46 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



to that in Selangor witnesses to the gradual breaking- 

 down under similar influences of the matrilineal system 

 formerly in force. Generally in the Patani States 

 "the bride and bridegroom are expected to take up 

 their abode in the house of the bride's parents ; but 

 the custom has now become largely ceremonial, and 

 as a rule they only stay a fortnight, after which they 

 are conducted in procession by the bridegroom's 

 parents to his old home, where they live until he 

 can afford to have a house of his own." Women, 

 however, have a very independent position ; and the 

 bridegroom " cannot force the bride to leave her parents, 

 though her refusal to do so is considered valid ground 

 for regular divorce, the man receiving back the wedding 

 present." 1 A similar ceremonial residence in the 

 bride's home is found among the Kaduppattans of 

 Cochin in the south of Hindustan. The protracted 

 marriage rites are begun in the house of the bride's 

 father and completed in the bridegroom's house. 

 The bride's father then takes the pair back to his 

 home, where they remain for twelve days, afterwards 

 returning to the bridegroom's. 2 Service for a bride 

 is by no means unusual among the tribes of Southern 

 India ; but such cases when the bridegroom does not 

 continue to reside after marriage in the wife's family 

 need not detain us. 3 



1 Annandale, Fasc. Mai. ii. 75. 



2 Ind. Cens. xx. 1901, 166. More protracted is the residence of 

 the young couple in the bride's father's house among the Mikirs, 

 where there is no bride-price but the bridegroom after marriage has 

 to work for his father-in-law for an agreed period (Stack, 18). 



3 Examples will be found in Thurston, 33. The custom among 

 the Shanars of Travancore by which all the bride's expenditure until 

 her first child is born is supplied from her father's house, where also 



