relationship between them such as she herself might in a year or two have voluntarily initiated, satisfied that her children, if any, would be looked after. How long that relationship would last (and divorce is quite an everyday occurrence) would be no concern of hers, and she would not trouble herself further in the matter. The next woman whom her husband married would therefore be rendered safe: the “death” would have been taken off his body. In India the widows of the higher castes are not allowed to marry again. Among the aboriginal tribes {230} widows who do so often marry “under cover of darkness, and with the aid of certain ceremonies commonly relied upon as a protection against spirits.” If in spite of these precautions the woman should be troubled by her departed husband, he is placated, as among the Kolīs of Ahmadnagar, by a tiny image of himself worn in a copper case round her neck, or set among the household gods, and by the expenditure of money in charity.[230.1] But the spirit of a dead wife is more troublesome. Her character for jealousy and malice is perhaps partly due to confusion with a woman dead in childbirth or pregnancy, or who has never had a child. A ghost of this kind is greatly dreaded.[230.2] The ghosts of ordinary married women are, however, not to be despised. They perform all sorts of unpleasant tricks on the survivors, not the least of which are the attacks they make on their successors in their husbands’ affections. Happily these attacks can be warded off by a judicious homage to the departed or a pretended identification of the deceased with her successor. Thus among the Gaddis, a Hindu sect in the Panjab, when the first wife dies the second wears a silver plate called _saukan mora_, or crown of the rival wife. This plate represents the deceased, and is propitiated to avert her hostility.[230.3] Indeed, the practice is not confined to one sect: it is common to several of the castes. The widower hangs a miniature portrait of his former wife, or even her name engraved on a silver or gold plate, about the new bride’s neck. The object, it has been suggested, is to humour the spirit of the first wife by identifying her with the second, thus proving the husband’s fidelity. In the {231} Central Panjab, on the other hand, the bride is dressed as a milkmaid, or a flower-seller, and given a servile nickname, apparently to convince the spirit of the deceased that the girl being married is not a real wife, but a slave-girl. When the death of the second wife shows that the device has been unsuccessful, a mock-marriage of the bridegroom to a tree or a sheep, adorned like a bride, is resorted to before his marriage with a woman. “It is interesting to watch the bedecked sheep sitting on the _khárás_ (reversed baskets) with a bridegroom and being led by him round the sacrificial fire, while the real bride sits by.” Here it is doubtless intended to fix the attention of the deceased upon the tree or the sheep, and so leave the