If the first wife dies, a second is sought after on the same principle which guided the first—'a superior to head his house'. In this case there would be the same public display which marked the first wife's marriage; all the minor or secondary wives being introduced to the zeenahnah privately; they are in consequence termed Dhollie[3] wives, or brought home under cover.
Many great men appear to be close imitators of King Solomon, with whose history they are perfectly conversant, for I have heard of the sovereign princes in Hindoostaun having seven or eight hundred wives at one time in their palaces. This is hearsay report only, and I should hope an exaggeration.[4]
The first marriage is usually solemnized when the youth is eighteen, and the young lady thirteen, or fourteen at the most; many are married at an earlier age, when, in the opinion of the parents, an eligible match is to be secured. And in some cases, where the parents on both sides have the union of their children at heart, they contract them at six or seven years old, which marriage they solemnly bind themselves to fulfil when the children have reached a proper age; under these circumstances the children are allowed to live in the same house, and often form an attachment for each other, which renders their union a life of real happiness.
There are to be found in Mussulmaun society parents of mercenary minds, who prefer giving their daughters in marriage as dhollie wives to noblemen or men of property, to the preferable plan of uniting them with a husband of their own grade, with whom the girl would most likely live without a rival in the mud-walled tenement; this will explain the facilities offered to a sovereign or nobleman in extending the numbers of his harem.
Some parents excuse themselves in thus disposing of their daughters on the score of poverty, and the difficulty they find in defraying the expenses of a wedding: this I conceive to be one great error in the economy of the Mussulmaun people,—unnecessary expense incurred in their marriage ceremonies, which hampers them through life in their circumstances. Parents, however poor, will not allow their daughter to be conveyed from their home, where the projected union is with an equal, without a seemingly needless parade of music, and a marriage-portion in goods and chattels, if they have no fortune to give beside; then the expense of providing dinners for friends to make the event conspicuous, and the useless articles of finery for the girl's person, with many other ways of expending money, to the detriment of the parents' finances, without any very substantial benefit to the young couple. But this dearly-loved custom cannot be passed over; and if the parents find it impossible to meet the pecuniary demands of these ceremonies, the girl has no alternative but to live out her days singly, unless by an agent's influence she is accepted as a dhollie wife to some man of wealth.
Girls are considered to have passed their prime when they number from sixteen to eighteen years; even the poorest peasant would object to a wife of eighteen.
There has been the same difficulty to encounter in every age of Mussulmaun history in Hindoostaun; and in the darker periods of civilization, the obstacles to settling their daughters to advantage induced the villagers and the uneducated to follow the example of the Rajpoots, viz., to destroy the greater proportion of females at their birth. In the present age, this horrid custom is never heard of amongst any classes of the Mussulmaun population[5]; but by the Rajpoot Hindoos it is still practised, as one of their chiefs very lately acknowledged in the presence of a friend of mine. I have often heard Meer Hadjee Shaah declare that it was a common occurrence within his recollection, among the lower classes of the people in the immediate vicinity of Loodeeanah,[6] where he lived when a boy; and that the same practice existed in the Oude territory, amongst the peasantry even at a much later date. One of the Nuwaubs of Oude,—I think Asoof ood Dowlah,—hearing with horror of the frequent recurrence of this atrocity in the remote parts of his province, issued a proclamation to his subjects, commanding them to desist from the barbarous custom[7]; and, as an inducement to the wicked parents to preserve their female offspring alive, grants of land were to be awarded to every female as a marriage-portion on her arriving at a proper age.
It is generally to be observed in a Mussulmaun's family, even at this day, that the birth of a girl produces a temporary gloom, whilst the birth of a boy gives rise to a festival in the zeenahnah. Some are wicked enough to say, 'It is more honourable to have sons than daughters', but I believe the real cause is the difficulty to be encountered in settling the latter suitably.
The important affair of fixing upon a desirable match for their sons and daughters is the source of constant anxiety in the family of every Mussulmaun, from the children's earliest years to the period of its accomplishment.
There is a class of people who make it the business of their lives to negotiate marriages. Both men and women of this description are of course ingeniously expert in the art of talking, and able to put the best colouring on the affair they undertake; they occupy every day of their lives in roving about from house to house, and, as they have always something entertaining to say, they generally gain easy admittance; they make themselves acquainted with the domestic affairs of one family in order to convey them to another, and so continue in their line of gossiping, until the economy of every person's house is familiar to all. The female gossip in her researches in zeenahnahs, finds out all the expectations a mother entertains for her marriageable sons or daughters, and details whatever she learns in such or such a zeenahnah, as likely to meet the views of her present hostess. Every one knows the object of these visits, and if they have any secret that the world may not participate in, there is due caution observed that it may not transpire before this Mrs. Gad-about.