Note 5 — Chapter XIV · BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD CEREMONIES
Reading edition
About the seventh month of pregnancy a ceremony is performed, which is called pursütpimi, “bow (and arrow) we touch.” This ceremony begins on the evening before the day of the new moon. The pregnant woman goes into a wood about a furlong from the village at which she is living. She is accompanied by her husband, or if she has several, by the husband who is to give the bow and arrow. The husband cuts a triangular niche in a tree,5 of which the Toda name is kers. The niche is large enough to contain a lamp, and is made a few feet above the ground, so that it is about on a level with the eyes of the woman when she is sitting on the ground. Ghi is then put in an earthenware lamp, which is lighted and placed in the niche. Some sort of arrangement is made on the tree to provide a covering under which the woman is later to sit, but I could not satisfy myself exactly how this is done. Husband and wife then go to find the wood called puv,6 and the grass called nark.7 A bow (purs) is made from the wood by stripping off a piece of bark and stretching it across the bent stick so as to form the string of the bow.8 The grass is put in the little artificial bow so as to resemble an arrow.