Note 34 — RELIGION

A well-to-do Lhota usually has two or often three wives. Very occasionally a man will have four or even five. All are of equal status, though the oldest wife naturally occupies a position of some authority in the household. The husband usually sleeps with her in the middle room. It is forbidden for him to have connection with more than one wife on the same night. Possibly a vestige of a former system of group marriage is found in the custom of a Lhota who expects to be away from home for some time giving his brother permission to have marital relations with his wife during his absence.34 On a man’s death his widow or widows are expected to go to his brother, who will not, however, receive them into his house till all the ornaments on the dead man’s grave have been cleared away and he has finally gone to the Land of the Dead. A man who thus takes his dead brother’s wife performs no marriage ceremony and pays no marriage price. If the woman marries a man of another clan, the late husband’s clan realize from the new husband a marriage price equal to the original marriage price. If a woman does not wish to marry again she may keep one of her husband’s mithan heads instead of putting it on his grave. This is equivalent to a vow of perpetual widowhood.