When a woman is in her
menstrual period, she stays apart and may not cook for herself nor touch
anybody nor sleep on a bed made of cotton thread. The Gonds have a
separate house outside the village to which women have to retire at this
time. When a woman is with a child for the first time, her women friends
come and give her green clothes and bangles; they then put her into a
swing and sing songs. While she is pregnant, she is made to work in the
house so as not to be inactive. If the birth is delayed, they put a few
grains of gram into the woman’s hand and then some one takes and feeds
them to a mare, as it is though that the woman’s pregnancy has been
prolonged by her having walked behind the tethering ropes of a mare
which is 12 months in a foal. Or she is given water to drink in which a Sulaimani
bead or a rupee of Akbar’s time has been washed. A pregnant woman must
not took on a dead body or her child may be still born and she must not
see an eclipse or the child may be born maimed. Women of the Mang, Mahar,
Gond and Dhimar castes act as midwives. Sometimes when delivery is
delayed, they take a folded flower and place it in a pot of water and
believe that as its petals unfold, so the womb will be opened and the
child born or they sear her on a wooden bench and pour oil on her head,
her forehead being afterwards rubbed with it, in the belief that as the
oil falls so the child will be born . If a child is a long time before
learning to speak, they give it leaves of the pipal tree to eat, because
the leaves of this tree make a noise by rustling in the wind; or a root
which is very light in weight, because they think that the tongue is
heavy and the quality of lightness will thus be communicated to it. A
child is given grain to eat for the first time six months after birth .
The first teeth of a child are thrown on to the roof of house, because
the rats who have especially good and sharp teeth, live there and it is
hoped that the child’s second teeth may grow like theirs or they are
placed under a water pot in the hope that the child’s second teeth may
grow as fast as the grass does under water-pots . If a child is lean,
some people take it to a place where asses have lain down and rolled in
ashes; they roll the child in the ashes similarly and believe that it
will get fat like the asses are. Or they may lay the child in a pig-sty
with the same idea. People who want to injure a child get hold of its
coat and lay it out in the sun to dry, in the belief that the child’s
body will dry up in a similar manner.