ABSTRACT
Grandfather Dharma arranges Muli’s marriage with a fourteen-year-old girl named Kia. Although the horoscopes of the bride and groom do not match, Muli’s grandfather and Kia’s father insist on holding the ceremony because they are friends. Kia’s father dies two days before the scheduled ceremony. Muli’s grandfather is supposed to postpone the wedding for one year to give the dead man’s spirit time to leave the house, but instead, he insists on holding the ceremony thirteen days after the burial, even though that day is inauspicious. Muli complains that his marriage has been doomed to be unhappy because of his grandfather’s disregard of custom. Muli fails to acknowledge that his own irresponsibility might contribute to his marital woes.
The marriages both of Muli and his sister Santi illustrate the flexibility of the marriage selection process. Disregarding the rule of village exogamy as well as the objections of Muli’s mother, Grandfather Dharma arranges Santi’s marriage with Damodar, a man from her own village. Grandfather Dharma reasons that the prospective groom is a responsible man of good behavior who has a steady job as a skilled mason—characteristics that outweigh other criteria (see Mayer 1960:202–207 for a further discussion of the criteria of selection for marriage). Grandfather Dharma’s assessment of the groom turns out to be excellent: Damodar is a good provider, a stable family man, and a dependable source of support when Grandfather’s family encounters crises.
In Muli’s narrative, Grandfather Dharma usually appears as a level-headed leader who bases his decisions on rational calculations. Although Muli never says so, Grandfather Dharma probably perceived qualities of dependability and stability in Muli’s prospective bride and family that prompted him to disregard the ritual prohibitions that Muli considers so important.
