If a man has a child in his twentieth year he does not see the child before he completes it.[160]
If a child is born at a wrong juncture or conjunction of the stars, the father does not see it for twenty-seven days.[161]
A child born on the fourth, fourteenth or fifteenth day of a month is supposed to become a burden to its father.[162]
It is a common belief that a woman in child-bed should not see the face of her husband nor he of her.[163]
Women who do not obey the commands of their husbands, who partake of their meals secretly before their husbands,[164] or violate any of their duties towards their husbands, are believed to enter the order of bats or owls after their death.[165]
According to another belief, men who have been incontinent become owls after death, while such women become bats.[166]
The owls and bats are blind during the day, but they can see corpses and the spirits of the deceased and converse with them in their own tongue.[167]
The spirits of the deceased are supposed to remain in their worldly tenement for twelve days, and owls and bats are supposed to be able to see them at night and talk to them.[168]
One of the beliefs entertained by Hindus about the owl is that none should throw a lump of earth at it, as the owl is believed to pick up the missile and throw it into a well or tank or any sheet of water, with the result that it gradually dissolves and disappears, and simultaneously the body of the person is said to be consumed.[169]
If perchance an owl utters some note perching on the top cross beam of a house on a Sunday or Tuesday night, the owner of the house should pass a dark woollen thread below the cross beam, to which a nude person should give a knot at every screech of the owl. If such a thread be kept in one’s anklet, one need have no fear of ghosts nor can he be seen by a dākan or witch.