Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/30

22 sees a snake in the house, or is stung by a scorpion, or suffers under any serious calamity before the marriage day arrives, the betrothal is cancelled and the parents of the bride return the four-anna piece to the bridegroom. The food and liquor consumed by all present at the betrothal are paid for by the bridegroom.

The marriage takes place where the bride lives; a shed, roofed over with mango and some other leaves, being erected for purposes of ceremonial in front of her hut. Mango leaves tied across the streets and doorways on occasions of festivity are very common throughout the country. They are considered to be decorative, as well as conveying some subtle auspiciousness. In the afternoon the bridegroom invites the caste-folk to his wedding, presenting each man, woman, and child with three betel nuts, five betel leaves, one-sixteenth of a measure (which is about 2 lb.) of rice, and one-eighth of a measure of green gram. The gram is cooked and eaten. After dark the Saduyagâdu escorts some married women to fetch water in two pots from a well, at which they are presented with red powder, some saffron, and betel leaves. It is impossible to stop here to consider the general use of saffron and its substitute, turmeric, in Hindu ceremonial. Suffice to say its use conveys some subtle meaning underlying its colour. Music is played while they are going and returning. The pots of water are smeared over with lime, and carried by the women, while a canopy of cloth, tied at the corner to sticks, is held over their heads by four men to the house of the bride, where bride and bridegroom are seated in different apartments (of a few square yards, the hut being very small), on the head of each a sheet, from the centre of each sheet is a thread, the end fastened to a bit of saffron laid on a heap of rice, and in front of each is placed one of the pots of water. The married women then oil the pair about to be made happy from head to foot, first the bridegroom and then the bride, and after this performance the pair are