1893.] S. C. Das— Marriage Customs of Tibet. 11 



which consists of the kinsmen and relations of the bridegroom, carrying 

 with them presents of clothes for the bride, and provisions for the mar- 

 riage entertainment, proceed on an auspicious day to fetch the bride 

 from the house of her father. The friends of the bride erect nine stone 

 cairns called tJio-do in the way, each about a hundred yards apart from, 

 the other. The bridegroom's party wait at the ninth tlio-do which is 

 farthest from the house of the bride's father, and in the hearing of the 

 bride's friends, who come to meet them there, describe the personal 

 beauty and accomplishments of the bride and the bridegroom, and also 

 pointing to the tho-do say that it is the first barrier that the demons 

 have set up and that it bars their way like a mountain. If they depart 

 from the customary description of the gods and the demons, or commit 

 any mistake in the manner of describing the tho-do, the friends of the 

 bride become angry and break clown the mound. Then the bridegroom's 

 party must apologise and again describe the mound and the couple to be 

 united. In this manner they halt at every one of the tho-do and describe 

 them according to the custom of the country. At the last tho-do which 

 is consecrated to the gods, they sing the praise of the bride, her parents 

 and their tutelary deity, and say that as they have come thus far after 

 having surmounted the nine valleys and nine mountains (la-gu and 

 lung-gu) they hope that the gods will help them in their mission. 



At the house of the bride's father they are received with kindness 

 and entertained with tea, chang, barley flour and the three kinds of 

 meat, cooked, dry and raw. They present a milch yak with her calf 

 to the bride's mother as the price of the bride, called mi-rin (price of 

 the mother's milk), and also two milch yaks to the father as the 

 nah-rin (price for (his) back). They also make presents of money and 

 scarves to the relations of the bride's parents, and return to the bride- 

 groom's house with the bride and her dowry, &c. 



Preliminaries op Marriage in U, Tsang and Sikkim. 



Parents generally arrange for the marriage of their sons and 

 daiighters, when they have passed the age of puberty. At the outset 

 of a marriage proposal, it is necessary for the parties to be furnished 

 with the names of the years in which they and their respective 

 parents were born. This is considered essential for the purpose of 

 ascertaining the thun-tsi calculation of the harmonious conditions of 

 marriage in the parties to be united. For this object two or three 

 astrologers are employed to arrive at independent results, working on 

 different astrological data. 



The application to astrologers for calculation is generally accompanied 

 by some presents, consisting of sum-tshan (articles of three varieties), a 



