Note 12 — Kurmi

During the period of labour the barber’s wife watches over the case, but as delivery approaches hands it over to a recognised midwife, usually the Basorin or Chamārin, who remains in the lying-in room till about the tenth day after delivery. “If delivery is retarded,” Mr. Marten continues,12 “pressure and massage are used, but coffee and other herbal decoctions are given, and various means, mostly depending on sympathetic magic, are employed to avert the adverse spirits and hasten and ease the labour. She may be given water to drink in which the feet of her husband13 or her mother-in-law or a young unmarried girl have been dipped, or she is shown the swastik or some other lucky sign, or the chakra-vyuha, a spiral figure showing the arrangement of the armies of the Pāndavas and Kauravas which resembles the intestines with the exit at the lower end.”