the common room, when she falls at her parents’ feet, begs their pardon, and asks for a blessing. The bride’s father takes the round loaf, with which the bridegroom’s father has already blessed him, and which has been brought for the purpose, and with it blesses his daughter, holding it over her head, and saying:
“May thy life be smooth, as this loaf is smooth. May thou be as rich as this loaf is rich in seeds. May thou be fruitful as this loaf is fruitful. Vedava hear us, and have mercy upon us.”
In the loaf there is a hole scooped out in the undercrust by the bridegroom before leaving home, but Mainoff was unable to discover its significance.[1] After receiving the parental blessing the bride is taken up under the arms and carried out of the apartment. In some places this is done by the nearest relatives of the bridegroom, in others by men of her own family, but in either case she resists by pinching and scratching her bearers. Formerly she seized the doorpost three times, and only at the third time, when the best man had struck it with a sword close to where she was holding on, did she loosen her grasp. Nowadays she seizes thrice in succession the tie-beam, the door of the room, or the doorpost of the porch. The best man and the bridegroom’s relations loosen her hands and try to carry her in such a way that she can seize nothing. However, a quick girl can grasp something oftener than three times, and tries her utmost to oppose being carried away; for her comrades praise the more she resists, and extol her dexterity and her love for her parents’ house. At last she is conveyed out of the house, when all halt and bow to the gate, for there or in the courtyard is the abode of the god that protects the dwelling-house. The following prayer is made to him:
- ↑ Compare the hole made in an omelette by the bridegroom in Ralston, op. cit., p. 281.
