Birth and Childhood in India, 1917
From Home Life in India by John Finnemore, 1917.
From: 1917 C.E. To: 1917 C.E.
Location: India
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Home Life in India by John Finnemore, 1917.
When a baby is born in a Hindu home, it will be received very gladly if it is a boy; the parents rejoice because the gods have given them a son. If the father is rich, he will show his pleasure by making a splendid feast for the priests and his friends. All the beggars in the countryside will flock to the house, for they know well that the wealthy man will distribute food and money among them, that all may rejoice with him on the birth of his son.
If it is a daughter, there is quite another face on things. The mother is sad, the friends shake their heads as if sorry for the misfortune which has befallen the house, and the father thinks that the gods are angry with him because they have sent him a daughter. This seems very wrong and unreasonable to us, but the causes must be sought in the views of the Hindus and their way of life.
In the first place, a Hindu believes that after his death he cannot be happy in the next world unless his son has performed certain rites and ceremonies on his behalf. A daughter cannot do this, so he earnestly wishes for a son. In the second place, a son is a son always—the prop and support of the house. He will never leave his parents, but their home will be his home until the day of his death. But a daughter is a daughter only for a very few years; she will marry and go to her husband's house, and thenceforth she has neither share nor part in the home in which she was born.
Whatever the need of her parents may be, she cannot tend or aid them: she belongs entirely to her husband's family. Among the higher castes the separation is so complete that a father may not visit his married daughter's home, and a man has been heard to boast that he had not even drunk water from the well of the village in which his married daughter lived.
In the third place, there is the question of the dowry. The Hindu husband often expects to receive a large sum of money with his wife; so that if there are many daughters of a house the parents are pinched to provide dowries. And we must remember that every daughter must be married. Nothing would more horrify Hindu parents than the idea that a daughter might remain unmarried at the age of fourteen. It is against every custom of their life, and custom is a tyrant in India.
Upon these scores, then, daughters are, as a rule, unwelcome—so unwelcome that, in the old days, they were often put to death. When a father heard that a daughter was born, he said nothing, but raised his hand, with the thumb clasped round the fingers. The sign meant that it was not to live, and the child was killed. The British Government set to work to stop this crime, and it is no longer done openly. But it is said that in some parts of the country it still goes on in secret, and it may easily be so, for the law stops short on the threshold of the zenana, where no man may be admitted save the master of the house.
When a child is born one of the first things done is to fetch the fortune-teller. He comes and looks very carefully at the marks on the baby's head. These are the lines between the bones of the skull, such as all children show. But the Hindus believe that in these marks the fate of the child can be read, and this very old story is told about them:
Long, long ago a daughter was born to the great god Brahma, the creator of all things, and his wife begged that he would tell her the fate of their child. Brahma was seated with his back towards his wife and the infant, but he stretched out his hand behind him towards the child. In his hand he held a pen of gold, and with this pen he wrote on the infant's head. He could not see the letters he was forming, but his wife could, and she cried out in alarm, for she saw that a dreadful fate was promised for her child.
She called upon Brahma to change the writing at once. He did so, but her terror increased, for this fate was worse than the last. Again she begged him not to leave so cruel a fate on the head of their daughter. Brahma wrote a third time, but now he did not give his wife a chance to urge him anew. Before she could say a word, he hurled his golden pen far from him, and since that day he has never written but once on the head of each child; so that when a child is born the fortune-teller is called in, and he pores over those markings in the tiny skull, and calls them the writings of Brahma. In those writings it is believed that the child's fate is set down, and the parents listen with great eagerness and anxiety as the fortune-teller prophesies what will happen to their little one.
For the first few years of a child's life he is allowed to tumble about and play just as he fancies, nor is any attention paid to what he says or does, for he is regarded as having no soul until he has attained the age of seven years. At about eight or nine years he is considered old enough to enter his caste, and this entrance is conducted, in the case of a high-caste boy, with many ceremonies. He now puts on the sacred thread which is the mark of his caste. He wears it over his right shoulder, and from the moment he puts it on he must obey every caste rule.
The priest who puts the thread on him for the first time also whispers in his ear the mantra—the sacred text or saying of his family. This mantra he must repeat every morning and evening, and he must always bathe before he tastes food. Besides the sacred thread, he is shown how to paint his caste marks on his face and body. There are many marks for the different castes, and a Hindu has only to glance at the mark on a man's forehead to know at once to what caste he belongs.
Finnemore, John. Home Life in India. A. & C. Black, 1917.
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