Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/32

24 the bride's parents (for the bride) a nose-ring and eight rupees, the oli or purchase-money for the bride, and distributes some rupees (twelve at least) amongst his caste-folk. The pair are again oiled and bathed, and they swear eternal fidelity to each other by pouring milk over each other's head. Again they are washed in warm water, a pot of which is brought for the purpose by each family in the convention; they are dressed and taken to the bride's room, a fowl being sacrificed at the threshold, and their foreheads marked with its blood ere they enter. But before they are given admittance they have to submit to another ordeal. The male members of the bride's family obstruct them, using language which is rather more forcible than polite. "You son of a whore, who are you? You cannot come in here, unless you call her beside your mother." "My pimps and slaves", rejoins the bridegroom, "I have purchased her, so she is not my mother." Conversation, illumined by sprightly wit of this kind, is bandied about, they enter the room, sit together awhile, and are yet again separated. The marriage is now complete. The pots of water are emptied over a green tree, and the pot that was in the bride's room is taken by the bridegroom, and the pot that was in the bridegroom's room is taken by the bride. The bridegroom takes his wife to his house, where he feasts his kinsmen, and afterwards retires with his bride in her hut.

Altogether the marriage affair is anything but a joke, and both parties are likely to remember it.

Girls are married usually after puberty, but they are sometimes married before it. Widows may remarry as often as seven times; but the second or after ceremony is not elaborate—a new cloth and six rupees to the woman and a good feed to the caste-folk settles the business. A second wife is allowed only with the first wife's consent, or, in the case of her refusal, when she is given a sufficient settlement.

There is nothing remarkable about the birth ceremonies.