Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/174

 which simply means sage or officiating priest, is found forty-six times.

We may now pass on to sketch rapidly the social conditions which prevailed in the period of the Rigveda. The family, in which such relationships as a wife's brother and a husband's brother or sister had special names, was clearly the foundation of society. The father was at its head as "lord of the house" (gṛihapati). Permission to marry a daughter was asked from him by the suitor through the mediation of an intimate friend. The wedding was celebrated in the house of the bride's parents, whither the bridegroom, his relatives, and friends came in procession. Here they were entertained with the flesh of cows slain in honour of the occasion. Here, too, the bridegroom took the bride's hand and led her round the nuptial fire. The Atharva-veda adds that he set down a stone on the ground, asking the bride to step upon it for the obtainment of offspring. On the conclusion of the wedding festivities, the bride, anointed and in festal array, mounted with her husband a car adorned with red flowers and drawn by two white bulls. On this she was conducted in procession to her new home. The main features of this nuptial ceremony of 3000 years ago still survive in India.

Though the wife, like the children, was subject to the will of her husband, she occupied a position of greater honour in the age of the Rigveda than in that of the Brāhmaṇas, for she participated with her husband in the offering of sacrifice. She was mistress of the house (gṛihapatnī), sharing the control not only of servants and slaves, but also of the unmarried brothers and sisters of her husband. From the Yajurveda we learn that it was customary for sons and daughters