ntary union; (7) forcible abduction (in
war); (8) rape of a girl asleep, or drunk, or imbecile.

In other words, of the eight kinds of marriage recognized by Hindoo
law and custom only one is based on free choice, and of that Mann
says: "The voluntary connection of a maiden and a man is to be known
as a Gandharva union, which arises from lust." It is classed among the
blamable marriages. Even this appears not to have been a legal form
before Mann. It is blamable because contracted without the consent or
knowledge of the parents, and because, unless the sacred fire has been
obtained from a Brahman to sanctify it, such a marriage is merely a
temporary union. Gandharvas, after whom it is named, are singers and
other musicians in Indra's heaven, who, like the apsaras, enter into
unions that are not intended to be enduring, but are dissoluble at
will. Such marriages (liaisons we call them) are frequently mentioned
in Hindoo literature (_e.g., Hitopadesa_, p. 85). Malati (30) chides
her friend for advising her to make a secret marriage, and later on
exclaims (75): "I am lost! What a girl must not do, my friend counsels
me." The orthodox view is unfolded by the Buddhist nun Kamandaki(33):
"We hear of Duschyanta loving Sakuntala, of Pururavas loving Urvasi
... but these cases look like arbitrary action and cannot be commended
as models." In _Sakuntala_, too, the king feels it incumbent on him to
apologize to the girl he covets, when she bids him not to transgress
the laws of propriety, by exclaiming that many other girls have thus
been taken by kings without incurring parental disapproval. The
directions for this form of courtship given in the _Kama Soutra_
indicate that Sakuntala had every reason to appeal to the rules of
propriety, social and moral. Kalidasa spares us the details.

The king's desertion of Sakuntala after he had obtained his
self-indulgent object was quite in accordance with the spirit of a
Gandharva marriage. Kalidasa, for dramatic purposes, makes it a result
of a saint's curse, which enables him to continue his story
interestingly. A poet has a right to such license, even though it
takes him out of the realm of realism. Hindoo poets, like others, know
how to rise above sordid reality into a more ideal sphere, and for
this reason, even if we had found in the dramas of India a portrayal
of true love, it would not prove that it existed outside of a poet's
glowing and prophetic fancy. There is a Hindoo say