Linking death with marriage: Seeing death through a different lens

Abstract

Although there is no apparent relation between death and marriage, the discourse of death connotes certain overtones of marriage. The relation between marriage and death entails the culturally shared patterns of interpretation. This study aims at foregrounding the parallels between death and marriage primarily in the religio-cultural framework of Hinduism. It focuses specifically on the relationship between death and marriage and on the questions of how do the seemingly unrelated rituals of marriage and death incorporate a pattern of a coherent and meaningful relationship and how does the interplay between death and marriage reflect the philosophical tradition of Hinduism? This article sets the relation between death and marriage within the realm of existing philosophies of death and shows how we can engage with the discourse of death through such joyous events as marriage. Further, this study reflects on this esoteric association in order to engage with the discourse of relationship between death and marriage not as an individual but as a well-crafted socio-cultural construction in the context of Hinduism. This onto-religious approach represents attitudes toward death and marriage and offers an in-depth understanding of and fresh insights into its esoteric knowledge.