ally administered to
children as a narcotic.

12. Devices for procuring children

If a woman is barren and has no children one of the remedies prescribed
by the Sarodis or wandering soothsayers is that she should set fire
to somebody's house, going alone and at night to perform the deed. So
long as some small part of the house is burnt it does not matter if
the fire be extinguished, but the woman should not give the alarm
herself. It is supposed that the spirit of some insect which is burnt
will enter her womb and be born as a child. Perhaps she sets fire
to someone else's house so as to obtain the spirit of one of the
family's dead children, which may be supposed to have entered the
insects dwelling on the house. Some years ago at Bhandak in Chanda
complaints were made of houses being set on fire. The police officer
[30] sent to investigate found that other small fires continued
to occur. He searched the roofs of the houses, and on two or three
found little smouldering balls of rolled-up cloth. Knowing of the
superstition he called all the childless married women of the place
together and admonished them severely, and the fires stopped. On
another occasion the same officer's wife was ill, and his little son,
having fever, was sent daily to the dispensary for medicine in charge
of a maid. One morning he noticed on one of the soles of the boy's
feet a stain of the juice of the _bhilawa_ [31] or marking-nut tree,
which raises blisters on the skin. On looking at the other foot he
found six similar marks, and on inquiry he learned that these were
made by a childless woman in the expectation that the boy would soon
die and be born again as her child. The boy suffered no harm, but his
mother, being in bad health, nearly died of shock on learning of the
magic practised against her son.

Another device is to make a _pradakshana_ or pilgrimage round a pipal
tree, going naked at midnight after worshipping Maroti or Hanuman, and
holding a necklace of _tulsi_ beads in the hand. The pipal is of course
a sacred tree, and is the abode of Brahma, the original creator of the
world. Brahma has no consort, and it is believed that while all other
trees are both male and female the pipal is only male, and is capable
of impregnating a woman and rendering her fertile. A variation of this
belief is that pipal trees are inhabited by the spirits of unmarried
Brahman boys, and hence a woman sometimes takes a piece of new thread
and wind