dren of the regular wife. Polyandry is said to be
practised, but the fact is not mentioned by Mr. Gurdon; in any case it
can prevail only among the poorer sort, with whom, too, it would often
seem to mean rather facility of divorce than the simultaneous
admission of plurality of husbands.[77]

[77] Fischer, _Tour. As. Soc._, Bengal, Vol. IX, Part II, p.
834.

The courtship customs of Khasi youths and maidens are simple and
beautiful. The young people meet at the dances in the spring-time,
when the girls choose their future husbands. There is no practice
among the Khasis of exchange of daughters; and there is an entire
absence of the patriarchal idea of their women as property. Marriage
is a simple contract, unaccompanied by any ceremony.[78] After
marriage the husband lives with his wife in her mother's home. Of late
years a new custom has arisen, and now in the Khasi tribe, when one or
two children have been born, and _if the marriage is a happy one_, the
couple frequently leave the family home, and set up housekeeping for
themselves. When this is done, husband and wife pool their earnings
for the support of the family. This is clearly a departure from the
maternal marriage, a step in the direction of father-right. Among the
Syntengs, the people who have most closely preserved the customs of
the matriarchate, the husband does not even go to live with his wife,
he only visits her in her mother's home. In Joway this rule is so
strict that the husband comes only after dark. He is not permitted to
sleep, to eat, or smoke during his visit--the idea being that as none
of his earnings go to support the home, he must not partake of food or
any refreshment. Here is a curious instance of etiquette preserving
these clandestine visits long after the time when such secrecy was
necessary. We may note another survival among the Syntengs. The father
is commonly called by the name of the first child, thus, the father of
a child called Bobon, becomes Pa-bobon.[79] This does not, I am sure,
point back to a period when paternity was uncertain, rather, it is an
effort to establish the social relation of the father to the family,
and is connected with domestic and property considerations, not at all
with relationship. The proof of this will appear in a later chapter.

[78] Dalton, _Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal_, p. 57.

[79] McGee, _The Beginning of Marriage_.

Very striking are the conditions attaching to divorce. A