1 24 PANJAB CASTES.
2 treating of civil coinlltion ; and it is unnecessary to repeat the information
3 here. The custom as to intermarriage in the hills will be found described in i
4 the sections on Eajputs of the eastern liills, Rathis and Rawats, and Kolis aud C^'-^^l
5 Dagis ; while the curious rule against taking a bride from a village marching
6 with one's own has already been discxissed in section 136. The marriage
7 customs of the people of Karniil will be found minutely described at pages
8 127 to 134 of my settlement report on that district. A brief notice of some
9 curious customs will be found in the present chapter under the head of Jats
10 of the western sub-montane. The subject is one of great interest and value,
11 and sadly needs more detailed inquiry. Customs of this sort are of all others
12 the most persistent, and often throw most valuable light upon the origin and
13 affinities of the tribes. The reason why I allude to the subject in this place
14 is, because I wish to point out how obviously the rules and customs regulating
15 marriage point to the former existence of marriage by capture and, perhaps
16 less obviously, of an intermediate stage when the cajoture had become fictiti-
17 ous, but the fiction was enacted with greater veri-similitudc than now-a-days.
18 Some of the suggestions I am about to make may very probably be fanciful ;
19 but the general tendency of the facts is lieyond the possibility of a doubt.
20 The sti-ict mle of tribal exogamy which still binds all classes both Hindu and
21 Musalman throughout the Eastern Plains, excepting however the jiriests and
22 traders who observe only the prohiliitions of the Sanskrit scriptures ; especially
23 the rale against marrying iron\ a neighliouring village ; the formal nature of
24 the wedding procession, M'hich must be as far as possible mounted on horses,
25 and in which only males may take jiart ; the preparatory oiling of the bride-
26 groom, the similar treatment of the la-ide being perhaps a later institution ;
27 all point to marriage by capture. So does the use of the mark of tlie bloody
28 hand at both villages. The marking all the turnings from the village gate
29 to the bride's house may be a survival of a very common intermediate stage,
30 where the bridegroom visits the bride by stealth. The nile that the pro-
31 cession must reach the girl's village after midday, and must not enter the
32 village, but remain outside in a place allotted to them; the fight between
33 the girl's and boy's parties at the door of the bride's house ; the nile that the
34 girl shall wear nothing belonging to herself ; the hiding of the girl from the
35 boy's people at the wedding ceremony ; all point to marriage by capture.
36 So do the rule )jy which the boy's party must not accept food at the hands of
37 the girl's people after the wedding, and must pay them for what they eat (Tn
38 the succeeding night, and the fiction by which the girl's father is compelled
39 to ignore all payment of money by the bridegroom's friends. The bloody
40 hand stamped on the shoulder of the boy's father by the girl's mother
41 as he departs, and the custom which directs the girl to go ofE bewailing
42 some one of her male relatives who has lately died, saying " Oh my fa-
43 ther is dead," or " Oh my brother is dead," arc very marked ; as is the
44 fight with sticks between the Ijride aud bridegroom. Finally we have the
45 rule that after the ceremonial goings and comings are over, the wife
46 must never visit her father's house without his special leave : and the fact
47 that—
48 ' ' tbe villiige into wliicli liis daugliter is man-ied is utterly tabooed for lier fatlier, Ler elder brother,
49 " and all near elder relatives. They may not go into it or eren di-ink water from a well in that
50 " village, for it is shameful to take anything from one's daugliter or her belongings. Hven her
51 " more distant elder relations will not eat or drink from the house into which the girl is man'ied,
52 " though they do not taboo the whole village. The boy's father can go to the girl's village by leave
53 " of her father, but not without."