In Circassia, weddings are accompanied by a feast, in the midst of which the bridegroom has to rush in, and, with the help of a few daring young men, carry off the lady by force, and by this process she becomes his lawful wife. Accord ing to Spencer, another important part of the ceremony consists in the bridegroom draviing his dagger and cutting open the bride's corset. Mr. Lecky tells us (i. p. 338) that amongst the Greeks and the Romans, the bride was girt with a girdle, which the bridegroom unloosed in the nuptial bed, and hence zonam solvere became a proverbial expression for pudicitiam mulieris imminuere. .
Among the Kalmuk, Dr. Hell tells us that, after the price of the girl has been duly•agreed on, when the bridegroom comes with his friends to carry off his bride, a sham resistance is always made by the people Of her camp, in spite of which she fails not to be borne away on a richly-capar isoned horse, with loud shouts and feu-de-joie.
Amongst some of the Mongol tribes, the girl mounts on horseback and flees, pursued by the lover, who only detains her as a wife if he over take her. The girl is first mounted, and rides off at full speed. Her lover pursues ; if he overtake her, she becomes his wife ; after this she returns with him to his tent. But it sometimes happens that the woman does not wish to marry the person .by whom she is pursued ; in which case Dr. Clark was assured that no instance occurs of a Kalmuk girl being thus caught, unless she have a partiality to the pursuer. Among the Tungus and Kamtskadale, says Ernaii, a matri monial engagement is not definitely arranged and concluded until the suitor has 'got the better of his beloved by force, and has torn her clothes. Attacks on women are not allowed to be avenged by blood, unless they take place within the court or house. The man is not regarded as to blame, if the woman have ventured to leave her natural place, the sacred and protecting hearth. Pallas observes that in his time, marriage. by capture prevailed also among the Samoyede. • Major Dalton mentions (p. 233) that among the Kol of Central India, when the price of a girl has been arranged; the bridegroom and a large party of his friends of both sexes enter with much singing and dancing, and seeming fighting, in the village of the bride, where they meet the bride's party, and are hospitably entertained. Occasionally, a few of the young man's friends assemble outside the fields where the women are at work, and rush on them to capture the- girl'he has fixed on, carrying her off from amongst the labourers, though a defeat and rescue are not uncommon. Kurku girls in Central India go through the form of preventing the removal of a bride. When they get near enough
to the cavaliers, they pelt them with balls of boiled rice, then coyly retreat, followed, of course, by the young men ; but the girls make a stand at the door of the bride's house, and suffer none to enter till they have paid toll in presents to the bridesmaids.
The Gond of Nimarerve for a wife, but prac tise forcible abduction of the bride, with a mock fight. They are polygamic. Mandla Gond have the Lamjana Shadi, in which the betrothed lad serves an apprenticeship for his future wife. A Gond girl, however, may exercise her own will and run off with a man, but it is quite allowable for her first cousin, or the man whom she has deserted, to 'abduct her from the man whom she has chosen. Their Shadi Bandhone is a com pulsory marriage. In their Shadi Baitho, a woman goes to a man's house. Widows re-marry either to a younger brother of the deceased husband, or to some other man. The men and women of the Gond along the banks of the Wardha river are never associated in their labour, but work at a distance apart. A Gond having ascertained that an adjacent village has a girl, whom he would like, goes with some friends to the place where she is working, and rushes to seize her. His companions will not aid him to carry her away by force, unless he, unaided, succeed in touching her band before she reach the shelter of her village. The women often contest every inch of the ground with their pursuers, inflict very serious hurt, and often shameful defeats. The touching by the bridegroom. once effected, the marriage contract is complete, and cannot be broken. • But the contest continues even after the bridegroom has touched the bride's hand ; and if the fight has drawn to the skirts of the village, the men join the women, and pursue dui runners back to their own village.
Writing of the Khand race of Orissa, Major General (Sir John) Campbell says that on one occasion he heaid loud cries proceeding from a village close at hand. Fearing some quarrel, he rode to the spot, and there he saw a man bearing away upon his back something enveloped in an ample covering of scarlet cloth ; he was surrounded by 20 or 30 young fellows, and by them protected from the desperate attack made upon him by a party of young women. On seeking an explana tion of this novel scene, he was told that the man had just been married, and his precious burden was his blooming bride, whom he was conveying to his own village. Her youthful friends were seeking to regain possession of her, and hurled ' stones and bamboos at the head of the devoted bridegroom, until he reached the confines of his own village.