CHILCHIL. HIND. Celosia argentea. CHILDREN.
Aulad , ARAB. I Batch-Katch, . . HIND.
Batche, . . . HIND. Pulli, . . . . TAM.
Male children are greatly longed for by all the races inhabiting the south and east of Asia. One prevailing feeling regarding them is such as is expressed in Psalm cxxvii. 4, 5 : ' As arrows are in the hand of 'a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that bath his quiver full of them : they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.' Most persons will hesitate to attack a large united family. Amongst Hindus and Chinese, with all of whom spirit - worship prevails, sons are particularly longed for, in order to obtain from them duties to the manes of their parents. The eastern custom of nursing a child from the hip or side, as in Isaiah lx. 4, lxvi. 12, is still continued ; and a child born after vows is still, as in Proverbs xxxi. 2, called the son of a vow ; and many Hindu children of both sexes, but principally girls, are devoted to the gods. As in Genesis xxv. 6, the children of Mahomedans, born of a wife of humbler birth, or of a harm woman, are not deemed equal in social rank to the children of a high-born wife. Infanticide is still continued amongst certain Rajput races, but the causes are not for fulfilment of any vow, or from any reli gious duty, but pride or poverty induces them to destroy their female children, and many Rajput tribes have the utmost difficulty in obtaining wives. The British Indian Government, in the early part of the 19th century, declared the throwing of children into the Ganges to be criminal, and has made continuous efforts to prevent the destruction of children. The Chinese have complete power over
their offspring, even to life, but in no country of the south-east of Asia is the sacrificing of children, on religious grounds, continued ; though, clown to comparatively recent historic times, the Ph ceni clans, Carthaginians, Aranneans, Syrians, Baby lonians, and even Israelites, and their neighbours on both sides of the Jordan, sacrificed their children with the hoped-for object of averting any great and serious misfortune. A Phoenician legend is of El, the strong, offering up his son Yedud or Yedid, the beloved,—E1 being the Kronos (Bunsen, iii. 286). Malek Bel was the same as the Tyrian Hercules, or Moloch or Bal Moloch, to whom, as also to Hecate and lifelekbet Artemis, dogs were sacrificed. In Exodus xiii. 13, xxxiv. 20, the animal's neck or back bone had to be broken unless redeemed. The principal sacrifices offered to Hercules Usoo, as well as to his mythical companion, were human beings, who in Laodicea of Phoenicia might be ransomed by a doe. At Carthage, the practice of sacrificing their favourite children, and those of the highest rank, in honour of Hercules, continued down to their latest wars. The legend of the Grecian Hercules is that he became insane, burned his own children, as well as those of his twin brother Iphicles, and murdered his guest Iphitus.— Bunsen, iv. 212, 213. See China ; Harm ; Infanti cide ; Rajput.