Note 230.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

In India the widows of the higher castes are not allowed to marry again. Among the aboriginal tribes widows who do so often marry “under cover of darkness, and with the aid of certain ceremonies commonly relied upon as a protection against spirits.” If in spite of these precautions the woman should be troubled by her departed husband, he is placated, as among the Kolīs of Ahmadnagar, by a tiny image of himself worn in a copper case round her neck, or set among the household gods, and by the expenditure of money in charity.230.1 But the spirit of a dead wife is more troublesome. Her character for jealousy and malice is perhaps partly due to confusion with a woman dead in childbirth or pregnancy, or who has never had a child. A ghost of this kind is greatly dreaded.230.2 The ghosts of ordinary married women are, however, not to be despised. They perform all sorts of unpleasant tricks on the survivors, not the least of which are the attacks they make on their successors in their husbands’ affections. Happily these attacks can be warded off by a judicious homage to the departed or a pretended identification of the deceased with her successor. Thus among the Gaddis, a Hindu sect in the Panjab, when the first wife dies the second wears a silver plate called saukan mora, or crown of the rival wife. This plate represents the deceased, and is propitiated to avert her hostility.230.3 Indeed, the practice is not confined to one sect: it is common to several of the castes. The widower hangs a miniature portrait of his former wife, or even her name engraved on a silver or gold plate, about the new bride’s neck. The object, it has been suggested, is to humour the spirit of the first wife by identifying her with the second, thus proving the husband’s fidelity. In the Central Panjab, on the other hand, the bride is dressed as a milkmaid, or a flower-seller, and given a servile nickname, apparently to convince the spirit of the deceased that the girl being married is not a real wife, but a slave-girl. When the death of the second wife shows that the device has been unsuccessful, a mock-marriage of the bridegroom to a tree or a sheep, adorned like a bride, is resorted to before his marriage with a woman. “It is interesting to watch the bedecked sheep sitting on the khárás (reversed baskets) with a bridegroom and being led by him round the sacrificial fire, while the real bride sits by.” Here it is doubtless intended to fix the attention of the deceased upon the tree or the sheep, and so leave the real wife free from her jealousy. After the death of the third wife the evil influence of the first is deemed to be exhausted.231.1 The Lets of Bengal, who are also Hindus in religion, permit their widows to marry again, though not by the rite for a virgin-bride. The second husband is usually a widower; and he places the iron bangle of his former wife on his new wife’s arm.231.2 So in Baroda a widower who marries again has to present to his new wife a neck-ornament with marks to represent the feet of his first wife. She will wear this to prevent the ghost of the latter from troubling her.231.3