Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v2.c14.6

v2.c14.6

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).]