Kanyadana
Kanyadana (Sanskrit: कन्यादान, romanized: Kanyādāna) is a Hindu wedding ritual.[1] One possible origin of this tradition can be traced to 15th century stone inscriptions found in the Vijayanagara Empire in South India.[2] There are different interpretations regarding kanyadana across South Asia.
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Etymology
Kanyadana is made of the Sanskrit words kanyā (maiden) and dāna (giving away), referring to the tradition of a father giving his daughter in marriage to a groom. symbolizing the transfer of responsibility and care from one family to another.[3]
Kanyadana songs
In communities where kanyadana is performed as part of the actual wedding, the ritual is carried out through a variety of kanyadana songs. These songs may include the parents lamenting the loss of their daughter etc. Other songs focus on the groom, for example comparing him to the "ideal groom", the god Rama, in the epic Ramayana. Importantly, the kanyadana ritual occurs right before the sindoor ritual (sindurdan).[4]
See also
References
- Enslin, Elizabeth. "Imagined Sisters: The Ambiguities of Women’s Poetics and Collective Actions". Selves in Time and Place: Identities, Experience, and History in Nepal. Ed. Debra Skinner, Alfred Pach III, and Dorothy Holland. Lanham; Boulder; New York; Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998 (269-299).
- Mahalingam, T.V (1940). Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar. University of Madras. pp. 255-256.
- Hunt, Stephen (15 May 2017). Religions of the East. Routledge. p. 213. ISBN 978-1-351-90476-6.
- Henry, Edward O. "Folk Song Genres and Their Melodies in India: Music Use and Genre Process". Asian Music (Spring-Summer 2000). JSTOR. 20 February 2008.
Further reading
- Gutschow, Niels; Michaels, Axel; Bau, Christian (2008). The Girl's Hindu Marriage to the Bel Fruit: Ihi and The Girl's Buddhist Marriage to the Bel Fruit: Ihi in Growing up - Hindu and Buddhist Initiation Ritual among Newar Children in Bhaktapur, Nepal. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, Germany. ISBN 3-447-05752-1. pp. 93–173.