9. Marriage customs.
Marriage may be infant or adult, and, as in many places husbands are difficult to find, girls occasionally remain unmarried till nearly twenty, and may also be mated to boys younger than themselves. In northern India a substantial bridegroom-price is paid, which increases for a well-educated boy, but this custom is not so well established in the Central Provinces. However, in Damoh it is said that a sum of Rs. 200 is paid to the bridegroom’s family. The marriage ceremony is performed according to the proper ritual for the highest or Brahma form of marriage recognised by Manu with Vedic texts. When the bridegroom arrives at the bride’s house he is given sherbet to drink. It is said that he then stands on a pestle, and the bride’s mother throws wheat-flour balls to the four points of the compass, and shows the bridegroom a miniature plough, a grinding pestle, a churning-staff and an arrow, and pulls his nose. The bridegroom’s struggles to prevent his mother-in-law pulling his nose are the cause of much merriment, while the two parties afterwards have a fight for the footstool on which he stands.[37] An image of a cow in flour is then brought, and the bridegroom pierces its nostrils with a little stick of gold. Kāyasths do not pierce the nostrils of bullocks themselves, but these rites perhaps recall their dependence on agriculture in their capacity of village accountants.
After the wedding the bridegroom’s father takes various kinds of fruit, as almonds, dates and raisins, and fills the bride’s lap with them four times, finally adding a cocoanut and a rupee. This is a ceremony to induce fertility, and the cocoanut perhaps represents a child.