Travels in India (Tavernier) 14.1.5

14.1.5

About the same time there happened a somewhat amusing matter in the same town of Ahmadabad. The wife of a rich Banian merchant, named Saintidas, not having any children, and causing it to be well known that she wished for some, an attendant of the house one day took her apart, and said to her that if she was willing to eat what he would give her, she might feel certain that she would have a child. The woman desiring to know what she ought to eat, the attendant added that it was a little fish, and that she need only eat three or four. The religion of the Banians forbidding them, as I have elsewhere said, to eat anything which has had life, the woman was at first unable to bring herself to do that which he suggested ; but the attendant having said that he knew how to disguise it so well that she would not know that what she was eating was fish, she resolved at length to try the remedy, and she lay the night following with her husband, according to the instruction she had received from the attendant. Some time after, the woman perceiving that she was enceinte, her husband died, and the relatives of the defunct wished to take possession of his effects. The widow objected, and told them that they should have patience till they knew if the infant which she carried would arrive safely. The relatives, surprised by this news, which they had not expected, treated it as a lie and a joke, the woman having been fifteen or sixteen years with her husband without bearing.