MOTHERRIGHT 305 



United Provinces (formerly the North-west Province), 

 have a low standard of sexual morality. In the 

 Muzaffarnagar district it is extremely rare for a 

 woman to live with her husband. " Almost invariably 

 she lives with another man ; but whoever he may be 

 the official husband is responsible for the children." 1 

 Among the Sumuwars, a cultivating tribe of Nepal, in 

 most cases girls are married after they are grown up 

 to men of their own choice ; and sexual intercourse 

 before marriage is tacitly recognised on the under- 

 standing that in the event of pregnancy the girl will 

 be married without delay. Divorce is permitted on 

 the ground of adultery or misconduct on the part of 

 the wife ; and divorced women may marry again in 

 the same manner as widows, that is to say, by simple 

 cohabitation without any ceremony at all. Their 

 children by the second husband are deemed legitimate. 

 In case of divorce the first husband usually keeps 

 his own children ; " but if the divorced wife is allowed 

 to take them with her, as sometimes happens, they 

 are treated as the children of her second husband." 2 

 Among the Reddies of Tinnevelly in Southern 

 India a young woman of sixteen or twenty years of 

 age is frequently married to a boy of five or six years 

 or even younger. She, however, lives with some 

 other man, a relative on the maternal side, perhaps 

 an uncle or cousin, but not with one of her father's 

 relatives. Occasionally it may be the boy-husband's 

 nominal father with whom she cohabits. Any children 



1 V. A. Smith, N. Ind N. and Q. i. 51 (par. 387). Mr. Vincent 

 Smith describes the Bawariyas as not a tribe but " a specially 

 organised predatory caste." The description in the text is 

 Mr. Crooke's(7>/fos and Castes, i. 228). 



2 Risley, ii. 282. 



