The following details relating to the marriage ceremonies are recorded in the Gazetteer of the Tanjore district. "The arrival of the bridegroom has been described as being sometimes especially ceremonious. Mounted on a horse, and attended by his maternal uncle, he is met by a youth from the bride's house, also mounted, who conducts the visitors to the marriage booth. Here he is given betel leaves, areca nuts, and a rupee by the bride's father, and his feet are washed in milk and water, and adorned with toe-rings by the bride's mother. The tali is suspended from a necklet of gold or silver instead of cotton thread, but this is afterwards changed to cotton for fear of offending the god Karuppan. A lamp is often held by the bridegroom's sister, or some married woman, while the tali is being tied. This is left unlighted by the Kallans for fear it should go out, and thus cause an evil omen. The marriage tie is in some localities very loose. Even a woman who has borne her husband many children may leave him if she likes, to seek a second husband, on condition that she pays him her marriage expenses. In this case (as also when widows are remarried), the children are left in the late husband's house. The freedom of the Kallan women in these matters is noticed in the proverb that, "though there may be no thread in the spinning-rod, there will always be a (tali) thread on the neck of a Kallan woman," or that "though other threads fail, the thread of a Kallan woman will never do so." By some Kallans pollution is, on the occasion of the first menstrual period, observed for seven or nine days. On the sixteenth day, the maternal uncle of the girl brings a sheep or goat, and rice. She is bathed and decorated, and sits on a plank while a vessel of water, coloured rice, and a measure filled with paddy with a style bearing a betel leaf struck on it, are waved before her. Her head, knees, and shoulders are touched with cakes, which are then thrown away. A woman, conducting the girl round the plank, pours water from a vessel on to a betel leaf held in her hand, so that it falls on the ground at the four cardinal points of the compass, which the girl salutes. A ceremony is generally celebrated in the seventh month of pregnancy, for which the husband's sister prepares pongal (cooked rice). The pregnant woman sits on a plank, and the rice is waved before her. She then stands up, and bends down while her sister-in-law pours milk from a betel or pipal (Ficus religiosa) leaf on her back. A feast brings the ceremony to a close. Among the Vellur-nadu Kallans patterns are said [52] to be drawn on the back of the pregnant woman with rice-flour, and milk is poured over them. The husband's sister decorates a grindstone in the same way, invokes a blessing on the woman, and expresses a hope that she may have a male child as strong as a stone.