Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 6.djvu/367

Rh best. In some places, all a man's wives are said to live together peaceably. It is not the custom in the Kolakotta villages. Knowing the wives would fight if together, domestic felicity is maintained by keeping up different establishments. A man's wives will visit one another in the daytime, but one wife will never spend the night in the house of another. An exception to this is that the first wife may invite one of the other wives to sleep in her house with the husband. As each wife has her separate house, so has she her separate piece of ground on the hill-side to cultivate. The wives will not cooperate in working each other's cultivation, but they will work together, with the husband, in the paddy fields. Each wife keeps the produce of the ground she cultivates in her own house. Produce of the paddy fields is divided into equal shares among the wives. If a wife will not work properly, or if she gives away anything belonging to her husband, she may be divorced. Any man may marry a divorced woman, but she must pay to her former husband a buffalo and a pig. If a man catches his wife in adultery (he must see her in the act), he thinks he has a right to kill her, and her lover too. But this is now generally (but not always) settled by arbitration, and the lover pays up. A wife caught in adultery will never be retained as a wife. As any man may have as many as three wives, illicit attachments are common. During large feasts, when the Saoras give themselves up to sensuality, there is no doubt a great deal of promiscuous intercourse. A widow is considered bound to marry her husband's brother, or his brother's sons if he has no younger brothers. A number of Saoras once came to me to settle a dispute. They were in their full dress, with feathers and weapons. The dispute was this. A young woman's husband was dead, and his younger