Page:Castes and tribes of southern India, Volume 5.djvu/232

NAMBUTIRI BRAHMAN hōmams and worship of Ganapathi, the bride is led to the bridal chamber at an auspicious moment. Her husband joins her, carrying two garlands of jasmine, one of which he puts on the lamp placed in the south-east corner of the room, and one round his wife's neck. He then smears the upper part of her body with the ointment known as chānthu, and she herself smears the lower part. Tum vir penem suum fseminae ad partes pudendas admovit, vestibus scilicet baud remotis. They then bathe and change their clothes, and sit near each other, the wife screened behind an umbrella. Her husband gives her water, and after some further rites they eat from the same plantain leaf. Actual cohabitation commences from that night. The pair are conducted to the bridal chamber by the Vādhiyār. The nuptial couch is but a grass mat or a common country blanket covered with a white sheet, with a little ridge of rice and paddy signifying plenty around the edges. The final ceremony is the hōmam called stālipagam. It is performed on the day after the first full moon day after the second hōmam. If the moon is at the full ¾ nazhiga before sunset or earlier, the ceremony may be performed on the full moon day itself"

It will have been seen already that the Nambūtiris are not strict monogamists. Some stated that a man may have four wives, and that the same ceremony as that described must be performed for wedding all four wives. Moreover, there is no restriction to the number of Nāyar women, with whom a man may be associated. Hamilton, writing concerning Malabar at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, says that "when the Zamorin marries, he must not cohabit with his bride till the Nambūtiri or chief priest