Hindu wedding vows: the Saptapadi, and why the English versions differ

The oldest widely cited source for the Saptapadi is the Ashvalayana Grihya Sutra, a ritual manual whose marriage section was translated into English in the nineteenth century for the Sacred Books of the East series. The passage is startlingly compressed.

In Oldenberg's translation the husband leads the bride through the steps with the words: for nourishment with one step, for health with two steps, for thriving of wealth with three steps, for consummate bliss with four steps, for offspring with five steps, for the seasons with six steps. Be friend with seven steps. So be thou devoted to me.

Two things follow from this. The steps are spoken over the bride by the husband rather than exchanged, and each is a single word or short phrase rather than a sentence. The ritual manuals do not even agree with each other: the Paraskara Grihya Sutra, translated by the same scholar in the same volume, gives four for comfort and five for cattle where the Ashvalayana gives consummate bliss and offspring.

The lists that circulate online, let us take the first step to provide for our household, and so on, are devotional expansions of those terse purposes into mutual sentences. They are genuinely used, they are meaningful, and they are not a translation of the canonical passage.

They also differ by region. North Indian and south Indian traditions assign different themes to different steps, and family and community practice varies again within those. Two guides can describe the same ceremony differently without either being wrong.

The honest position, and the one your guests deserve, is that there is no canonical English text of the seven vows. Anyone presenting one list as the seven vows of Hindu marriage is describing one tradition among several.

With the caveats above firmly in place, the themes most commonly assigned in English summaries are the following. Use them as an orientation to the ideas rather than as your ceremony's text.

A Hindu wedding is a sequence of rituals rather than a single moment, and it commonly runs over several hours or across more than one day. The Saptapadi sits near the end of the wedding day itself.

The Kanyadaan is the giving of the daughter by her father or guardian. The sacred fire is lit and tended as the witness to the marriage: Agni stands in place of a signature. The Mangalphera or Pheras are the circlings of the fire, traditionally four in many north Indian traditions and seven in others.

The Mangalsutra, a sacred necklace, is tied by the groom around the bride's neck in many traditions, and sindoor is applied to the parting of her hair. Both are visible signs of marriage worn afterwards.

A long ceremony in a language most guests do not speak can become an hour of respectful confusion. A printed programme with three or four lines explaining each ritual transforms the experience.

Some families ask a relative to give brief spoken explanations between rituals. This works well when the explanations are genuinely brief and stops working when they become a running commentary.

If guests will be seated a long time, say so on the invitation. It is a kindness, and it is better than people learning it in hour two.

Personal spoken vows are not part of the traditional rite. Couples who want them usually place them elsewhere: at a civil ceremony held alongside the religious one, at a reception, or at a separate blessing.

Some priests will accommodate a short English exchange after the Saptapadi. Whether that is appropriate is a question for your family and your priest, and the answer varies.

If you do write personal vows, the seven steps give you a ready-made structure. Take one theme from each step and say what it means in your life, in one sentence each. Seven sentences is a complete vow and needs nothing added.