If a woman greatly desires a child she will go to a shrine and lay a
stone on it which she calls the _dharna_ or deposit or pledge. Then
she thinks that she has put the god under an obligation to give her a
child. She vows that if she becomes pregnant within a certain period,
six or nine months, she will make an offering of a certain value. If
the pregnancy comes she goes to the temple, makes the offering and
removes the stone. If the desired result does not happen, however,
she considers that the god has broken his obligation and ceases to
worship him. If a barren woman desires a child she should steal on a
Sunday or a Wednesday a strip from the body-cloth of a fertile woman
when it is hung out to dry; or she may steal a piece of rope from
the bed in which a woman has been delivered of a child, or a piece of
the baby's soiled swaddling clothes or a piece of cloth stained with
the blood of a fertile woman. This last she will take and bury in a
cemetery and the others wear round her waist; then she will become
fertile and the fertile woman will become barren. Another device is
to obtain from the midwife a piece of the navel-string of a newborn
child and swallow it. For this reason the navel-string is always
carefully guarded and its disposal seen to.