TRANSFORMATION 229 



ever afterwards be barren. 1 In the legend of the 

 manioc already cited the maiden from whose grave the 

 manioc sprouted was buried in her parents' house. In 

 a variant it is the maiden's infant child who is thus 

 buried ; and we are told that he was thus buried 

 according to ancient custom. 2 



Among the rites for obtaining children referred to in 

 the last chapter were attempts by women in India and 

 elsewhere to possess themselves of the life of a little 

 infant, or of an executed criminal or other corpse, in the 

 hope that the life thus obtained would be born again 

 of them. 3 The subject was postponed for fuller discus- 

 sion in connection with the subject of Transformation. 

 Directing our attention first to the practice at Bombay 

 of cutting off the end of a fruitful woman's robe, it might 

 be thought that the object was merely to share, by a 

 well-known magical process illustrated in practices 

 elsewhere, in the fertility of the woman who owned the 

 robe. That this is not so is shown by the requirement 

 that in Guzerat the woman whose skirt is detached 

 must be one pregnant for the first time, and the belief 

 that she will thus be caused a miscarriage, while the 

 woman who takes the skirt will bear a child. 4 Similarly 



1 Dixon, Bull. Am. Mus. N. H. xvii. 230. 



2 Carl Teschauer, Anthropos. i. 742. Many peoples bury adults 

 in their huts. The hut ir then usually abandoned, but by no means 

 always : among tribes in various parts of the world it continues to 

 be occupied. The question whether in such cases the burial has 

 any relation to the belief in a fresh birth of the deceased requires 

 examination for which I have had no opportunity. But even if the 

 burial have no relation to the belief in question a considerable 

 volume of evidence remains, of which examples are given above, that 

 children are buried under or in close proximity to the parental hut 

 for the purpose of being born again. 



* Supra, pp. 69, 71, 75-77- * Daya, 90. 



