The marriage of persons of the same sept and of first cousins is
usually forbidden. A man may marry his wife's younger sister while
she herself is alive, but never her elder sister. An unmarried girl
becoming pregnant by a man of the caste is married to him by the
ceremony used for a widow, and she may be readmitted even after a
_liaison_ with an outsider among most Telis. In Chanda the parents of
a girl who is not married before puberty are fined. The proposal comes
from the boy's side and a bride-price is usually paid, though not of
large amount. The Halia Telis of Chhattisgarh, like other agricultural
castes, sometimes betroth their children when they are five or six
months old, but as a rule no penalty attaches to the breaking of the
betrothal. The betrothal is celebrated by the distribution of one or
two rupees' worth of liquor to the neighbours of the caste. As among
other low castes, on the day before the wedding procession starts,
the bridegroom goes round to all the houses in the village and his
sister dances round him with her head bent, and all the people give
him presents. This is known as the Binaiki or Farewell, and the bride
does the same in her village. Among the Jharia Telis the women go
and worship the marriage-post at the carpenter's house while it is
being made. In this subcaste the bridegroom goes to the wedding in
a cart and not on horseback or in a litter as among some castes. The
rule may perhaps be a recognition of their humble station. The Halia
subcaste can dispense with the presence of a Brahman at the wedding,
but not the Jharias. In Wardha the bridegroom's head is covered with
a blanket, over which is placed the marriage-crown. On the arrival of
the bridegroom's party they are regaled with _sherbet_ or sugar and
water by the bride's relatives, and sometimes red pepper is mixed with
this by way of a joke. At a wedding of the Gujarati Tells in Nimar
the caste-priest carries the tutelary goddess Kali in procession,
and in front of her a pot filled with burning cotton-seeds and oil. A
cloth is held over the pot, and it is believed that the power of the
goddess prevents the cloth from taking fire. If this should happen
some great calamity would be portended. Rathor Teli girls, whether
married or unmarried, go with their heads bare, and a woman draws
her cloth over her head for the first time when she begins to live
in her husband's house.