Note 354.1 — Chapter XIV · MARRIAGE RITES.

The meaning of this extension of the rite must be interpreted by its meaning when limited to husband and wife, and both by reference to the rites of kinship. It is not merely assent to the marriage on the part of the guests. It is indeed that; but assent, though, as we shall see, very necessary, may be obtained and given in other ways. To understand its full force we must turn back to some of the examples I have cited. By sitting and eating with her husband, the Santal maiden “ceases to belong to her father’s tribe, and becomes a member of her husband’s family.” The Ho and the Múnda bride and bridegroom, drinking the blended liquor from their two cups, become of one kili. But the woman who enters her husband’s kili, or clan, becomes related to all its members. Becoming of one flesh with him, she becomes of one flesh with all of his kindred. This is implicitly recognised among the Amils of Sindh, where the bridegroom and all his female friends are marked with vermilion by the officiating Brahman.354.1 Among the Bodos and the Kochh of Bengal it would seem to be the rule for two women to accompany the bridegroom and his friends in their procession to the bride’s house. These women it is who, penetrating to her apartment, anoint her head with oil mixed with red lead, prior to her being presented to her husband.354.2 Conversely, the Santal bridegroom in some districts, after reaching the bride’s village, is stripped by her clanswomen, and by them bathed and dressed in new garments properly stained with vermilion.354.3 When, among the Mál Paháriás, the bridegroom has daubed the bride with sindur, the compliment is returned not by her but by her maidens, who adorn his forehead with seven red spots.354.4 The analogy to the blood-covenant is in these cases carried to the point of identity. The same may be conjectured with some probability to be the effect of marriage on the island of Bonabe in Micronesia, where the wife is tattooed with the marks representing her husband’s ancestors.354.5 Ellis describes the female relatives of a bride and bridegroom in the Society Islands as cutting their faces, receiving the flowing blood on a piece of native cloth, and depositing the cloth, “sprinkled with the mingled blood of the mothers of the married pair, at the feet of the bride.” And he tells us in so many words that the rite removed any inequality of rank that might have existed between them, and that “the two families to which they respectively belonged were ever afterwards regarded as one.”355.1