When pregnant women experience longings for strange kinds of food, it
is believed that these really come from the child in the womb and must
be satisfied if its development is not to be retarded. Consequently
in the fifth month of a wife's first pregnancy, or shortly before
delivery, her mother takes to her various kinds of rich food and feeds
her with them. It is a common custom also for pregnant women, driven by
perverted appetite, to eat earth of a clayey texture, or the ordinary
black cotton soil, or dried clay scraped off the walls of houses, or
the ashes of burnt cowdung cakes. This is done by low-caste women in
most parts of the Province, and if carried to excess leads to severe
intestinal derangement which may prove fatal. A pregnant woman must
not cross a river or eat anything with a knife, and she must observe
various precautions against the machinations of witches. At the time
of delivery the woman sits on the ground and is attended by a midwife,
who may be a Chamar, Mahar or Ganda by caste. The navel cord is burnt
in the lying-in room, but the after-birth, known as Phul, is usually
buried in a rubbish pit outside the house. The portion of the cord
attached to the child's body is also burnt when it falls off, but
in the northern Districts it is preserved and used as a cure for the
child if it suffers from sore eyes. If a woman who has borne only girl
children can obtain the dried navel-string of a male child and swallow
it, they believe that she will have a son, and that the mother of the
boy will henceforth bear only daughters. This is the reason why the
cord is carefully secreted and not simply thrown away. In Bastar on
the sixth or naming day the female relatives and friends of the family
are invited to take food at the house. The father touches the feet of
the child with blades of dub grass (Cynodon dactylon) steeped first
in milk or melted butter, then in sandal-paste, and finally in water,
and each time passes the blade over his head as a mark of respect. The
blades of grass are afterwards thrown over the roof of the house, so
that they may not be trampled under foot. The women guests then bring
leaf-cups containing rice and a few copper coins, which they offer to
the mother, the younger ones bowing before her with a prayer that the
child may grow as old as the speaker. All the women kiss the child,
and the elder ones the mother also. The offerings of rice and coins
are taken by the midwife.