Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/87

Rh kinds; remain in your own home and enjoy happiness in the company of your children and grandchildren.

"(The bride and bridegroom say) May Prajapati bestow on us children; may Aryaman keep us united till old age. (Address to the bride) O bride! Enter with auspicious signs the home of thy husband. Do good to our male servants and our female servants, and to our cattle.

"Be thine eyes free from anger; minister to the happiness of thy husband; do good to our cattle. May thy mind be cheerful, and may thy beauty be bright. Be the mother of heroic sons and be devoted to the gods. Do good to our male servants and our female servants, and to our cattle.

"O Indra! make this woman fortunate and the mother of worthy sons. Let ten sons be born of her, so that there may be eleven men in the family with the husband.

"(Address to the bride) Mayest thou have influence over thy father-in-law and over thy mother-in-law, and be as a queen over thy sister-in-law and brother-in-law."

Polygamy was allowed among kings and the rich in Vedic times, as it was allowed in olden times in all countries and among all nations. Domestic dissensions were the natural result, and we have hymns in the latter part of the Rig-Veda in which wives curse their fellow wives. The evil seems, however, to have grown in the latter part of the Vedic Age, for there are scarcely any allusions to it in the earlier hymns.