"Barrey, Barrey, Barrey (a cooking utensil)
May Sateen become a slave!
Khangra, Khangra, Khangra, (broomstick)
May Sateen be exposed to infamy!
Hatha, Hatha, Hatha, (a cooking utensil)
May she devour her Sateen's head!
Geelay, Geelay, Geelay (a fruit)
May Sateen have spleen!
Pakee, Pakee, Pakee (bird)
May Sateen die and may she see her from the top of her house!
Moyna, Moyna, Moyna (bird)
May she never be cursed with a Sateen!"
May she cut an Usath tree, erect a house there, cause her Sateen to die and paint her feet with her Sateen's blood!
I might swell the list of these curses, but I fear they would prove grating to the ears of civilized readers.
The performance of the Sajooty Brata springs out of a desire to see a Sateen or rival wife become the victim of all manner of evils, extending even to the loss of life itself, simply because a plurality of wives is the source of perpetual disquietude and misery. By nature, a woman is so constituted that she can never bear the sight of a rival wife. In civilized countries, the evil is partially remediable by a legal separation, but in Hindoostan the legislature makes no provision whatever for its suppression. A feeling of burning jealousy becomes rampant wherever there is a case of polygamy to poison the perennial source of domestic felicity. So acutely sensitive is a Hindoo lady in this respect that she would rather suffer the miseries of widowhood than be cursed with the presence of a Sateen, whose very name almost spontaneously awakens in her mind the bitterest and the most envenomed feelings. She can make up her mind to give away a share of her most valuable worldly enjoyments, but she can never give a share of her husband's affection to any one on earth. To enjoy the exclusive monopoly of a husband's love is the life-long prayer of a Hindoo female. She expresses it in the incipient stage of her girlhood, and practically carries it with her until the last spark of life becomes extinct. This certainly indicates the prompting of a very strong natural feeling.
V.
MARRIAGE CEREMONIES.
The Hindoos have a strong belief that to solemnise the marriage of their children at an early age, is a meritorious act as discharging one of the primary obligations of life. They are, therefore, very anxious to have their sons and daughters formally married during their own life-time. Sometimes children are pledged to each other even in infancy, by the mutual agreement of the parents; and in most cases the girl is married when a mere child of from eight to ten years, all unconscious as yet of the real meaning and obligations of the relation, although her girlish fancies have been continually directed to it. Matches in the case of good families are commonly brought about in the following way.
When an unmarried boy attains his seventeenth or eighteenth year, numbers of professional men called Ghatucks or match-makers come to the parents with overtures of marriage. These men are destitute of principle, they know how to pander to the frailties of human nature; most of them being gross flatterers, endeavour to impose on the parents in the most barefaced manner. As they live on their wits, their descriptive powers and insinuating manners are almost matchless. When the qualities of a girl are to be commended, they, indulging in a strain of exaggeration, unblushingly declare, "she is beautiful as a full moon, the symmetry of her person is exact, her teeth are like the seeds of a pomegranate, her voice is remarkably sweet like that of the cuckoo, her gait is graceful, she speaks like the goddess Luckee, and will bring fortune to any family she may be connected with." The Hindoos have a notion that the good fortune of a husband depends on that of the wife, hence a woman is considered as an emblem of Luckee, the goddess of fortune. This is the highest commendation she can possess.[15]