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 Koran 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.