end by a regular marriage as the hero’s wife number two.  By way of securing variety, apsaras, or celestial bayaderes, were brought on the scene, as in Kalidasa’s Urvasi, permitting the poet to indulge in still bolder flights of fancy.  Princesses, again, were favorite heroines, for various reasons, one of which was the tradition concerning the custom called Svayamvara or “Maiden’s Choice”—­a princess being “permitted,” after a tournament, to “choose” the victor.  The story of Nala and Damayanti has made us familiar with a similar meeting of kings, at which the princess chooses the lover she has determined on beforehand, though she has never seen him.  Apart from the fantasticality of this episode, it is obvious that even if the Svayamvara was once a custom in royal circles it did not really insure to the princesses free choice of a rational kind.  Brought up in strict seclusion, a king’s daughter could never have seen any of the men competing for her.  The victor might be the least sympathetic to her of all, and even if she had a large number of suitors to choose from, her selection could not be based on anything but the momentary and superficial judgment; of the eye.  But for dramatic purposes the Svayamvara was useful.

VOLUNTARY UNIONS NOT RESPECTABLE

In Sakuntala, Kalidasa resorts to the third of the expedients I have mentioned.  The king weds the girl whom he finds in the grove of the saints in accordance with a form which was not regarded as respectable—­marriage based on mutual inclination, without the knowledge of the parents.  The laws of Mann (III., 20-134) recognized eight kinds of marriage: 

(1) gift of a daughter to a man learned in the Vedas, (2) gift of a daughter to a priest; (3) gift of a daughter in return for presents of cows, etc.; (4) gift of a daughter, with a dress.  In these four the father gives away his daughter as he chooses.  In (5) the groom buys the girl with presents to her kinsmen or herself; (6) is voluntary union; (7) forcible abduction (in war); (8) rape of a girl asleep, or drunk, or imbecile.

In other words, of the eight kinds of marriage recognized by Hindoo law and custom only one is based on free choice, and of that Mann says:  “The voluntary connection of a maiden and a man is to be known as a Gandharva union, which arises from lust.”  It is classed among the blamable marriages.  Even this appears not to have been a legal form before Mann.  It is blamable because contracted without the consent or knowledge of the parents, and because, unless the sacred fire has been obtained from a Brahman to sanctify it, such a marriage is merely a temporary union.  Gandharvas, after whom it is named, are singers and other musicians in Indra’s heaven, who, like the apsaras, enter into unions that are not intended to be enduring, but are dissoluble at will.  Such marriages (liaisons we call them) are