1 206 APPENDIX — MARRIAGES.
2 surface, and to render it applicable to the purposes of
3 irrigation ; were a total prohibition of this beneficial
4 practice to be enacted, large tracts on many estates,
5 through which streams flow, in deep channels, would
6 become uncultivated ; and the villages depopulated, to
7 the serious loss of the proprietors, and the ruin of their
8 Zumeendars. With the view of relieving the deficiencies
9 experienced from the want of the fluid in the arid districts
10 lower down, a substitute for the dam might be found in a
11 Hydraulic wheel of simple construction, to draw the water
12 to the level, and in places where the banks are compara-
13 tively low, it will only be requisite to dig the kool, or cut,
14 for the reception and carriage of the water deeper, and to
15 raise it in the cut by sluice boards. The churras, or lea-
16 thern bags, in common use at wells, with a relief of bul-
17 locks, might also be serviceable in other spots. All these
18 expedients, however, fall very short of the utility and
19 cheapness of the dams, when water requires to be
20 conveyed many miles, and every kool is a canal in
21 miniature.
22 Nuptial contracts are made in early youth by the
23 parents or nearest of kin, who, in too many cases, are
24 influenced more by pecuniary and sordid motives, than
25 by the welfare of the children. Disagreements are very
26 common relative to betrothments, (mungnee), and to
27 breaches of a promise of marriage, (nata or nishut)
28 amongst all classes of the inhabitants. In some instances,
29 real or imaginary diseases, or bodily defects, will be
30 alleged by one of the contracting parties, as a reason why
31 the bargain should be annulled ; in others, a flaw in the
32 cast, and in most a discovery, that the girl had been pro-
33 mised to two, three, or four difl'erent families, from all of