DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.636#0368
356 Male-prodtiction Ceremony.
' Immortality in future worlds and heavenly bliss are obtained
by means of sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons.'
A story is told in some Brahmana of a certain pious man of
ascetical temperament who determined to shirk the religious
duty of taking a wife. Quietly skipping over the second pre-
scribed period of life, during which he ought to have become
a householder (grihastha), he entered at once upon the third
period—that is to say, he became an ascetic, abjured all
female society, and retired to the woods. Wandering about
one day, absorbed in meditation, he was startled by an
extraordinary spectacle. He saw before him a deep and
apparently bottomless pit. Around its edge some unhappy
men were hanging suspended by ropes of grass, at which here
and there a rat was nibbling. On asking their history, he
discovered to his horror that they were his own ancestors
compelled to hang in this unpleasant manner, and doomed
eventually to fall into the abyss, unless he went back into the
world, did his duty like a man, married a suitable wife, and
had a son, who would be able to release them from their
critical predicament.
It is not, therefore, difficult to understand the object of the
' Male-production' ceremony (Pumsavana). It was performed
in the third month of gestation and before the period of
quickening. According to Asvalayana the wife was to keep
a solemn fast. She was then fed by her husband with two
beans and a grain of barley1 mixed with a handful of curds,
and made to pray three times for the production of male-
offspring.
A further supplementary rite for the prevention of mis-
carriage was customary in some localities. It was performed
by sprinkling the juice of a stalk of fresh Dfirba grass in the
wife's right nostril, with the repetition of certain Mantras.
This ceremony was called Anavalopana (or Anavalobhana).
1 Symbolical of the Lifiga.
' Immortality in future worlds and heavenly bliss are obtained
by means of sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons.'
A story is told in some Brahmana of a certain pious man of
ascetical temperament who determined to shirk the religious
duty of taking a wife. Quietly skipping over the second pre-
scribed period of life, during which he ought to have become
a householder (grihastha), he entered at once upon the third
period—that is to say, he became an ascetic, abjured all
female society, and retired to the woods. Wandering about
one day, absorbed in meditation, he was startled by an
extraordinary spectacle. He saw before him a deep and
apparently bottomless pit. Around its edge some unhappy
men were hanging suspended by ropes of grass, at which here
and there a rat was nibbling. On asking their history, he
discovered to his horror that they were his own ancestors
compelled to hang in this unpleasant manner, and doomed
eventually to fall into the abyss, unless he went back into the
world, did his duty like a man, married a suitable wife, and
had a son, who would be able to release them from their
critical predicament.
It is not, therefore, difficult to understand the object of the
' Male-production' ceremony (Pumsavana). It was performed
in the third month of gestation and before the period of
quickening. According to Asvalayana the wife was to keep
a solemn fast. She was then fed by her husband with two
beans and a grain of barley1 mixed with a handful of curds,
and made to pray three times for the production of male-
offspring.
A further supplementary rite for the prevention of mis-
carriage was customary in some localities. It was performed
by sprinkling the juice of a stalk of fresh Dfirba grass in the
wife's right nostril, with the repetition of certain Mantras.
This ceremony was called Anavalopana (or Anavalobhana).
1 Symbolical of the Lifiga.