After the wedding if the bride is grown up she lives with her husband
at once; but if she is a child she goes back to her parents until
her adolescence, when the ceremony of Pathoni or 'Going away' is
performed. On this occasion some people from the bridegroom's home
go to fetch her and their number must be even, so that when she
returns with them the party may be an odd one, which is lucky. They
take a new cloth for the bride and stay the night at her house; next
morning the bride's parents put some rice, pulse, oil and a comb in
a basket for her, and she sets out with the party, wearing her new
cloth. But when she gets outside the village this is taken off her
and placed in the basket, which she has to carry on her head as far
as her husband's house. As she enters his village the people stretch
a rope across the way and prevent her passage until her father-in-law
gives them a present. On arriving at his house her feet are washed
by her mother-in-law, and she is then made to cook the food brought
in her basket. After a fortnight she again goes back to her parents'
house and stays with them for another year, before finally taking up
her abode with her husband. It has been remarked that this return of
a married woman to her parents' house for such lengthened periods is
likely to be a pregnant source of immorality, and the advantage of the
custom has been questioned; the explanation may perhaps be that it is
an outcome of the joint family system by which young married couples
live with the bridegroom's parents, and that the object is to accustom
the girl gradually to the habits of a fresh household and the yoke,
necessarily irksome, of her mother-in-law. The proverb with reference
to a young wife, 'If your husband loves you your mother-in-law can
do nothing,' indicates how formidable this may be in the event of
any cooling of marital affection; and it is well known that if she
does not please her husband's family a young wife may be treated as
little better than a slave. To throw a young girl, therefore, into
a family of complete strangers is probably too severe a trial, and
this is the reason of the goings and returnings of the bride after
her wedding between her husband's home and her own.