The Churel, who corresponds to the Jakhâî, Jokhâî, Mukâî, or Navalâî of Bombay, [565] is the ghost of a woman…
- Date of account
- Second edition published 1896
- Source
- The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 1 (of 2)
- Reference
- The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 1 (of 2) · selected passage 113
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
The Churel, who corresponds to the Jakhâî, Jokhâî, Mukâî, or Navalâî of Bombay, [565] is the ghost of a woman dying while pregnant, or on the day of the child's birth, or within the prescribed period of impurity
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyThe Churel, who corresponds to the Jakhâî, Jokhâî, Mukâî, or Navalâî of Bombay, [565] is the ghost of a woman dying while pregnant, or on the day of the child's birth, or within the prescribed period of impurity. The superstition is based on the horror felt by all savages at the blood, or even touch of a woman who is ceremonially impure. [566] The idea is, it is needless to say, common in India. The woman in her menses is kept carefully apart, and is not allowed to do cooking or any domestic work until she has undergone the purification by bathing and changing her garments. Some of the Drâvidian tribes refuse to allow a woman in this condition to touch the house-thatch, and she is obliged to creep through a narrow hole in the back wall whenever she has to leave the house. Hence, too, the objection felt by men to walk under walls or balconies where women may be seated and thus convey the pollution. From Kulu, on the slopes of the Himâlayas, a custom is reported which is probably connected with this principle and with the rules of the Couvade, to which reference will be made later on. When a woman who is pregnant dies, her husband is supposed to have committed some sin, and he is deemed unclean for a time.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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