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78
KALPA SÚTRA.
of cloth, and of all customs, of taxes on cattle, and husbandry, and other taxes, that no arrests should be made, that small fines should be remitted, and larger reduced one-half, and debts cancelled, and that dances, plays, and all kinds of music should be provided for the people, and the city gave itself to joy and festivity for ten days. During these ten days of festivity Siddhartha received hundreds and thousands, and tens of thousands of gifts, and gave and ordered to be distributed among his servants, hundreds, and thousands, and tens of thousands of donations. The first day there was performed the feast of special rejoicing for the birth of a son*, the third day was the shewing him the moon, and the sunt; on the sixth day was observed the religious wake; the eleventh day put an end to the
* In Sanskrit called स्थितिप्रतीक्षा
The Commentator says, that instead of shewing the child the actual sun and moon, they form a golden or brass image of the former, and a silver one of the latter, and shew it these.
The mother and her attendants keep awake all this night from respect, my informants say, to the Goddess Sati, or as the Marathas call her, Satvâi, who comes to write the child's fate in its forehead. The lines formed for the blood-vessels inside the skull, and especially the serrated lines of the junction of the frontal and parietal bones, are supposed by the Hindus to be the work of a deity, and to contain a record of a man's fate. Accordingly, in the Deccan, for "fated," they use the expression, "written on the forehead."
