"The visit is soon returned by the girls. They are
received by the young men in their Darbar and
entertained, and the girls of the receiving village
must not be seen....
"They have certainly more wit, more romance, and more
poetry in their composition than is usually found among
the country folk in India."
LIBERTY OF CHOICE
All this may indeed be "marvellously pretty and romantic," but I fail
to see the least indication of the "higher emotions." Nor can I find
them in some further interesting remarks regarding the Hos made by the
same author (192-93). Thirty years ago, he says, a girl of the better
class cost forty or fifty head of cattle. Result--a decrease in the
number of marriages and an increase of immoral intimacies. Sometimes a
girl runs away with her lover, but the objection to this is that
elopements are not considered respectable.
"It is certainly not from any yearning for celibacy
that the marriage of Singbhum maidens is so long
postponed. The girls will tell you frankly that they do
all they can to please the young men, and I have often
heard them pathetically bewailing their want of
success. They make themselves as attractive as they
can, flirt in the most demonstrative manner, and are
not too coy to receive in public attentions from those
they admire.
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