[Marriage rules.] 6. The totemistic septs are exogamous, and in addition the children of the mother’s brother, the sister and father’s sister are barred. Polygamy is permitted only when the first wife is barren, and then the consent of the Chaudhari and clansmen is required. The marriage age is ten or twelve for boys and girls. The bride-price is two rupees, and is invariably fixed by caste custom. No physical defect subsequently ascertained can annul a marriage; but both parties are carefully examined by the relatives before the engagement is made. A man may divorce his wife if he discovers that she is a witch, and habitual adultery on the part of husband and wife justifies divorce with the leave of the council. Women who have been divorced can marry again, but the general feeling is against the practice, and it is not allowed in respectable families. The institution of the Bachelor Hall, described by Colonel Dalton among the Orâons, [303] does not prevail among the Mirzapur Dhângars. [Widow-marriage and the levirate.] 7. The levirate prevails, and a widow can marry an outsider by sagâi only when her younger brother-in-law gives up his claim to her. The only ceremony is that the lover comes with a yellow sheet to the widow’s house. She puts it on and comes home with him, when he gives a feast to his clansmen, and it is essential that the cooking should be done by the new-made wife. By remarriage a widow loses all right to the property of her first husband. In the case of the levirate the property of the first husband passes to the levir, and when they grow up, the sons by the first marriage are entitled to a share in all the property of their step-father on the same scale as his sons. There is no fiction of attributing the sons of the levir to his deceased elder brother. [Succession.] 8. Adoption is unknown. The heirs of a man are his sons: but the eldest son gets something more than the others. When the father and sons live jointly and distribution takes place after the father’s death, all the sons share equally, no matter whether any part of the property may have been acquired by any particular son. Grandsons get their proportion of the share that would have fallen to their fathers. The widow has a sort of life interest in her husband’s estate, but is liable to expulsion for unchastity. Daughters have no right of succession. But a girl who is ill-treated by her husband is entitled to return to her own home and be maintained by her brothers. [Domestic ceremonies. Birth.] 9. The birth ceremonies resemble those among Bhuiyârs (q.v.). On the sixth day the chhathi ceremony is performed, and after this the mother is pure. The husband does not cohabit with his wife for two months after her confinement.