Page:A Short History of Aryan Medical Science.djvu/62

54, rites at birth, among others putting ghee into the child's mouth with a golden spoon, before cutting the cord : , naming the little one on the eleventh, twelfth, or any other auspicious day : , taking the infant out of the house when three months old to see the moon in the third light fortnight : , the ceremony of showing the sun to the child when four months old : , feeding the baby with its first dish of rice in the sixth or eighth month : , the ceremony of boring the child's ears, generally performed in odd months after birth : , the rite of shaving the head save one lock, called "Chuda" or crest, in the first or third year, and not later than the fifth year : , the investiture with the sacrificial thread, which falls from the left shoulder to the right hip, for a Brahman in the eighth and not later than the sixteenth year ; for a Kshatriya in the eleventh and not later than the twenty-second year ; and for a Vaishya in the twelfth and not later than the twenty-fourth : this ceremony marks the commencement of student-life : , an initiatory rite generally four days after the last, when the Gaetree* is taught and repeated: