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In Westermarck’s view, as expressed in his History of Human Marriage, marriage is a relationship between a man a woman or many woman, and the relationship has been recognized by law; such persons not only have the relationship as between themselves, they have some definite obligations towards the children that may be born out of such relationship.
Westermarck’s idea of marriage takes not only the biological side, but also the sociological side of the matter into consideration. Marriage is the very basis of a family, and in spite of the present day thinking as to ‘companionate’ marriages, both sex and reproduction will be the principal objectives of a marriage.
While some sociologists like Rivers are of the view that marriage is essential for avoiding sexual licence in society, the truth of the matter lies with the fact that purposive sex, that is, reproductive sex activity is the very objective of marriages. There are several communities in the world, mostly Oriental ones like the Chinese before the Revolution, in which sex licence is permitted even to the married man, although marriage itself is regarded as sacred for reasons of its reproductive possibilities.
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Thus, marriage and family are correlated ideas; while marriage is an institution which formalizes human relations, the family gives an actual and a concrete expression to such relations and widens the scope of activities that began with the institution.
The commonly accepted concept of marriage is that it is the authorized union of man and woman primarily for the production of offspring. The authorization comes with the observance of a ceremony that is prescribed by the personal or the statutory law. Statutory laws regulating Christian marriages have bodily accepted rules laid down by the Church in the matter, and the man and the woman must both swear acceptance of each other before the altar and in the presence of a priest.
The Muslim marriage ceremony primarily takes the shape of making a sacred contract in the presence of a priest, for the parties have to go through the offer-acceptance process in the making of the agreement when the ijab and quabul are formalized. The Hindu marriage is regulated now partly by personal laws and partly by codified principles. While marriage between persons of prohibited degrees of relationship is not permitted by the law, the only statutory requirements are the homa (the sacrificial fire) and saptapadi (going round the fire seven times by the groom and the bride together) for completing the marriage ceremony.
Whatever be the nature of the ceremony the idea in all cases is to obtain social approval and divine blessings and, at times, they symbolize the wife’s duties of child-bearing and cooking and the husband’s obligations of giving protection. It may also be mentioned here that the element of contract in the Hindu marriage is only a late introduction by the codified law, for Hindu personal law looked upon the institution only as a sacrament; and the contractual element, therefore, becomes important when one looks at the provisions for divorce and nullity.
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The contractual element in marriage is not directly a Christian concept; it has been taken from Roman customs, while the concept of forming a patriarchal property through marriages was originally a thinking among Germanic peoples. The church, when it asserted authority, emphasized the idea that marriage is a sacrament ordained by God and that it is indissoluble. Although annulment on the ground of specific sex offences is permitted, the Roman Catholic view is that divorce is not allowed, a view that falls in line with the original Hindu scriptural dictates as to marriage.
Marriage, as an institution has taken various forms according to the nature and the number of persons who can be taken as mates, as also according to the respective rights and obligations of the parties who enter the relationship. Thus, marriages may be polygamous or monogamous.
Monogamy, the practice of having one man and one woman, and no more, united in matrimony is the general order of the day in most advanced countries, though polygamy is not unknown. Polygamy allows a man or a woman to have more than one spouse at a time.
When a man is lawfully permitted to take more than one wife, the practice is known as polygyny, while polyandry means that a woman can lawfully take more than one husband Polyandrous practices may still be found among Eskimos, the Nayars of the Malabar Coast and perhaps among the Tibetans even after the Chines occupation.
Among the Eskimos, the Muslims and the pastoral tribes of Africa polygamy is still practised the different wives adding to the husband’s comfort, bringing him prestige in society and enhancing his social position by allowing him a large family. Even where polygyny is practised, there seem to be some foundations of monogamy in the acceptance of a principal wife, the others being subordinates.
Hence, polygyny has also been described as multiple monogamy, whereas polyandry is called successive monogamy for, under the system, husbands take their turn in living with the wife either by rotation or by some other agreed system.
While the more modern societies have relatively simpler regulations as to marriages, simple societies and tribal ones have more complex laws on the point. Endogamy is a practice among communities prohibiting marriages outside the tribe or clan and, in India; it takes the shape of religious prohibitions of marriages outside one’s own caste. Exogamy necessarily allows marriage into a tribe or clan that is not one’s own.
In larger societies, tribes or clans do not any longer exist in their simple forms; but endogamous or exogamous sanctions persist under different colourings. Thus, certain communities permit the marriage of cousins while others extend the concept of incest to proscribe such types of marriages too. While the North Indian Hindu does not allow a man to marry his cousin or his niece, the South Indian Hindu permits the marriage of a man with his sister’s daughter.
The Muslims and the Christians do not prohibit marriage of cousins. Among some Hindus, there is also the practice of a man marrying his elder brother’s widow, and one can venture to say that the idea behind marriage of close relatives is to keep property within the family or the clan so that economic prosperity can be maintained. Marriages may be patrilocal or matrilocal.
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A marriage is regarded as patrilocal when the bride is required to come over to the household of the groom and live there with his relatives, or even without them; and it is matrilocal when the groom goes over to the bride’s household. In some parts of Kerala, as also with the Veddas of Ceylon and some tribes in Assam, the matrilocal system is still the rule, and this rule as to the household is necessarily connected with the laws that reckon descent.
The matrilineal descent, that is, the line of succession reckoned from the mother’s side, is in close contact with matrilocal residence and matriarchal authority in the family. The patrilocal system is widely prevalent in the world and it is associated with patriarchal authority and patrilineal descent. The bride coming to the husband’s household loses her identity in it, and her children by the husband are reckoned as offspring in the patrilineal line and she necessarily lives under the husband’s authority or the authority of some other dominant male in the family, whom all its members obey.
The North Indian society, Hindu or Muslim, is predominantly patriarchal and as such patrilocy is the rule. Under this system, the wife looks after the children, collects water and fuel and cooks the food; the man does the heavier work outside the house.
Marriage, in whatever form it is found, is essential to society not only for propagating the human race, but for nurturing and developing a society with healthy traditions and values. Arguments are put forward these days that marriage has become an obsolete institution and that it in effect thwarts the personality development in an individual by reducing him or her into conditions of degenerate bondage of futility. Living together for convenience, contract marriages and groups marriages or any of them are being practised by some in the West in order to test whether or not the monotony resulting from marriage can be avoided.
Only time will prove whether these attempts will make any significant contribution to the growth of the human society, but one may venture to state that an institution that has served mankind for several centuries is not likely to die out sheerly because it stands in the way of individualistic personal comfort. Marriage has been historically more enduring than that.