[Advaita-l] Brahmin bridegrooms not getting brides

[Venkatesh Murthy]

Namaste

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 10:57 PM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan
<svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Well, one can sit around wringing one's hands and bemoaning the fall of
> brAhmaNa dharma, or one can make use the dharmaSAstra rule that allows
> marriages between brAhmaNa men and women of any caste. It is called
> anuloma vivAha,

Sri Ravi Chandrasekhara has written in another thread-
>8.I also read on a Madhva site, that if one parent is a Dvija, and another a Shudra; then the sons have no adhikara for Upanayana.

There must be some justification for the Madhva rule also. Your
examples are not from Kali Yuga at all but from others. There must be
some Dharma Sastra behind the Madhva rule. We have to find out. If the
Madhva rule is also correct the Anuloma rule is to marry a non Brahmin
girl but from Kshatriya or Vaisya caste only but not Sudras and SC/ST.
But nowadays there are not many pure Kshatriyas. I heard they also
married many other caste girls. They have lost the true Kshatriyatva.
Vaisyas are also not interested in making marriage alliances with
Brahmins. They also have married from other castes.

In Karnataka the Lingayat and Vokkaliga communites are the largest.
This will leave a large Sudra population as the only choice for
getting girls for our Vaidika Brahmins. If they marry girls from Sudra
caste they are doomed because the children will not be eligible for
Upanayana and Veda Adhyayana. A Brahmin marrying the Sudra girl may
lose his Brahmantva itself.

> All this shows that there is a long dhArmika history behind what the Sringeri
> Acharya has suggested. Having said this, let me say something else. Asking
> the question, "is this a correct approach?" is superfluous and the paragraphs
> I've written above are totally unnecessary. If Sringeri Acharya recommends
> a course of action, you can rest assured that it is in accordance with dharma,
> by default. There is no need to second guess it and seek further justification.
> I have only offered the above details for the sake of the general discussion.
> At a personal level, if one has a question about dharma and one approaches
> a guru for advice, then one needs to have the requisite SraddhA in the guru
> and the advice that he gives. The words of a Sankaracharya are not things
> in the market place to be bought, tested and returned or thrown away if one
> doesn't like them.
>
We have to find out what Sringeri Acharya said exactly. If he said you
can marry vegetarian girls from any caste including Sudras it is a
problem. If he said marry from Kshatriya and Vaisya castes there may
still be a problem.

> Regards,
> Vidyasankar
>


-- 
Regards

-Venkatesh