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Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c14: XIII. Woman Lying-In

Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c14

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XIII. Woman Lying-In

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LIKE Ambā in the tale we have just given, the Hindu says : The woman that is excluded from marriage must be looked on as an unhappy hermaphrodite. In marriage and in love, however, as the Epic again shows, the man seeks pleasure, but the woman seeks the child. And the half-pitying, half-proud smile of the stronger sex at the child-bed stories of women is hardly called for. The heroes, indeed, of the Mahābhārata in their converse tell one another of their victories and fights. Should the woman, then, not speak of her own, and of her “dwelling with death”? The woman in child-bed, indeed, has by the Hindu also, from ages past been held to be an important, even if at the same time unclean, being. One that is unclean in any sense gives the evil powers that are ever lurking about mankind a dangerous opening. Thus, too, swarms of monsters are on the watch to do hurt to the mother and new-born child. A number of them, and also such as are dangerous to women with child are given in iii, 230.24-45 : they carry off children, eat them, for ten nights they are ever to be found in the lying-in room ; a female snake-demon penetrates into the mother’s womb, and there devours the fruit, the woman then brings forth a snake¹ ; the mother of the Apsarases takes the fœtus away, and people then say : “She has lost her child.” So, too, in iii, 228.1 ff., we are told of evil spirits who carry off children after birth or even in the womb.² 8, 14, 21-22, 64-65, 77-80); they carry off the new-born child (ibid., li, 105-107). Cp. further Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, i, 264 f.; Thurston, *Omens and Superstitions*, etc., 246; Chavannes, *Cinq cents contes*, iii, 42; 115; Jātaka, Nos. 510, 513, 540; etc. A long list of supernatural beings that also do harm to children is given in Agnipur., xxxi, 29-31 (Dutt, p. 125), so too in ccxcix, such as especially lie in wait for the young child, and this until the seventeenth year of life. The Bhūtas, Pretas, Piçācas, and Vetālas are foes of conception (cp. Mārk.-Pur., li, 46, 114 ff.) and dangerous to the fœtus (Mahānirvāṇatantra, ix, 124). Mārkaṇḍeyapur., lxxvi, 6-19 is worthy of remark here: Jātaharīṇī (a female robber of new-born children) always first steals two children, and exchanges them with one another, then she steals a third, and eats it. When doing this she takes the shape of a cat, and so awaits near the child her opportunity. Among the Urau (in Bengal) the evil spirit Chordeva, turning into a cat, creeps into the house, and during the birth and for fifteen days after seeks to harm the mother. Therefore the husband must keep watch, and a fire always be kept up. *Zeitschr. f. Ethnol.*, Bd. 6, p. 343 (after Dalton). Cp. Crooke, loc. cit., p. 271; Elsie Clews Parsons, *The Old-Fashioned Woman*, p. 57; etc. In the West, too, this witch-beast is dangerous to the woman lying-in. See Zachariae, *Zeitschr. d. Ver. f. Volksk.*, Bd. 22, p. 235 f. But on the other hand Shashṭhī also, the friendly goddess of the sixth night after the birth, rides on the back of this witching beast (Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, ii, 241); and in general this tailed creature of magic is in near relation with the sexual life of woman. Cp. also Thurston, *Omens and Superst.* of Southern India, p. 77. Like the witches and goblins, the old German wood-spirits also are fond of turning into cats (Mannhardt, *Wald- u. Feldkulte*, i, 89, 112, 146; E. H. Meyer, *Mythol. d. Germanen*, 140); and to the Indians also they are magical beings or witch-beasts (Stokes, *Indian Fairy Tales*, 15, 18, 19, 255).

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¹ [For women and snakes in Melanesia cp. G. C. Wheeler, Mono-Alu Folklore, pp. 13, 36, 37 (Translator).]

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² The children’s female demon Pūtanā gives her breast to the suckling during the night, and those that drink of it die at once. Viṣṇup., vol. iv, p. 376; Bhāgavatapur., x, 6. Evil spirits kill the fruit of the womb, exchange those of two pregnant women, if these come near trees, mountains, embankments, ditches, cross-roads, burning-grounds, or the sea (water), where a spirit of this kind dwells (Mārk.-Pur., li,

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Superstition of this kind is well-known to be spread throughout the world. Witches steal small children, and eat them or use them for their magical purposes; all kinds of spirits do harm to the mother, carry off the small beings, and put their changelings in their stead, suck children’s blood, and so on. Garnett, *The Women of Turkey*, etc., i, 13, 70, 231, 315; ii, 22, 245 (and on this *Zschr. f. Ethnol.*, Bd. 26, p. 560); Żmigrodski, *Die Mutter bei d. Völkern d. arisch. Stammes*, 124 ff.; Hartland, *The Science of Fairy Tales*, New York, 1891, pp. 93-134; Fr. S. Krauss, *Slav. Volkforsch.*, 60, 64, 66, 67, 68, 72, 146, 148, 153 ff.; etc. As probably most primitive peoples believe that a man can make only one child, and that with twins there must be either an uninvited fellow-worker or a supernatural being at work, so in one of the twins there is often seen a supernatural visitor from magical realms. But as it is not known which is a man's own child, both of them are often reared. But in other places, indeed, both are forthwith killed, or there is means to find out which is the intruder, exactly like the real changeling in European tales. There is a great number of these tales of changelings. As an example let only Kirchhof's *Wendunmuth*, iii, 516 f. be given.

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A delightful account of the wise oracular utterances which are made especially by the swarm of aunts, godmothers, and woman-neighbours about a supposed magical being of this kind, is given by Juho Reijonen, a pleasing Finnish novelist of our day, in his *Vaihdokas* (The Changeling). Indeed, Żmigrodski states: "Witch and lying-in woman are in Aryan tradition almost one and the same" (*Die Mutter*, p. 177). The death of a woman in child-bed is always a magically dangerous misfortune in India (see e.g. *Anthropos*, vi, 872 f.; vii, 85 f.; iv, 68); she becomes, at least in the belief of some primitive tribes, a very evil spirit, called Churel or Chorail, which wanders about with the feet turned backwards. Billington, *Woman in India*, p. 100; Crooke, *Things Indian*, Lond., 1906, p. 131; *Popul. Relig.*, etc., i, 269-274; *Anthropos*, iv, 679 (Pahariya); vii, 649, 659 (Khond); *Zeitschr. für Ethnol.*, Bd. 6, p. 344. Cp. Ploss-Bartels, ii, 579 ff.; Żmigrodski, 148; E. H. Meyer, *Mythol. d. Germanen*, 31; 56; 101 f.; cp. 43; A. Jeremias, *Allgemeine Religionsgesch.* 2, p. 53 (among the old Babylonians). In the belief of the Urau they are clothed in white, and have a pleasing face, but a coal-black back. *Zschr. f. Ethnol.*, Bd. 4, p. 344 (after Dalton). Like those who have met an accidental death, women that die in child-bed are buried by the Nāgas in the jungle without any rites.

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And yet the Empêo at any rate among them believe that only women dying in child-bed, and men that have fallen in the fight or been killed by tigers are allowed to go forthwith to the highest god. *Zschr. f. Ethnol.*, Bd. 30, p. 353. This reminds us of the Breton belief: A mother who has died in child-bed need only fly through purgatory, and then goes straight into heaven. Żmigrodski, *Die Mutter*, p. 142. A like belief is found, too, among the Mohammedans, in old Mexico, in Sumatra, in Steiermark, and so on. The uncanny and the holy or the divine are very near akin not in India only. The woman thus snatched away was at that very time highly unclean, and she also suffered an unnatural, premature death, as do for instance the criminal and the soldier, together with whom she often appears. The ghost of a person that has thus died is, however, powerful and often malicious. In India, indeed, the robber or murderer that has been put to death becomes a kind of god. See my *Daçakum.*, pp. 31, 358, and on that *Bhāratiyanātyaçāstra*, iii, 40 ff.; the eerie tale "The Cry from the River" in R. W. Frazer, *Silent Gods and Sun-Steeped Lands*, Lond., 1906, p. 90; Crooke, *Popul. Relig.*, etc., i, p. 228; ii, 199 (also Dubois-Beauchamp, 449; 548; Fuller, *Studies of Indian Life and Sentiment*, p. 95, and especially 96); and Thurston, *Omens and Superstitions*, etc., pp. 162, 178, 179, 209.

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With the Indian doctrine that punishment atones, blots out any guilt and reproach, is probably connected on the other hand the teaching of the old verse which I quoted in that note to the Daçakum., and which, for instance, is also found in Vasistha, xix, 45; Manu, viii, 318; Nārada, Pariçishta, 48: The criminal punished by the king goes without a spot into heaven, like the pious man. Cp. my *Hindu Tales*, pp. 9-10 (note). In Sicily, too, as I point out in the Daçakum., executed criminals are prayed to and worshipped. Cp. Hartland, "The Cult of Executed Criminals at Palermo," *Folk-Lore*, vol. 21, p. 168 ff.; vol. 7, p. 275; *Primitive Paternity*, i, 77. And in general anyone meeting his end by violence is outside the course of nature, and becomes a god, an evil spirit, etc. "There is a deified Pootra in every Rajput family—one who has met with a violent death." Tod, *Rajasthan*, i, 298, note; cp. 659-60; Hartland, i, 77; *Zschr. d. Ver. f. Volksk.*, Bd. 2, p. 185; *Zschr. f. Religwissensch*, Bd. 8, p. 258. Much valuable information is given especially by Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, i, 43, 44, 46, 62, 96, 99, 115, 119 129, 138 ff., 147, 189 ff., 230 f., 234 ff.; Crooke, *The North-Western Provinces*, 252. Here we find included the suicide, who in the law writing, the Purānas, and elsewhere is branded as evil;

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even the attempt at suicide is, indeed, to be heavily punished (Mahānirvānatantra, xi, 72 f.), and as an offence bringing loss of caste must be atoned for by works of mortification and "Penance of the Purse", that is, by giving cattle (Parāçara, xii, 5-8; cp. Vasistha, xxiii, 18 ff.). If a kinsman loses his life by his own hand, or in some other "unnatural" way (execution, water, fire, lightning, a beast, battle, accident, etc.), then his death does not make his kinsfolk unclean, and for the suicide there must be no pyre, no tears, no death-gifts, nor any other pious rite, otherwise heavy vows of mortification must be undertaken, as must no less be done by him who even cuts the cord of a hanged man. Gautama, xiv, 9 ff.; Manu, v, 89, 95, 98; Vishnu, xxii, 47, 56, 58-60; Vasistha, xxiii, 14 ff.; Yājñav., iii, 6, 21, 27; Parāçara, iii, 10; iv, 1-6; Kautilya, transl., 341.23 ff.; Garuda-Pur., Pretakalpa, 4.104-112, 160; 40.4 ff.; 44.24-29; 44.1-5; Baudh.-Grihyas., Pitrimedhasūtra, iii, 7.1 ff.; Mārk.-Pur., xxxv, 45; Agnipur., clvii, 32; 159.2-3; 158.37, 39-41; often in the Vishnupur.; etc. How uncanny the man is who has died by his own hand, is seen clearly also from Parāçara, v, 10 ff. The Çraddha on the 14th day of the half-month is forbidden for the ordinary dead, but prescribed for him that has been slain with a weapon. Yājñav., i, 263; Caland, *Totenverehrung*, bottom of 44 to 45.

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Sacer means “holy” and “cursed”—he that has been raised above sin and earthly mankind through blissful death in battle, and the shameful outcast from the caste appear side by side in the laws we have quoted! Cp. with this subject of death by violence, for instance, *Zschr. d. Ver. f. Volksk.*, Bd. 14, p. 31 ff.; 322 f. (and the references there); Caland, *Totenverehrung*, 74; *Zschr. f. Ethnol.*, v, 187; Crooke, *Anthropos*, Bd. 4, p. 68 (Nāga); ibid., 464 (Dravidian peoples); Hosten, ibid., p. 682 (Pahariya, India); *Anthropos*, Bd. vii, p. 649 (Khond); Hartland, i, 182 (Pahariya). And the very animal one kills can become a destroying being. So the Hindu, when a snake has been killed, carries out the same death rites as he does in honour of a kinsman (Rāmakrishna, *Life in an Indian Village*, 1891, p. 135, from south India; Thurston, *Omens and Superstitions*, etc., 1912, p. 123); and these often discussed ideas are very well expressed in the 46th rune of the Kalevala, where the bear, the strong king of the Finnish forests, is appeased with the most reverential ceremonies and the most honeyed words, and he is told that it is not men who have taken his life, but that he fell himself out of the fir-tree to his death. Cp. Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, ii, 212.

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The appeasing of the captured bear here referred to seems, however, to fit in first of all with the bear-worship of the Aino, the Gilyaks and other Amur peoples, which finds its highest expression in the famous bear-festival of the Aino and the Gilyaks. Of this festival among the last-named people, and what is connected with it Leo Sternberg has given a very good account in his excellent article on the religion of the Gilyaks, *Zeitschr. f. Relgnswiss.*, Bd. 8, p. 260 ff.; see especially 272 there. The bear-cult of the Aino and a long set of details belonging to it, as also the ideas lying behind it are treated at length by Frazer, *Golden Bough* 2, 1900, Bd. ii, 374 ff.

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It can be understood that the woman dead in child-bed seeks above all to harm those of her own sex, or her husband, or young men: her envious revenge is directed against those who in things of sex are so much happier than she has been. Therefore they also annoy women in child-bed. R. Schmidt, *Liebe u. Ehe in Indien*, p. 520. In India such a ghost, as a handsome woman, also draws on young men by night into destruction. Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, i, 253, 270 ff. Cp. e.g. R. Andree, *Ethnogr. Parallelen*, i, 92 f. In the same way in India the tiger that has eaten a man is always accompanied by the ghost of its victim, and led by him to other human beings that it may also slay them. Sleeman, *Rambles and Recollections*, i, 154; Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, i, 267; ii, 210 ff.; *Anthropos*, vii, 651, 660; and the thrilling tale of “The Various means, ceremonies, and magics for driving off these evil influences are, of course, of great antiquity, and make their appearance already in Vedic literature. Then the Gṛihyasūtras also deal with this subject, although not at great length; further there are the medical works, etc. A fairly clear description of the lying-in room of an upper-class woman of Old India is given in xiv, 68. It is hung with white, luck-bringing wreaths; vessels filled with water stand everywhere towards the different quarters of the heavens, and melted butter, brands of tinduka-wood, and mustard-seeds; round about are set naked missiles and lighted fires. Old women run around on all kinds of services, and equally skilled physicians. Everywhere the eye meets the magical things which have been set out about the place by experienced persons according to the prescript, and which rob the spirits of their evil.—So soon as Sītā has brought forth her twins, the holy Vālmīki is called in to see to the spirit-banning, protective measures. And he also drives away the rakshas and bhūtas. As being especially powerful, the holy kuça-grass is, of course, used here also (Rām., vii, 66).

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Most important of all is the fire (sūtikāgni) that still burns to-day in the lying-in rooms of India. It must be kept always burning (xii, 69.49), as, indeed, for keeping off the dark powers in general the warding flame of fire must be kept up day and night ¹ (cp. xiii, 131.7 ff., where as remedies against the eerie Tailless Tiger" in Frazer's *Silent Gods and Sun-Steeped Lands*, p. 11 ff. Doubtless among other things the belief also enters here that anyone killed by a beast becomes this beast himself. So also the Gilyaks believe of the human prey of a bear (Schurtz, *Urgesch. d. Kultur*, p. 570). Finally there is probably another belief at work in the dread with which a woman carried off in child-bed is looked on: The woman that was so little fitted for her natural calling is a wretched being, nay, an offence against her lord and master, and a shame on her family. How should she, then, but have to go about as an evil ghost, herself unhappy, and to others bringing unhappiness! With more advanced views she has also done wrong to the child, and has to come back to it, suckle it, care for it, and so on. Mother love as a motive probably belongs to a higher developed set of ideas. [For child-stealing spirits in Melanesia cp. G. C. Wheeler, *Mono-Alu Folklore*, pp. 60, 61, (Translator).]

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¹ Billington, *Woman in India*, 1 ff.; 99; Hartland, *Science of Fairy Tales*, 96; etc. The woman who is unclean and makes unclean must stay ten days in the lying-in room. Manu, vi, 217.

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spirit-beings Pramathas the following are also given : hyena skin, hyena teeth, mountain tortoise, the smell of butter, a cat, a black and a red he-goat). Like the fire that comes into contact with other unclean objects, as for instance the lich-fire, the sūtikāgni is unclean (iii, 221.31 ; cp. e.g. Hiraṇyakeçin's Gṛihyas., ii, 1, 3.4 ; i, 4.8).¹

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¹ Down to to-day in India, or at least here and there, the husband also is made unclean by the wife's child-bed, and thus exposed to magical influences (Billington, 4-5); and the Gopa ("herdsman") in Bengal is forty days unclean then, just as in case of a death (*Zeitschr. f. Ethnolog.*, Bd. 6, p. 372, after Dalton). The same belief is witnessed to for us by the old law books. As by the death of one of his kindred, so through the birth of a child the Brahman becomes unclean for ten days, the Kshattriya twelve, the Vaiçya fifteen, the Çūdra a month. Viṣṇu, xxii, 1-4; Parāçara, iii, 4. According to Vasiṣṭha, iv, 20-29 the dark ban lies on the Kshattriya even fifteen days, on the Vaiçya twenty days. Cp. Gautama, xiv, 14-16. Indeed, in the matter of the disputed question touched on here and by Vasiṣṭha there were, according to Baudhāyana, i, 5, 11.19-23, those who maintained that only the father, as the main originator, was made unclean through the child's birth. Cp. Bühler's note SBE, xiv, p. 180; Agnipur., 158.60 f.; Garuḍapur., Pretakalpa, 39.9, 11. But Baudh. decides like others : "both parents." See also Manu, v, 77, 79; Agnipur., p. 608; Schmidt, *Liebe u. Ehe in Indien*, p. 530 ff. (also 503 ff.; 509); Crooke, *Pop. Rel.*, i, 274-277. In the fact that the father is thus exposed to the evil-minded powers I see the most primitive and main cause of the Couvade, for which so many interpretations have been given. Max Müller's way out of it all is most extraordinary. It is in general explained as a survival from the times of mother-right; the husband wanted, it is said, to make known in a very evident way his claim on the child. So, too, Ploss-Bartels, Henne am Rhyn, Westermarck, Ed. Meyer, and others, to say nothing of those with a fad for the matriarchate. But even where mother-right actually prevails, the husband in many, but by no means in all, cases is deemed to be the natural owner of each child which his wife, that is, his property, brings forth, even when he himself and everyone else knows that he has nothing to do with it; and under father-right this is the universally held view. Among many Brazilian tribes that have the Couvade it is to the father only that the origination of the child is ascribed. Kunicke, *Zeitschr. f. Ethnol.*, vol. 43, p. 553. Cp. there 547-8. Now for the man there is nothing more dreadful than to be in any

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way put on a level with the so very contemptible, and often mysterious woman, or to be in any way like her. There is, therefore, in truth a much stronger motive needed, for making a lying-in woman of the husband, than the wish to see the children of his wife looked on as his own. Superstition filled with the thought of the precious self holds all the primitive peoples in its bonds, and an even relatively important freedom from it, such, for instance, as we meet with in the book of the two Seligmann’s on the Veddas, or as is here and there reported of the Aino, arouses the greatest astonishment. On the other hand the universal development of marriage by way of hetærism and matriarchate cannot be proved. For then all the peoples with the Couvade would have to be patriarchal now, and before they had the men’s lying-in they must have had mother-right. But even the first of these two does not hold, to say nothing whatever of the proof of the second. And the selfishness of the man is a truly “cosmic” element. I should like, then, as against this explanation and the other one to be immediately discussed, to point to some words of Fr. S. Krauss that are to be found somewhere in a note on the customs and habits of the South Slavs, and are worth more than many a long ethnological treatise. They are somewhat as follows: “If to-morrow the men had to bear the children, then the social question would be solved at one stroke—mankind would at once die out.” Children are indeed often very valuable to primitive man; but he does not take to the child-bed for *their* sake. But this is just what Starcke holds: “The well-being of the child is the object; the father’s powers of endurance are displayed on such occasions, and might thus be assured to the child, for no one who was deficient in courage and endurance would submit to this custom” (*Primit. Family*, p. 52). Primitive man is indeed not so careful and self-forgetting for the sake of his offspring. We are, it is true, often told of the foolish fondness shown, or said to be shown, by savages towards their growing children. But when we are told how general it is for the new-born to be killed off, and when we think how despised the father would become, if he took much heed of a brat like this, usually left only to the care of women, or even of fate—then we cannot believe that he would hand over his very important self to the shame and the discomforts, and even the pains of a couvade, only that it may go well for the little helpless creature. The statement in Dobrizhoffer from the relatively highly developed Abipones is worth nothing. No; superstitious fear of the harm that might come to a man’s own much-threatened personality, this only is the root. *Primos in orbe deos fecit timor*, as we may read also in the MBh., xii, 15.13-19; K, iii, 28.16. Dark beings and forces lurk round the father, who is likewise made

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unclean, far more than round the mother or the child; for, as a man, he seems so immeasurably more important, in the eyes of the ghostly powers also, than the wretched worthless woman. The man's child-bed is probably, anyhow where it is bound up with torments of any kind, at the same time a magical matter, and bestows charmed and magic strength. And probably it makes a part of the magical homœopathy of primitive man.

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*Note in Proof.*¹—The well-known article by Ling Roth in the *Journal of the Roy. Anthropol. Inst.*, vol. xxii, p. 204 ff., was deliberately not read by me till the last, so that I might not be influenced by it. But unfortunately I only saw it after sending off my MS. He brings forward a good many cases where the welfare of the child is given as the reason of the couvade (pp. 209-11, 214 f., 217 f., 219 ff.). This standpoint has therefore undoubtedly not been without influence. The man's lying-in is found neither among the lowest, nor among the civilized peoples (of to-day) (p. 222). The Australians living under mother-right believe that the child really comes only from the father (225 f.). Mother-right and Couvade are met with together among the Arawaks, and in Melanesia (227; cp. 238 f.).

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¹ [Of the original.]

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XIV

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