see
their plans to satisfy these motives frustrated by the children if they
should delay. The intimacy of the children is left to chance. Wilken
says that child marriage seems to be, in the Dutch East Indies, an
exercise of absolute paternal authority, especially seeing that they
have marriage by capture. The father wants to secure, in time, the
realization of plans which he has made. Especially, the purpose is to
make the man take the status-wife appointed for him by the marriage
rule,--his mother's brother's daughter. Wilken also explains child
betrothal and marriage by the fact that girls have entire liberty until
betrothed, and the future husband wants to put an end to this. Girls are
often betrothed at birth and married at six, although they remain with
their parents. In some parts of the East Indies the custom is declining;
in others it is extinct. In some places it continues, although marriage
by capture is extinct. Where marriage by capture exists, the reason for
child marriage is the fear that the girl may be stolen by another than
the desired husband.[1269]

+399. Child marriage in Hindostan.+ By the laws of Manu[1270] a man may
give his daughter in marriage before she is eight years old to a man of
twenty-four, or a girl of twelve to a man of thirty, and he loses his
dominion over her if he has not found a husband for her by the time that
she might be a mother; yet intercourse before puberty is especially
forbidden.[1271] The Hindoos, including Mohammedans, practice child
marriage and cling to it, in spite of the efforts of the English to
dissuade them from it, and in spite of the opinion of their own most
enlightened men that it is a harmful custom. It is deeply rooted in
their mores. The modern Hindoo father or brother considers it one of the
gravest faults he can commit to allow a daughter or sister to arrive at
puberty (generally eight years) before a husband has been found for her.
It is a disgrace for a family to have in it an unmarried marriageable
girl. What is proper is that, from five to sixteen days after puberty,
the previously married husband shall beget with her a child in a solemn
ceremonial which is one of the twelve (or sixteen) sacraments of Hindoo
life.[1272] The idea of child marriage was that the woman should be
already married to her chosen husband, so that she might be given to him
at the proper time.[1273] Moreover, "marriage completes, for the man,
the regenerating ceremonies, expiato