But With The Invasion Of The Persians, In The Seventh Century, And
Later On Of The Fanatical, All-Destroying Mussulmans, All This
Changed.
Woman became enslaved, and the Brahmans did everything
to humiliate her.
In towns, the position of the Hindu woman is
still worse than amongst agricultural classes.
- - - - - -
The wedding ceremonies are very complicated and numerous. They
are divided into three groups: the rites before the wedding;
the rites during the ceremony; and the rites after the celebration
has taken place. The first group consists of eleven ceremonies:
the asking in marriage; the comparison of the two horoscopes;
the sacrifice of a goat; the fixing of a propitious day; the
building of the altar; the purchase of the sacred pots for
household use; the invitation of guests; the sacrifices to the
household gods; mutual presents and so on. All this must be
accomplished as a religious duty, and is full of entangled rites.
As soon as a little girl in some Hindu family is four years old,
her father and mother send for the family Guru, give him her
horoscope, drawn up previously by the astrologer of their caste
(a very important post), and send the Guru to this or that inhabitant
of the place who is known to have a son of appropriate age. The
father of the little boy has to put the horoscope on the altar
before the family gods and to answer: "I am well disposed towards
the Panigrhana; let Rudra help us." The Guru must ask when the
union is to take place, after which he is bowed out. A few days
later the father of the little boy takes the horoscope of his son
as well as of the little girl to the chief astrologer. If the
latter finds them propitious to the intended marriage, it will
take place; if not, his decision is immediately sent to the
father of the little girl, and the whole affair is dropped. If
the astrologer's opinion is favorable, however, the bargain is
concluded on the spot. The astrologer offers a cocoa-nut and a
handful of sugar to the father, after which nothing can be altered;
otherwise a Hindu vendetta will be handed down from generation to
generation. After the obligatory goat-sacrifice, the couple are
irrevocably betrothed, and the astrologer fixes the day of the wedding.
The sacrifice of the goat is very interesting, so I am going to
describe it in detail.
A child of the male sex is sent to invite several married ladies,
old women of twenty or twenty-five, to witness the worship of the
Lares and Penates. Each family has a household goddess of its own -
which is not impossible, since the Hindu gods number thirty-three
crores. On the eve of the sacrificial day, a kid is brought into
the house, and all the family sleep round him. Next morning, the
reception hall in the lower story is made ready for the ceremony.
The floor is thickly covered with cow-dung, and, right in the
middle of the room a square is traced with white chalk, in which
is placed a high pedestal, with the statue of the goddess. The
patriarch of the family brings the goat, and, holding him by the
horns, lowers his head to salute the goddess. After this, the
"old" and young women sing marriage hymns, tie the legs of the goat,
cover his head with red powder, and make a lamp smoke under his nose,
to banish the evil spirits from round him. When all this is done,
the female element puts itself out of the way, and the patriarch
comes again upon the stage. He treacherously puts a ration of
rice before the goat, and as soon as the victim becomes innocently
absorbed in gratifying his appetite, the old man chops his head
off with a single stroke of his sword, and bathes the goddess in
the smoking blood coming from the head of the animal, which he
holds in his right arm, over the idol. The women sing in chorus,
and the ceremony of betrothal is over.
The ceremonies with the astrologers, and the exchange of presents,
are too long to be described. I shall mention only, that in all
these ceremonies the astrologer plays the double part of an augur
and a family lawyer. After a general invocation to the elephant-
headed god Ganesha, the marriage contract is written on the reverse
of the horoscopes and sealed, and a general blessing is pronounced
over the assembly.
Needless to say that all these ceremonies had been accomplished
long ago in the family to whose marriage party we were invited in
Bagh. All these rites are sacred, and most probably we, being
mere strangers, would not have been allowed to witness them. We
saw them all later on in Benares - thanks to the intercession of
our Babu.
- - - - -
When we arrived on the spot, where the Bagh cere-mony was celebrated,
the festivity was at its height. The bridegroom was not more than
fourteen years old, while the bride was only ten. Her small nose
was adorned with a huge golden ring with some very brilliant stone,
which dragged her nostril down. Her face looked comically piteous,
and sometimes she cast furtive glances at us. The bridegroom, a
stout, healthy-looking boy, attired in cloth of gold and wearing
the many storied Indra hat, was on horseback, surrounded by a whole
crowd of male relations.
The altar, especially erected for this occasion, presented a queer
sight. Its regulation height is three times the length of the
bride's arm from the shoulder down to the middle finger. Its
materials are bricks and white-washed clay. Forty-six earthen
pots painted with red, yellow and green stripes - the colors of
the Trimurti - rose in two pyramids on both sides of the "god of
marriages" on the altar, and all round it a crowd of little
married girls were busy grinding ginger. When it was reduced to
powder the whole crowd rushed on the bridegroom, dragged him from
his horse, and, having undressed him, began rubbing him with wet
ginger.
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