The crime of adultery, _Abàradha_, which may be committed by two betrothed as well as married persons, is punished by expulsion from the cast, and, according to circumstances, even with banishment. If the bride or spouse is alone guilty, she loses the prerogative of her cast, and is sold as a slave to some foreigner, whether he be Christian, Jew, or Mahometan. This was the case, in particular, with the celebrated wife of a Brahman at _Alangatta_, who had been degraded and sold, and who was afterwards baptised by the bishop of _Arcopolis_ in Malabar. She spoke and wrote the Samscred language with great ease. I myself once baptised, at _Edapalli_, a Brahman woman, who had also been guilty of the like offence. When I asked her why she wished to embrace the Roman Catholic religion, she replied: _Inika dòsham vannu poi_; that is, I have been guilty of a sin. This is the common mode of expression employed by the Indians in such cases; for adultery is one of the five mortal sins, which they call _Pancia mahà pàva_. Other women, however, not of the Brahmanic cast, are sold as slaves when they hold criminal intercourse with a man of inferior condition, or do so when they have married into another cast. But this crime is overlooked when women, over whom their cast has no power, lead irregular lives, or when they indulge in such licentiousness with men belonging to a higher cast. If the wife of a man who married _per usucapionem_, and who belongs to an inferior class, is guilty of conjugal infidelity, the husband repairs to the superintendant of the cast, and causes him to return the stone which he delivered to him at his marriage. If he has accused his wife of adultery only in this manner, he conducts her back to the house of her parents; and this ceremony supplies the place of an actual separation. In India marriages are allowed to the third degree of consanguinity. On the coast of Malabar a custom prevails, in the cast to which the braziers belong, that the eldest brother alone marries; but the rest, when he is absent, supply his place with their sister-in-law.