Daughter and Sons, and Some Aspects of Marriage in VāLmīKirāMāYaṇa

This paper focuses on the representation of marriage with a view to understanding the issues related to social organization. We will discuss here about marriage being an institution, its importance in society, and the issues related to the origins of marriage, by using examples from the Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki. We obtain certain ideas of social stratification, hierarchies and alternate social ordering from the Rāmāyaṇa. The objective is to see whether there was a gender bias in defining marriage, as represented in the Rāmāyaṇa.