At the outset, let me state clearly that I am a layperson. I am neither a marriage expert nor am I well read in Indian scriptures. I have however lived a good life and have read a few scriptures and therefore putting across some views on the purpose of marriage as they appear to have been conveyed in the scriptures. The idea is not to convey my personal idea of marriage but to explore the purpose of marriage as conveyed by various Indian Puranas and Itihasa narratives. I may be way off mark and hugely ill-informed and will therefore be keen to receive corrections/ suggestions from the world of internet so that I can learn better. With these words, let me pen down my thoughts gathered thus far.

But before one embarks into the detail, there is a need to understand the meaning of two terms – प्रकृति & पुरुष in simple language. These words do not have any equivalents in English. As Rajiv Malhotra says in his book “Being Different”, some of the Indian words are non-translatable and one will derive greater meaning if these words continue to be used in the original conception instead of getting translated in English. Just like the words योग, गुरु, मंत्र, etc are used in English or “Computer” or “Phone” in native languages across the world, some of the technical words available in our texts have layered meanings and are better served if they continue to be used in their original way only. So what do these two words mean?

पुरुष – Our true reality, our primal identity. In fact, in many contexts, आत्मा & पुरुष mean one and the same thing. This is usually expressed as the masculine within us.
प्रकृति – That aspect of our reality which goes out and executes the Will of पुरुष. Thus, while the Will may be to seek an experience, our knowledge, our thought and our senses execute. This aspect of us that converts the Will into an act through an action and thereby brings form to a formless idea is प्रकृति. This is expressed as the feminine within all of us.

Both are one only as both are really inseparable. शिव & उमा and नारायण & महालक्ष्मी as representative of प्रकृति & पुरुष are shown as married since both पुरुष & प्रकृति as eternal realities and fully dependent on one another. Both are present in all of creation and both together make any form of life. However, in males, masculine is usually dominant while in females, feminine is usually dominant but this is not necessary in all cases. With this background, let us get into the topic.

1. Three cases are featured as ideal couples in our texts again and again – शिव-पार्वती, नल-दमयन्ती and राम-सीता. And yet, when you read their lives, there is a lot of conflict and challenge the wife and husband go through but despite this, their fidelity for one another is never shaken. So what is the idea of wife and husband that is seen in our texts? The अध्यात्म idea of प्रकृति & पुरुष is brought in where husband is seen as representing पुरुष and wife as प्रकृति. What does this mean?
2. Universe is seen as born out of प्रकृति with पुरुष as the seed giving father. This idea comes across in various अध्यात्म texts including the Gita. शिव is thus seen as Universal Father and देवी as Universal Mother. And their union permeates the entire Universe. And they are always connected with one another complementing each other at all times. In Nature, we have the idea of seed & land. A tree cannot happen without a seed. But a tree cannot happen without land too which gives the tree its body and water. The seed is expressed as the पुरुष while land is expressed as the प्रकृति.
3. In Indian marriages, the rituals also are done as if the creation story needs to be repeated again through marriage of the woman and man. And that they should remain thick like पुरुष and प्रकृति – marriage thus becomes sacred and not an ordinary meeting of two people. And just universe follows rules for being orderly, both wife and husband have rules for an orderly life.
4. In human history, at a general level, males had taken upon the role of bringing objects into home and building a house – house is necessary from an existential perspective viz पुरुष aspect of our being. But the female had taken up the role of providing meaning to the house. She gives shape to the baby inside, takes primal responsibility to maintain and run the house and make all decisions inside the house. The food she makes is giving good health to people at home – she is literally giving form to the identity of people at home. Both male and female are thus inseparable and both are necessary to enable the house to have a good meaning.
5. So how did अध्यात्म texts appear to conceive of marriage? They seem to have a view that even human lives need to align their lifestyles with Nature which is a मिश्रण of प्रकृति & पुरुष. Let us start with the idea of family name. A barren land represents raw nature and is therefore प्रकृति. What do you call it – you call it waste land. However, when you “civilize” the land by planting mango seeds, this land becomes named as a mango orchard and land with orange plants as orange orchard. Put this in another way, masculine is giving identity while feminine is giving meaning. What is the use of identity with no meaning and vice versa?
6. So women gets the identity of male name who marries them but the male gets meaning into his life through marriage. And this carries to kids too. So when the tree grows up, whose name does it take up – that of the land or that of the seed? Mango seed planted on land becomes a mango tree while a pipal seed becomes a pipal tree. So स्मृति texts stated that even among humans, a son or daughter will take the name of father as their Surname. This is why kids conceived by कुन्ती and माद्री through देवता become पाँडुपुत्र since he is the husband of these two women who are equally devoted to him – it is as simple as that. Who actually conceived the kids is irrelevant. And this comes up again and again in various पुराण events.
7. But there are a few problems with this thinking. Should humans organize themselves on similar lines as the Nature so as to tune themselves with their environment? Or should they ignore Nature and create their own system of society? More key is the question – is man really पुरुष and woman प्रकृति? Why should women be seen as barren land – such a line can be deeply unsettling in modern era and rightly so. The अध्यात्म texts do not seem to be making such an assertion unless we undertake selective reading with a prejudiced mind. Everything in creation is a mix of पुरुष and प्रकृति – masculine and feminine are both in man and woman. But male physiology makes him perform a पुरुष-like role and female performs a प्रकृति-like role – this is fully in sync with their physical way of being. So in this role, they must discharge the role of प्रकृति & पुरुष with male giving identity and female giving meaning to the identity. And this will keep them together like शिव & पार्वती. But equally, the male must not think he is पुरुष alone – after all, his mother’s body gave body to him and besides, all of us take multiple births wherein we take the male form in a few births and female in a few others. It is just that in this particular life, one has a certain form but that does not mean this form is their permanent reality.
8. So who is superior – प्रकृति or पुरुष? It is a silly question. Both are inseparable. Both are necessary for existence. But both are happy when they discharge their roles in tune with their state of being. But are all marriages in Nature happy? Of course not. So a fertile seed does not grow in desert land while a seed does not become a tree unless the soil is right – cotton grows well on black soil only. But a thick forest is where there is richness where the marriage appears to have worked. Or a fully grown Banyan or Pipal tree is a case where both  प्रकृति & पुरुष union has worked – so such trees become our देवता and they are sacred – thus in temples, often couples are seen going around an abundant tree for kids. They are actually going around शिव & पार्वती or a representation of an ideal marriage symbol so that they bring this prosperity into their lives too.
9. But we come to a more primal question – what is the purpose of marriage? Why do people marry? So we go back to the primal question – why did creation happen? Why did पुरुष and प्रकृति come together. They came together to experience joy – it is as simple as that. So when they came together, they are shown to dance together. The dance of universe of mother and father together with their creation. And together – they are सत्-चित्-आनन्द स्वरूप. They exude bliss through their creation. And so should humans too when they marry.
10. There is a need for both of them to anchor towards their “identity” (पुरुष) and live a life that gives “meaning” (प्रकृति) to this identity. So from a practical perspective, ancients in India mandated man to focus on living a life of यम/ नियम by getting up early and doing नित्यकर्म. And the wife helps husband in preparation of the Puja by making नैवेद्यं and putting together other द्रव्य पधार्थ. And then both sit for Puja together to attain oneness with the Divine where the husband undertakes the Puja. Both are साधक and neither is superior or inferior. Interestingly,  both are bound to a life of यम/नियम. Husband is bound by the words of his Guru and wife is bound to the husband helping him follow the words of the Guru. And the Guru is also bound to live by the words of शास्त्र. No one is free. But this is a choice they have exercised as companions to attain the balance of पुरुष & प्रकृति into their lives – that is the goal, that is the purpose of marriage.
11. So what if one partner does not echo this sentiment? शास्त्र says that in a home where the wife sheds tears, that house is doomed. To the husband, it says that if wife does not resonate धर्म, do not force her – just tolerate her and do your धर्म towards the family. Similarly, if husband is deviant, wife too goads her husband to follow the words of the Guru or ways of the scriptures. Both need to be patient. But if they do not succeed, it is their प्रारब्ध कर्म that they need to accept. Does the land have a choice of what seeds are planted on it? Does the seed change lands after it realized that the land on which it is planted is not fertile enough. They accept this aspect and wait for their next life to give them another chance. After all, there are many lives, right? 😊 (Of course, common sense works here – no one has to tolerate raw violence or excessive mental harassment of their partner and modern laws do offer protection against such excesses. One has to be smart in their approach to life and live with common sense and not naive in a foolish manner.)
12. What is the situation in a marriage where partners do not subscribe to the idea of प्रकृति, पुरुष, मोक्ष, etc? There is no problem. They need to figure out why they are marrying. If it is sex only, marriage is not required. If it is kids, one can adopt them. If it is companionship, one need not marry for this. If one is wedded to career, why marry another person and torture him or her? But if is a conventional society requirement for which one marries but does not subscribe to our texts, what must one do? In such cases, the purpose of marriage must be to extract maximum joy from the partner. And the modern principle of equality can be a good guide here. Rules are still there in the form of adherence of modern laws. And since marriage is not sacred here but secular, they can enter into pre-nupital contracts like Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas and enjoy life within the confines of these rules. And consistent adherence to such rules entered into my mutual agreement can become the basis of marriage for such people.
13. So what if we are convinced of the value of मोक्ष – do we necessarily have to follow every line of the अध्यात्म texts? This is especially so if we find some rules conveyed within these texts as not palatable. Here, basics of Indian texts need to be known. We have a division of स्रुति & स्मृति. The परम् message of मोक्ष is contained in the स्रुति texts and these contain eternal truths. These do not concern themselves with social conduct issues. It is the स्मृति texts that get into social aspects. But the स्मृति texts are clear on one aspect – they are not eternal. They change with time, place and society. They are organized or provide rules merely to provide a way to reach the truth of the स्रुति. So if society has changed owing to technology, a new स्मृति can be written. But the new lifestyle needs to continue to focus on the same outcome of life of the स्रुति viz मोक्ष.
14. But again – who can write a new स्मृति? Only a ऋषि. But if no ऋषि has as yet written yet, what does one take on to? What roles do wife and husband share? While I can say that these roles can remain in tune with their physiology, one must note that modern technology has made physiology less relevant. We can therefore dip into modern studies on man and woman psychology and use this as a determiner to decide the respective strengths to determine mutual roles. And we can refer to ancient texts too taking their good points and ignoring the ones that seem irrelevant. Issue is not about what roles we do – work, cook, etc but whether we are jointly working towards मोक्ष.  If yes, pursue them fully and if not, realign ourselves with the purpose of life. Key point is – both partners can undertake a mature evaluation of each others’ strengths and then live their married life whereby they attain maximum joy by riding on the strengths of each other. These strengths may be physical, physiological, mental and intellectual – list these down honestly, share with one another openly and then live fully keeping one common purpose of marriage – to attain the end state conveyed by the स्रुति viz मोक्ष.

To conclude, primary aspect of creation is प्रकृति – पुरुष मिश्रण. That is a primal सत्य. When a प्रलय happens, both प्रकृति & पुरुष become dormant but they become active again at the time of सृष्टि. All throughout the Universe being active, they are engaged in their union joyously. And even if there are situations of discord, their love and trust for one another never dissipates. And it is this trust that makes their marriage sacred. We humans are however not connected with our सत्-चित्-आनन्द state. We are cut off. And marriage is an opportunity to experience the joy of this sacred union. And this requires us to follow rules of यम – नियम as without rules, nothing can work. Our texts must be read with this दृष्टि. Every rule must be followed keeping in mind that primal love of प्रकृति – पुरुष must permeate through our marriage too. For a few lucky ones, they may discover their primal state through the marriage. For most who do not, life is सार्थक if they have at least worked towards it as any hard work never goes wasted.

ॐ तत् सत्