Vol. X, No. 9.] Marriage Customs of the Cochin Castes. 309 

 [N.S.] 



things in the community did not quite satisfy the sentiments 

 of the educated public. There was a loud cry for reform 

 and legislation in British Malabar. The Madras Government 

 appointed a commission which, after its protracted labours, 

 enacted a permissive law, Act IV of 1896. The main provi- 

 sions of the Bill are, that, when a sambandham has been 

 registered, it shall have the incidence of a legal marriage; 

 that is to say, the wife and children shall be entitled to 

 maintenance by the husband or father respectively and to 

 succeed to half his self-acquired property if he dies intestate, 

 while the parties to such a sambandham cannot register a 

 second one during its continuance. The law does not extend 

 to the State. The fewness of the number of marriage registra- 

 tion shows how little the Nayars, as a community, have 

 availed themselves of it. The principal objections urged against 

 it are: — (1) that it ignores caste and customary restrictions on 

 marriage and thereby interferes with caste ; (2) that it sanctions 

 what according to social usage is deemed to be incestuous 

 marriage ; (3) that marriage before the Registrar is obnoxious to 

 the people, and that no one has any scruples about going 

 through the customary form; (4) that the provisions relating 

 to divorce are ill-adapted to the present state of Society in 

 Malabar, and that revelations of conjugal infidelity in public 

 courts are the most repulsive to the people ; (5) that the 

 provisions relating to the giving of the whole of the self- 

 acquired property to wives and children amount to violent 

 interference with the customary law. 



The mass of the people continued to regard the marriage 

 law with aversion and suspicion, and even the educated 

 members of the communitv who are in favour of the measure, 

 shrink from taking advantage of it from fear of offending 

 the elderly members of their tarwads (families), and all the 

 powerful Nambuthiris and other great landlords. The Regis- 

 trar of Calicut also points out, that the power conferred by 

 the marriage law, to make provision for one's own wife and 

 children, has hitherto acted as some inducement to persons 

 to register their sambandhams , but as Act V of 1898 enables 

 the followers of the M arumakkathayam law to attain this 

 object without registering their sambadhams, and " unneces- 

 sarily curtailing their liberty of action, and risking the chance 

 of divorce proceeding," he thinks it unlikely that registration 

 under the marriage law would increase in future. 



Polygamy.— Among Hindus, though the Shastras allow 

 polygamy, BrahmaDS, as a rule, are monogamous; but the 

 custom is still in force among the Nambuthiris of Malabar, 

 Cochin and Travancore ; and a Nambuthiri can have as many 

 as four wives. He resorts to this either when the first wife is 

 barren or sickly or to dispose of the superfluous daughters 

 and sisters. Among the Tamul Brahmans and other higher 



