamy and Polygamy.
The practice of having only one partner in marriage (i.e. a husband having one wife only and a wife having one husband only) is called monogamy.
The practice of having more than one partner, in marriage is called polygamy. Polygamy may be of two types: polygyny and polyandry ‘. When one man has two or more wives at a time, the practice is known as polygyny. When a man marries several sisters, the practice is known as sororal polygyny.
When one woman marries more than one man at the same time, the practice is known as polyandry. Polyandry may be of-two types: fraternal or adelphic polyandry and non- fraternal polyandry.
When one woman marries several brothers at the same time, the practice is known as fraternal or adelphic polyandry (reminiscent of Draupadi of Mahabharata). The practice is prevalent among Todas. When a woman has several husbands none of whom are necessarily brothers, the practice is known as non-fraternal polyandry.
We may consider, in this connection, two types of polygamous marriages, namely levirate and sororate. Marriage of a man with the childless widow of his deceased brother is known as levirate. Where the ‘true’ levirate prevails, upon the death of a husband,’ it is the duty of one of his brothers to marry the widow, and any children born to the union are counted as the progeny of the deceased man.
Where the ‘true’ sororate prevails, the husband of a barren woman marries her sister, and at least some of the children born to the union are counted as children of the childless wife. The term sororate is also used with reference to the custom whereby, upon the death of a wife, her kin supply a sister as wife for the widower. In this case, however, any children born to the woman are recognised as her own.
Levirate and sororate emphasise the acceptance of inter-familial obligations and the recognition of marriage as a tie between two families and not simply between two individuals. We may consider another kind of polygamy called ‘group marriage’.
When two or more grooms are married simultaneously to two or more brides, it is called group marriage. It is a combination of polyandrous and polygynous marriages. It occurs infrequently among the Kaingang of Brazil and also infrequently among the Marquesas’.
(b) Classification based on mate-choice:
When the marriage partners are chosen by the partners themselves, the practice is known as romantic marriage or love marriage. When the marriage partners are chosen by the guardians or relatives or even by friends, the practice is known as arranged marriage.
When marriage is prescribed only among partners who belong to the same group, the practice is known as endogamy or endogamous marriage. In endogamy marriage outside one’s group is prohibited.
We may think of various kinds of endogamous marriages, such as tribal endogamy, caste endogamy, class endogamy, race endogamy, etc. Due to the universal fear of the strange, the novel and the unknown, almost all the Indian tribes are endogamous.
In certain cases there is a prescription or preference for marriage to a particular kin. Thus, a Gond is required to marry his/her cross-cousin. If one would like to have this prescription waived in one’s case, a compensation has to be paid to the losing party.
Fifty-four per cent of Gond marriages were found by Grigson to be of this type. The Kharia and Oraon practice cross-cousin marriage. So does the Khasi. But a Khasi male can have such a marriage only after the death of his father with his paternal aunt’s daughter.
When marriage is prohibited among partners who belong to the same group, the practice is known as exogamy or exogamous marriage. We have among the Hindus ‘gotra’ exogamy and ‘pravara’ exogamy in terms of which marriage is not permissible among partners having the same gotra or pravara.
There is also ‘pinda’ exogamy. In Hindu society marriage within the ‘pinda’ is prohibited. “Pinda’ means common parentage. Offspring from five maternal generations and seven patonal generations are ‘sapinda’ and they cannot intermarry.
There is also among some Indian tribes village exogamy. This restriction is prevalent among the Munda and other tribes of Chhotanagpur in Bihar. The Naga tribe in Nagaland is divided into Khels. Khel is the name given to the residents of a particular place and the people of one Khel cannot inter-marry.
(c) Classification based on Status of Married Partners:
The marriage between partners who exhibit parity in terms of age, education, temperament, economic condition, social status, etc. is known as homogamy. On the other hand, the marriage between partners who differ widely in terms of these criteria is known as heterogamy.
Classification is also made in terms of marriage between partners of unequal social status. When a man marries a woman belonging to a comparatively lower social stratum, the marriage is known as hypergamy or ‘anuloma’. The man does not generally suffer any loss of social standing because of his marrying a woman of lower social status.
When a woman belonging to a higher social stratum marries a man of a comparatively lower social status, the marriage is known as hypogamy or ‘pratiloma’. In such a case, the woman attracts social scorn and in some societies even ostracism because of her marrying a man of lower social ranking.
Such differential evaluation in the cases of men and women is to be found in all societies. Basham points out :
“This distinction is to be found in other societies; for instance, in Victorian England the peer who married an actress rarely incurred the same scorn and ostracism as the lady who married her groom”.
(d) A distinction is made between closed marriage system and open marriage system:
Societies which prescribe that a spouse be chosen from among one or more designated categories of persons have been said to possess closed marriage systems. Those societies in, which such prescriptions do not exist have been characterized as having open marriage systems. In open marriage systems, the only group of persons unequivocally proscribed as marriage partners are those to whom the incest taboo is extended.
In addition to the aforesaid dichotomous forms of marriage, there are various other types which may be noted. There is, for instance, companionship marriage which is “the marriage of two persons on the understanding that as long as there are no children the marriage may be dissolved simply by mutual consent”.
Reference may also be made to concubinage which is a state of living together as husband and wife without being married. Under the system of experimental marriage, a man and a woman may be allowed to lead matrimonial life temporarily in order to find out if they can settle down permanently in matrimonial relationship.