Storia do Mogor 257.6

257.6

When all the ceremonies have been performed, the newly-married man allows his wife to go back to her father's house, and he returns to his own abode accompanied by his relations. But the father and mother-in-law do not deliver their daughter to their son-in-law until she has attained puberty. This event is celebrated with all possible solemnity and even greater obscenity. Without offending Christian modesty, it is impossible to state what they say and do on such occasions. This is why I shall pass over in silence their conduct on such a day. I will merely say that the bride is shut up for twelve days in a little room outside the house, where no one may enter. There her food is pushed in at the room door. I will not repeat all the gross and coarse things said by the Brahman women and girls who collect there during the twelve days. These they utter not only in the house, but in the street, and that not only to each other, but to anybody passing along the road, whether known to them or unknown. No reproof or direction to hold their tongues comes from the fathers or husbands, in spite of their disapproving it. Yet no one stops the women, for they say it is the custom of their caste, which no one has the power to alter.