3. Marriage
Marriage within the gotra or exogamous group and within three degrees of relationship between persons connected through females is prohibited. Girls are usually wedded before adolescence, but no stigma attaches to the family if they remain single beyond this period. If a girl is seduced by a man of the caste she is married to him by the pāt, a simple ceremony used for widows. In the southern Districts a barber cuts off a lock of her hair on the banks of a tank or river by way of penalty, and a fast is also imposed on her, while the caste-fellows exact a meal from her family. If she has an illegitimate child, it is given away to somebody else, if possible. A girl going wrong with an outsider is expelled from the caste.
Polygamy is permitted and no stigma attaches to the taking of a second wife, though it is rarely done except for special family reasons. Among the Marātha Barais the bride and bridegroom must walk five times round the marriage altar and then worship the stone slab and roller used for pounding spices. This seems to show that the trade of the Pansāri or druggist is recognised as being a proper avocation of the Barai. They subsequently have to worship the potter’s wheel. After the wedding the bride, if she is a child, goes as usual to her husband’s house for a few days. In Chhattīsgarh she is accompanied by a few relations, the party being known as Chauthia, and during her stay in her husband’s house the bride is made to sleep on the ground. Widow marriage is permitted, and the ceremony is conducted according to the usage of the locality. In Betūl the relatives of the widow take the second husband before Māroti’s shrine, where he offers a nut and some betel-leaf. He is then taken to the mālguzār’s house and presents to him Rs. 1–4–0, a cocoanut and some betel-vine leaf as the price of his assent to the marriage. If there is a Deshmukh[3] of the village, a cocoanut and betel-leaf are also given to him. The nut offered to Māroti represents the deceased husband’s spirit, and is subsequently placed on a plank and kicked off by the new bridegroom in token of his usurping the other’s place, and finally buried to lay the spirit. The property of the first husband descends to his children, and failing them his brother’s children or collateral heirs take it before the widow. A bachelor espousing a widow must first go through the ceremony of marriage with a swallow-wort plant. When a widower marries a girl a silver impression representing the deceased first wife is made and worshipped daily with the family gods. Divorce is permitted on sufficient grounds at the instance of either party, being effected before the caste committee or panchāyat. If a husband divorces his wife merely on account of bad temper, he must maintain her so long as she remains unmarried and continues to lead a moral life.