years (reduced to forty-four days in the case of “royalty”), after which he may be
allowed to remove to a house of his own. No Kathi^92 was present until quite
recently at marriages in Selangor, nor has it in the past been the practice, so far
as I could find out, for him to attend. Sir S. Raffles gives as part of the formula
used in Java:—“If you travel at sea for a year, or ashore for six months, without
sending either money or message to your wife, she will complain to the judge
and obtain one talak (the preliminary stage of divorce),” and this condition
should, strictly speaking, be included in the Malay formula. It is now growing
obsolete, but was in former days repeated first by the priest, and then by the
bridegroom after him. The marriage portion (isi kahwin, Arabic mahar) is here
generally called b’lanja kahwin or mas kahwin.^93 No wedding-ring should,
strictly, be given.
For three days lustrations are continued by the newly-married pair, but before
they are completed, and as soon as possible after the wedding, friends and
acquaintances once more put on their finery, and proceed to the house to pay
their respects, to bathe, and to receive largess.
On the third day after the hari langsong there is a very curious ceremony called
mandi tolak bala, or mandi ayer salamat (bathing for good luck).
On the night in question the relatives of the bridegroom assemble under cover of
the darkness and make a bonfire under the house of the newly-married couple by
collecting and burning rubbish; into the fire thus kindled they throw cocoa-nut
husks and pepper, or anything likely to make it unpleasant for those within, and
presently raise such a smoke that the bridegroom comes hastily down the steps,
ostensibly to see what is the matter, but as soon as he makes his appearance, he
is seized by his relatives and carried off bodily to his own parents’ house; these
proceedings being known as the stealing of the bridegroom (churi pĕngantin).
Next day there is a grand procession to escort him back to the house of his bride,
which he reaches about one o’clock in the afternoon, the processionists carrying
“Rice of the Presence” (nasi adap-adap) with the eggs stuck into it as on the last
day of the wedding, two sorts of holy water in pitchers, called respectively ayer
salamat (water of good luck), and ayer tolak bala (water to avert ill-luck), vases
of flowers (gumba) containing blossom-spikes of the cocoa-nut and areca-nut
palms, and young cocoa-nut leaves rudely plaited into the semblance of spikes of
palm-blossom, k’risses, etc. etc., together with a large number of rude syringes