Vol. X, No. 9 ] Marriage Customs of the Cochin Castes. 303 



[N.S.] 



or abets such a marriage is liable to be punished with imprison- 

 ment up to six months. No restriction is placed upon infant 



marriages between the age of eight and fourteen. The law ifl 

 mainly intended to stop the practice of aged widowers from 

 marrying child wives. Any man who has completed 55 years 

 of age marries a girl who has not completed fourteen years 

 of age, is liable to be punished with fine or imprisonment, 

 which may extend to two years, or with both. 1 



Ten years after the passing of the above regulation in 

 Mysore, a similar legislation was enacted in the progressive 

 State of Baroda, according to which the age limit of girls was 

 fixed at twelve as against eight in Mysore. But there is a 

 clause in the Baroda Act authorizing the marriage of girl 

 between nine and twelve after obtaining exemption from the 

 Government of His Highness the Maharaja. The Act shows 

 that the present legislation in Baroda is much more advanced 

 than in Mysore, and is far ahead of the current notions and 

 practices among the people at large.' 2 There is at present a 

 general feeling among the Hindus of all castes in the State, as 

 in other parts of India, to defer the marriage of their daugh- 

 ters to as late as possible, and avoid the danger of a life- 

 long misery. 



Fortunately in the Cochin State, the marriage of Tamul 

 and Konkani Brahmans is mostly between twelve and fourteen 

 and gives no room for comment. Among the Nambuthiri 

 Brahmans there is a large percentage of unmarried girls at 

 the ages of 12 and 20, and this illustrates two peculiarities of 

 their social system. The first is that the women marry after 

 puberty ; the eldest alone of a Nambuthiri family marries in 

 his own caste, while the junior members form Sambandham 

 alliance with the women of other castes. Consequently, the 

 difficulty of procuring a husband for the daughter of a 

 Nambuthiri is very great. He has to pay a heavy price for 

 securing a bridegroom. In other cases he either allows an 

 exchange of daughters in matrimonial alliances between two 

 females, or takes two or three wives in exchange to get rid of 

 his superfluous daughters. Further he possesses a singularly 

 efficient safeguard of morality in their custom of outcasting 

 all men, implicated by a fallen woman, whose statements as to 



her lovers are conclusive. 3 



The necessity of early marriage and difficulty of its early 

 accomplishment being more urgent on the side of the bride 

 than that of the bridegroom, the question may be viewed 

 from the standard of a parent anxious to marry his daughter. 

 (1) The girl must not have attained puberty; (2) the horo- 

 scopes of the bride and bridegroom must have already agreed; 



* & * Census of India, 1911, vol. xvi, part I, page 153. 



* Cochin Tribes and Castes, vol ii, pages 308-309. 



