Marriage Pattern

Marriages, generally agreed upon by households, bring two households and kinship groups together within a long-lasting network. While gathering of accurate data on the stability of marriage is not possible, available information strongly indicates that marriages, in general, are highly stable. Arranged marriage, particularly among high caste people is successful in the sense that the marriage is not dissolved or replaced. Marriage, apart from its economic, political and social dimensions, also bears a pronounced spiritual underpinning.

Marriage,is socially recognised as bonding of man and woman typically for the purposes of legitimate reproduction. It is an essential institution in the establishment of nuclear family or creation of a new household. Furthermore, it is not only an opportunity to create new social bonds, it is often accompanied by prestations in the form of dan, daijo or tilak, of greater or lesser importance, as much symbolic as material, which firmly establish the marriage and set up long lasting relation between two households or families party to the exchange.

The popular form of marriage prestation is presumably within the whole Terai region is the practice dowry, or tilak pratha, whereby a collection of good and services are offered by the bride’s family to the groom or his family. The structure of marriage prestation has important political, economic and ritual consequences for the society as whole. The symbolic consequences of gender relation can be seen among the Rajbanshis, Tajpuriyas and Gangais when the chumna partha, a woman valued system of marriage prestation has been replaced by the tilak partha (dowry system) where women are considered as a commodity.

The search for bridegroom is complicated by involved rules relating to caste, locality, and clan or thar. Arranged marriage within same jatis is the dominant form of marriage practice. Very few love marriages are reported and inter-caste marriages are still intolerable for the majority of the population. Village exogamy is a norm but not strict rule for maintaining marriage relation within a village. When a man wishes to get his son or daughter married, he usually look out for a bride or groom outside his own village, belonging to his caste, yet not to the same gotra. Gotra exogamy is not a standard rule for many jatis like Rajbanshi, Tajpuriya, and Gangai and there are of course several exception and variation to the marital codes practised within the society. Even among the Hindu jatis Halwai and harijan are not particular about maintaining gotra exogamy and other standard Hindu codes of marriage in practice.

Very few some have already practised marriage between two maternal first cousins. In Rajbanshi society very rarely can see this marriage(Gutiyari marriage) married in between cousins.Usually this type of marriage is prohibited and considered as taboo among the Hindus. It can be assumed that among the Muslims this type of marriage are in practice, however, beside cross-cousin marriage, marriage between parallel cousin is permitted and indeed encouraged.

High caste Brahmins, on the other hands, are strict in caste endogamy and gotra and thar exogamy in the arranged marriage. A Brahmin boy of Bhandari thar never married a girl of same thar, unless they belong to different gotra. Even outside the gotra, marriage between two first cousins is not permissible. Among the Brahmin and Chhetri, a man may not marry even a daughter of either his father or mother’s cousins. Generally, marriage is avoided between the boy and girl up to five generations on the mother side and seven generations on the father side among the high caste people.

Even within the same jat, say bahun, a person with of kumain bahun background does not marry with purbiya bahun. Similarly, the Maithil Brahmin does not marry in the family of Saraswat or Kankubj and similarly, the Karna Kaystha does not marry in the family of Srivastava. In addition, within the same jat, marriage does not so frequently occur between different groups because some regard themselves superior to others. For example, Upadhaya Brahmin hesitates to marry with the Kumain Brahmin and Kaspatiya Baniyas regarded themselves superior to the other local families of Baniyas. These various restrictions and confinement of marriage within the same but selected group of caste has fostered the tilak pratha in the Terai, as it limits the choice.

The extent of the marriage fields varies in different caste and groups. Low caste people tend to marry their children to others living in neighbouring villages. Marriages, in most of the cases, among these groups take place between families living few miles apart. Hill people marry within Nepal across village or district where as geographical verticality across southern border (northern India) is the common marriage vector among the deshi and aadibasi people. More than 60% of marriage relations among the plain people take place with the people across the border.

The similar cultural landscape and traditional affinity across the border are the major determining factor to decide marriage field. This pattern results partly from the fact that there are generally fewer families of some upper and business castes like Brahmin, Marwari and Baniya living in nearby village. There is another factor fostering marriage between across the border. Since some of the castes of Hindus and Muslims are migrants into Terai or descendants of migrants from India , they tend to maintain closer ties to their ancestral village through marriage relation. These marriage patterns, nevertheless, represent a continual and active reinforcement of the cultural ties between the plain people of Nepal and the people of the plain region of northern India.

It is a vital obligation for a person among the Hindus as well as the Muslims to get his offspring married. This ideology of marriage is so deeply rooted that his salvation in the “other world” and his peace of mind in this world depends on this very karma (work). To get married is counted as one of the das karmas (ten essential works) of life, according to Hindu literature. It is considered equally important as to give birth and provide care to children. This is why the arranged marriage system predominates in marriage relations and parents spend large sums of money on weddings, even at the risk of sinking deep into the debt.

Most of the Rajbanshi & Deshi arrange their daughter's marriage by selling his land or else selling some ornaments to have money in cash. They even tried to get loan of some amount by dhito Pass (negotiable mortgage).This is the force moment of all Deshi or Rajbanshi due to uneffort of any kind of work.They dont have saving for this purpose. They dont think for the future purpose of money as other castes do.We can see or can feel very short cut marriage held in other castes or pahariya samuday. Due to the ignorance at present suffers in the last prospects of marriage or anything else of family functions.

They gave their daughter to a government officer in India, who naturally demanded more tilak showing his prestige as government officer. In addition of the tilak money, the father of bride has to spend more money for food and other expenses when groom’s party visits his house in various stages of marriage. The another factor of paying high tilak money is that the father of girl wants his daughter to be in comfortable circumstances and to have less work to do, ideally, than she has had to do at home. He will sometimes pay more for a wedding than he can afford, in order to marry his daughter to a good family. Furthermore, the marriage feast is an extremely important part of the negotiations, for both families want to have as large a feast as possible for showing off their social prestige.