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A man married by ambel-anak may redeem himself and family on payment of the jujur and adat of a virgin before-mentioned. The charo of a jujur marriage is twenty-five dollars. If the jujur be not yet paid in full and the man insists on a divorce he receives back what he has paid, less twenty-five dollars. If the woman insists no charo can be claimed by her relations.
Both forms of marriage, the maternal and the purchase contract, are practised side by side by many peoples. These cases are so instructive that I must add one or two examples to those already noticed. The ambel-anak marriage of Sumatra is the maternal form, but there is another marriage known as djudur, by which a man buys his wife as his absolute property.
The maternal marriage, here known as the ambel-anak, in which the husband lives with the wife, paying nothing to the support of the family and occupying a subordinate position, may be taken as typical of the former condition.
Of a person married by ambel-anak the family he married into is answerable for debts contracted during the marriage: such as were previous to it his relations must pay. Should the son use his father's name in borrowing it shall be at the lender's risk if the father disavows it. Interest of money has hitherto been three fanams per dollar per month, or one hundred and fifty per cent per annum.
Marriage by ambel-anak, which rendered a man and his descendants the property of the family he married into, is now prohibited, and none permitted for the future, but, by semando, or jujur, subject to the following regulations.
If the offender be not secured the reward shall be only five dollars to the person that brings the slave, and three dollars the debtor, if on this side the hills; if from beyond the hills the reward is doubled. The modes of marriage prevailing hitherto have been principally by jujur, or by ambel-anak, the Malay semando being little used.
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