123 friends to get ready to honour her daughter; and she asks her relatives, and in particular one relative or close friend to marry that daughter and he promises it willingly and has a small jewel of half a ducat made, which is long like a ribbon, with a hole in the middle which is threaded on to a chain of white twisted silk thread. On the appointed day, the mother takes her daughter who is in her finest clothes with many fine jewels and holds a great celebration for her with a lot of people playing and dancing. The relative or close friend then comes with the jewel, and after holding a certain ceremony with the girl, throws it around her neck, where she will wear it for the rest of her life as a sign that she can do whatever she wants. If he is her relative, he will leave without sleeping with her, but if he is not, then he can sleep with her, although he is not obliged to. From that moment on, her mother starts asking and searching for some young men to take her daughter’s virginity, and they have to be nairs, who believe it to be dirty and almost rotten to sleep with a virgin; and after someone has slept with her, she can take men. The mother starts asking other young nairs if they want to keep that daughter as their concubine. Some three or four nairs will agree to that and keep her, sleeping with her and each gives her so much per day for that. And the more friends she has, the greater her honour is. Each of them has a certain day with her, from midday one day to midday the next and they hereby live their lives peacefully, with nobody hearing of or there being competition amongst them. And if any should choose to leave her and take another, they can do; and if she should grow tired of one of them, she can tell him to leave and he does so, or she insists. She brings up the children she bears them alone, because they do not recognise any of them as their children, even if they look like their father. They do not they cherish them as children either, nor do they bequeath them anything, because as I have already mentioned, their nephews are their heirs and their mother’s heirs.
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