[Advaita-l] Marrying a maternal uncle's daughter (mAtulakanyA vivAha)

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

Dear friends,

This is further to the previous mail on this topic. If the marriage takes place
 after separation of seven generations then the chances of genetic 
defects occurring due to marriage within the Gotra is minimal. According
 to the Mendel's law the probability of genetic hazard (ie. chance of 
hereditary defect) would be 1 in 
128,  when the marriage takes place after seven generations.  But 
that does not necessarily give one the probability of genetic hazards, 
because this also depends on the frequency of the genes underlying those
 hazards.    Paradoxically, the rarer the 
gene, the more consanguineous marriage increases the risk.  This result 
comes about because for common defects, even apparently unrelated 
individuals have some significant chance of sharing the defective gene; 
when it is rare, this chance is negligible.

While science says this  much one has ro think of the emotional aspects also. Arjuna married his uncle's daughter.

Regards,

Sunil KB





--- On Tue, 6/21/11, Sunil Bhattacharjya <sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com> wrote:

From: Sunil Bhattacharjya <sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Marrying a maternal uncle's daughter (mAtulakanyA vivAha)
To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Date: Tuesday, June 21, 2011, 4:06 PM

It seems that the cousin marriages are not as bad as one thought. 
 Genetic research in Otago university New Zealand shows that. In the ancient times he social out-reaching could have been  probably considered more important than the other considerations.

Regards,

Sunil KB