Chapter XVI

CHAPTER XVI.

1. The sixteenth subject is this, that, when a woman becomes pregnant in a house, it is necessary to make an endeavour so that there may be a continual fire in that house, and to maintain a good watch over it. 2. And, when the child becomes separate from the mother, it is necessary to burn a lamp for three nights and days—if they burn a fire it would be better—so that the demons and fiends may not be able to do any damage and harm; because, when a child is born, it is exceedingly delicate for those three days.

3. For it is declared in revelation 1, that, when Zaratust, the Spitamân, became separate from his mother, every night, for three nights, a demon came on, with a hundred and fifty other demons, so that they might effect the slaughter (halâk) of Zaratust, and, when they had beheld the light of the fire, they had fled away, and had not been able to do any damage and harm.

4. During forty days it is not proper that they should leave the child alone; and it is also not proper that the mother of the infant should put her foot over a threshold in the dwelling, or cast her eyes upon a hill, for it 2 is bad for her menstruation.