7. Devices for procuring children, and beliefs about them.
Women who desire children resort to the shrines of saints, who are supposed to be able to induce fertility. “Blochmann notes that the tomb of Saint Salīm-i-Chishti at Fatehpur-Sikri, in whose house the Emperor Jahāngīr was born, is up to the present day visited by childless Hindu and Musalmān women. A tree in the compound of the saint Shāih Alam of Ahmedābād yields a peculiar acorn-like fruit, which is sought after far and wide by those desiring children; the woman is believed to conceive from the moment of eating the fruit. If the birth of a child follows the eating of the acorn, the man and woman who took it from the tree should for a certain number of years come at every anniversary of the saint and nourish the tree with a supply of milk. In addition to this, jasmine and rose-bushes at the shrines of certain saints are supposed to possess issue-giving properties. To draw virtue from the saint’s jasmine the woman who yearns for a child bathes and purifies herself and goes to the shrine, and seats herself under or near the jasmine bush with her skirt spread out. As many flowers as fall into her lap, so many children will she have. In some localities if after the birth of one child no other son is born, or being born does not live, it is supposed that the first-born child is possessed by a malignant spirit who destroys the young lives of the new-born brothers and sisters. So at the mother’s next confinement sugar and sesame-seed are passed seven or nine times over the new-born infant from head to foot, and the elder boy or girl is given them to eat. The sugar represents the life of the young one given to the spirit who possesses the first-born. A child born with teeth already visible is believed to exercise a very malignant influence over its parents, and to render the early death of one of them almost certain.”[10]