Note 92 — Chapter VI · Magic Rites as affecting the Life of Man

This completes the wedding ceremony, but the bridegroom is nominally expected to remain under the roof (and eye) of his mother-in-law for about two years (reduced to forty-four days in the case of “royalty”), after which he may be allowed to remove to a house of his own. No Kathi92 was present until quite recently at marriages in Selangor, nor has it in the past been the practice, so far as I could find out, for him to attend. Sir S. Raffles gives as part of the formula used in Java:—“If you travel at sea for a year, or ashore for six months, without sending either money or message to your wife, she will complain to the judge and obtain one talak (the preliminary stage of divorce),” and this condition should, strictly speaking, be included in the Malay formula. It is now growing obsolete, but was in former days repeated first by the priest, and then by the bridegroom after him. The marriage portion (isi kahwin, Arabic mahar) is here generally called b’lanja kahwin or mas kahwin.93 No wedding-ring should, strictly, be given.