an should be placed in a position to
start for that direction. Another explanation is that the head of the
earth lies towards the north, and yet another that in the Satyug or
beginning of time the sun rose in the north; and in each succeeding
Yug or era it has veered round the compass until now in the Kali Yug
or Iron Age it rises in the east. In Chhattisgarh, before burying a
corpse, they often make a mark on the body with butter, oil or soot;
and when a child is subsequently born into the same family they
look for any kind of mark on the corresponding place on its body. If
any such be found they consider the child as a reincarnation of the
deceased person. Still-born children, and those who die before the
Chathi or sixth-day ceremony of purification, are not taken to the
burial-ground, but their bodies are placed in an earthen pot and
interred below the doorway or in the courtyard of the house. In
such cases no funeral feast is demanded from the family, and some
people believe that the custom tends in favour of the mother bearing
another child; others say, however, that its object is to prevent
the _tonhi_ or witch from getting hold of the body of the child and
rousing its spirit to life to do her bidding as Matia Deo. [456] In
Seoni a curious rule obtains to the effect that the bodies of those
who eat carrion or the flesh of animals dying a natural death should
be cremated. In the northern Districts a bier painted white is used
for a man and a red one for a woman.

8. Childbirth.

Among the better-class Chamars it is customary to place a newborn child
in a winnowing-fan on a bed of rice. The nurse receives the rice and
she also goes round to the houses of the headman of the village and
the relatives of the family and makes a mark with cowdung on their
doors as an announcement of the birth, for which she receives a small
present. In Chhattisgarh a woman is given nothing to eat or drink
on the day that a child is born and for two days afterwards. On the
fourth day she receives a liquid decoction of ginger, the roots of
the _orai_ or _khaskhas_ grass, areca-nut, coriander and turmeric
and other hot substances, and in some places a cake of linseed or
sesamum. She sometimes goes on drinking this mixture for as long
as a month, and usually receives solid food for the first time on
the sixth day after the birth, when she bathes and her impurity
is removed. The child is not permitted to suckle its mother until
the t