Chap. xiv MORALS : MARRIAGE CEREMONIES 197
their wives, adultery is very rare among them, and one never hears unnatural crime spoken of.1
They marry their children at the age of seven or eight years, through
fear lest they should abandon themselves to this crime. And, in a few
words, these are the ceremonies which are observed at their marriages.
On the eve of the nuptials the bridegroom, accompanied by all his
relatives, goes to the house of the bride with a pair of large
bracelets two fingers in thickness, but hollow inside, and in two
pieces, with a hinge in the middle to open them by. According to the
wealth of the bridegroom these bracelets are more or less costly, being
of gold, silver, brass, or tin,2 those of the poorest being
of lead only. When the bridegroom arrives, he places one of these
bracelets on each leg of his bride, to indicate that he holds her
thenceforward enchained, and that she can never leave him. On the
morrow the feast is prepared in the house of the bridegroom, where all
the relatives on either side are present, and at 3 p.m. the bride is
brought.3 Several Brah-mans are present, and their Chief
makes the head of the bridegroom touch that of the bride, and
pronounces several words while he sprinkles water on their heads and
bodies. Then on plates or on large leaves of the fig tree 4
many kinds of food and pieces of stuff and calico are brought. The
Brahman asks the bridegroom if what God gives to him he will share
with his wife, and if he will strive to support her by his labour. When
he has said ' yes,' all the guests seat themselves at the feast which
has been prepared for them, and each one eats apart. According to the
wealth of the bridegroom and the credit he enjoys with great persons,
the nuptials
as Friar Jordanus, Wonders of the East, 22 ; Marco Polo, ii. 303. Max Milller has made a large collection of similar evidence (India, What can it teach us ? ed. 1905, p. 34 ff.). Both sides of the question are discussed in Bombay Gazetteer, ix, part i, 78.
l'
This testimony as regards homosexual practices is very different from
that given by some other writers of the same period as Xavemier, who
himself describes cases (vol. i, pp. 44,100). See Fryer, i. 245;
Linschoten, i. 100; Dubois, 311; Grose, 219 ; Chevers, Handbook of Medical Jurisprudence, 705 ff.; Russell, Tribes and Castes, Central Provinces, iii. 209 ff.
* Leton and estain in the original.
* For the rites among Brahmans see Mrs. S. Stevenson, Mites of the Twice-born, 46 ff. * The plantain (vol. i. 197, and vol. ii. 3).
