Ekarśi. Eka + rśi = ekarśi. Ekarśi is the name of a kind of fire which was considered very sacred by ancient people. In the Vedas it is written:

Vrátyastvaḿ práńasya rśirattá vishvasya satpatih;
Vayamádyasya dátárah pitá tvaḿ mátarishva nah.

In the Atharvaveda, the word Práńa is frequently used for Parama Puruśa. For Paramá Prakrti the words Rayi, Rayá and Raye are used. In this shloka it is said, “O Práńa, O Parama Puruśa, You are a high, great object as sacred as the ekarśi fire. Conversely, You are a very ordinary object like any other object. This universe is finally dissolved in You.” (Attá means “eater, devourer”.) “O Parama Puruśa, we offer ghee and many other objects for Your satisfaction. You are the very dynamism, the mobility, inherent in the existence of all entities.”

In prehistoric days, human beings did not know about fire. Prehistoric human beings used to live on fruits, roots, tender green leaves and raw meat.⁽¹⁾

At last they discovered fire. The discovery of fire, or better to say, the invention of fire, marked the most significant day in human history. After the invention of fire, people began to use it. It took a few more centuries to refine the uses of fire. Gradually, people learned to use fire properly. They learned to eat roasted meat instead of raw meat.⁽²⁾

This first moment of the invention of fire distinguished human beings as the greatest of living creatures. Through the use of fire, sky-kissing civilizations were built that could give everything to humankind – everything, that is, except life’s deeper beatitude. One of the contributions civilization did make was to give humans an engulfing, domineering pride over all life. This pride may one day tumble them from the highest peaks down to the ground and turn them into dust.

Fire is indispensable. Humans cannot survive without fire. Metallurgy, and the manufacture of wheels, vehicles, weapons, agricultural tools and weaving machines, are all by the grace of fire. It is not an easy task to prepare fire. In the initial stage, they produced fire through the frictional heat of rubbing two pieces of flint together. Fire cannot be kept by just anybody. A few rśis [sages] were designated to keep fire.

In those days, people lived mainly in the forests, constructing shelters in tall trees in imitation of birds’ nests, or in mountain caves. Gotra [which also came to mean “clan”] was the Vedic word for both “mountain” and “large forest”.

In the beginning, a head woman would be the leader of each gotra. She was the gotramátá [matriarch]. Later came the age of male dominance. The head of the gotra would then be a male rśi. His followers took pride in the rśi, who was designated to keep the fire. That fire-keeping sage was called a ságnik or ágnihotrii. He would worship fire as a holy god. He would offer sumptuous foods into the fire for the satisfaction of Ágni, the fire-god. This was called havana. The general term for these offerings and sacrifices was yajiṋa. The word yajiṋa (yaj + na) means “action”, a special type of action, an auspicious action. The root verb yaj means “to do a work”. Yaj + ghaiṋ = yága. When a ságnik fell ill or was absent, his patnii [wife] or son would protect the fire and provide it fuel. In this connection, I would like to discuss something about the meaning of the term patnii.

Prior to Lord Shiva, there was no institution of marriage in human society. As fathers and mothers were not bound by the ties of duty, the innocent children suffered tremendous hardship. The mothers had to bear a great burden as they had to shoulder the entire responsibility of rearing the children. The result was that the women’s progress in different spheres of life was thwarted. Shiva, through the application of logic and strength, forced husbands and wives into a social bond. That was the first time social marriage took place in this world. The system that Shiva introduced has continued in different ways throughout the world into the modern age.

After Shiva’s time, opportunistic men divided the social status of women into various categories. We can roughly analyse the following levels:

Patnii: A patnii enjoyed equal religious and social rights as her husband.⁽³⁾ Her children were entitled to all religious and social rights as their inheritance.

Jáyá: A jáyá was deprived of the religious rights, but was entitled to the social rights of her husband. Her children were entitled to the religious and social rights of their father.

Bháryá: A bháryá was not allowed any of the religious or social rights of her husband. But as the marriage was recognized, her children were entitled to the religious and social rights of their father. A bháryá was married only to perpetuate the lineage, not to give the woman dignity. That’s why it was declared: Puttrárthe kriyate bháryá [“A bháryá is taken on only for the sake of male children”].

Kalatra: Some time before the Buddhist age, the system of kalatra was introduced, but it did not receive encouragement in the Buddhist period. It remained in an obscure form, but later gained ascendancy in the post-Buddhist age. In this husband-wife relationship, the wife did not enjoy the religious and social rights of her husband. The children were also denied any of the paternal religious or social rights; they inherited their mother’s gotra, caste and social rights according to the system of anuloma and pratiloma.⁽⁴⁾ For instance, if the father was a Vipra, an “intellectual”, and the mother a Shúdra, their child did not receive its father’s caste; that is, the child was not a Vipra, but was put into the caste of its mother, that is, was treated as a Shúdra. Or suppose the father belonged to the Bharadváj Gotra. His child did not necessary belong to the Bharadváj Gotra. For instance, if the mother’s gotra was Káshyapa, then her child belonged to the Káshyapa Gotra. If, furthermore, the marriage was not socially recognized, the children were not entitled even to their mother’s gotra and caste. They were vrátya [outcaste].

The word vrátya occurs in the shloka in the earlier part of this essay. That is, in the period when this shloka was composed there was a rejected fifth caste suggested by this word vrátya.

Although kalatra means “wife”, it is neuter gender. It will not be declined as kalatrah or kalatrá but as kalatram. (Yad bharttureva hitamicchati tad kalatram [“One who wishes the welfare of her husband is kalatra”].)

(Similarly, the word dára means “wife”, but it is in masculine gender and plural number. So its declension will be like that of nara [“man”]. That is why when it is declined in the first case, it will always be dárá. When it is used in a sentence, dára is changed into dárá. But as the original word is dára, the Sanskrit expression is dára parigraha [“to take a wife”], not dárá parigraha when used in the sense of a man’s marriage. A widower will be called mrtadára, not mrtadárá, a bachelor is akrtadára and not akrtadárá.)

Needless to say, as the children of kalatras were not entitled to paternal religious and social rights, they were not permitted to keep fire either. If a kalatra marriage was socially recognized, the children were entitled to the maternal religious and social rights. Only if their mother was permitted to keep fire did her children inherit the right to keep fire.

Niyoga custom: When the kuliina⁽⁵⁾ system abruptly burst forth like a meteor or comet, cursing the whole society, its corollary, niyoga, spontaneously burgeoned.⁽⁶⁾

It was extremely difficult for the kuliinas who married so many women to maintain them all with food and clothes. Some of the wives stayed in their husband’s house and the rest of the wives would remain in their fathers’ houses. In many cases, even though a child of a kuliina wife was recognized as the legitimate child of its mother’s lawful husband, usually it was the offspring of a socially unrecognized mate of the wife. These socially unrecognized mates were called niyoga pati [niyoga husband]. The children would call that particular man niyoga pitá [niyoga father], and the children were niyoga putra [niyoga sons]. The Pandava brothers of the Mahábhárata were the niyoga putras of different fathers. Society somewhat accepted this system. Although the children inherited the gotra and caste of their mother’s legitimate husband, or even his social and religious rights, they did not inherit the natural inheritable qualities of their fathers, as there was no blood relation between the husband and the niyoga putras. In this niyoga system, the number of kuliinas increased by leaps and bounds, but the standard of quality could not be kept. The inevitable result of this ugly system was that the intellectual level of the kuliinas gradually declined. The children of the niyoga pitá could inherit the social and religious rights of their socially-accepted father, but were not authorized from the paternal side to keep fire. Most of them were not born or brought up in the paternal home, rather they would stay with their maternal uncles.

Pratiloma: In the cases where the father was of an upper caste and the mother was of a lower caste, the offspring born under such an anuloma system were entitled to their father’s gotra and caste but not his religious and social rights. (This was the case in the patriarchal social system. But in the matrilineal social system the children would inherit the mother’s gotra, caste, and social and religious rights.)

But if the marriage took place under the pratiloma system, the children were only entitled to their father’s gotra, but not his caste nor any other rights whatsoever. Nor were they entitled to their mother’s gotra, caste, or social and religious rights. Hundreds of castes and sub-castes were created due to the children born out of this socially-unacceptable pratiloma system.

In Bengal also, many small castes and communities were created, and they exist to this day. Needless to say, none of these castes had the right to keep fire.

You can easily understand from these events and various marriage systems that women were merely playthings in the hands of a group of opportunistic, capricious men. Today their position has changed on paper, but the actual position remains virtually the same as before. People guided by righteous intellect should be vocal against these ugly customs and injustices to women. Further, they should work to abolish these things without any more delay. The path which Lord Shiva showed for social emancipation should be adhered to by His followers. The path should be made wider, paved well, and made easily accessible, instead of making it more thorny.

Footnotes

(1) Several paragraphs on the development of fire and on its sacred nature omitted at this point. –Trans.

(2) Several paragraphs on the development of fire and on its sacred nature omitted at this point. –Trans.

(3) Each member of the society of that time had rights to a certain specified degree of participation in different social and religious functions. Those rights correlated with the person’s social level. –Trans.

(4) A man marrying below or above his station, respectively according to caste hierarchy. While anuloma was not encouraged, it was somewhat acceptable, but pratiloma was never condoned. –Trans.

(5) High-born. See “Women’s Rights in Ráŕh” for further explanation. –Trans.

(6) The niyoga custom originated long before the kuliina system as a means of producing offspring. A man would be given permission to mate with a deceased or sterile man’s wife. For example, in the Mahábhárata King Dhritarashtra, King Pandu, and the Pandavas as well, were the offspring of such unions. –Trans.