Here then is a selection of some of his more famous laws that touch the lives of women.
-A girl, a young woman, or even an old woman should not do anything independently, even in her own house. -In childhood a woman should be under her father’s control, in youth under her husband’s and when her husband is dead, under her sons.
-A virtuous wife should never do anything displeasing to the husband who took her in marriage, when he is alive or dead, if she longs for her husband’s world (after death)
- No learned father should take a bride-price for his daughter, no matter how small, for a man who, out of greed exacts a price, would be selling his child like a pimp.
-And those deluded relatives who live off a woman’s property- her carriages, her clothes and so on- are evil and go to hell.
- Fathers, brothers, husbands and brothers-in-law who wish for great good fortune should revere these women and adore them.
- The deities deligh in places where women are revered, but where women are not respected all rites are fruitless. - There is unwavering good fortune in a family where the husband is always satisfied by the wife, and the wife by the husband.
- If the wife is not radiant, she does not stimulate the man; and because the man is unstimulated the making of children does not happen.
- Through bad marriages, the neglect of rites and failure to study the Vedas, families cease to be families.
-The tradition calls it the rule of the Lord of the Creatures when a man gives away his daughter after adorning her and saying “May the two of you together fulfill your duties…”
- It is called the demonic law when a man takes the girl because he wants her for himself, when he has given as much wealth as he can to her relatives and to the girl herself.
- The lowest and most evil of marriages, known as that of the ghouls, takes place when a man secretly has sex with a gril who is drunk, asleep or out of her wits.
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