Next Morning, The Reception Hall In The Lower Story Is Made Ready For The Ceremony. The Floor Is Thickly Covered With Cow-Dung, And, Right In The Middle Of The Room A Square Is Traced With White Chalk, In Which Is Placed A High Pedestal, With The Statue Of The Goddess.

The patriarch of the family brings the goat, and, holding him by the horns, lowers his head to salute the goddess.

After this, the "old" and young women sing marriage hymns, tie the legs of the goat, cover his head with red powder, and make a lamp smoke under his nose, to banish the evil spirits from round him. When all this is done, the female element puts itself out of the way, and the patriarch comes again upon the stage. He treacherously puts a ration of rice before the goat, and as soon as the victim becomes innocently absorbed in gratifying his appetite, the old man chops his head off with a single stroke of his sword, and bathes the goddess in the smoking blood coming from the head of the animal, which he holds in his right arm, over the idol. The women sing in chorus, and the ceremony of betrothal is over.

The ceremonies with the astrologers, and the exchange of presents, are too long to be described. I shall mention only, that in all these ceremonies the astrologer plays the double part of an augur and a family lawyer. After a general invocation to the elephant- headed god Ganesha, the marriage contract is written on the reverse of the horoscopes and sealed, and a general blessing is pronounced over the assembly.

Needless to say that all these ceremonies had been accomplished long ago in the family to whose marriage party we were invited in Bagh. All these rites are sacred, and most probably we, being mere strangers, would not have been allowed to witness them. We saw them all later on in Benares - thanks to the intercession of our Babu. - - - - -

When we arrived on the spot, where the Bagh cere-mony was celebrated, the festivity was at its height. The bridegroom was not more than fourteen years old, while the bride was only ten. Her small nose was adorned with a huge golden ring with some very brilliant stone, which dragged her nostril down. Her face looked comically piteous, and sometimes she cast furtive glances at us. The bridegroom, a stout, healthy-looking boy, attired in cloth of gold and wearing the many storied Indra hat, was on horseback, surrounded by a whole crowd of male relations.

The altar, especially erected for this occasion, presented a queer sight. Its regulation height is three times the length of the bride's arm from the shoulder down to the middle finger. Its materials are bricks and white-washed clay. Forty-six earthen pots painted with red, yellow and green stripes - the colors of the Trimurti - rose in two pyramids on both sides of the "god of marriages" on the altar, and all round it a crowd of little married girls were busy grinding ginger.

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