About Mising Culture

Midang (Marriage System)

A boy and a girl in the Mising society may get married in three different ways:

Da:ro Midang : A formal marriage through negotiations between the parents of the groom and the bride. After the process of negotiations is over, the wedding ceremony takes place on a schedule date at the house of the bride’s parents, where religious elders of the village offer blessings to the bride and the groom, permitting them to start a conjugal life. Thereafter the bride is escorted back to the groom’s house, where she is welcomed ceremonially with songs and dances to the accompaniment of drums and cymbals and ushered into her new home.

Kumsu-jo:su : A very simple wedding ceremony, in which the would-be couple is blessed by a few elders of the village at the home of the bride, making it legal for the two individuals to start a conjugal life. Such marriages are performed either because of financial difficulties or for circumstantial reasons.

Dugla la:nam : It is the system of marriage by elopement, in which a boy and a girl in love with each other may just elope for reasons of opposition from the parents’ side or because of pecuniary circumstances and start a conjugal life at the boy’s home after the parents on both sides come to an understanding.

In addition to the three systems of marriage mention above, there use to be, in earlier times, a way of marrying a girl by force: a man, intending to marry a particular girl, who is not willing to enter into a marriage with the person concerned, simply drags away the girl from some spot outside or away from her house and makes her his wife by force. This practice has now died out.