ABSTRACT
From early youth until the onset of old age, sexual intercourse is one of the chief ingredients in Santal happiness. In the years preceding marriage, it is the natural end of romantic love. Their attitudes are expressed in a host of love songs, sung either privately in the forest or openly in the village - at weddings, at the Sohrae festival and at social dances. In the years that follow marriage, intercourse becomes more and more a nighdy conjugal routine. In the case of forest songs, the references to sex are frank and unabashed. In the case of other songs, the implications are similar but the treatment is more symbolic. When a boy and girl are first married, they have each other five times a night and twice in the day. After that, they go four times in the night and a fifth time when they have drunk rice-beer’.
