11. Treatment of the mother
If a child is born in the morning they will give the mother a little sugar and cocoanut to eat in the evening, but if it is born in the evening they will give her nothing till next morning. Milk is given only sparingly as it is supposed to produce coughing. The main idea of treatment in childbirth is to prevent either the mother or child from taking cold or chill, this being the principal danger to which they are thought to be exposed. The door of the birth chamber is therefore kept shut and a fire is continually burning in it night and day. The woman is not bathed for several days, and the atmosphere and general insanitary conditions can better be imagined than described. With the same end of preventing cold they feed the mother on a hot liquid produced by cooking thirty-six ingredients together. Most of these are considered to have the quality of producing heat or warmth in the body, and the following are a few of them: Pepper, ginger, azgan (a condiment), turmeric, nutmeg, ajwāin (aniseed), dates, almonds, raisins, cocoanut, wild singāra or water-nut, cumin, chironji,[10] the gum of the babūl[11] or khair,[12] asafoetida, borax, saffron, clarified butter and sugar. The mixture cannot be prepared for less than two rupees and the woman is fed on it for five days beginning from the second day after birth, if the family can afford the expense.
12. Protecting the lives of children
If the mother’s milk runs dry, they use the dried bodies of the little fish caught in the shallow water of fields and tanks, and sometimes supposed to have fallen down with the rain. They are boiled in a little water and the fish and water are given to the woman to consume. Here the idea is apparently that as the fish has the quality of liquidness because it lives in water, so by eating it this will be communicated to the breasts and the milk will flow again. If a woman’s children die, then the next time she is in labour they bring a goat all of one colour. When the birth of the child takes place and it falls from the womb on to the ground no one must touch it, but the goat, which should if possible be of the same sex as the child, is taken and passed over the child twenty-one times. Then they take the goat and the after-birth to a cemetery and here cut the goat’s throat by the halāl rite and bury it with the after-birth. The idea is thus that the goat’s life is a substitute for that of the child. By being passed over the child it takes the child’s evil destiny upon itself, and the burial in a cemetery causes the goat to resemble a human being, while the after-birth communicates to it some part of the life of the child. If a mother is afraid her child will die, she sells it for a few cowries to another woman. Of course the sale is only nominal, but the woman who has purchased the child takes a special interest in it, and at the naming or other ceremony she will give it a jewel or such other present as she can afford. Thus she considers that the fictitious sale has had some effect and that she has acquired a certain interest in the child.
13. Infantile diseases
If a baby, especially a girl, has much hair on its body, they make a cake of gram-flour and rub it with sesamum oil all over the body, and this is supposed to remove the hair.
If a child’s skin dries up and it pines away, they think that an owl has taken away a cloth stained by the child when it was hung out to dry. The remedy is to obtain the liver of an owl and hang it round the child’s neck.
For jaundice they get the flesh of a yellow snake which appears in the rains, and of the rohu fish which has yellowish scales, and hang them to its neck; or they get a verse of the Korān written out by a Maulvi or Muhammadan priest and use this as an amulet; or they catch a small frog alive, tie it up in a yellow cloth and hang it to the child’s neck by a blue thread until it dies. For tetanus the jaws are branded outside and a little musk is placed on the mother’s breast so that the child may drink it with the milk. When the child begins to cut its teeth they put honey on the gums and think that this will make the teeth slip out early as the honey is smooth and slippery. But as the child licks the gums when the honey is on them they fear that this may cause the teeth to grow broad and crooked like the tongue. Another device is to pass a piece of gold round the child’s gums. If they want the child to have pretty teeth its maternal uncle threads a number of grains of rice on a piece of string and hangs them round its neck, so that the teeth may grow like the rice. If the child’s navel is swollen, the maternal uncle will go out for a walk and on his return place his turban over the navel. For averting the evil eye the liver of the Indian badger is worn in an amulet, this badger being supposed to haunt cemeteries and feed on corpses; some hairs of a bear also form a very favourite amulet, or a tiger’s claws set in silver, or the tail of a lizard enclosed in lac and made into a ring.
14. Religion. Vālmīki
The religion of the sweepers has been described at length by Mr. Greeven and Mr. Crooke. It centres round the worship of two saints, Lālbeg or Bale Shāh and Bālnek or Bālmīk, who is really the huntsman Vālmīki, the reputed author of the Rāmāyana. Bālmīk was originally a low-caste hunter called Ratnakār, and when he could not get game he was accustomed to rob and kill travellers. But one day he met Brahma and wished to kill him; but he could not raise his club against Brahma, and the god spoke and convinced him of his sins, directing him to repeat the name of Rāma until he should be purified of them. But the hunter’s heart was so evil that he could not pronounce the divine name, and instead he repeated ‘Māra, Māra’ (struck, struck), but in the end by repetition this came to the same thing. Mr. Greeven’s account continues: “As a small spark of fire burneth up a heap of cotton, so the word Rāma cleaneth a man of all his sins. So the words ‘Rām, Rām,’ were taught unto Ratnakār who ever repeated them for sixty thousand years at the self-same spot with a heart sincere. All his skin was eaten up by the white ants. Only the skeleton remained. Mud had been heaped over the body and grass had grown up, yet within the mound of mud the saint was still repeating the name of Rāma. After sixty thousand years Brahma returned. No man could he see, yet he heard the voice of Rām, Rām, rising from the mound of mud. Then Brahma bethought him that the saint was beneath. He besought Indra to pour down rain and to wash away the mud. Indra complied with his request and the rain washed away the mud. The saint came forth. Nought save bones remained. Brahma called aloud to the saint. When the saint beheld him he prostrated himself and spake: ‘Thou hast taught me the words “Rām, Rām,” which have cleansed away all my sins.’ Then spake Brahma: ‘Hitherto thou wast Ratnakār. From to-day thy name shall be Vālmīki (from valmīk, an ant-hill). Now do thou compose a Rāmāyana in seven parts, containing the deeds and exploits of Rāma.’” Vālmīki had been or afterwards became a sweeper and was known as ‘cooker of dog’s food’ (Swapach), a name applied to sweepers[13], who have adopted him as their eponymous ancestor and patron saint.