Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 7.djvu/98

party may annul the marital union at will, without awarding any compensation ; and, as its infraction is easy and simple, so is its institution. Nor is there any rigid inquiry as to the antecedents of either party. It is an affair of mutual arrangement, attended with little formality. Proceeding to the girl's house, accompanied by a few friends, the intending husband takes with him a couple of cloths, one for the girl, and the other for her mother. In parts of North Malabar, the Tiyan women wear an ornament called chittu (ring) in a hole bored in the top of the helix of each ear. The holes are bored in childhood, but the chittu is not worn until the girl forms a marital union with a man. The chittus are made on the spot at the time, in the marriage pandal erected for the occasion, the girl's uncle providing the gold. They are never removed during life, except in cases of dire distress. "To sell chittu" is equivalent to having become a pauper. It is supposed that, in olden days, the marriage ceremonies lasted over seven days, and were subsequently reduced to seven meals, or three and a half days, and then to one day. Now the bridegroom remains the first night at the bride's house, and then takes her to his home. Before they leave, a cocoanut, the outer husk of which has been removed, is placed on a stool of pala wood, and one of the bridegroom's party must smash it with his fist. Some of the more orthodox in North Malabar observe the formality of examining horoscopes, and a ceremony equivalent to the conjee-drinking ceremony which has been described, called achāra kaliāna, and the payment of kanam in the shape of forty-one fanams, instead of forty-two as in South Malabar. In connection with fanams it may be noted that the old gold fanam is reckoned as worth four annas, whereas five silver or velli fanams make a rupee. Everywhere