amentation
of his parents, to the bride's house."

It is true that this inversion of the usual process of proposing and
acting a comedy of sham coyness occurs only in the case of the poor
girls, the wealthy ones being betrothed by their parents in infancy;
but it would be interesting to learn the origin of this quaint custom
from someone who has had a chance to study this tribe. Probably the
girl's poverty furnishes the key. The whole thing seems like a
practical joke raised to the dignity of an institution. The perversion
of all ordinary rules is consistently carried out in this, too, that
"if the old people refuse they can be beaten into compliance!" That
the loss of female coyness is not a gain to the cause of love or of
virtue is self-evident.

PAHARIA LADS AND LASSES

Thus, once more, we are baffled in our attempts to find genuine
romantic love. Of its fourteen ingredients the altruistic ones are
missing entirely. What Dalton writes (248) regarding the Oraons,

"Dhumkuria lads are no doubt great flirts, but each has
a special favorite among the young girls of his
acquaintance, and the girls well know to whose touch
and pressure in the dance each maiden's heart is
especially responsive," will not mislead any reader of
this book, who will know that it indicates merely
individual preference, which goes with all sorts of
love, and is moreover, characteristically shallow here;
for, as Dalton has told us, these village flirtations
"seldom end in marriage."

The other ingredients that primitive love shares with romantic
love--monopoly, jealousy, coyness, etc., are also, as we saw, weak
among the wild tribes of India. Westermarck (503) indeed fancied he
had discovered the occurrence among them of "the absorbing passion for
one." "Colonel Dalton," he says, "represents the Paharia lads and
lasses as forming very romantic attachments; 'if separated only for an
hour,' he says, 'they are miserable.'" In reality Dalton does not
"represent them" thus; he says "they are represented;" that is, he
gives his information at second-hand, without naming his authority,
who, to judge by some of his remarks, was apparently a facetious
globe-trotter. It is of course possible that these young folks are
much attached to each other. Even sheep are "miserable if separated
only for an hour;" they bleat pathetically and are disconsolate,
though there is no question of an "absorbing