Page:Advice to the Indian Aristocracy.djvu/167

129 in this respect, after the completion of the fourteenth year at least is the proper age for girls to be married. But amongst ourselves if we put off the marriage till the sixteenth year, so much the better.

For the sake of the mental and bodily health of the offspring of marriages, and in the interests of purity in family life, marriages are prohibited between the children of a brother and a sister. In the Hindu Shastras it is laid down as a general rule that no man should marry the daughter of his father's sister or of his mother's brother. It is only for secondary considerations that a man is allowed to marry the daughter of his mother's brother. But a man is never allowed to marry the daughter of his father's sister. Anyhow it is a very good thing to avoid consanguineous marriages, i.e., marriages between close relations.

Now let me turn again to the subject