Beautiful Hindu Women and Wonderful Weddings

By London Swaminathan

Hindu women have colorful dress and more elaborate marriage ceremonies. They have the oldest wedding rituals. Rig Vedic Kalyana Mantras reverberate in wedding halls throughout the world where the Hindu diaspora do it in the traditional way. Their wedding dress, jewels, rituals, and food items have regional flavour in addition to uniform mantras. Even within four South Indian States of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra and Karnataka we can see this. So do North Indian states.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pustaka Digital Media
• Release date: Jan 14, 2023
• ISBN: 6580553509318

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Beautiful Hindu Women and Wonderful Weddings

Author:

London Swaminathan

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Table of Contents

Foreword

1.HUSBAND IS ELEVENTH CHILD! – SAYS RIG VEDA

2.MARRIAGE CEREMONY MANTRA IN RIG VEDA

3.A Wife is a Gift from the Gods- Manu Smrti

4.A WIFE IS HALF THE MAN: STATUS OF WOMEN IN HINDUISM

5.RIG VEDIC WEDDING SCENE IN TURKEY

6.Three Beautiful Tamil Hindu Weddings

7.Kannaki and Andal Weddings

8.Kannaki praised Seven Tamil Women before Burning Madurai City

9.Beautiful Names of Ancient Kashmiri Women!

10.Beautiful Commentary on Five Day Brahmin Wedding! in 1903!!

11.Five Day Hindu Marriage- Part 1

12.FIVE DAY HINDU MARRIAGE – PART 2

13.FIVE DAY HINDU WEDDING- Part 3

14.FIVE DAY HINDU MARRIAGE- PART 4

15.Most Intelligent Woman in the Ancient World

16.TWO TYPES OF VEDIC WOMEN

17.GREAT WOMAN SCHOLAR AVANTI SUNDARI

18.Eastern and Western View of Women

19.GREAT HINDU HEROINES PADMINI & RANI SAMYUKTA

20.LET US ENTER FIRE BEFORE MUSLIMS TOUCH US- HEROIC SPEECH BY RANI BHAI

21.CHANAKYA ON WOMEN’S MIGHTY POWER!!!

22.UGLY GIRL IS OK- CHANAKYA

23.WOMAN AND YOGI- CHANAKYA

24.Definition of a Woman by a Tamil Poet!

25.Gems of Women: Varahamihirar’s Definition

26.Stri Rajya- Kingdom of Women in India!

27.Wonderful Syllabus for Women!

28.Hindu Women’s Education 2700 Years Ago!

29.Fifty-one Interesting Hindu Couples; Four Types of Women

30.Sita’s Famous Quotes: I would Follow Eleven Women

Foreword

Hindu women have colourful dress and more elaborate marriage ceremonies. They have the oldest wedding rituals. Rig Vedic Kalyana Mantras reverberate in wedding halls throughout the world where the Hindu diaspora do it in the traditional way. Their wedding dress, jewels, rituals, and food items have regional flavour in addition to uniform mantras. Even within four South Indian States of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra and Karnataka we can see this. So do North Indian states.

Apart from the wedding, this book features ideal Hindu women. South Indians do see the Arundhati star in the Saptarishi Mandala (Ursa Major Constellation) on the wedding day; Arundhati, wife of Vasistha Maharishi is the embodiment of chastity. Even Sangam Tamil literature mentioned her in six places and Ursa Major (Great Bear) Constellation in one place with due reverence. Sita said that she followed 11 ideal couples in Valmiki Ramayana and Kannaki praised seven great chaste Tamil women in the Tamil epic Silappadikaram. I have published elsewhere 600 Tamil and Sanskrit proverbs on women. I have listed 51 celebrated couples from ancient literature in this book.. ‘Women and weddings’ is an unending topic. In the second part I will bring out more interesting information.

The articles in this book were posted in my blogs over ten years. You will find here the date and the serial number of those posts. Though I posted more pictures in my blogs, I could not include them here. Hope you would enjoy reading it. As we progress through time, the Hindu wedding ceremonies are becoming shorter and shorter. Until we document all the ancient rituals, we may not understand what our forefathers did during weddings. From horoscope matching to ritual Shanti Muhurtham (First Night or Honey Moon), Hindu marriages are unique!

London swaminathan

November 2022

1.HUSBAND IS ELEVENTH CHILD! – SAYS RIG VEDA

HUSBAND IS ELEVENTH CHILD! – SAYS RIG VEDA

The wedding hymn in the Rig Veda (10-85) is one of the most interesting hymns in the whole Vedic literature. It has got beautiful quotable quotes, interesting details about botany, gold, Vedic Gods, puzzles, and psychological observations.

Amazing thing about this hymn is when all other Gilgamesh verses have gone into museums of the world , this hymn is reverberating in Hindu marriages even today. You can hear it almost fully in South Indian Brahmin Weddings. This hymn has 47 Mantras (verses). Since 5 day Hindu wedding is celebrated in half a day nowadays, main mantras only used now but extra rituals are added.

First let me give the QUOTES in bullet points:-

1.Quotable Quotes in the hymn RV 10-85

Truth is the base that bears the Earth ; by Suurya are the heavens sustained

Another translation of the same mantra-

By truth is the earth sustained and by the sun are heavens

***

"Thought was the pillow of her couch

And sight the unguent of her eyes,

Heaven and earth her treasure box

When Suuryaa went to her husband"

(Bride’s name is (Miss) Suuryaa; all Hindu girls are portrayed as Suuryaa in Hindu weddings. Suurya (short sound ‘a’ is Sun; Suuryaa, long sound ‘aa’ is Sun’s daughter.).

***

Sun and Moon are going round like playing children:–

"One after another , by their power move these Two

And they go round like two playing children around the sacrifice.

One surveys all existing things, and the other

Ordering the seasons , is born again and again"

(Sun and Moon are playing around Earth like children playing around the wedding hall)

Husband 11th child

"Make her, thou bounteous indra

A good mother of sons; grant her

Good fortune; give her TEN SONS

AND MAKE HER HUSBAND THE ELEVENTH"

(Newly married couple play around like little children till a child is born; they pay full attention to each other; they praise what each one does; as soon as a child is born 90% attention and affection of a woman is shown to the new born one; husband gets only 10% affection; not only that, husband is blamed for not caring for the baby: Vedic poets knew this woman’s mind. So they beg to the proud mother, please care for your husband as well even if you give birth to 10 children)

***

YOU ARE A QUEEN

"Be a queen to thy father in law

A queen to thy mother in law;

A queen to thy husband’s sisters,

And a queen to thy husband’s brothers."

***

Take care of the Pets and Cattle:-

Vedic poets were so kind to animals; they remind the bride about pets and cattle in husband’s house and ask her to look after them—

"May Prajapati bring forth children of us, may

Aryaman unite us together till OLD AGE,

Not inauspicious, enter thy husband’s house,

Be gracious to our BIPEDS AND OUR QUAREPEDS"

(Throughout Sanskrit and Tamil literature, we read about cattle and pets raised by the women. Brahmin houses had Parrots as pets (bipeds) and Cows (quadrupeds). Other three communities had all sorts of animals in their houses. We have even references about donkeys raised by them).

***

25 GODS AND GODDESSES!

Another amazing thing about the Wedding hymn in the Rig Veda (RV 10-85) is the number of gods and goddesses mentioned in the hymn. No one could under stand them fully. The greatest of the Hindu commentators Sayana adds seven more names!

Griffith is always honest; he doesn’t pretend like Max Muller. In 47 mantra hymn he says THE MEANING IS UNCERTAIN at least three times! And in one more place he adds PROBABLY it is…

Other scholars are half baked; one fellow even pushed the hymn to appendix of the Vedas; either he is very jealous or a pukka idiot!.

Let me give the mysterious names now:-

Hindus worship Sun as God and Goddess (Savitri/Gayatri) every day. Brahmins does this thrice a day; in the Vedic days people of first three castes did this.

Here Savitr/Sun and his daughter Suuryaa are mentioned.

Foreigners are so confused about two words SOMA and INDRA , they bluffed through out their translation of 20,000 Vedic Mantras.

INDRA meant a Natural force (thunder, lightning, rain, cloud, rain bow) and a King, Leader, an engineer who diverted water, a Superman who cut the wings of Flying Mountains and husband of one woman Sasi or Indrani.

He is even called Bull etc. Without understanding this they attributed 1000 plus mantras addressed to Indra to one individual