Marriage Customs
The Lepcha trace their descent patrilineally. The marriage is negotiated between the families of the bride and the groom. If the marriage deal is settled, the lama will check the horoscopes of the boy and girl to schedule a favourable date for the wedding. Then the boy's maternal uncle, along with other relatives, approaches the girl's maternal uncle with a khada, a ceremonial scarf, and one rupee, and gains the maternal uncle's formal consent.
The wedding takes place at noon on the auspicious day. The groom and his entire family leave for the girl's house with some money and other gifts that are handed over to the bride's maternal uncle. Upon reaching the destination, the traditional Nyomchok ceremony takes place, and the bride's father arranges a feast for relatives and friends. This seals the wedding between the couple.
Sex is a common recreation for the Lepcha, beginning at age 10 or 11 and lasting throughout their lives. Extra-marital sex is expected and not viewed as a problem. During the harvest festival time, the Lepcha produce homemade liquor to enhance the harvest. At this time, 4- and 5-year olds mimic copulation with each other, at the encouragement of their elders.
Read more about this topic: Lepcha People
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or customs:
“Men commonly couple with their idea of marriage a slight degree at least of sensuality; but every lover, the world over, believes in its inconceivable purity.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)