19. This version of the story differs in some minute particulars from
the version given _ante_, [14].
CHAPTER 5
Marriages of Trees--The Tank and the Plantain--Meteors--Rainbows.
Before quitting Jubbulpore, to which place I thought it very unlikely
that I should ever return, I went to visit the groves in the
vicinity, which, at the time I held the civil charge of the district
in 1828, had been planted by different native gentlemen upon lands
assigned to them rent-free for the purpose, on condition that the
holder should bind himself to plant trees at the rate of twenty-five
to the acre, and keep them up at that rate; and that for each grove,
however small, he should build and keep in repair a well, lined with
masonry, for watering the trees, and for the benefit of
travellers.[1]
Some of these groves had already begun to yield fruit, and all had
been _married_. Among the Hindoos, neither the man who plants a
grove, nor his wife, can taste of the fruit till he has _married_ one
of the mango-trees to some other tree (commonly the tamarind-tree)
that grows near it in the same grove.
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