Page 105 - DSOC402_SOCIOLOGY_OF_KINSHIP_ENGLISH

Unit 14: Mate Selection in India and West

Merits of Exogamy Notes
(i) The view of Westermark is that practice of exogamy is started due to incest means to pre-
vent sexual relation among close relatives. (ii) According to biology, the children born of ex-
ogamy are of sound health and mind because marrying in one generation may cause physi-
cal defect in children. (iii) Due to exogamy social and cultural contact between different
society’s increases and the possibilities of struggle and differences comes to an end. (iv) Due
to exogamy the atmosphere of love, peace and calm in the family remain maintained. If it
is permitted to marry in the family then the atmosphere of the family will become tension-
ized and struggling. (v) Sumnor and Kailer have termed endogamy as conservation and ex-
ogamy as progressing. P.V. Kaney had written, “By exogamy, a generation has got oppor-
tunity to remove their defect because combination of strange bloods produces new races of
better quality.
In this way exogamy makes the society progressive and produces cultural unity among them
and maintains the morality and regulation in society.

Demerits of Exogamy

As there are many merits of exogamy, some demerits exists too, like – (i) By this the scope of
marriage becomes limited, thus it is difficult to select a life-mate. Blunt had told that prohibiting
marrying seven generations of father and five generation of mother prohibits marrying 2,121
possible relatives. (ii) Due to limited scope of marriage suitable match is difficult as a result
problem of dowry emerges.(iii) Due to lack of dowry the daughters are being married to an
older and ugly persons also, this result in the increment of mismatch pairs. This type of marriage
raises the problems of widows. In this way the rules of exogamy are responsible for giving rise
many evil customs in the society.

14.2 Anuloma and Pratiloma Marriages
In Hindus, many prohibitions are followed in selecting a life-mate and in that the rules of Anu-
loma and Pratiloma is also important. This rule is followed by all the Hindus. We will discuss
them here in brief.

Anuloma Marriages

When any man of higher class, caste, sub-caste, family and gotra is married to such a girl which
belongs to a comparatively lower class, caste, sub-caste, family and gotra then this marriage is
called as Anuloma Marriage. In other words, in this type of the groom belongs to a higher class
society and the bride belongs to a lower class society. For example, if a Brahmin boy is got mar-
ried to a Kshatriya or Vashya class then it is called Anuloma Marriage. Anuloma Marriage was
popular from Vedic period to Smriti period. In Manusmriti, it is written that a Brahmin can
marry a girl of three lower classes i.e. Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra in addition to his class, in
this way Kshtriya can marry to Vaishya and Shudra girl in addition and Vaishya with Shudra
girl in addition to his class, Manu had given permition for Panigrahan Sanskar in own class
only. Yagyavalkya also said for Brahmin to marry among four classes, Kshtriya among three,
Vaishya among two and Shudra in one class. Manu had told it unsuitable to marry a Shudra girl
with a Dwija boy at some other place. By such marriage the class of Dwija gets contaminated
and his family status declines. And his children gets status of Shudra. The child born of such
marriage is termed ‘Parshav’ (a living animal) by Manu, he has no right to property. In an-
cient period, the range of Anuloma Marriage was among classes only, but later on when classes
got sub-divided into castes and sub-castes and the feelings of blood purity and upper-lower
emerged and birth Jainism and Buddhism had taken place, then Hypergamy became popular.

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