Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/75

Rh it difficult for her to obtain another husband. If the wife wishes to get rid of her husband, she must pay up all his expenses towards the marriage. The party found to be in the wrong must pay a fee of five to twenty rupees to the Tandān and all present, the relations excepted. The amount is distributed then and there. The procedure to be adopted in effecting divorce is as follows. The Tandāns of both sides, uncles and relations, and sometimes the fathers, assemble at the house of the wife, the Tandān, or one of the relations. To the left of a burning lamp are placed two small wooden stools. On one of these are laid a small towel with four fanams (one rupee) tied up in a corner of it, and another towel with a little rice and four fanams tied up in it. Close by is the other stool, on which the wife's uncle stretches a single thread taken from his own cloth. The husband carries this stool to the gate, and says three times to the wife's brother, father, or uncle — " Your sister's (daughter's or niece's) matrimonial connection is severed." He then blows away the thread, throws the stool down, and departs for ever. This little ceremony cannot be performed at the husband's house, as it would involve perpetual banishment from his own house. The coins in the cloths go to the Tandāns. It is the uncle who gives these cloths, because it was he who received the two cloths at the conjee ceremony. A marriage cannot be dissolved unless both parties agree.

A girl is under pollution for four days from the commencement of the first menstrual period. During this time she must keep to the north side of the house, where she sleeps on a grass mat of a particular kind, in a room festooned with garlands of young cocoanut leaves. Round the mat is a narrow ridge made of paddy (unhusked rice), rice, and flowers of the cocoanut and