11. Marriage customs.
Polygamy among the Pārsis has been forbidden by the Pārsi Marriage and Divorce Act of 1865. The remarriage of widows is allowed but is celebrated at midnight. If a bachelor is to marry a widow, he first goes through a sham rite with the branch of a tree, as among the Hindus. Similarly before the wedding the bride and bridegroom are rubbed with turmeric, and for the ceremony a marriage-shed is erected. At a feast before the wedding one of the women beats a copper dish and asks the ancestral spirits to attend, calling them by name. Another woman comes running in, barking like a dog. The women drive her away, and with fun and laughing eat all the things they can lay their hands on. Prior to the rite the bride and bridegroom are purified in the same manner as when invested with the sacred shirt and cord. The bridegroom wears a long white robe reaching to his ankles and a white sash round his waist; he has a garland of flowers round his neck, a red mark on his forehead, and carries a bunch of flowers and a cocoanut in his right hand. At every street corner on his way to the bride’s home a cocoanut is waved round his head, broken and thrown away. He sets his right foot in the house first, and as he enters rice and water are thrown under his feet and an egg and cocoanut are broken. At the wedding the couple throw rice on each other, and it is supposed that whoever is quickest in throwing the rice will rule the other. They are then seated side by side, and two priests stand before them with a witness on each side, holding brass plates full of rice. The two priests pronounce the marriage blessing in old Persian and Sanskrit, at each sentence throwing rice on the bride’s and bridegroom’s heads. At intervals in the midst of the blessing the bridegroom and bride are asked in Persian, ‘Have you chosen her?’ and ‘Have you chosen him?’ They answer in Persian, or if they are too young their mothers answer for them, ‘I have chosen.’[18]