d-birth is efficacious as
a charm for fertility. The Nain or Basorin will sometimes try and dip
her big toe into it and go to her house. There she will wash her toe
and give the water to a barren woman, who by drinking it will transfer
to herself the fertility of the woman whose blood it is. The women
of the family are in the lying-in room and they watch her carefully,
while some of the men stand about outside. If they see the midwife
coming out they examine her, and if they find any blood exclaim,
'You have eaten of our salt and will you play us this trick'; and
they force her back into the room where the blood is washed off. All
the stained clothes are washed in the birth-room, and the water as
well as that in which the mother and child are bathed is poured into
a hole dug inside the room, so that none of it may be used as a charm.

16. Treatment of mother and child

The great object of the treatment after birth is to prevent the mother
and child from catching cold. They appear to confuse the symptoms of
pneumonia and infantile lockjaw in a disease called _sanpat_, to the
prevention of which their efforts are directed. A _sigri_ or stove
is kept alight under the bed, and in this the seeds of _ajwain_ or
coriander are burnt. The mother eats the seeds, and the child is waved
over the stove in the smoke of the burning _ajwain_. Raw asafoetida
is put in the woman's ears wrapped in cotton-wool, and she eats a
little half-cooked. A freshly-dried piece of cowdung is also picked
up from the ground and half-burnt and put in water, and some of this
water is given to her to drink, the process being repeated every day
for a month. Other details of the treatment of the mother and child
after birth are given in the articles on Mehtar and Kunbi. For the
first five days after birth the child is given a little honey and
calf's urine mixed. If the child coughs it is given _bans-lochan_,
which is said to be some kind of silicate found in bamboos. The mother
does not suckle the child for three days, and for that period she is
not washed and nobody goes near her, at least in Mandla. On the third
day after the birth of a girl, or the fourth after that of a boy, the
mother is washed and the child is then suckled by her for the first
time, at an auspicious moment pointed out by the astrologer. Generally
speaking the whole treatment of child-birth is directed towards the
avoidance of various imaginary magical dangers, while the real sa