PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 141 



of procuring children recounted in the foregoing pages 

 had not sprung from the elementary therapeutics of 

 the lower culture, and were not intended to act 

 mechanically or as a drug upon the body of wife 

 or husband, so as to remove a physical incapacity 

 or ailment which prevented the bearing or begetting 

 of children. Simulation does not admit of any such 

 explanation : it is simply magic. Although therefore 

 it is not one of the causes prominent in the stories of 

 supernatural birth it deserves notice as strengthening 

 the general argument that conception in early stages 

 of culture is held to be procured by other than natural 

 means. 



A frequent form of simulation for the purpose of 

 obtaining children is found in the custom of putting 

 a boy to sit on the bride's lap at a wedding. The 

 ceremony was usual among the ancient Aryans'and is 

 prescribed in the Apastamba^ It is still followed infthe 

 east of Europe and elsewhere. 2 In Sweden on the 

 night preceding her nuptials the bride should have a 

 boy-baby to sleep with her, in which case her first-born 

 will be a son. 3 Among the Hindus of the Panjab at 

 the first menstruation of a woman after the marriage 

 has been consummated, she is shut up in a dark room 

 under a strict taboo. She must not use milk, oil or 

 meat. On a day chosen as auspicious by a Brahman, 

 and while she is still impure, all her female relatives 

 assemble and wash her head with gondhana. Then 

 after she has bathed five cakes of flour, walnuts and 

 pomegranates are put in her lap with a pretty child, 

 that she too may bear a child. Looking into its face 



1 Winternitz, 23, 75; Schroeder, 123. 



2 Mannhardt, Myth. Forsch. 357. 



Lloyd, 85. 



