________________
396
ACCOUNT OF THE RELIGION
About his time the Prince Selím', having attained his sixteenth year, was married to the daughter of Rájá Bhagaván Dás. A portion of two crore of rupees was settled on the bride. The king, with the head Kází and other law officers, went to the palace of the Rájá, where the marriage ceremony was performed in their presence, agreeably to the Hindu ritual. The king conducted the bride to the palace.
In Hij. 995 new enactments were issued. A man was restricted to one wife, unless she proved barren. Widows were permitted to marry again. Virgin widows, amongst the Hindus, were not allowed to burn with the bodies of their husbands; but this law was subsequently cancelled, and permission to burn was granted to all, provided the act was voluntary, and nothing like compulsion was used. In the first case, a whimsical compromise was sanctioned: the living widow might be transferred to a man whose wife was at the same time dead; and his dead wife was then burnt in her place, on the same pile with the husband of the widow. In all legal causes between Hindus, a Brahman was to judge; in those between Mohammedans, the Kází. The ordeal was administered to the defendant in the former case, where an oath was otherwise required. Bodies were to be buried with the feet to the east, and people were commanded to repose in the same direction. Persons in the lower orders of society were interdicted from
Akbar's eldest son, who succeeded him under the title Jehángir.
