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LIFE IN ANCIENT INDIA
such circumstances, the man was free to marry another woman. Thus we are told in the commentary on the Uttaradhyayana that a merchant's wife was fond of decorating her body so much that she did not look after the household servants and property and as a result all the servants left her. In course of time, when the merchant returned from his journey, not sceing any servant in the house, he got angry with his wife, turned her out of the house, and married another woman.se
WIDOW REMARRIAGE According to the Hindu ideal of marriage, a true wife must preserve her chastity as much after as before her husband's death and hence the marriage of widows was generally not favoured in ancient India. Although according to the Smytis, there are "five cases of legal necessity" whereby the wife is allowed to marry a second husband, viz , if the first husband is lost, or dead, or becomes an ascetic or is impotent or is expelled from the caste ; 86 yet it seems that on the whole the widow remarriage was looked with contempt.66
The Ovãiya mentions the women whose husband is gone abroad, the women who have lost their husbands, the women who are widows from their childhood, the women who are forsaken, the women who are guarded by their mother, father, brother, family or father-in-law, the women whose nails have grown, the hairy women who have grown beard (marsu), the women who have given up the use of flowers, perfumes, garlands and ornaments, the women who suffer from perspiration, dirt and filth without a bath, the women who have given up the use of milk, curds, butter, ghee, oil, jaggery, salt, honey, wine and meat; it is said of such women that they observe celibacy and never marry another man 67
Reference is made to child-widows who joined the ascetic order. Dhanasiri88 and Lakkhanavati'are mentioned as such widows who entered the life of nuns.
THE CUSTOM OF NITOGA Reference may be made here to the custom of niyoga which prevailed in ancient India. The practice prescribed for a childless widow to have intercourse with the brother or any near kinsman of her deceased husband to beget a male child. In the Avasyaka cürni reference is made to this
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84 4, P 97 85 Nárada, XII, 97. 98 See Valvalkar, op cit, chapter on Marriage ; also Altekar, op. cit, pp. 181-3 87 38, p 107, cf Manu (IX 65)
Ava cu P 626 89 Maha Ni p 24.
According to Manu (IX 59f) the person who was appointed under niyoga to beget a son
for the widow was to approach her anointed with clarified butter, silently to give her one son only, and by no means a second, and after the purpose of niyoga is served the man and the woman had to behave towards each other like a father and a daughter-inlaw, also Gautama XVIII 4ff, Also sce Altekar, op. cit., pp 168-76.
