Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/213

Rh reverse direction against the ruinous tyranny of a bride-penalty would be an anxiously sought relief to the strugglings of many an indigent bride's father. The special law of Malabar, under which the eldest son is alone entitled to be married, has already been referred to. The anchorite stage comes in for regulation by the Manu of Kērala. The eyes of a Sanyāsin should never rest on a woman even for a second. This rule, which, if it errs at all, only does so on the side of safety, is not observed elsewhere, as the stage of a Sanyāsin is expected to be entered only after the complete subjugation of the passions. No āradhana (worship) srāddhas are performed for them, as is done in other parts. The soul of the Sanyāsin is freed from the bondage of Karma and the chance of recurring birth, and has only to be remembered and worshipped, unlike the ordinary Jivan or still enslaved soul, whose salvation interests have to be furthered by propitiatory Karmas on the part of its earthly beneficiaries.

(6) Regulation of women's conduct. — Women are not to gaze on any face but that of their wedded lord, and never go out unattended. They are to wear only white clothes, and are never to pierce their noses for the wearing of jewelry. Death on the husband's funeral pyre is not to be the sacred duty of the Nambūtiri widow, who is advised to seek in the life of a self-sacrificing Sanyāsi a sure means of salvation. In affairs of the world, time is reckoned by the ordinary Malabar kollam or solar year, the era beginning from the date of the departure of the last Perumāl, a sovereign of the western coast, to Arabia in 825. The months of the kollam year are Mēsha (Mētam), Vrishabha (Itavam), Mithuna, Karkkātaka, Sihma (Chingga), Kanya (Kanni), Tula, Vrischika, Dhanu, Makara, Kumbha, Mīna. In