Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/549

 until it was explained to her, that I was not going to marry the gentleman, and had only accepted the nose-ring to make a native dress perfect.

Three of the slave girls, wishing to see the world, I suppose, went to the Begam, and asked her to give them to me. She laughed and told me their request.

Science has not yet entered the confines of the zenāna; nature and superstition reign supreme; nevertheless, native women suffer less on the birth of a child than the women of Europe. The first nourishment given an infant medicinally is composed of umaltass (cassia fistula) sugar, aniseed water, and russote, from a colt just born! Native women do not approve of flannel for infants, thinking it excites the skin too much.

In page 230 is the following remark by Colonel Gardner,—"Nothing can exceed the quarrels that go on in a zenāna, or the complaints the Begams make against each other; a common complaint is, such an one has been practising witchcraft against me." The following extracts will account for their belief in witchcraft. "Aa'yeshah said, 'His Majesty was bewitched while he was with me, and he prayed to God, and then said, 'O Aa'yeshah! do you know, that verily God gave me what I asked him? Two men came to me, one sitting at my head, the other at my feet; and one of them said to the other, 'What is the cause of his Majesty's pain and illness?' The other said, 'The man has been bewitched.' The other asked, 'Who did it?' He said, 'Labid-bin-As'am, the Jew.' The first said, 'In what thing?' The other replied, 'In a comb, and in the hair which falls from it, and in the film of the male date bud.' And one of them said, 'Where has he put them?' The other said, 'In the well Dharwān.' Then his Majesty sent Alī and Omer to bring the things out of the well; and they found in the bud an image of his Majesty, made with wax, with needles stuck into it, and a thread tied upon it, with eleven knots in it. Then Gabriel brought the chapters imploring protection, every verse of which repeated opened one of the knots; and his Majesty received ease from every needle that was pulled out of it."