Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/259

 The Liftmg of the Bride. 243

sort of war-dance, known as the Jhanda, is performed.^ Among the Kanjaris, a begging tribe in the same district, the father or some elder of the bridegroom's family lifts him on his shoulders, while the bride's father lifts her ; they dance in a circle seven times, after which the clothes of the pair are knotted together, which is the final act of the marriage service." The Varlis, a jungle tribe of the Thana district, vary the rite by making one of the bride's relations lift the bridegroom and convey him to a booth, where they seat him on their shoulders and dance.^ At a marriage among the Bhils the maternal uncle of the bride takes the pair on his shoulders and dances to the rhythm of a wedding song.* The same customs generally prevail among many of the lower castes throughout India. As might be expected, they can give no intelligible explanation of these rites. " The bridegroom is a king and the bride aqueen "on this occasion, some say, and should be treated accordingly. But it may be safely assumed that such rites^ now classed as honorific, were in origin precautionary, and intended to provide pro- tection of persons in a state of taboo against some form of demoniacal influence, one and the chief of which would naturally be that which tended to prevent the marriage from being fertile. Generally, however, the stereotyped answer is that they do it because their forefathers did it before them. This appeal to well-established custom is from their point of view quite conclusive.

In this connection, where we may suspect a transition from precautionary or protective observances to those which have now come to be regarded as simply honorific, the large chapter of folklore which prescribes the things on which the bride may or may not sit, stand, or walk, is instruc-

' Bombay Gazetteer, xvii., 109.

^ Ibid., p. 180. Here the knotting of the clothes is merely symbolical of the union of the couple in marriage, and is apparently quite distinct from the " chaining" rite referred to above.

' Ibid., xiii., pt. i., 185.


 * Ibid., vi., 31.

R 2