Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 4.djvu/475

Rh not love him, she is advised by the guru and headman to do so, because there are many cases in which the girls, after marriage, if they are matured, go away with other Malaiālis. If this matter comes to the notice of the guru, she says that she does not like to live with him. After enquiry, the husband is permitted to marry another girl." A curious custom prevailing among the Malaiālis, which illustrates the Hindu love of offspring, is thus referred to by Mr. Le Fanu. " The sons, when mere children, are married to mature females, and the father-in-law of the bride assumes the performance of the procreative function, thus assuming for himself and his son a descendant to take them out of Put. When the putative father comes of age, and, in their turn, his wife's male offspring are married, he performs for them the same office which his father did for him. Thus, not only is the religious idea involved in the words Putra and Kumāran carried out, but also the premature strain on the generative faculties, which this tradition entails, is avoided. The accommodation is reciprocal, and there is something on physiological grounds to recommend it." Putra means literally one who saves from Put, a hell into which those who have not produced a son fall. Hindus believe that a son can, by the performance of certain rites, save the souls of his ancestors from this place of torture. Hence the anxiety of every Hindu to get married, and beget male offspring. Kumāran is the second stage in the life of an individual, which is divided into infancy, childhood, manhood, and old age. Writing to me recently, a Native official assures me that "the custom of linking a boy in marriage to a mature female, though still existing, has, with the advance of the times, undergone a slight yet decent change. The father-in-law