When a boy is born the father's younger brother or one of his friends
lets off a gun and beats a brass plate to proclaim the event The women
often announce the birth of a boy by saying that it is a one-eyed
girl. This is in case any enemy should hear the mention of the boy's
birth, and the envy felt by him should injure the child. On the sixth
day after the birth the Chhathi ceremony is performed and the mother is
given ordinary food to eat, as described in the article on Kunbi. The
twelfth day is known as Barhon or Chauk. On this day the father is
shaved for the first time after the child's birth. The mother bathes
and cuts the nails of her hands and feet; if she is living by a river
she throws them into it, otherwise on to the roof of the house. The
father and mother sit in the _chauk_ or space marked out for worship
with cowdung and flour; the woman is on the man's left side, a woman
being known as Bamangi or the left limb, either because the left limb
is weak or because woman is supposed to have been made from man's left
side, as in Genesis. The household god is brought into the _chauk_
and they worship it. The Bua or husband's sister brings presents to
the mother known as _bharti_, for filling her lap: silver or gold
bangles if she can afford them, a coat and cap for the boy; dates,
rice and a breast-cloth for the mother; for the father a rupee and a
cocoanut. These things are placed in the mother's lap as a charm to
sustain her fertility. The father gives his sister back double the
value of the presents if he can afford it. He gives her husband a
head-cloth and shoulder-cloth; he waves two or three pice round his
wife's head and gives them to the barber's wife. The latter and the
midwife take the clothes worn by the mother at child-birth, and the
father gives them each a new cloth if he can afford it. The part of
the navel-string which falls off the child's body is believed to have
the power of rendering a barren woman fertile, and is also intimately
connected with the child's destiny. It is therefore carefully preserved
and buried in some auspicious place, as by the bank of a river.
In the sixth month the Pasni ceremony is performed, when the child is
given grain for the first time, consisting of rice and milk. Brahmans
or religious mendicants are invited and fed. The child's hair and
nails are cut for the first time on the Shivratri or Akti festival
following the birth, and are wrapped up in a ball of dough and thrown
into a sacred river. If a child is born during an eclipse they think
that it will suffer from lung disease; so a silver model of the moon
is made immediately during the eclipse, and hung round the child's
neck, and this is supposed to preserve it from harm.