mmadans to the number of four wives, but it is
very rare in the Central Provinces. Owing to the fact that members
of the immigrant trading castes leave their wives at home in Gujarat,
the number of married women returned at the census was substantially
less than that of married men. A feeling in favour of the legal
prohibition of polygamy is growing up among educated Muhammadans,
and many of them sign a contract at marriage not to take a second
wife during the lifetime of the first. There is no prohibition on
the remarriage of widows in Muhammadan law, but the Hindu rule on
the subject has had considerable influence, and some Muhammadans of
good position object to the marriage of widows in their family. The
custom of the seclusion of women also, as Mr. Marten points out,
operates as a bar to a widow finding a husband for herself.

7. Devices for procuring children, and beliefs about them.

Women who desire children resort to the shrines of saints, who are
supposed to be able to induce fertility. "Blochmann notes that the
tomb of Saint Salim-i-Chishti at Fatehpur-Sikri, in whose house
the Emperor Jahangir was born, is up to the present day visited by
childless Hindu and Musalman women. A tree in the compound of the
saint Shaih Alam of Ahmedabad yields a peculiar acorn-like fruit,
which is sought after far and wide by those desiring children; the
woman is believed to conceive from the moment of eating the fruit. If
the birth of a child follows the eating of the acorn, the man and woman
who took it from the tree should for a certain number of years come at
every anniversary of the saint and nourish the tree with a supply of
milk. In addition to this, jasmine and rose-bushes at the shrines of
certain saints are supposed to possess issue-giving properties. To
draw virtue from the saint's jasmine the woman who yearns for a
child bathes and purifies herself and goes to the shrine, and seats
herself under or near the jasmine bush with her skirt spread out. As
many flowers as fall into her lap, so many children will she have. In
some localities if after the birth of one child no other son is born,
or being born does not live, it is supposed that the first-born child
is possessed by a malignant spirit who destroys the young lives of
the new-born brothers and sisters. So at the mother's next confinement
sugar and sesame-seed are passed seven or nine times over the new-born
infant from head to foot, and the elder boy or girl