All this may indeed be "marvellously pretty and romantic," but I fail
to see the least indication of the "higher emotions." Nor can I find
them in some further interesting remarks regarding the Hos made by the
same author (192-93). Thirty years ago, he says, a girl of the better
class cost forty or fifty head of cattle. Result--a decrease in the
number of marriages and an increase of immoral intimacies. Sometimes a
girl runs away with her lover, but the objection to this is that
elopements are not considered respectable.
"It is certainly not from any yearning for celibacy
that the marriage of Singbhum maidens is so long
postponed. The girls will tell you frankly that they do
all they can to please the young men, and I have often
heard them pathetically bewailing their want of
success. They make themselves as attractive as they
can, flirt in the most demonstrative manner, and are
not too coy to receive in public attentions from those
they admire. They may be often seen in well-assorted
pairs returning from market with arms interlaced, and
looking at each other as lovingly as if they were so
many groups of Cupids and Psyches, but with all this
the 'men will not propose.' Tell a maiden you think her
nice-looking, she is sure to reply 'Oh, yes! I am, but
what is the use of it, the young men of my acquaintance
don't see it.'"
Here we note a frankly commercial view of marriage, without any
reference to "higher emotions." In this tribe, too, the girls are not
allowed the liberty of choice. Indeed, when we examine this point we
find that Westermarck is wrong, as usual, in assigning such a
privilege to the girls of most of these tribes. He himself is obliged
to admit (224) that
"in many of the uncivilized tribes of India parents are in
the habit of betrothing their sons.... The paternal
authority approaches the _patria potestas_ of the ancient
Aryan nations."
The Kisans, Mundas, Santals, Máriás, Mishmis, Bhils, and Yoonthalin
Karens are tribes among whom fathers thus reserve the right of
selecting wives for their sons; and it is obvious that in all such
cases daughters have still less choice than sons. Colonel Macpherson
throws light on this point when he says of the Kandhs:
"The parents obtain the wives of their sons during
their boyhood, as very valuable _domestic servants,_
and _their selections are avowedly made with a view to
utility in this character."_[258]
Rowney reports (103) that the Khond boys are married at the age of ten
and twelve to girls of fifteen to sixteen; and among the Reddies it is
even customary to marry boys of five or six years to women of sixteen
to twenty. The "wife," however, lives with an uncle or relation, who
begets children for the boy-husband. When the boy grows up his "wife"
is perhaps too old for him, so he in turn takes possession of some
other boy's "wife".[259] The young folks are obviously in the habit of
obeying implicitly, for as Dalton says (132) of the Kisans, "There is
no instance on record of a youth or maiden objecting to the
arrangement made for them." With the Savaras, Boad Kandhs, Hos, and
Kaupuis, the prevalence of elopements shows that the girls are not
allowed their own choice. Lepcha marriages are often made on credit,
and are breakable if the payment bargained for is not made to the
parent within the specified time. (Rowney, 139.)[260]