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often a mock combat, and the binding and breaking 
of a. cord. The bridegroom is regarded and treated 
as a (temporary) king. 
Marriages are arranged, with many formalities, 
between the parents or near relations of the con- 
tracting parties, and a present of sir eh - leaves and 
of two rings is carried to the house of the bride’s 
parents. 
Whether the suitor, who does not appear in 
the negotiations, has seen his intended bride before 
the ceremony takes place depends a good deal upon 
the part of the country to which he belongs. In 
some neighbourhoods young girls are a good deal 
more shut up than in others, but in the more parti- 
cular districts the young man often manage to get 
a glimpse of the girl through a chink in the walls 
or flooring. It is only at a girl’s first wedding — the 
bridegroom may or may not have been married 
previously — that much ceremony is indulged in. 
The Malay, as a Mohammedan, is legally allowed 
the use of four wives at the same time and as 
divorce is easy for the man, an unsuitable wife is 
frequently put awa^' and replaced by another. A 
“ widow ” thus made frequently remarries after a 
few months. Very few Malay peasants support 
more than one wife at a time, but many young men 
marry several times before they finally settle down — 
and even then ! There are three degrees of divorce, 
the third being final and no . man can remarry a 
wife to whom he has given divorce in the third 
degree unless she has been married to somebody 
else first. In order to circumvent this Mohammedan 
law, husbands who have given such divorce to their 
wives, and repented of it, sometimes get another 
Malay, who is technically known a “blind Chinaman” 
to marry the divorced wife and then divorce her 
