Kanyadana () is a Hindu wedding ritual.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). Inscriptional evidence of this tradition can be found on 15th century stones found in the Vijayanagara Empire in South India. There are different interpretations regarding kanyadana across South Asia.
The kanyadana ritual occurs before the sindoor ritual (sinduradana).
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.
Kanyadana songs The wedding ritual may be accompanied by a variety of kanyadana songs. These songs may include the parents lamenting the loss of their daughter. Other songs focus on the groom, sometimes comparing him to Rama, portrayed in the Ramayana as the "ideal groom".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.
See also Vivaha Marriage in Hinduism
References
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. . pp. 93–173.