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The moment of marriage: Towards a history of temporality in South Asia, circa 1650–1850
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2025
Abstract
This article investigates marriage as a site for the historical study of time. Focusing on Hindu marriage in South Asia between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, the article studies (a) how the moment of a marriage is made and documented through what the article calls ‘temporal practices’, and (b) how, once this moment is made and documented, it is put to use in and for a marriage ceremony. The article has three sections. In the first section, it discusses the device used to measure the time of the marriage ceremony: the water clock. This section also addresses how the water clock was used, and who used it, within the marriage ceremony; and registers a shift in the nineteenth century from the water clock to the mechanical clock. In the second section, the article discusses documentary practices that record the moment of a marriage and addresses historical changes related to these practices in the nineteenth century. In the third section, the article examines the work that the moment of a marriage does once it has been brought into being and documented. This section argues that the moment of a marriage frames and makes efficacious a certain action through which the bride and groom are transformed. The article concludes by arguing that the moment of a marriage temporally regulates the activities of the marriage ceremony and explores how this moment reconfigures relations to the past and future for the bride and groom.
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References
1 Sukumar Sen (ed.), Caṇḍīmaṅgal (Kalikata: 1362 [Bengali era]), pp. 274–275, v. 485, lines 20–21 to v. 486, lines 2–5: bibāha karāha tār sakal tomār bhār śubhadin kara śubhakṣaṇ … ḍāni kare nila ghaṛi bām kare puthi / saptaśalā ādi lagna kariẏā bicār / bibāher lagna padmā kaila sāroddhār nakṣatra rebatī śubha yog rabibār / ihā bai bibāher lagna nāhi ār. The term yoga here is used to refer to an auspicious conjunction, which ‘occurs when certain conditions, as, for instance, the conjunction of certain vāras and nakshatras … are fulfilled’: Robert Sewell and Sankara Balkrishna Dikshit, The Indian Calendar with Tables for the Conversion of Hindu and Muhammadan into A.D. Dates, and Vice Versa (London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1896), p. 22. This yoga is different from the yoga related to a specific distance between the sun and moon: ibid., p. 3. Edward Yazijian dates this text to late sixteenth-century Bengal: Edward Yazijian, ‘From Performance to Literature: The Caṇḍīmaṇgla of Kavikaṅkaṇa Mukundarāma Cakravarti. Volume one’, PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 2007, pp. 35–36.
2 Matthew S. Champion, ‘The History of Temporalities: An Introduction’, Past & Present, vol. 243, no. 1, 2019, pp. 247, 254.
3 Margrit Pernau, Emotions and Temporalities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 3, 8.
4 Eric Moses Gurevitch, ‘When is Medicine? Contesting the Temporality of Healing in Precolonial South Asia’, Journal for the History of Knowledge, vol. 4, 2023, pp. 151, 159–160.
5 Mark R. F. Williams, ‘Experiencing Time in the Early English East India Company’, The Historical Journal, vol. 65, no. 5, 2022, pp. 1178, 1193–1194, quote on p. 1196.
6 Saumya Agarwal, ‘The Auspicious and the Mechanized: Exploring Transitions in Temporalities through the Wall Paintings of Shekhawati (1750–1940)’, Early Popular Visual Culture, vol. 20, nos. 2–3, 2022, especially pp. 187–201.
7 Axel Michaels, ‘Rites of Passage: saṃskāra’, in Hindu Law: A New History of Dharmaśāstra, (eds) Patrick Olivelle and Donald R. Davis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 86.
8 For example, the sacred thread rite is only available to males. For the debate about whether those of a low-caste status can perform rites other than marriage, see P. V. Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra (Ancient and Medieval Religious and Civil Law) (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1941), vol. 2, part 1, pp. 198–199; and Ludo Rocher, ‘Dāsadāsi’, in Studies in Hindu Law and Dharmaśāstra, (ed.) Donald R. Davis, Jr (London: Anthem Press, 2012), p. 512.
9 Stephanie W. Jamison, ‘Women: strīdharma’ and ‘Marriage and the Householder: vivāha, gr̥hastha’, in Hindu Law, (eds) Olivelle and Davis, pp. 137–150 and pp. 125–136, respectively; Lindsey Harlan and Paul B. Courtright (eds), From the Margins of Hindu Marriage: Essays on Gender, Religion, and Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Rochona Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009); and Tanika Sarkar, ‘A Prehistory of Rights: The Age of Consent Debate in Colonial Bengal’, Feminist Studies, vol. 26, no. 3, 2000, pp. 601–622. On remarriage, see David Brick, Widows Under Hindu Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023).
10 Questions of time are, however, central to the criticism that childhood is too early to marry: Ishvarcandra Vidyasagar, ‘The Evils of Child Marriage’, (trans.) Brian A. Hatcher, Critical Asian Studies, vol. 35, no. 3, 2003, pp. 476–484.
11 V. S. Bendrey (ed.), Coronation of Shivaji the Great (Bombay: P. P. H. Bookstall, 1960), p. 46; Williams, ‘Experiencing Time’, p. 1187.
12 Colin Mackenzie, ‘An Account of the Marriage Ceremonies of the Hindus and Mahommedans, as Practiced in the Southern Peninsula of India’, Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 3, no. 1, 1831, pp. 170–184.
13 The account was published after Mackenzie died and Johnson gives no information on the ‘native’ researchers: ibid., p. 170.
14 Ibid., p. 172.
15 Nilakshi Sengupta, ‘Evolution of Hindu Marriage with special reference to rituals (C.1000 B.C.– A.D.500)’, PhD thesis, University of London, 1958, pp. 4–6, 42–47.
16 Panchanan Mandal, Ciṭhipatre Samājacitra (Santiniketan: Bishva-bharati University Press, 1953), vol. 2, p. 8: śrīyuta puruṣottama vidyālaṅkāra barābareṣu—likhitaṃ śrīlalamohanadebaśarmanaḥ ṣubha sambandhapatram idaṃ san 1173 sāl abde likhanaṃ kājjanañca āge[.] tomār putra śrīguruprasāda debaśarmmār āmār kanyā śrīmati śrīdāmnidebir sahita ṣubha sam[b]andha nirnnaẏ karilām[.] tāhāte tomār kulamarjjādā pan 14 taṅkā diẏā lagnānusāre śubhakā[r]yya samāpan kariba etadarthe śubha sambandhapatra dil[ām] iti tāṃ 11 kārtik[.] pan—14 jāẏ—dānasāmagrī—11 baryātra—3 kulācāryyer bidāẏ tomi kariben [bottom]. iha patre madhyastha śrībīracandra śarmmā lagnānusāre śubhakāryya saṃpūrṇa kariba [left side]. śrīlālamohana devaśarmanaḥ sāṃ dvārasinī [right side] (original orthography retained). For similarly worded sambandha patras from 1766 and 1763 that also commit to completing the marriage ‘according to the lagna’, see ibid., p. 10 and Mohit Ray, Nadiẏār Samājacitra (Kalikata: Pustak Bipani, 1990), p. 54, respectively.
17 Ronald B. Inden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture: A History of Caste and Clan in Middle Period Bengal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 104–105. See also a brief discussion on dowry in seventeenth-century Bengal by Anima Mukhopadhyay, Satero Śataker Rāṛh Bāṃlār Samāj o Sahitya (Kolkata: Anima Prakasini, 1990), pp. 180–181.
18 This device had numerous names such as ghaṭī, ghaṭikā-yantra, jala-yantra, and ṭās-i sā‘at.
19 The text is Ghaṭikāyantraghaṭanāvidhi and is edited and translated in S. R. Sarma, ‘Setting up the Water Clock for Telling the Time of Marriage’, in Studies in the History of the Exact Sciences in Honour of David Pingree, (eds) Jan P. Hogendijk, Kim Plofker, Michio Yano and Charles Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 318–322. I follow Sarma’s translation: ibid., p. 322.
20 This form of the water clock most likely emerged around the fourth century ce. S. R. Sarma, ‘The Bowl that Sinks and Tells Time’, in The Archaic and the Exotic: Studies in the History of Indian Astronomical Instruments, (ed.) S. R. Sarma (Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2008), pp. 125–135. For some discussion on the history of the term ghaṭikā, see Takao Hayashi, ‘The Units of Time in Ancient and Medieval India’, History of Science in South Asia, vol. 5, no. 1, 2017, p. 94.
21 To prevent confusion, I refer to this time unit exclusively as ghaṭikā in the article.
22 John Marshall, In India: Notes and Observations in Bengal, 1668–1672, (ed. and trans.) Shafaat Ahmad Khan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927), p. 281.
23 The viṇādi was most likely a unit originally linked to the earlier outflow water clock; see Hayashi, ‘Units of Time’, p. 94.
24 One day lasts from ‘mean sunrise to mean sunrise’: J. F. Fleet, ‘The Ancient Indian Water-Clock’, The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, [April] 1915, p. 213. Experiments timing the water clock against mechanical clocks were common among European travellers and colonial officers.
25 John Gilchrist, ‘Account of the Hindustanee Horometry’, Asiatic Researches, or, Transactions of the Society instituted in Bengal for inquiring into the history and antiquities, the arts, sciences and literature of Asia, vol. 5, 1799, p. 87.
26 Sarma, ‘Setting up the Water Clock’, p. 318.
27 S. R. Sarma, ‘The Legend of Līlāvatī’, in Bhāskara-prabhā, (eds) K. Ramasubramanian, Takao Hayashi and Clemency Montelle (New Delhi: Springer and Hindustan Book Agency, 2019), pp. 35–39; Hemavijaya, Śrī-Kathāratnākaraḥ (Jamnagar: Sravaka Hiralala Hamsaraja, 1911), pp. 539–540.
28 See Irfan Habib’s translation in Sarma, ‘The Legend of Līlāvatī’, pp. 33–34.
29 For the Persian, see Feizi, The Lilavati, a Treatise on arithmetic (Calcutta: Education Press, 1827), pp. 3–4, 5. For Persian transliteration in this article, I follow the IJMES transliteration system.
30 In theory, the water clock also predicts the future success of a marriage by the direction in which it sinks within its receptacle: Sarma, ‘Setting up the Water Clock’, pp. 320, 322.
31 G. T. Kulkarni, ‘Settlement of the Disputes of the Village Officials: A Study of an Unpublished “Farman” of Shahjahan’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 53, 1992, pp. 199–204.
32 Ibid., pp. 8, 7, lines 4–5 (of farmān): dar hangām-i shādī bekhānah desmukhīān va dīspāndīān va mahājan va mutāṣadīān-i firishtah … [torn] … kālas va ghatikā [va] lagnah va akshatā va patrīkā va kālas-i zawr-i chāram va umūr-i katkhudā’ī va shādī bemūjub-yi żābiṭah-i hindvī dar pīsh āmad. For this meaning of lagna, see John T. Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English (London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1884), pp. 961–962, ‘lagna’. Here the farmān is a non-paginated insert and the left half of each folio is reproduced first, so my citation of the farmān reverses my assigned page numbers.
33 Ibid., pp. 8,7, line 8 (of farmān): joshī-i vatan āz dahāt-i lavāzim-i ganes wa karā va ghatikā va lagnah va patrikā. The village names are Selu, Padi, Kanjhada, and Kothari.
34 I rely heavily on the early account by Hermann Jacobi, ‘How to Calculate the Lagna’, Indian Antiquity, A Journal of Oriental Research, vol. 29, 1900, pp. 189–190.
35 On these charts in this period, see Anuj Misra, ‘Recomputing Sanskrit Astronomical Tables: The Amr̥talaharī of Nityānanda (circa 1649/50 CE)’, in Editing and Analysing Numerical Tables: Towards a Digital Information System for the History of Astral Sciences, (eds) Matthieu Hudson, Clemency Montelle and Benno van Dalen (Turnhout: Brepolis Publishers, 2021), pp. 187–252.
36 This conversion rate is provided by Jacobi, ‘How to Calculate the Lagna’, p. 189.
37 Kim Plofker explains the issue of precession: ‘astrochronological inferences’ are ‘based on the “astronomical clock” provided by the precession of the equinoxes caused by the periodic wobbling of the earth’s axis. This wobbling makes the position of the vernal equinox (where the sun rises exactly at the east point of the horizon) shift slowly westward … It takes about 26,000 years to complete one cycle of precession, so the equinox moves about one degree of arc every seventy-two years’: Kim Plofker, Mathematics in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 32–33.
38 David Shulman, ‘Cowherd or King?: The Sanskrit Biography of Ananda Ranga Pillai’, in Telling Lives in India: Biography, Autobiography, and Life History, (eds) David Arnold and Stuart Blackburn (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004), p. 191.
39 This term can also mean ‘an auspicious moment’, but is not used in the sambandha or lagna patras; see Platts, A Dictionary, pp. 1101–1102.
40 Ananda Ranga Pillai, The Private Diary of Ananda Ranga Pillai Dubash to Joseph Fançois Dupleis, Knight of the Order of St. Michael, and Governor of Pondicherry. Translated from the Tamil by order of the Government of Madras, (ed.) Sir J. Frederick Price, assisted by K. Rangchari (Madras: Government Press, 1907), vol. II, p. 52. The first two square brackets are not in the original. For more on the event, see Mark K. Israel, ‘Governor Joseph Francis Dupaleix—His Religious Policy’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, no. 38, 1977, pp. 533–538.
41 Because the 60 ghaṭikās are divided into 30 from sunrise and 30 from sunset, the ghaṭikās after sunset are occasionally counted from 1–30 again. Here, Ranga Pillai records time in this manner: starting from the twelfth ghaṭikā, even though it is technically the forty-second ghaṭikā. Knowing the historical time of the sunset would give a more accurate gloss of water-clock time here.
42 Projit Bihari Mukharji, ‘Olden Times: Watches, Watchmaking, and Temporal Culture in Calcutta, c. 1757–1857’, in On Modern Sensibilities: Culture, Politics, History, (eds) Ishita Banerjee-Dube and Sarvani Gooptu (New Delhi: Routledge, 2017), pp. 107–108.
43 Ibid., p. 106.
44 Edgar Thurston, Ethnographic Notes in Southern India, Part II (Delhi: Cosmo Publications, 1975 [1907]), p. 566.
45 Ibid., p. 565.
46 Ibid.
47 For care as part of scientific observation, see Lorraine Daston, ‘The Empire of Observation, 1600–1800’, in Histories of Scientific Observation, (eds) Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 91; and in relation to social life, see Karen Jones, ‘Trust as an Affective Attitude’, Ethics, vol. 107, no. 1, 1996, pp. 4–25.
48 The astrologer’s reliance upon the horoscope means that it is another site of documentary production in preparing for a marriage ceremony. But, as it is beyond the scope the article, I do not address its production.
49 Ray, Nadiẏār Samājacitra, pp. 55–56: śrīyukta kāśīnātha cakrabartī—sadur [read: sadar] cariteṣu—likhitaṃ śrīgauramohana vāgīsaśya śubha lagnapatram—idaṃ kāryyanañca āge—san 1204 sāl—āmār sarbba kaniṣṭhā kanya śrīmati lakṣmīrāṇī debir āpaṇkār jyeṣṭha putra śrīmān dinanātha bābājībaner śubha sambandha je nirupaṇ haiẏāche tāhār śubha bibāha bartamān baisākha maser 20 dibase rātrite lagnanirupaṇ karilām[.] lagnānusāre śubha bibāha saṃpūrṇa kariẏā diba adya tārik abadhi śāstra vidhite kanyār dāner bākadān karilām[.] etadarthe āpan secchāpūrbbak lagnapatra likhiẏā dilām iti san 1204 sāl 5 baisākh. śrīgauramohana bāgiśa sāṃ bilbagrām[.] sākṣī—śrīkṛṣṇamohana bhaṭṭācārya sāṃ bilbagrām śrīśrīnātha cakrabartī sāṃ nabadvīp. According to Ray, Nadiẏār Samājacitra, p. 56, Bilbagram is now included within the town of Nakashipara.
50 Mandal, Ciṭhipatre Samājacitra, p. 12: … śubha bibāha bartamān māser 23 dibase sombāre rātrīte lagnanirūpaṇ karilām ukta[-]lagnānusāre śubhabibāha saṃpūrṇa kariẏā diba adya tārik abadi ukta bidhite kaṇyār dāner bākadān karilām. The lagna patra was written on 6 Vaishak 1247 (19 April 1840).
51 Ibid., p. 4: āmār jeṭhā[r] kanne śrīmati sāmā su[nda]rike o śrīmati jādumanike māha baisāke dosarā…sampradān kariba ihā sthir kariā [l]agan patra likhā dilām.
52 Mahmud Shahjahan Miya, Purono Baṃla Dalilpatra (1638–1882) (Dhaka: Laila Jahan Publications, 1991), p. 103: āmi kanyā sa[ṃ]pradān kariẏā diba. The author of the document writes that ‘this is an auspicious sambandha and lagna patra’: śubha sammanda-lagna-patram idam (original orthography).
53 Ray, Nadiẏār Samājacitra, p. 57: ‘I shall send musicians to you all … You all can take a standard palanquin … The marriage is one whose lagna is at dusk. 10 Phalgun 1201 [23 February 1795]’ (tomārder nikaṭ bādyakardigake pāṭhāi … tomārrā ḍuli laibe … lagna godhūlīte bibāha …. iti san 1201 sāl tārik 10 phālguṇ). The author of the document is from Kashiyadanga but the document is identified as having been composed in Jagannathpur (both in Nadia district).
54 On dusk and dawn as additional components of time measurement, see Hayashi, ‘Units of Time’, pp. 43–44.
55 Mukhopadhyay, Satero Śataker Rāṛh Bāṃlār Samāj o Sāhitya, pp. 182–183.
56 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity.
57 Ibid., pp. 55–90, 268 n. 13.
58 Mandal, Ciṭhipatre Samājacitra, vol. 1, p. 186.
59 Ibid., vol. 2, p. 13; for additional examples of costs over Rs 100, see pp. 9–10. See also Ray, Nadiẏār Samājacitra, pp. 58–59. These costs include the purchase of various types of cloth, jewellery, sweets, and many other items.
60 Mukhopadhyay, Satero Śataker Rāṛh Bāṃlār Samāj o Sāhitya, pp. 182, 185.
61 Such calculations and related debates among astrologers in nineteenth-century Bengal are discussed in the thesis currently under preparation by Sagnik Kar, ‘Clocks, Watches, and Almanacs: Perceiving Time at Home and Beyond in Calcutta, 1870s–1940s’, University of Göttingen. Thurston, Ethnographic Notes, p. 565.
62 Ranga Pillai, The Private Diary, p. 52.
63 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, pp. 244–252. Majumdar provides an example, however, of a late sambadha patra from 1954 on p. 245.
64 Miya, Purono Baṃla Dalilpatra, p. 132, no. 114; Mandal, Ciṭhipatre Samājacitra, vol. 2, p. 7 no. 13; Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, p. 251.
65 Mandal, Ciṭhipatre Samājacitra, vol. 2, p. 8, no. 15; Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, pp. 248, 250.
66 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, pp. 246–247, fig. 28.
67 Ibid., p. 247, fig. 28.
68 Ibid., p. 247, fig. 29: 21-śe āṣāṛh śukrabār (iṃ 6-i julāi), rātri 9 ghaṭikāẏ. The term ghaṭikā was adapted at this time to refer to the hour of the mechanical clock rather than just the ghaṭikā of the water clock.
69 Ray, Nadiẏār Samājacitra, p. 60: āgāmī 25-śe baiśākh 1281 san sandhyāẏ godhūlilagne … śrīmati kalyāṇīr sahita … śrīmān sabitāṃśuśekhar … śubhabibāha susampanna haibe.
70 Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity, pp. 244, 246.
71 That this shift occurred at the same time as the increasing use of the mechanical clock leaves open the question of how, or if, changes in technologies of time measurement affected the practice of composing sambandha and lagna patras.
72 Daston, ‘The Empire of Observation’, p. 93.
73 Ronald Inden, ‘Ritual, Authority, and Cyclic Time in Hindu Kingship’, in Kingship and Authority in South Asia, (ed.) J. F. Richards (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 53–54, with quote on p. 53; and Ananya Vajpeyi, ‘Excavating Identity through Tradition: Who was Shivaji?’, in Traditions in Motion: Religion and Society in History, (eds) Satish Sabbarwal and Supriya Varma (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 246–247.
74 Jamison, ‘Marriage and the Householder’, pp. 132–133.
75 Raghunandana Bhaṭṭācārya, ‘Udvāhatattvam’, in Smr̥titattva, (ed.) Jibananda Vidyalankara (Kalikata: Siddhesvara Press, 1895), vol. 2, p. 106: asapiṇḍā ca yā mātur asagotrā ca yā pituḥ sā praśastā dvijātīnāṃ dārakarmaṇi maithune … dārakarmaṇi bhāryātvasampādake karmaṇi. tac ca karma grahaṇarūpam … tena bhāryātvasampādakaṃ grahaṇaṃ vivāhaḥ. tasya svīkārarūpajñānaviśeṣasya samavāyaviṣayatayor bhedāt varakanyayor vivāhakarttrtvakarmatve[.] For a discussion on the phrase dārakarmaṇi maithune, see Patrick Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law, A Critical Edition and Translation of the Mānava-Dharmaśāstra, with the editorial assistance of Suman Olivelle (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 922.
76 Duncan M. Derrett, ‘The Discussion of Marriage by Gadādhara: A Preliminary Investigation’, in Essays in Classical and Modern Hindu Law. Vol. 1: Dharmaśāstra and Related Ideas (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), p. 324: yat tu bhāryātvasaṃpādakagrahaṇaṃ vivāhaḥ tac ca grahaṇaṃ mameyaṃ bhāryā ityākārakaṃ jñānaṃ. The text is edited and translated by Derrett, but the translations are my own. Immediately following this comment, he quotes Raghunandana’s Udvāhatattvam.
77 Ibid., p. 330: ‘If you were to argue that marriage is simply a “taking” of such a type [which entails the cognition, “This is my wife”] immediately after a relinquishing [of the bride by the father] during any of the eight types of marriage (the Brahmā type, etc.), I would disagree. This argument cannot be sustained because it would not include marriages among children and others who are not able to entertain such a cognition’ (brāhmādyaṣṭakatyāgānantaratādrśagrahaṇam eva vivāha iti cen na tādrśajñānāsamarthabālakāder vivāhe ’vyāpteḥ). On the eight types of marriage, see Sengupta, ‘Evolution of Hindu Marriage’, pp. 153–166.
78 As we read above, Raghunandana also uses this term to gloss the act of taking, but Gadādhara does not engage with this part of his argument.
79 Derrett, ‘The Discussion of Marriage’, pp. 326, 328: atha bhāryātvaṃ vivāhajanyasaṃskāravannārītvam …. tasya [bhāryātvasya] … upalakṣaṇavidhayā vyāvartakatvena saṃpādakasvīkāra eva vivāhaḥ. atra bhāryātvanirūpitasaṃpādakataiva svīkāre viśeṣaṇam.
80 On his time and location, see Ethan Kroll, ‘A Logical Approach to Law’, PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 2010, p. 278.
81 The full episode is provided in John D. Smith, The Mahābhārata (London: Penguin Books, 2009), pp. 72–73. After their mother tells them to share what they have brought, they each find themselves feeling love (manobhāva) towards Draupadī (p. 73); and Nīlakaṇṭha, Mahābhārata with the Commentary of Nīlakaṇṭha, (ed.) R. C. Kinjavadekar (Poona: Shankar Nahar Joshi, 1929), p. 309 (1.191.13). The narrative notes that because Yudhiṣṭhira ‘understood [his brothers’] feelings’ and was ‘fearful of discord between them’, he announced that ‘The beautiful Draupadī shall be wife (bhāryā) to us all (Nīlakaṇṭha, Mahābhārata, p. 309 (1.191.15–16): teṣām ākārabhāvajñaḥ … yudhiṣṭhiraḥ … abravīt sahitān bhrātr̥̄n mitho bhedabhayān nrpaḥ. sarveṣām draupadī bhāryā bhaviṣyati hi naḥ śubhā. I am following J. A. B. van Buitenen, The Mahābhārata (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), vol. 1, p. 376.
82 Gokulanātha Upādhyāya, Nyāyasiddhāntatattvaviveka, folio 115a, reproduced in Kroll, ‘A Logical Approach to Law’, p. 282 n. 10: pāṃdavādīnāṃ pāṃcālyādau svatvaṃ kālaviśeṣaprakārakaṃ tādṛśam eva viniyogaṃ janayati.
83 Significantly, Draupadī becomes a new bride (kanyā) the day after each marriage: ‘One after another, a day apart, the sons of the king of men, took the hand of the most excellent bride. And the sage recounted this amazing wonder that occurred there beyond human comprehension: that that beautiful bride of stunning elegance became a virgin girl (kanyā) on each successive day’ (Nīlakaṇṭha, Mahābhārata, p. 321 [1.198.13–14]: krameṇa cānena narādhipātmajā varastriyas te jagr̥hus tadā karam ahany ahany … idaṃ ca tatrādbhūtarūpam uttamaṃ jagāda devarṣir atītamānuṣam mahānubhāvā kila sā sumadhyamā babhūva kanyaiva gate gate ’hani). I am following van Buitenen, The Mahābhārata, p. 376.
84 P. P. S. Sastra (ed.), The Mahābhārata (Southern Recension), Ādi Parvan, Part II (Madras: V. Ramaswamy Sastrulu and Sons, 1931), vol. II, p. 1317 (1.200.121–123): samayaṃ cakrire rājaṃs te ’nyonyena samāgatāḥ samakṣaṃ tasya devarṣer nāradasyāmitaujasaḥ ekaikasya gr̥he krṣṇā vased varṣam akalmaṣā. draupadyā ca samāsīnam anyonyaṃ yo vidarśayet sa no dvādaśa vai māsān vratacārī vane vaset. The line about living for a year in each brother’s home is not found in Nīlakaṇṭha, Mahābhārata, p. 336 (1.212.28–29).
85 Samuel Wright, ‘The Practice and Theory of Property in Seventeenth-century Bengal’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 54, no. 2, 2017, pp. 160–161 n. 40.
86 Kane, History of Dharmaśāstra, pp. 508–509; and Jamison, ‘Marriage and the Householder’, pp. 133–134; Stephanie W. Jamison, Sacrificed Wife/Sacrificer’s Wife: Women, Ritual, and Hospitality in Ancient India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 236–237. Christopher Fleming notes a distinction made by seventeenth-century Sanskrit scholars between ‘familial and propriety’ notions of the word sva (one’s own) wherein a father, for example, could not give away his son as progeny but could as a servant: Christopher Fleming, Ownership and Inheritance in Sanskrit Jurisprudence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), p. 154 and 154 n. 189.
87 For the complex relation between ownership and use, see Fleming, Ownership and Inheritance. For example, Fleming discusses the view of Gāgā Bhaṭṭa (Banaras, circa 1650) in which ownership is defined as ‘the state of being the object of the cognition “mine”’ or ‘fitness for use as desired’ (p. 154).
88 Gokulanātha, Nyāyasiddhāntatattvaviveka, folio 118a, reproduced in Kroll, ‘A Logical Approach to Law’, p. 293 n. 29: viniyoge tadupādānakaprayatnasvarūpe. Use may occur in legal or illegal ways, and it is not confined to the space of ritual: see Fleming, Ownership and Inheritance, p. 49.
89 Fleming, Ownership and Inheritance, p. 51; Kane, History of Dharmaśātra, pp. 556–559.
90 For a wife and husband selling their servant (1651, Mithila), see K. P. Jayaswal, ‘The Unexplained Passage’, Journal of Bihar and Orissa Research Society, vol. 7, parts 2 and 3, 1921, pp. 123–124; for a wife present at her husband’s debt repayment (1627, Mithila), see K. P. Jayaswal, ‘A Deed of Acquittance in Sanskrit’, Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, vol. 14, part 1, 1928, p. 63; for a wife selling herself with her husband (1694, western Bengal), see Ray, Nadiẏār Samājacitra, pp. 3–4; for wives attending a religious event as ‘the wives of’ their husbands (no date but most likely nineteenth century, western Bengal), see Mandal, Ciṭhipatre Samājacitra, vol. 2, pp. 154–55; and for a wife giving a gift in her capacity as ‘the wife of’ her husband (1825, western Bengal), see Mandal, Ciṭhipatre Samājacitra, vol. 2, p. 359.
91 For a literary acknowledgement of this, see Jagannātha Paṇḍitarāja (circa 1650, Banaras) writing upon the death of his wife: Kasinath Pandurang Parab and Mangesh Ramakrishna Telang (eds), The Bhāminivilāsa of Jagannāth Paṇḍit with the Commentary (Praṇayaprakāśa) of Achchyutaraya Modak and revised by Wasudev Laxman Sastri Pansikar (Bombay: Nirnaya Sagara Press, 1894), pp. 115–116 [‘Karuṇavilāsa’, especially vv. 5, 8]). For more on the death of Jagannātha’s wife, see Sheldon Pollock, ‘The Death of Sanskrit’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 43, no. 2, 2001, pp. 410–412.
92 Yulia Framer, Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), p. 10.
93 Ibid.
94 Avner Wishnitzer, Reading Clocks, Alla Turca: Time and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), p. 7, n. 21.