778 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lets liis liair grow as lie desires to wear it. The girls cease to 

 play and laugli with the boys, observe a more strict and graver 

 walk, and more usually keep to the house. 



Betrothals take place, in the presence of both families, one or 

 two years before the marriage. They consist of a repast partici- 

 pated in in common by all the connection, and in the proclamation 

 of the engagement which the two families have made to unite 

 their children. As the diviners have named the most favorable 

 day for the betrothal, they also designate the most suitable one 

 for the celebration of the marriage. This ceremony takes place, 

 like the former one, in the presence of both the contracting fami- 

 lies, the kindred, and the neighbors. It includes presents made 

 by the groom to the parents of the bride, the offer of betel and 

 areca nuts, the invocation of ancestors, and the cJiang day or bind- 

 ing of the wrists, a curious ceremony which all the parents per- 

 form by attaching cotton threads around the left wrist, in token, 

 I suppose, of the bonds which will hereafter exist between the 

 members of the two families. Besides this a present of sam- 

 pots, silver bars, or money is made by the friends of the groom to 

 the mother of the bride, in consideration of the care she bestowed 

 on her daughter in her infancy. This has been improperly, perhaps, 

 styled the price of the girl ; if not a proof of her purchase by the 

 groom, it is certainly a relic of the customs of a period when the 

 woman was bought by the one who married her, and the price 

 paid to the mother. I say to the mother, not to the father, be- 

 cause the present is in reality made to her, and not to the head of 

 the family ; a very important fact, which with others that I shall 

 adduce attests to the existence in the past of the matriarchate 

 among the Khmers. 



I find traces of this state of society in this fact, that the price 

 of the " nursing milk," as it is called, is paid to the mother ; and 

 also in the much more lasting and profound respect had by the 

 son for his mother, and in the general and uncontested prin- 

 cij^le that the woman put away by her husband has the right to 

 take her children with her. I might add, too, in support of this 

 view that it is the custom, always observed, for the father not to 

 consent to a marriage which the mother opposes, and not to 

 pledge a child without the consent of its mother ; then there is 

 the instinctive horror, much more marked than when the father 

 is the victim, which Cambodians feel at the thought of a child 

 beating its mother. One of the most conclusive proofs appears in 

 the word for cousin-german, which when analyzed means brother- 

 grandmother, or brother by the same grandmother, but never 

 brother by the same grandfather. This affords an almost incon- 

 testable trace of an ancient social regime when relationship fol- 

 lowed the female line. 



