Page:The history of caste in India.pdf/164

 "The twice-born men who in their folly wed wives of the low castes soon degrade their families and their children to the status of Shūdra."

"A Brähmana who takes a Shūdra wife to his bed will (after death) sink to hell. By begetting a child by her, he loses Brāhmanahood."

"The manes and the gods will not eat the offering of that man who performs rites in honor of the gods, and of manes, and of guests, having a (Shūdra wife) to assist him, and such a man will not go to heaven."

"For him who drinks the moisture of Shūdra woman's lips, or is tainted by her breath, and who begets a son by her, no expiation is prescribed" (iii, 13-19).

He tells us in the rules regarding the shrāddha ceremony that a Brāhmana who marries a Shūdra female should not be invited to a shraddha (iii, 155).

Marriage between men of lower castes and women of higher castes was positively forbidden. The marriage regarded as the greatest horror was the marriage of a Brāhmana woman to a man of Shūdra varna. Such marriages are condemned severely by calling their progeny equal to the Chandālas. Such marriages must have been really rare and the object of the fiction is to prevent them. Neither our writer nor any other law-writer found it necessary to make the children by "marriages against the grains" (marriages of women of higher castes with men of lower castes) a topic in the discussion of inheritance. But it seems probable that men of higher castes might have married women of lower castes, especially Shūdras. Our writer wishes to condemn such practices strongly.