7& 
FASCICULI MALATENSES 
conducted in procession by the bridegroom’s parents to his old home, where 
they live until he can afford to have a house of his own. The bridegroom, 
however, cannot force the bride to leave her parents, though her refusal to do 
so is considered a valid ground for regular divorce, the man receiving back 
the wedding present. 
These customs refer more particularly to the peasants, and among the 
nobility weddings are very much more elaborate affairs, especially when both 
parties are of royal blood. A reigning raja cannot marry a commoner 
in person, bnt sends a proxy wearing the royal kris , who conducts the bride 
to the royal residence and hands her over to her husband. The royal kris , 
sent to a commoner who has a daughter, means that the raja demands the 
said daughter as a kind of secondary wife (she is called bint —the ordinary 
term for * wife),’ who occupies a higher position than an ordinary concubine 
(gondt) but is not called isiri t or consort, and it is to this kind of secondary 
wife that the limitation of seven, noted above, properly belongs. 
Good Mahommedans refrain from intercourse with women on the eve 
of the first day of the month of fasting, which is otherwise very little observed 
in the Patani States, and on the eves of certain other Mahommedan ‘great days’ 
(hart raya). Otherwise, restrictions of the kind only apply to persons whose 
occupation entails upon them an elaborate series of * prohibitions * {pantang) y 
except that a man may not approach a woman during her menses (in Jalor 
Malay, buian bttan y or, more politely, hart yang paya, ‘ the difficult days).* In 
the case of a pregnant woman it is believed that coition between the fortieth 
day, at about which date it is said that pregnancy can first be diagnosed, and 
the fifth month would cause the embryo to be ‘ spoilt * (rSsak). 
In some families in the Patani States, notably in that of the rajas of Jalor 
(which is said to be of recent Siamese origin, though it is now Mahommedan), 
the men exhibit a certain diffidence in the presence of their mothers-in-law 
and wives* sisters, never speaking to them except on important matters or 
when politeness requires a brief answer to a question, and often leaving the 
apartment which they enter. A man is said to be ‘ ashamed in the presence 
of his mother-in-law' (main dtdapan mentuab ). The position that the 
mother-in-law holds towards her daughter’s husband in Malay folklore is 
well illustrated by the Jalor legend of the mouse deer. 1 
Funeral Customs 
The modes of disposing of the dead are most varied among the Malayo- 
Siamese of the Patani States, including interment, tree-burial and cremation ; 
i. Both the it iJan at Jalor a mu red ui that menstruation rarely occurred before the age of fifteen, never before 
that of fourteen. 
1. An tea, fart I, p. lot. 
