Consummation is not necessary to complete a marriage. In thousands of cases girls under ten years of age have been married to males older than themselves who have died before their wives were old enough for the consummation of marriage. Such a situation has brought about the sad plight of the tens of thousands of child widows in India. If a girl of eight years of age is ceremoniously married to a man and immediately thereafter returns to her father's home to await the time when she shall be old enough to assume conjugal duties, she is from the moment the ceremony of marriage is completed a married woman, and if her husband dies the next day she is an eight-year-old widow whom no orthodox Hindu will marry. When the British first came to India it was a general practice for widows to voluntarily submit to be burned alive with the corpses of their deceased husbands. This savage practice was called a _suttee_, and by it millions of child and adult widows were burned to death. By a provision of the Indian Penal Code such a death is treated as a suicide, and all who participate in the offence are holden for homicide. We are glad to record that the British Government has so thoroughly enforced the law in this respect that _suttees_ have been entirely abandoned by the Hindus. CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY.--Baudhayana says: "He who inadvertently marries a girl sprung from the same original stock with himself must support her as a mother." Marriage between ascendants and descendants is unlawful. Marriage is also prohibited between a twice-born man and a woman who is of the same _gotra_, or primitive stock. The woman must not be the daughter of one who is of the same _gotra_ with the bridegroom's father or maternal grandfather. Neither must she be a _sapinda_ of the bridegroom's father or maternal grandfather. _Sapinda_ in the Hindu law means descended from ancestors within the sixth degree. That is, from persons in the ascending line within the seventh degree from the intending husband. The _sapinda_ relationship ceases after the fifth and seventh degrees from the father and mother respectively. A _Sudra_ has no _gotra_ of his own. DIVORCE.--Divorce in the ordinary sense is unknown to the Hindu law. The Hindus contend that even death does not dissolve the bond of marriage. The single case in which a dissolution of a Hindu marriage can be granted by a court of law is under Act XXI. of 1860, which was enacted to meet the complications which arise when one of the spouses becomes a Christian. If the convert, after deliberation for a prescribed time, refuses to cohabit further with the other spouse, the court may upon petition declare the marriage to be dissolved, and either party is free to marry again.