Note 71 — Chapter III · TOTEMISM AND FETISHISM.

The same beliefs largely prevail in India. In 1870, a Musalmân butcher losing his child was told by a Hindu conjuror that if he washed his wife in the blood of a boy, his next infant would be healthy. To ensure this result a child was murdered. A similar case occurred in Muzaffarnagar, where a child was killed and the blood drunk by a barren woman.71 In one of the tales of Somadeva the pregnant queen asks her husband to gratify her longing by filling a tank with blood for her to bathe in. He was a righteous man, and in order to gratify her craving he had a tank filled with the juice of lac and other extracts, so that it seemed to be full of blood. In another tale the ascetic tells the woman that if she killed her young son and offered him to the divinity, another son would certainly be born to her. Quite recently at Muzaffarnagar a childless Jât woman was told that she would attain her desire if she bathed in water mixed with the blood of a Brâhman child. A Hindu coolie at Mauritius bathed in and drank the blood of a girl, thinking that thereby he would be gifted with supernatural powers. It would be easy to add largely to the number of instances of similar beliefs.72