REMBAU HISTORY, ETC. 87 
are exempt, as thelr possession would be a matter of noto- 
riety. The debts of a bridegroom must similarly be declared, 
or the wife may repudiate her liability therein. The necessity 
for the declaration arises from the fact that the wife obtains 
no permanent interest in property thus settled upon her. 
She has the use only during married life. On divorce or 
death property brought by him on marriage reverts to the 
husband, or his tamily. 
There is no dowry in Rembau. Custom speaks of the 
“ acquisitions”? of a husbaad on marriage, (pendapatan), but 
he obtains no rights whatever over the separate estate of his 
wife. Pendapatan means, not a dowry, but the bevefits 
accruing to aman on marriage, and may be confined to his 
daily rice, and the roof over his head. 
But if the responsibility for a husband’s welfare rests 
with his wife, his relative position is one of inferiority. He 
is at the beck and eall of his relations by marriage ;* his 
mother-in-law boasts that she can find some use for any sort 
of son—-the clever may be cajoled, and the fool bullied: the 
blind man can be put to pound the rice: the cripple to mind 
the pad: drying in the sum: the deaf to fire the cannon and 
the braggart to take the hard knocks. 
The mother’s predominance in the home is patent to her 
children and has prevented the growth of a sincere filial 
affection for the father. The attitude of children to their 
father is one of toleration tempered by as much sentiment as 
is expressed in the dictum that “ after all they are of his flesh 
and blood:”’? a reflection which pales before the fact that 
the © life and blood” of the father is the care not of the 
children, but of their paternal grand-mother or aunts. 
The use of the term “ cherat”’ is not confined, as is the 
word divorce, to an urnatural severence of the marriage tie: 
but extends also to dissolution of marriage by the death of 
either party, (cherat matt) as well as to separation during the 
life-time of both, (cheraz hidop). 
(1) vide App. I. Sayings XLVII, XLVIII. 
(2) vide App. I. Saying XXXVI. 
R, A. Soc., No. 56, I9I0, 
No dowry 
in Rembau, 
The married 
man in his 
home. 
Attitude of 
children to 
their father. 
Meaning of 
EINn@ % @Dinn 
‘* cherat”’ dis- 
solution of the 
marriage tie. 
