Intercaste marriage, A Query

[Guest guest]

Dear Bhagavathas,

 

Please excuse me if my unenlightenend opinion hurts anyone!

 

On Thu, 4 Sep 1997, swathy prabhu wrote:

> When I was going through the first chapter of Bhagavad Gita, amidst

> other things, verse 41 caught my attention quite strongly. To quote

> Arjuna,

> 'With the preponderance of vice, Krsna, the women of the family become

> corrupt and with the corruption of women, O descendant of Vrsni there

> ensues an intermixture of castes' ..I 41

> 'Admixture of blood damns the destoyers of the race as well as the race

> itself, Deprived of the offerings of rice and water the manes of their

> race also fall.' ..42

 

Referring to my earlier post (sent just a few moments ago) on the topic

of "sarvadharmAn.." vs. "karmaNyeva..", i believe we must interpret Bhagawad

Geetha as the supreme timeless Truth expressed in a language style that

nonetheless takes into consideration the mores of *those* times as well as

Arjuna's despondency. It was Sri Krishna's purpose not to promote social

equality (no doubt a noble endeavor in its own right, perhaps) or

address some such social issue but to get to the ultimate truth without

jolting the already desperate Arjuna!

 

Note that only in the modern times have the Mahaans, with an

appreciation of the spirit of these times, bothered to address social,

etc issues, if so far as they have!

> Shocked by the seriousness of the consequences I started searching the

> entire text for any other references about intercaste marriage. I could

> not spot it. IT is quite likely that I could have missed.

> Does Sri Vaishnavism speak anything about this either prohibiting or

> complimenting. Can someone throw light on this. I hope this is not a

> deviation from the main theme of this mailing list. If so kindly excuse

> me.

 

I tend to think these social issues are really not too important these

days, tho one cannot undermine their relevance at all in the past

millenia! But, anyway, it may be difficult to give a rigorous answer

since hardly anyone practices kuladharma-s (as a profession) these days, we

are all either engineers, scientists, software-guys, MBA's, etc by

_profession_, not rtwiks, warriors, traders, many of us living abroad,

etc.. :-) Since in that case the very definition of the caste-system has

not been borne out in practise, i wonder if it is that meaningful to

attach importance to a corollary thereof???!!!! Applying the doctrine of

rebirth, the unmanifest baddha jeeva is no longer so strongly conditoned

or guided to assume a particular birth-station since the carefully preserved

social/professional distinctions of the earlier times designed to afford an

optimal expression of the latencies in the jeeva are apparently leveling off.

 

Please, Bhagavatas, forgive me if you feel that i have gone overboard

in these explanations. If i have hurt any of yr feelings, please let me know!

 

Hari Om

srikanth

[Guest guest]

Dear friends,

When I was going through the first chapter of Bhagavad Gita, amidst

other things, verse 41 caught my attention quite strongly. To quote

Arjuna,

'With the preponderance of vice, Krsna, the women of the family become

corrupt and with the corruption of women, O descendant of Vrsni there

ensues an intermixture of castes' ..I 41

'Admixture of blood damns the destoyers of the race as well as the race

itself, Deprived of the offerings of rice and water the manes of their

race also fall.' ..42

 

Shocked by the seriousness of the consequences I started searching the

entire text for any other references about intercaste marriage. I could

not spot it. IT is quite likely that I could have missed.

Does Sri Vaishnavism speak anything about this either prohibiting or

complimenting. Can someone throw light on this. I hope this is not a

deviation from the main theme of this mailing list. If so kindly excuse

me.

 

with love

swathy prabhu