Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/411

 must eat rice from a bowl and not off a plate. It is thought that neglect of this rule would cause her body to swell in an unbecoming manner after childbirth.

After the mother has been laid on the prataïh, the infant is attended to. The navel-cord is, as in Java, cut with a piece of sharp bamboo (teumèn=the Jav. wělad), and to ward off evil influences the midwife spits (seumbō) upon the child from her mouth a slaver composed of chewed sirih, turmeric (kunyèt), betel-nut, gambir and lime.

The midwife then wraps the child in some strips of cloth and hands it over to the father. If it is a boy, the latter repeats in his right ear the adan or bang (the formula used as a summons to the five daily prayers), and in his left the kamat or final exhortation before the performance of a religious exercise. In the case of a girl he limits himself to the last. The intention of this pious custom is to make the child hear, immediately after its birth, the Mohammedan confession of faith, which occurs frequently in both these formulas. Where the father is incapable of performing this office, the services of a teungku are engaged. At the same time the father gives a fee of one or two dollars to the midwife, who after her first attendance on the child also receives a money present from the woman and another from her mother-in-law.

A first born child (aneuʾ phōn) is presented by his father with a couple of dollars, which he puts under the infant's sleeping-place, to be spent by the mother’s parents for the child’s advantage.

The child is now laid beside its mother on the prataih, and care is taken to spread some raw rice beneath its pillows. This is one of the numerous devices employed both about the prataïh and all through the house, to avert the dreaded burōng (pontianak). Pieces of wood of a variety with a malodorous bark supposed to frighten away the burōng, are laid all round the platform. Over the mother's head is hung, bell-wise, the hollow half-shell of a cocoanut, suspended by a cord passing through its top. To the end of this cord, inside the bell, is fastened a duròë rungkōm, the thorn of a large tree which bears small sour-sweet fruits.

The stairway or ladder leading up to the house is protected against