Page 100 - DSOC402_SOCIOLOGY_OF_KINSHIP_ENGLISH

Sociology of Kinship Sukanya Das, Lovely Professional University

Notes Unit 14: Mate Selection in India and West

CONTENTS
Objectives

Introduction
14.1 Rules of Selection of Life-Mate in India
14.2 Anuloma and Pratiloma Marriages
14.3 Mate Selection in the West

14.4 Marriage Ritual among Christians
14.5 Summary
14.6 Keywords
14.7 Review Questions

14.8 Further Readings

Objectives
After studying this unit, student will be able to:
• Know the rules regarding life-mate selection in India.
• Know the ways of selection of life-mate in West.

Introduction
In Dharmasutra and Manusanhita, a long list of characters is given for the selection of life-mate
which should be kept in mind during selection of a bride or groom. In ancient period, the right
of choice is totally vested in the father and consent of bride and groom is rarely taken but gener-
ally the marriage were not painful because mother-father pay a lot of attention to choose bride
or groom from better families and social ideals of marriage and organization of joint family,
never give chance for emerging of struggle of benefits and views. Even today the selection of
bride and groom is controlled according to social tradition.

14.1 Rule of Selection of Life-Mate in India
In every society, there are some rules regarding marriage. During the selection of the life-mate
three matters comes in front- Area of Selection, Party of Selection and Criteria of Selection.
The area of selection is made limited in two ways- (i) By giving preference to some of the
people and this is not only required but considered a duty also. For example in south India
and in Maharashtra, maternal and tertiary brothers and sisters are given preference for marriage.
(ii) Marrying to some relatives is considered undesirable or prohibited. Besides this, rules of
exogamy also direct the selection of life-mates. Kapadia and Prabhu both has acknowledged this
matter. Prabhu writes that all rules regarding Hindu marriage can be divided into four parts—
Endogamy, Exogamy, Anuloma and Pratiloma marriage. We will investigate them here in brief.

94 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY