Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 267

THE MARRIAGE FEAST
Bananas, jack, and
other fruits
227
make up
the fourth course.
follows the kalavanta, which consists of four different
dishes all highly flavoured, and composed of various in-
To finish the repast a beverage
gredients mixed with rice.
is handed round composed of lime-juice, sugar, cardamom,
and aniseed mixed with water. The whole meal takes
place in absolute silence.
When all the guests have feasted they turn their atten-
tion to the meal for the newly married couple, not. for-
getting the necessary ceremonies connected with it. {First
of all the sacred fire is brought and placed before the dais
on which they are sitting. The husband rises and does
homam to the fire, whilst the purohita repeats mantrams.
Then the women form a procession, and singing take the
fire back to its original place?] The young married couple,
holding each other by the h^nd, go to the place where the
tutelary deity is reposing, and make a deep obeisance to it.
The husband then does puja to it, and offers as neiveddya
some cakes and boiled rice. They make a similar obei-
sance to the five little earthen vases placed near the deity,
in which are sown ten kinds of seeds, and sprinkle them
with water.
It is only after having gone through all these prelimi-
naries that the young married couple are allowed to partake
of the meal which has been specially prepared for them.
They sit down facing one another in the centre of the
pandal on two little stools, the bridegroom facing east.
Before them is spread a large banana leaf, and at each of
its four corners are placed four lamps made of ground rice
filled with oil, which are lighted, as well as many others all
round the pandal. Then the married women bring in on
two metal dishes the different viands which have been
prepared for the young couple, much singing and music
going on the while. After they have been helped, melted
butter is poured three times on to their fingers, and after
swallowing this they begin to eat their food together from
the same leaf \ To eat in this manner is a sign of the
Then
1
This custom is not observed nowadays in Hindu marriages, but the
bridegroom and bride exchange comestibles from each other's leaves.
When they live together afterwards the wife may, and does, eat off her
husband's leaf, after he has finished eating. Ed.