Choice Of The Life Partner

Earlier in Assam, Bihu was an occasion for the choice of the life partners, and English observer, as early as 1905 recorded that “this is the season of the year when run-away matches are most common.” Another observer Major John Buttler wrote in 1955 thus: “An unfortunate youth having failed to receive the consent of the parents of the girl he has selected to be his wife, he has resources to a stratagem to effect his object. He lays in wait in the road till the dismal passes by to the fair or festival with her female relatives, when, with the aid of his companions, he carries off the feigning reluctant bride, and immediately marries her privately; when in few days the parents are obliged to be reconciled and the consent to a marriage.” It is however customarily to regularize these matches by offering a feast to or otherwise securing a sanction from the community.  Secondly to forestall relationships which were not sanctioned y society there was also the taboo that young men and women of the same village were not to dance together. Under the ordinary circumstances it is usual for the peasantry to seek a bride which does not belong to the same village as the groom’s.

However life partners may have been chosen may be learnt from the songs themselves-

‘Rustlings does the wing below,

The Sali paddy has opened its ears

Our parents have not sought our pairing

The pairing has been effected by god.’

‘My brother heard me singing among the trees,

He drove me out of my home,,

I stayed night and a day among the trees,

Eating the areca-nut which my lover split.’

Caste sometimes stands in the way of union, but it has already been observed that caste was not as rigid in Assam as in other parts of India. Bride-price had also to be taken into accounts. Even then elopements were frequent, as is evidenced in this song-

‘I would dance the whole day, O friend,

I would dance the whole day,

Only do not carry me off while I dance

For heavily you will have to pay.'