The Toda or Todawar (properly Tuda or Tuda vara) live in hamlets or' mund ' on the Neilgherry plateau. They never could have exceeded a few thousand, but they have diminished through opium eating and polyandria, and, at a former period, the prevalence among them of female infanticide. It is said that no girl has been destroyed since 1819, but their present numbers do not support this. Before marriage, young people associate. After marriage, the Toda wife, or if there be more than oue, all the wives, in a family of brothers are common to all the brothers.
According to Colonel Dalton (Trap. Ethn. Soc. vi. p. 25), the Khariah of Central India have no word for marriage in their own language, and the pairing appears to be little more than a sort of public recognition of the fact. The Badaga can scarcely be said to have any marriage ceremony. The Kurumbar tribe of the Neilgherry Hills have no marriage ceremonies ; but occasionally, when two have been living together for some time, they will enter into an agreement; in the presence of friends, to remain united for life ; and in a family where a succession of such unions has taken place, they will, once in two or three generations, perform a ceremony, and hold a festival in celebration of them. This is done by pouring pots of water over one another, the pairs seating themselves together for this purpose ; the ablution commencing with the seniors. They then put ou new clothes, and end the day in feasting and merriment.
The Dhor, leather-workers of the Dekhan, marry in their own tribe, making the marriage procession on a bullock ; they are not entitled to proceed on a horse. The Chamar in Aurangabad worship Mariamma and Sitla. They marry when under age, proceeding on foot to the goddess Sitla, whose shrine they circumambulate five times. The expense is about 100 rupees. Kol girls, till they are married, occupy at night the same house as their fathers and mothers. Boys and young men sleep in the Morang or town hall, and when a man marries, he and his bride leave the paternal roof, and form a separate home. The Kharriah bride and bridegroom, as part of the ceremony, are carried through the dances seated on the hips of two of their companions.
Santal are shy and superstitious. To obviate disputes between them and the lowlanders, the Government, in 1832, erected a boundary line of stone pillars ; but they fell into debt, and in 1855 a body of 30,000 men, armed with their bows and arrows, started to walk to Calcutta to lay their grievances before the Governor-General. But
they began to plunder, and, when checked, they went into open rebellion, and in putting it down many were slain. A simple form of govern ment was then introduced among them ; neverthe less, again, in 1881, a few of them took up arms to resist the census-taking. They dwell in villages of their own, apart from other inhabitants, and each hamlet is governed by a headman, assisted by a deputy and a watchman. The Santal bachelors are under a separate head. The young people select their own partners, and at the marriage ceremony the girl's relatives pound burning char coal with the household pestle, and extinguish it with water, in token of the breaking up of her former family ties. The dead are burned, and they float three portions of the skull down the Damuda river, the sacred stream of their race.
In Sumatra there were formerly three perfectly distinct kinds of marriage,—the Jugur, in which the man purchased the woman ; the Ambelanak, in which the woman purchased the man ; and the Temando, in which they joined on terms of equality. In marriage by Ambelanak, says Mars den, p. 262, the father of a virgin makes choice of some young man for her husband, generally from an inferior family, which renounces all further right to, or interest in him, and he is taken into the house of his father-in-law, who kills a buffalo on the occasion, and receives twenty dollars from his son's relations. After this, the buruk baik'nia (the good and bad of him) is invested >in the wife's family. If he murder or rob, they pay the bangun, or the fine, If he be murdered, they receive the bangun. They are liable for any debts he may contract in marriage, those prior to it remaining with his parents. He lives in the family in a state between that of a son and a debtor. He partakes as a son of what the house affords, but has no property in himself. His rice plantation, the produce of his pepper garden, with everything that he can gain or earn, belongs to the family. He is liable to be divorced at their and though he has children, must leave all and return naked as he came. The Temaudo is a regular treaty between the parties on the footing of equality. The adat paid to the girl's friends has usually been twelve dollars.