Coyness as well as primitive gallantry has its amusing phases among
these wild tribes. The following description seems so much like an
extravaganza that the reader may suspect it to be an abstract of a
story by Frank Stockton or a libretto by Gilbert; but it is a serious
page from Dalton's _Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal_ (63-64). It
relates to the Garos, who are thus described:
"The women are on the whole the most unlovely of the
sex, but I was struck with the pretty, plump, nude
figures, the merry musical voices and good-humored
countenances of the Garos girls. Their sole garment is
a piece of cloth less than a foot in breadth that just
meets round the loins, and in order that it may not
restrain the limbs it is only fastened where it meets
under the hip at the upper corners."
But if they have not much to boast of in the way of dress, these girls
enjoy a privilege rare in India or elsewhere of making the first
advances.
"As there is no restriction on innocent intercourse,
the boys and girls freely mixing together in the labors
of the field and other pursuits, an amorous young lady
has ample opportunity of declaring her partiality, and
it is her privileged duty to speak first.... The maiden
coyly tells the youth to whom she is about to surrender
herself that she has prepared a spot in some quiet and
secluded valley to which she invites him.... In two or
three days they return to the village and their union
is then publicly proclaimed and solemnized. Any
infringement of the rule which declares that the
initiative shall in such cases rest with the girl is
summarily and severely punished."
For a man to make the advances would be an insult not only to the girl
but to the whole tribe, resulting in fines. But let us hear the rest
of the topsy-turvy story.
"The marriage ceremony chiefly consists of dancing,
singing, and feasting. The bride is taken down to the
nearest stream and bathed, and the party next proceeds
to the house of the bridegroom, who pretends to be
unwilling and runs away, but is caught and subjected to
a similar ablution, and then taken, in spite of the
resistance and the counterfeited grief and lamentation
of his parents, to the bride's house."
It is true that this inversion of the usual process of proposing and
acting a comedy of sham coyness occurs only in the case of the poor
girls, the wealthy ones being betrothed by their parents in infancy;
but it would be interesting to learn the origin of this quaint custom
from someone who has had a chance to study this tribe. Probably the
girl's poverty furnishes the key. The whole thing seems like a
practical joke raised to the dignity of an institution. The perversion
of all ordinary rules is consistently carried out in this, too, that
"if the old people refuse they can be beaten into compliance!" That
the loss of female coyness is not a gain to the cause of love or of
virtue is self-evident.