The same feeling of insecurity gave birth, no doubt, to this
preposterous usage, which tends so much to keep down the great mass
of the people of India to that grade in which they were born, and in
which they have nothing but their manual labour to depend upon for
their subsistence. Every man feels himself bound to waste all his
stock and capital, and exhaust all his credit, in feeding idlers
during the ceremonies which attend the marriage of his children,
because his ancestors squandered similar sums, and he would sink in
the estimation of society if he were to allow his children to be
married with less.
But it could not have been solely because men could not invest their
means in profitable works, with any chance of being long permitted to
enjoy the profits under such despotic and unsettled governments, that
they squandered them in feeding idle people in marriage ceremonies;
since temples, tanks, and groves secured esteem in this life, and
promised some advantage in the next, and an outlay in such works
might therefore have been preferred. But under such governments a
man's title even to the exclusive possession of his wife might not be
considered as altogether secure under the mere sanction of religion;
and the outlay in feeding the family, tribe, and neighbourhood during
the marriage ceremony seems to have been considered as a kind of
value in exchange given for her to society.
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