Sambandham was a mode of traditional marriage practiced by Nambudiris, Nairs, Samantha Kshatriya and Ambalavasis among their own communities as well as with each other, in Kerala, India.
[6] Alternate names for the system were used by different social groups and in different regions;[6] they included Pudavamuri, Pudavakoda, Vastradanam, Vitaram Kayaruka, Mangalam and Uzhamporukkuka.
The boy and the girl are then carried by Enangans to a decorated apartment in the inner part of the house, where they are required to remain under a sort of pollution for three days.
On the fourth day they bathe in some neighbouring tank or river and, they come home preceded by a procession, which varies in importance according to the wealth of the girl’s family.
Many Malayali communities lacked proper marriage practices compared to the Nairs and Nambudhiri Brahmins during that period.
Nair women and men enjoyed the highest privileges in society, including the ability to divorce their partners at will, akin to practices in some modern European cultures.
The foreign authors would’ve mistaken both of them as standard marriages in the European sense, hence would have deduced that the Sambandham women had more than one partner.
[9] It is also to be noted that even though second marriage after divorce is allowed, it was looked down upon and didn’t involve celebrations as the first marriage, as the 1891 Madras census says: “Sambandham is, strictly speaking, dissoluble at the will of either party without any formal ceremony being gone through for the purpose, but that will is controlled by public opinion which views with disfavour divorces made for trivial reasons.