5 o PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



gitimate. The governor consulted the doctors, who 

 advised that the infant should be taken to the bath, 

 and that if the mother's story were true the infant 

 would smell of fish. The experiment was tried, and 

 the child's legitimacy was held to be proven. The 

 inheritance was considerable, and the relatives were 

 persons of position. Not satisfied with the result, 

 they went to Agra and appealed to the King, who 

 ordered the test to be repeated in his presence. 

 It was repeated, with the same success as on the 

 previous occasion ; and the widow and child retained 

 the property. 1 This train of incidents is reported to 

 us from a high stage of civilisation. Consequently 

 it would be in vain to expect to find in anything 

 like purity the ideas which it embodies. But in spite 

 of impurity, in spite of the share apparently assigned 

 to the husband in the procreation of the infant, 

 it is clear that the fish is regarded as much more than 

 a medicine for an abnormal condition of the wife's 

 body. It is a true fertiliser, a true begetter, one of 

 whose most distinctive characteristics is reproduced in 

 the offspring. The Gonds of India perform, a week 

 after a death, the rite of bringing back the soul of the 

 deceased. "They go to the riverside, call out the 

 name of the dead man, catch a fish, and bring it home. 

 In some cases they eat it in the belief that by so doing 

 the deceased will be born again as a child in the 

 family." 2 Here the practice has become connected 

 with a belief which we shall discuss in the next 

 chapter. On every Christmas Eve unfruitful wives 

 among the Transylvanian Saxons eat fish and throw 



L Tavernier, Trav. in Ind. i. 75. 

 2 Crooke, Things Indian, 221. 



