MARITAL JEALOUSY 167 



and influence and conduce to the interest of the 

 children who, having a plurality of fathers, will be 

 the better taken care of and will still have a father left 

 even though they lose one. The children call all the 

 husbands father, distinguishing the eldest as " great 

 father" the others as "little fathers." "Chastity," 

 says a writer of the early part of the last century, " is 

 not a virtue in very high estimation amongst the 

 Singalese women, nor jealousy a very troublesome 

 passion amongst the men. Infidelity certainly is not 

 uncommon ; and it is easily forgiven, unless the lady 

 disgrace herself by forming a low-caste attachment, 

 which is considered unpardonable and always ends 

 in divorce." 1 Among the Kannuvans of Madura 

 on the mainland a woman may only have one legal 

 husband at a time ; but she may " bestow favours 

 on paramours without hindrance, provided they be of 

 equal caste with her." 2 



Throughout India the proper marriage for a boy is 

 deemed to be with his father's sister's daughter or his 

 mother's brother's daughter ; and in the wedding 

 ceremonies of many tribes and castes among which it 

 is no longer insisted on vestiges are found of the 

 custom. 3 Some castes, however, are very punctilious 

 and will even marry together a boy who is a mere 

 child and a full-grown woman who stands in the 

 necessary relationship to him. This may, in some 

 Indian cases, be the origin of the ill-assorted marriages 

 of the kind referred to in a previous chapter. 4 The 

 Tottiyans or Kambalattars (Telugu cultivators of the 



1 Davy, 286; Thurston, 112. 



2 Mayne, 74, quoting Madura Manual, pt. ii. 34. 



3 W. H. R. Rivers,/. R. A. S. 1907, 6n sqq. 



4 Supra, vol. i. p. 305. 



