This chapter will be devoted to the description of Hindoo marriage with all its numerous peculiarities. It assumes such a different aspect from that of this country, and contains such a host of absurd forms quite new to the Christian people, that I should like to detail it distinctly as it is. Marriage is regarded by the Hindoos as a sacred condition of human life, and essentially necessary to meet both our temporal and spiritual wants. Notwithstanding all the benevolent and charitable acts of life, the sanctity of the heart’s thoughts and all the purities of the soul, a Hindoo requires something else to redeem his spirit after death. It is believed that after the departure of the last breath from the body, or, in a Hindoo mode of thought, after the return of the five elements which compose the human body to their respective homes, the vital spirit invisibly walks round the house until some one of the male members of the family exorcise it by a peculiar ceremony. Hence arises the need of matrimony and its efficacy as tending to the spiritual benefit of man. In India a man and woman must marry. It is expressedly a divine ordinance and a violation of it is by no means an act for commendation. The ceremonies performed by every male offspring are requisite for the redemption of the Hindoo parents; hence when a man sees his wife the mother of girls only, or of no children at all, he is required by his religious law and for the safety of the soul to marry more wives until his demand has been met or ambition gratified. But it ought to be observed here, that the necessity of offspring does not entitle a woman to marry a second time, even in her widowhood, for her step-son would do just as well for her spiritual wants. Sometimes we see a man here and there who spends a bachelor life, either through an inability to support a family or from some vicious character of his own or his parents. For if a single member of a family should be found guilty of some abominable practice, such as adultery, theft, murder, irreverence to the Brahmuns, intoxication, or violation of caste regulations in eating or marrying low caste, the family would be outcasted; people, even the nearest relative, would withhold any social intercourse whatever in order to avoid the equal fate of the sinner. To intermarry with an outcasted family is out of the question; even the family barber and washerman withdraw their services. How far this contagion troubles our people, the following incident will show to the curious and inquisitive. A young Brahmun married a girl, in our village, whose mother was the daughter of a Brahmun of a low order, or more distinctly a priest of the fishermen, and whose poor father was outcasted on that account. In course of time, through entreaties, the Brahmuns took pity upon him, and agreed that he should be allowed to dine with them provided he should sit at a distance from them, and, what is the greatest of all favors, that _they_ would eat