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JULY, 1911.1
AN ENQUIRY INTO BIRTH AND MARRIAGE CUSTOMS
191
The feeding of the child for the first time or the anna--prushad ceremony takes place in the sixth month. The priest and the relations are invited. The child is clothed in new garments, and some rice, cooked in milk, is given to the baby to eat, after the priest has helped the family to worship.
As for twins (two girls or two boys), they have no special significance. But if they turn out to be a boy and a girl, it is considered very inauspicious. In the latter case, too, there is a distinction. A girl followed by a boy, though bad, is not so bad. But if the boy prevedes the girl, it is a dreadful scandal indeed, for it is imagined they are really like husband and wife, though born of the same mother.
It must be so arranged that a girl first menstruates while at her husband's home. Menstruating for the first time at her parents' house is an evil to be avoided at all costs, for it would certainly bring ill-luck to her brothers. So if it is suspected that a girl is about to menstruate, she is gent at once (if married, as indeed she usually must be at that age) to her husband's home. If, however, that cannot be arranged, she must be sent away to a friend's bouse at least.
At her husband's home, a wife's attaining puberty is celebrated very much like the birth of a child. Friends and relations are invited. The husband and the wife together worship the godand there is feasting. • If the former children of a woman have died, there is a simple method for saving a subsequent one from a similar fate. The child is given away to a jogi so that he no longer belongs to her parents' household, and, therefore, escapes any evil fortune connected with it. -
The jogi gives his mantram (the sacred formula) to the child by whispering it in its ear-thus completing the discipleship of the child; and finally, to mark this physically, ties a rudráksh bead round the child's neck. The parents then purchase the child from the jogi for money. The jogi has to be invited at the Yajño pavita and the marriage festivities of the child, who is often in such cages even called " Jogia."
Marriage Customs: Polyan lry.-- Polyandry, though prevalent across the border in Tibet, does not exist among residents of Bhot on this side of the border, though the Bhotiyas are undoubtedly of Tibetan origin. The language has affinities with the Tibetan, and they have the same Mongolian cast of countenance. It may be that contact with the more elaborate social and religious polity of the Indian immigrants from the plains made the Bhotiyas give up this custom. Whatever the cause of the disappearance may be, there is now no trace of polyandry in any shape in the Bhot parganas of Johar, Darma, Chaudas or Bians. I made special and careful enquiries; for, it had been suggested to me by Mr. E. A. II. Blunt, I.C.S., that it may possibly be found in Darma. Bat in Pargana Askot there is a tribe called the Rajis. They live an uncivilized life in the wilds of Askot and Nepal borderland, and are called Ban-manas (men of the wilderness) by the residents. They practise polyandry, though now they deny it when asked specifically. One of these men who denied this before me was asked if he could say that his mother (there present) was not equally the wife of his father and his unole. The mother and son both kept significantly silent.
As for parentage, the first child is said to belong to the eldest husband, the second to the second, and so on in order, whatever the real parentage may be. There have been various speculations about the origin of this tribe, but notbing has been established definitely yet. They probably represent some of the pre-Aryan inhabitants. Some Tibetan families, that have settled at Khimling (Darma), are of course polyandrous.
Niyoga.-Niyoga was an ancient custom among the Hindus, by which a childless widow often raised a son to her dead husband through the agency of her dead hushand's brother, or sometimes a Rishi. Pandu and Dhritarashtra, the progenitors of the Pandavas and the Kauravas, who fought
