The Domestic Sutras of Gobhila

...is attained (that is, before the commencement of menstruation). Although, owing to differing climatic conditions, the age of puberty is not the same in all parts of India, and therefore no fixed age is stated in the Dharmasastras Ancient Indian treatises on law and social conduct, nevertheless they enjoin that the rite of marriage should be performed at some time prior to that age as indicated above. Hence the infant marriage of females is a useless and needless practice, and one that ought to be abandoned as often entailing the evil of child-widowhood.

The next point for consideration is, at what age the marriage of males should take place. This, too, in accordance with the Dharmasastras, should never be in infancy; nor, to speak generally, before the age of eighteen, which is the essential meaning of the injunctions contained in those Sastras Sacred scriptures or authoritative scientific treatises. But the present practice of marrying boys in mere infancy results from ignorance both of what is physically right and of what is religiously enjoined, and is a fruitful cause of rendering those who are thus married puny, sickly, diseased, and miserable throughout their lives, to say nothing of the condition of their offspring.

Lastly, as regards cohabitation, the Dharmasastras (for example, Asvalayana, Manu, and Yama Traditional authors of Hindu law and domestic rituals) with one voice declare that it should commence only after puberty (that is, after the appearance of the catamenia The monthly menstrual cycle). Among the upper classes, people of all the four castes observe this rule, and with them cohabitation is never allowed beforehand, not only out of regard for the injunctions of the Dharmasastras, but also because to act otherwise would be opposed to their traditional customs. In the warmer parts of India, such as Bengal, Madras, and Bombay, females reach this state of maturity usually about the twelfth year, and in the colder regions of Rajputana and the Punjab about the thirteenth, and among the poorer classes still later. On this account the great physicians and rishis Inspired sages or seers of this country, Charaka and Sushruta The founding fathers of Ayurvedic medicine, have laid down the general rule that the wife should not join her husband before she has reached the age of twelve at least. (In those places in the Mahabharata and Brahma Purana Major Hindu epics and encyclopedic scriptures where the age for the marriage in the case of females is declared to be sixteen, eighteen, or twenty, this applies to former times—in former times women attained maturity later, and retained their vigor longer).