fruit, tree, stone…..

Different cultures view marriage in different ways. The Newar people of Nepal marry their young girls to bel-fruits.

A majority of Newars observe the symbolically arranged marriage of their daughters with a bel fruit before they ever marry a man. The bel fruit marriage is done when the girl is seven to nine years old, or before she attains puberty; and since it is the general belief of Hindu and Buddhist Newar communities that a proper marriage with full rites can be held only once in a lifetime, her subsequent marriages, if any, are considered of only secondary importance.

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Punjabi men can have one, two or four wives, but not three. To get around this prohibition, they sometimes would go through a third marriage ceremony with a tree. In Madras, if a younger son wishes to marry but his older sibling has not yet decided upon a wife, the elder son can wed a tree. After the ceremony, a priest cuts the tree down and pronounces it dead. The family all mourn the man’s deceased wife, and then the younger son is free to marry.

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The daughter of a courtesan is unable to marry but she may get herself a ritual husband by marrying a house plant which she then cares for in a special way.

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Two trees may also marry each other. This type of wedding is arranged by a childless couple who are trying to conceive. The trees, usually a mango and a fig are planted close together so their stems entwine. If one of them dies it is considered a very bad omen for the woman.

In Siberia a man sometimes married a stone. There would be no wedding ceremony, the man simply chose an attractive stone, put clothes on it and placed it in his bed. There was even some sexual connotation, since the man would treat the stone as a human, caressing it as if it were a real woman.

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Marriages to objects were also known of in Mongolia. A father might sometimes offer his daughter to a guest for the night as a sexual favour. The guest would be asked to leave behind his belt as a token. If a pregnancy resulted from this hospitality, the girl was simply married the belt. On the other hand, if a girl became pregnant to a stranger outside this sexual hospitality arrangement, she would be married to a prayer rug instead.