Page:The People of India — a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan Vol 3.djvu/241

 MUSSULMAN FEMALE. (167)

HE person represented in the Photograph is married; and is the wife of one of the bridge keepers on the Ganges canal, near Hurdwar, who is in the employ of Government, and, therefore, in a humble but respectable class of life. It is probable that she was not secluded; but like many women of the poorer classes of Mahomedans, dispensed with that custom owing to inability to keep servants to do the outside work of the house, fetch water, &c. The mark of her marriage is worn about her neck, in a small bead necklace called Pote, common both to Mahomedans and Hindoos all over India. This is tied round the bride's neck at the marriage ceremony by the bridegroom's mother, or other near female relative, immediately after the Kazi who has performed the rites has given the following blessing: " O, great God, grant that mutual love may reign between this couple as it existed between Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sara, Moses and Zipporah, his Highness Mahomed Moostafa and Ayesha, &c." The necklace is now handed to the person who is to fasten it around the bride's neck, with a piece of sugar candy, which the bride is to eat, as emblematical of the sweets of matrimony, while the beads are being adjusted. After this, they are never removed, except to be rethreaded upon new string, and it is considered a very unlucky omen if they should ever be accidentally broken.

Marriages among all Mahomedans in India are contracted either by the parents or by agents. There is no courtship, nor do the parties even see each other except they are of the lowest and unsecluded classes. Women are married generally before the age of puberty; but there is no restriction on this head, as among Hindoos, nor is any disgrace attached to a comparatively long spinsterhood. Mahomedan females have even a right, under the law, to choose for themselves after they reach the age of eighteen years; but it is rarely exercised. The Nika, or simple legal form of marriage, which includes the settlement of dowry between the parties and agents on both sides, and to which formal agreement must be made, used formerly to be the only ceremony used at marriages; but gradually many of the Hindoo