The basic working definition of marriage appeared in the Notes and Queries (1951) “Marriage is a union between a man and a woman such that the children born to the woman are recognised as legitimate offspring of both parents”. However such a definition of marriage as is obvious is highly Eurocentric and has limited cross cultural applicability.
Among the Nuer for example, a rich widow with no children can enter into a ghost marriage with a young and fertile woman so that the children born to the ‘wife’ are socially considered as children of the dead man and become 50 legitimate heirs. In India the practice of Niyoga enabled a young widow to achieve. the same end through a brother /classificatory brother or family priest.
However as Kathleen Gough has pointed out the fact of producing legitimate children does remain the most important function of marriage. She was replying to scholars like Edmund Leach who were of the opinion that the Nayars of Kerala did not have a real marriage as the father had no role in the identity of the children who took on the mother’s name and identity in a matrilineal system of inheritance. The society had no social role of father as the children were begotten through visiting husbands who were only sexual partners to the mother and had no rights over their children. The mother’s brother wielded authority in households comprising of brothers and sisters and the sister’s children. However Gough points out that every Nayar woman did undergo a marriage ceremony with a person of proper caste ranking and wore the tali (a kind of necklace worn as a sign of marital status). Although the husband did not have any social role, he did have a ritual status of legitimizing the woman to be socially sanctioned to bear legitimate children. A woman observed pollution rites at the death of this husband like a woman would of a regular husband. More importantly if a woman bore a child before this marriage ceremony the child would be considered illegitimate and the mother and child banished. Thus a Nayar marriage was a proper marriage in bestowing legal and social status on the child. She gave a often quoted definition of marriage as “—a relationship between a woman and one or more other person, which provides that a child born to the woman under circumstances not prohibited by the rules of the relationship, is accorded full birth status rights common to normal members of his society or social stratum” (Gough).
Gough’s definition takes care of polygamy that is both polygyny, where a man may have more than one wife and polyandry, where a woman may have more than one husband. While polygyny was practiced in many parts of world and is often associated with horticulture and the practice of bride-wealth, polyandry is found only in South Asia. Polygyny is associated with those economies where women play a significant role in the economy, like in hoe cultivation and also where the number of wives signifies high social status as among the aristocracy of the East. However polyandry is confined to some rare geographical regions especially among some communities of the Himalayas, like the Jaunsaries and Kinnauries; also among some Tibetan and Bhutiya communities. In most such societies it takes the form of fraternal polyandry where a group of brothers may have a wife in common. In Hindu mythology polyandry is described in the Mahabharata where five Pandava brothers have a common wife in Draupadi.
Some scholars have criticized Gough’s definition in that she does not take into account those societies where children from concubines may also have legitimate status.
Polygyny has often given rise to conflicts of succession between children, especially sons of co-wives, as depicted in the popular Hindu epic The Ramayana. According to law giver Manu, the son of a wife of proper caste ranking and who has been married in the most appropriate manner, that is gifted as a virgin by her father with proper ritual has more rights than the sons of other wives and concubines.