the hands of the bride, when the latter says, ' I am come from the family of my father into your family, and now my life and all I have are yours:' after which, the bridegroom repeats the praise of the regent of fire, calling him to be witness, and, after walking round the altar seven times, pours the rice on the fire. Taking up clarified butter, the bridegroom, after saying to the bride, 'Your heart is in mine, and my heart is in yours, and both are one; your word is in mine, and my word is in yours, and both are one,' pours the clarified butter on the fire. He next draws the veil over her face, while he adorns her forehead with red lead. At the close, he intreats the blessing of the company on the bride, adding a prayer to the regent of fire, that he would destroy all mistakes that may have attended this service. Different diversions now take place, and the remainder of the day is spent in feasting, and in dismissing distant relations with presents. If a friend on this day should not eat of the food, which is considered as having been cooked by the bride, it is regarded as a great dishonour, which can only be removed by his eating there at the next public feast. On this night the married pair do not remain together. The girl's father sends garments, sweetmeats, fruits, &c. for them both, and the next day he goes himself, and sees the married pair put to sleep on an ornamented bed of flowers.

On the fourth or fifth day, the father of the girl takes the bride and bridegroom to his house, where they remain. about ten days. On the fifth, seventh, or ninth day, the women take off the thread that was tied on the arms of the young couple on the day of marriage; after which, the officiating bramhun, in their names, worships the sun: the father-in-law presents changes of raiment to the bride

and bridegroom, and at the close entertains the guests. After ten days, the boy returns to the house of his father, and the girl remains with her mother.

At respectable weddings, four or five thousand roopees are expended, but the greatest expence is incurred in the fire-works, and other accompaniments of the procession : should four or five hundred persons sit down to the entertainment, their food will not cost so much as eight pence a head. Many guests who do not partake of the entertainment receive presents of money, garments, brass, and other household utensils.

About forty-five years ago, Jŭyŭ-Narayŭnŭ, a bramhŭn of Khidŭr-poorů, near Calcutta, expended 40,000 roopees in the wedding of his nephew, and entertained five or six thousand guests.-Soon after this, Huree-Krishnŭrayŭ, a pēēr-alee bramhun, expended more than a lack of roopees in the marriage of his eldest son, entertaining the nŭwab, and most of the rajas of Bengal.—About thirty years since, raja Raj-Krishnŭ, of Calcutta, a kayŭst'hŭ, expended 80 or 90,000 roopees in his son's marriage.

At the end of a year, the bridegroom takes home his wife; or, if she be very young, she remains at her father's (visits excepted) till the proper time for their ultimate union, when her husband proceeds to the house of his father-in-law, if a poor man, on foot, and if rich, in a palanqueen, with a few friends. When the married pair return to the house of the boy's father, most of those ceremonies are repeated which took place there on the day after marriage. A Hindoo, on his marriage, does not become a housekeeper, as in England, but continues to live with his father; and in this way, if they can agree,

many generations live together. At present, however, separations into distinct families are becoming more and

more common.

At the time of the second marriage, certain foolish customs are practised by the females: the girl also abstains from eating the common rice, fish, &c. and on the fifth, seventh, or ninth day, the worship of Shusht'hēē, Markůndéyů, Günéshu, and the nine planets, is performed, the officiating bramhun reading, and the bridegroom repeating the service after him. To this succeeds the worship of the sun, in which the officiating bramhun, joining the open hands of the bride and bridegroom, repeats certain formulas from one of the smritees. After these services, the bridegroom feeds the bride with sugar, clarified butter, honey, and the urine and dung of a calf, mixed together; and folds up plantains, nutmegs, &c. in the garment of the bride, and as they enter the house, the bridegroom causes a ring to slide between the bride's garment and her waist." The bride and bridegroom then eat furmenty together.

The Hindoos in general carry their attachment to children, especially to sons, to the greatest excess. They are amazed at the apparent want of affection in Europeans, who leave their parents, and traverse foreign countries, some of them without the hope of ever seeing them again. If a man should not have children, his father or elder brother seeks for him a second wife; few take this trouble on themselves. The husband directs which

X

"Among the Romans, the man sent a ring as a pledge to the woman.

* The Hindoos say, a man ought to wait till his wife is more than twenty before he marries a second.

wife shall have the chief rule, though, according to the shastră, this honour belongs to the wife he first married. Multitudes of instances occur, in which a plurality of wives is the source of perpetual disputes and misery: indeed the Hindoos confess, that scarcely any instances are to be found of the continuance of domestic happiness where more than one wife lives in the same house. A person of some respectability deplored to the author, in the most pitiable manner, his miserable condition on account of having been driven by his father into a state of polygamy. He was obliged to have two cook-rooms, separate apartments, and was compelled to dine with his two wives alternately with the utmost regularity; the children of the different wives were continually quarelling; and thus, through the jealousies, and the innumerable vexations and collisions inseparable from polygamy, he was almost driven to desperation.-On further enquiry into this matter, I found, that polygamy was acknowledged to be the greatest of all domestic afflictions among the Hindoos. Kŭvee-kunkunů, in his Chundee, a Bengalee poem, has deplored his own case in having two wives; and it has become a proverb, that one wife would rather accompany her husband to the gloomy regions of Yumu, than see him sit with the other. In short, the whole country is full of the most disgraceful proofs, that polygamy is an unnatural and miserable state. Thus Divine Providence seems evidently to have marked polygamy as a state contrary to moral order; in which order we see, that innocent enjoyments are always connected with tranquillity, and vicious ones ever followed with pain and disorder.-See the history of Abraham, Gen. xxi. &c.

He who has lost his wife by death, generally marries another as soon as he is purified, that is, in eleven days,

Some wait

if a bramhun, and in a month, if a shōōdrů. longer, and a few do not marry again. A Hindoo may' marry a second time, a third," and so on, till he is fifty years old; but, according to the shrastru, not when he is advanced beyond this age; nevertheless many of the lower orders marry when sixty, and some kooleenus marry when as old as eighty. The ceremonies at a second marriage are similar to those at the first.

Few men continue in a single state to old age: those who do, cohabit with concubines: few females remain unmarried; none who can obtain husbands. Yet the cast presents such various obstacles to union, and there are so many gradations of rank by which marriages are regulated, that cases do exist in which men cannot obtain wives, nor women husbands. Still, so great a disgrace is incurred by remaining unmarried, that on one occasion a number of old maids were married to an aged koolēēnŭ bramhăn, as his friends were carrying him to the Ganges to die.

Widows amongst the lowest casts are sometimes married by a form called nika; when the bride and bridegroomi,

:

The wife of one of the author's servants once presented a complaint against her husband, that he neither maintained nor lived with her when the man was asked the reason of this cruel behaviour, he said, without shame, “Oh Salièb, she was so sick some time ago, that I did not expect her to

live: I therefore married another!"

A third marriage is considered as improper and baneful to the female; heuce, before the marriage ceremony takes place, they first betroth the man to a tree, when, it is said, the evil expends itself on the tree, and the tree inmediately dies.

* In the year 1815, some Hindoos, of high cast, were on the eve of petitioning the English government to interfere and prevent the koolēēnus from engrossing so many wives, as this disgraceful custom prevented many individuals from entering into the marriage state.