The Couvade.
In connection with this subject of parturition impurity, the very remarkable custom of the Couvade may be referred to here. This is the rule by which at the birth of a child the father is treated as an invalid, instead of or in addition to the mother:—
When Chineses go to bed,
And lie in in their ladies’ stead.
Marco Polo, writing of Zardandan, gives a good example:—“When one of their wives has been delivered of a child, the infant is washed and swathed, and then the woman gets up and goes about her household affairs, whilst the husband takes to bed with the child by his side, and so keeps his bed for forty days; and all the kith and kin come to visit her, and keep up a great festivity. They do this because they say the woman has had a bad time of it, and it is but fair that the man should have a share of suffering.”[114] Professor Rhys remarks that the gods of Celtic Ireland used to practise the Couvade.[115]
Professor Max Müller thinks that it is clear that the poor husband was at first tyrannized over by his female relations and afterwards frightened into superstition. He then began to make a martyr of himself, till he made himself really ill, or took to bed in self-defence. The custom appears, however, to rest on a much more primitive set of ideas. It partly implies, perhaps, the transition from that social state in which, owing to the laxity of the connection between the sexes, the only recognized form of descent was through the mother, and partly, the kindred conception that the father has more to do with the production of the child than the mother, and that the father must, at the critical period of the baby’s existence, exercise particular caution that through his negligence no demoniacal influence may assail the infant,[116]
It is curious that in India itself so few actual instances of the Couvade have been discovered. This, however, as Mr. Hartland shows, is not unusual, and the Couvade is not found in the lowest stage of savagery. But that the custom once generally prevailed is quite certain, and in Northern India, at least, it seems to have been masked by special birth ceremonies of great stringency and elaborate detail, but of distinctly later date than the very primitive usage with which we are now concerned.
One instance of the actual Couvade is given by Professor Sir Monier-Williams.[117] Among a very low caste of basket-makers in Gujarât, it is the usual practice for a wife to go about her work immediately after delivery, as if nothing had occurred. “The presiding Mother (Mâtâ) of the tribe is supposed to transfer the weakness to her husband, who takes to his bed and has to be supported for several days with good nourishing food.” Again, among the Kols of Chota Nâgpur, father and mother are considered impure for eight days, during which period the members of the family are sent out of the house, and the husband has to cook for his wife. If it be a difficult case of parturition, the malignancy of some spirit of evil is supposed to be at work, and after divination to ascertain his name, a sacrifice is made to appease him.[118] Among many of the Drâvidian tribes of Mirzapur, when the posset or spiced drink is prepared for the mother after her confinement, the father is obliged to drink the first sup of it. Among all these people, the father does not work or leave the house during the period of parturition impurity, and cooks for his wife. When asked why he refrains from work, they simply say that he is so pleased with the safety of his wife and the birth of his child, that he takes a holiday; but some survival of the Couvade is probably at the root of the custom. The same idea prevails in a modified form in Bombay. The Pomaliyas, gold-washers of South Gujarât, after a birth, take great care of the husband, give him food, and do not allow him to go out; and “when a child is born to a Deshasth Brâhman, he throws himself into a well with all his clothes on, and, in the presence of his wife’s relations, lets a couple of drops of honey and butter fall into the mouth of the child.”[119]