FASCICULI MALATENSES 
73 
large number of concubines, and as a rule he has only one wife, a lady of rank, 
who would brook no rival to her position, and not more than five or six other 
occupants of his barim. For a raja to make concubines of the maidservants 
of his household is considered most unfitting, and the social position of a 
raja’s concubine is lower and less enviable than that of a commoner’s, because 
the raja, not being subject in the same degree to popular opinion as an ordinary 
man, may cast her off at any moment and often neglects to provide for her 
even while she is in his house, so that she may become, at first secretly 
and then openly, a common prostitute—a condition regarded as reflecting on 
her male relatives rather than herself. Among the lower classes, outside 
towns like Patani, concubinage, though a recognized institution, is even rarer 
than polygamy, and the children of such unions are regarded as of inferior 
social status to those born in lawful wedlock. Perhaps the least uncommon 
form of polygamy among the rice-cultivators is the simultaneous marriage of 
two sisters to one man—a family arrangement which is regarded as less con¬ 
ductive to discord than the keeping of two wives unrelated to one another. 
A man who has more than one wife is not bound either by law or by public 
opinion to provide a separate establishment tor each of them, but it is con¬ 
sidered prudent of him to do so. 
Divorce is very frequent, and although we found that a large proportion 
of the men whom we questioned had been content to forgo the privilege, 
others boasted that they made it a practice to cast off their wives at not very 
infrequent intervals. The Mahommedan rule prevails amongst the Malays, 
that a man may not re-marry a woman whom he has divorced three times, 
unless she has been married to someone else in the interval. A man may 
divorce his wife for any reason, or for none at all, hut unless she has deserted 
him, proved barren or unfaithful, he loses the present that he made to her 
parents before marriage. A women can also divorce her husband at will, 
provided that she pays him this gift back threefold ; but she generally prefers 
to induce him to divorce her, which he may do in a perfectly friendly manner, 
without attaching any stigma either to himself or to her. If a husband is 
absent for six months on land, or for nine months by'sea, his wife has the 
right to divorce him free, provided that he has not sent her money with which 
to support herself in the interval. 
The independent position held by women in the Patani States is not 
without its influence on married life, for a wife, by custom if not by law, is 
permitted to manage her own property, whether gained by her own exertions 
or inherited. Consequently it is considered by many young men a misfortune 
to marry a rich wife, as such a one is apt to be of a domineering nature. A 
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