The Lord of the universe, out of His causeless mercy upon the conditioned souls, descends by His own energy (ātma-māyā) to reestablish the eternal relation of the conditioned souls with Him. He instructs all to surrender unto Him instead of falsely claiming to be enjoyers for a certain limit under His control. When He so descends He proves how much greater is His ability to enjoy, and He exhibits His power of enjoyment by (for instance) marrying sixteen thousand wives at once. The conditioned soul is very proud of becoming the husband of even one wife, but the Lord laughs at this; the intelligent man can know who is the real husband. Factually, the Lord is the husband of all the women in His creation, but a conditioned soul under the control of the Lord feels proud to be the husband of one or two wives.
(Srimad Bhagavatam----2:4:20-----purport).

The brahmacāri, or a boy from the age of five years, especially from the higher castes, namely from the scholarly parents (the brāhmaṇas), the administrative parents (the kṣatriyas), or the mercantile or productive parents (the vaiśyas), is trained until twenty-five years of age under the care of a bona fide guru or teacher, and under strict observance of discipline he comes to understand the values of life along with taking specific training for a livelihood. The brahmacārī is then allowed to go home and enter householder life and get marriedto a suitable woman. But there are many brahmacārīs who do not go home to become householders but continue the life of naiṣṭhika-brahmacārīs, without any connection with women. They accept the order of sannyāsa, or the renounced order of life, knowing well that combination with women is an unnecessary burden that checks self-realization. Since sex desire is very strong at a certain stage of life, the guru may allow the brahmacārī to marry; this license is given to a brahmacārī who is unable to continue the way of naiṣṭhika-brahmacarya, and such discriminations are possible for the bona fide guru. A program of so-called family planning is needed. The householder who associates with woman under scriptural restrictions, after a thorough training of brahmacarya, cannot be a householder like cats and dogs. Such a householder, after fifty years of age, would retire from the association of woman as a vānaprastha to be trained to live alone without the association of woman. When the practice is complete, the same retired householder becomes a sannyāsī, strictly separate from woman, even from hismarried wife. Studying the whole scheme of disassociation from women, it appears that a woman is a stumbling block for self-realization, and the Lord appeared as Nārāyaṇa to teach the principle of womanly disassociation with a vow in life. The demigods, being envious of the austere life of the rigid brahmacārīs, would try to cause them to break their vows by dispatching soldiers of Cupid. But in the case of the Lord, it became an unsuccessful attempt when the celestial beauties saw that the Lord can produce innumerable such beauties by His mystic internal potency and that there was consequently no need to be attracted by others externally. There is a common proverb that a confectioner is never attracted by sweetmeats. The confectioner, who is always manufacturing sweetmeats, has very little desire to eat them; similarly, the Lord, by His pleasure potential powers, can produce innumerable spiritual beauties and not be the least attracted by the false beauties of material creation. One who does not know alleges foolishly that Lord Kṛṣṇa enjoyed women in His rāsa-līlā in Vṛndāvana, or with His sixteen thousandmarried wives at Dvārakā.
(Srimad Bhagavatam----2:7:6-----purport).

The Lord is, however, visible to the naked eyes of people in general when He descends Himself by His own personal potency. Lord Kṛṣṇa incarnated Himself as He is and played very wonderful parts as the Lord Himself, and the Bhagavad-gītā concerns such wonderful actions and knowledge. Yet foolish men will not accept Lord Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Lord. Generally they consider the infinitesimal and infinite features of the Lord because they themselves are unable to become either the infinitesimal or the infinite, but one should know that the infinite and infinitesimal sizes of the Lord are not His highest glories. The most wonderful manifestation of the Lord's power is exhibited when the infinite Lord becomes visible to our eyes as one of us. Yet His activities are different from those of the finite beings. Lifting a mountain at the age of seven years and marrying sixteen thousand wives in the prime of His youth are some of the examples of His infinite energy, but the mūḍhas, after seeing them or hearing about them, decry them as legendary and take the Lord as one of them. They cannot understand that the Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, although in the form of a human being by His own potency, is still the Supreme Lord with full potency as the supreme controller.
(Srimad Bhagavatam----2:10:10-----purport).

The kṣatriyas used to fight the kings of various dominions and kidnap their beautiful princess-daughters, after conquering their relatives. This system was laudable because the kṣatriyas and the princesses would be married only on the basis of the chivalry of the conquering kṣatriya. All the young princes of the Yadu dynasty married the daughters of other kings in this way, by chivalrous force, and thus they were conquerors of all the kings of the world. Vidura wanted to impress upon his elder brother that fighting with the Pāṇḍavas was fraught with many dangers because they were supported by Lord Kṛṣṇa, who had conquered, even in His childhood, demons like Kaṁsa and Jarāsandha and demigods like Brahmā and Indra. Therefore all universal power was behind the Pāṇḍavas.
(Srimad Bhagavatam----3:1:12-----purport).

When getting married, the kṣatriya kings would take on several other youthful girls along with the married princess. These girl attendants of the king were known as dāsīs, or attendant mistresses. By intimate association with the king, the dāsīs would get sons. Such sons were called dāsī-putras. They had no claim to a royal position, but they would get maintenance and other facilities just like princes. Vidura was the son of such a dāsī, and he was thus not counted amongst the kṣatriyas. King Dhṛtarāṣṭra was very affectionate toward his younger dāsī-putra brother, Vidura, and Vidura was a great friend and philosophical advisor to Dhṛtarāṣṭra. Duryodhana knew very well that Vidura was a great soul and well-wisher, but unfortunately he used strong words to hurt his innocent uncle. Duryodhana not only attacked Vidura's birth, but also called him an infidel because he seemed to support the cause of Yudhiṣṭhira, whom Duryodhana considered his enemy. He desired that Vidura be immediately put out of the palace and deprived of all his possessions.
(Srimad Bhagavatam----3:1:15-----purport).

Princess Rukmiṇī, the daughter of King Bhīṣmaka, was actually as attractive as fortune itself because she was as valuable as gold both in color and in value. Since the goddess of fortune, Lakṣmī, is the property of the Supreme Lord, Rukmiṇī was actually meant for Lord Kṛṣṇa. But Śiśupāla was selected as her bridegroom by Rukmiṇī's elder brother, although King Bhīṣmaka wanted his daughter to be married to Kṛṣṇa. Rukmiṇī invited Kṛṣṇa to take her away from the clutches of Śiśupāla, so when the bridegroom, Śiśupāla, came there with his party with the desire to marry Rukmiṇī, Kṛṣṇa all of a sudden swept her from the scene, stepping over the heads of all the princes there, just as Garuḍa carried away nectar from the hands of the demons.
(Srimad Bhagavatam----3:3:3-----purport).

Narakāsura kidnapped many daughters of great kings and kept them imprisoned in his palace. But when he was killed by the Lord and the Lord entered the house of the demon, all the princesses were enlivened with joy and offered to become His wives because the Lord is the only friend of the distressed. Unless the Lord accepted them, there would be no chance of their being married because the demon kidnapped them from their fathers' custody and therefore no one would agree to marry them. According to Vedic society, girls are transferred from the custody of the father to the custody of the husband. Since these princesses had already been taken away from the custody of their fathers, it would have been difficult for them to have any husband other than the Lord Himself.
(Srimad Bhagavatam----3:3:7-----purport).

"The Lord, Govinda, whom I worship, is the original Personality of Godhead. He is nondifferent from His innumerable plenary expansions, who are all infallible, original and unlimited and who have eternal forms. Although He is primeval, the oldest personality, He is always fresh and young." By His internal potency the Lord can expand Himself into various personalities of svayaṁ-prakāśa and again into prābhava and vaibhava forms, and all of them are nondifferent from one another. The forms into which the Lord expanded to marry the princesses in different apartments were all slightly different just to match each and every one of them. They are called vaibhava-vilāsa forms of the Lord and are effected by His internal potency, yoga-māyā.
(Srimad Bhagavatam----3:3:8-----purport).

All these charities were meant for the brāhmaṇas, whose lives were devoted entirely to the welfare of society, both spiritually and materially. The brāhmaṇas were not giving their services as paid servants, but the society provided them with all necessities. It was arranged for some of the brāhmaṇas, who were in difficulty for marriage, to be given girls. The brāhmaṇas, therefore, had no economic problems. The kṣatriya kings and rich mercantile men would provide them with all that they needed, and in exchange the brāhmaṇas were completely devoted to the elevation of society. That was the way of social cooperation between the different castes. When the brāhmaṇa class or caste gradually became easygoing, being fed by the society although they had no brahminical qualifications, they degraded themselves into brahma-bandhus, or disqualified brāhmaṇas, and thus other members of society also gradually fell down from the social standard of progressive life. As described in Bhagavad-gītā, the caste system is the creation of the Lord and is arranged according to the quality of work rendered to society and not in terms of birthright, as falsely claimed in the present degraded society.
(Srimad Bhagavatam----3:3:27-----purport).

During student life the brahmacārīs were given full instructions about the importance of the human form of life. Thus the basic education was designed to encourage the student in becoming free from family encumbrances. Only students unable to accept such a vow in life were allowed to go home and marry a suitable wife. Otherwise, the student would remain a permanent brahmacārī, observing complete abstinence from sex life for his whole life. It all depended on the quality of the student's training. We had the opportunity to meet an avowed brahmacārī in the personality of our spiritual master, Oṁ Viṣṇupāda Śrī Śrīmad Bhaktisiddhānta Gosvāmī Mahārāja. Such a great soul is called a naiṣṭhika-brahmacārī.
(Srimad Bhagavatam----3:12:42-----purport).