5. The marriage ceremony.
The marriage ceremony resembles that of the Hindus but has one or two special features. After the customary cleaning of the house which should be performed on a Tuesday, the bridegroom is carried to the heap of stones which represents Mutua Deo, and there the Bhumka or priest invokes the various sylvan deities, offering to them the blood of chickens. Again when he is dressed for the wedding the boy is given a knife or dagger carrying a pierced lemon on the blade, and he and his parents and relatives proceed to a ber[11] or wild plum tree. The boy and his parents sit at the foot of the tree and are tied to it with a thread, while the Bhumka again spills the blood of a fowl on the roots of the tree and invokes the sun and moon, whom the Korkus consider to be their ultimate ancestors. The ber fruit may perhaps be selected as symbolising the red orb of the setting sun. The party then dance round the tree. When the wedding procession is formed the following ceremony takes place: A blanket is spread in the yard of the house and the bridegroom and his elder brother’s wife are made to stand on it and embrace each other seven times. This may probably be a survival of the modified system of polyandry still practised by the Khonds, under which the younger brothers are allowed access to the elder brother’s wife until their own marriage. The ceremony would then typify the cessation of this intercourse at the wedding of the boy. The procession must reach the bride’s village on a Monday, a Wednesday or a Friday, a breach of this rule entailing a fine of Rs. 8 on the boy’s father. On arrival at the bride’s village its progress is barred by a rope stretched across the road by the bride’s relatives, who must be given two pice each before it is removed. The bridegroom touches the marriage-shed with a bamboo fan. Next day the couple are seated in the shed and covered with a blanket on to which water is poured to symbolise the fertilising influence of rain. The groom ties a necklace of beads to the girl’s neck, and the couple are then lifted up by the relatives and carried three times round the yard of the house, while they throw yellow-coloured rice at each other. Their clothes are tied together and they proceed to make an offering to Mutua Deo. In Hoshangābād, Mr. Crosthwaite states, the marriage ceremony is presided over by the bridegroom’s aunt or other collateral female relative. The bride is hidden in her father’s house. The aunt then enters carrying the bridegroom and searches for the bride. When the bride is found the brother-in-law of the bridegroom takes her up, and bride and bridegroom are then seated under a sheet. The rings worn on the little finger of the right hand are exchanged under the sheet and the clothes of the couple are knotted together. Then follow the sapta padi or seven steps round the post, and the ceremony concludes with a dance, a feast and an orgy of drunkenness. A priest takes no part in a Korku marriage ceremony, which is a purely social affair. If a man has only one daughter, or if he requires an assistant for his cultivation, he often makes his prospective son-in-law serve for his wife for a period varying from five to twelve years, the marriage being then celebrated at the father-in-law’s expense. If the boy runs away with the girl before the end of his service, his parents have to pay to the girl’s father five rupees for each year of the unexpired term. Marriage is usually adult, girls being wedded between the ages of ten and sixteen and boys at about twenty. Polygamy is freely practised by those who are well enough off to afford it, and instances are known of a man having as many as twelve wives living. A man must not marry his wife’s younger sister if she is the widow of a member of his own sept nor his elder brother’s widow if she is his wife’s elder sister. Widow-marriage is allowed, and divorce may be effected by a simple proclamation of the fact to the panchāyat in a caste assembly.