Note 158.3 — Chapter VI · THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN PRACTICAL SUPERSTITIONS.

The Grihya-Sûtra of Gobhila gives minute directions for the sacrifice offered by the ancient Aryans of India. The object of the Anvashtakya ceremony was the propitiation of the ancestral spirits, to whom three Pindas, or lumps of food, consisting of rice and cow-beef mixed with a certain juice, are offered. After the offering, if the sacrificer’s wife wish for a son, she is to eat the middle Pinda, dedicated among the manes especially to her husband’s grandfather, uttering at the same time the verse from the Mantra-Brâhmana: “Give fruit to the womb, O Fathers!”158.3 No doubt the virtue of this prescription consists in the food’s having been part of the sacrificial offering. But the cow is so intimately connected with the well-being of all tribes in the Old World who have passed beyond the lower stages of savagery, and has consequently become so well-recognised a symbol of fecundity, that we need not be surprised to find it used in charms to produce offspring. An Old English recipe for a woman who miscarries is to let her take milk of a one-coloured cow in her hand and sup it up into her mouth, and then go to running water and spit out the milk therein. Next, she must ladle up with the same hand a mouthful of the water and swallow it down, uttering certain words. Lastly, she must, without looking about her either in her going or coming, return, but not into the same house whence she came out, and there taste of meat.159.1 Among the Kaffirs an amulet to remove the reproach from a childless woman is made by the medicine-man of the clan from the tail-hairs of a heifer. The heifer must be given to the husband by a kinsman for the purpose; and the charm, when made, is hung round the woman’s neck.159.2 In Belgium, women desirous of offspring are advised to drink a mixture of the milk of the goat, ass, and sheep.159.3