hen the child is
given grain for the first time, consisting of rice and milk. Brahmans
or religious mendicants are invited and fed. The child's hair and
nails are cut for the first time on the Shivratri or Akti festival
following the birth, and are wrapped up in a ball of dough and thrown
into a sacred river. If a child is born during an eclipse they think
that it will suffer from lung disease; so a silver model of the moon
is made immediately during the eclipse, and hung round the child's
neck, and this is supposed to preserve it from harm.

18. Suckling children

A Hindu woman will normally suckle her child for two to three years
after its birth, and even beyond this up to six years if it sleeps
with her. But they think that the child becomes short of breath if
suckled for so long, and advise the mother to wean it. And if she
becomes pregnant again, when she has been three or four months in this
condition, she will wean the child by putting _nim_ leaves or some
other bitter thing on her breasts. A Hindu should not visit his wife
for the last six months of her pregnancy nor until the child has been
fed with grain for the first time six months after its birth. During
the former period such action is thought to be a sin, while during
the latter it may have the effect of rendering the mother pregnant
again too quickly, and hence may not allow her a sufficiently long
period to suckle the first child.

19. Beliefs about twins

Twins, Mr. Marten states, are not usually considered to be
inauspicious. [65] "It is held that if they are of the same sex they
will survive, and if they are of a different sex one of them will
die. Boy twins are called Rama and Lachhman, a boy and a girl Mahadeo
and Parvati, and two girls Ganga and Jamuni or Sita and Konda. They
should always be kept separate so as to break the essential connection
which exists between them and may cause any misfortune which happens
to the one to extend to the other. Thus the mother always sleeps
between them in bed and never carries both of them nor suckles both
at the same time. Again, among some castes in Chhattisgarh, when the
twins are of different sex, they are considered to be _pap_ (sinful)
and are called Papi and Papin, an allusion to the horror of a brother
and sister sharing the same bed (the mother's womb)." Hindus think
that if two people comb their hair with the same comb they will lose
their affection for each other. Hence the hair of