Grihastha (gṛhastha)

The grihastha is the householder, the second stage of life, in which a person marries, raises children, earns, gives and maintains the household fire. The Mahabharata argues in several places that this is the stage that supports all the others, since students, forest dwellers and renunciants all eat what householders grow and give. Its defence of the householder is part of its wider argument that engagement, not withdrawal, is the ordinary road to liberation.