In Pasir, a district of eastern Borneo, the afterbirth is carefully treated and kept in an earthen pot or basket in the house until the remains of the navel-string have fallen off. All the time it is in the house candles are burned and a little food is placed beside the pot. When the navel-string has fallen off, it is placed with the placenta in the pot, and the two are buried in the ground near the house. The reason why the people take this care of the afterbirth is that they believe it able to cause the child all kinds of sickness and mishaps.​[706] The Malas, a low Telugu caste of Southern India, bury the placenta in a pot with leaves in some convenient place, generally in the back yard, lest dogs or other animals should carry it off; for if that were to happen they fancy that the child would be of a wandering disposition.​[707] The Khasis of Assam keep the placenta in a pot in the house until the child has been formally named. When that ceremony is over, the father waves the pot containing the placenta thrice over the child’s head, and then hangs it to a tree outside of the village.​[708] In some Malayo-Siamese families of the Patani States it is customary to bury the afterbirth under a banana-tree, the condition of which is thenceforth regarded as ominous of the child’s fate for good or ill.​[709] A Chinese medical work prescribes that “the placenta should be stored away in a felicitous spot under the salutary influences of the sky or the moon, deep in the ground, and with earth piled up over it carefully, in order that the child may be ensured a long life. If it is devoured by a swine or dog, the child loses its intellect; if insects or ants eat it, the child becomes scrofulous; if crows or magpies swallow it, {p195} the child will have an abrupt or violent death; if it is cast into the fire, the child incurs running sores.”​[710] The Japanese preserve the navel-string most carefully and bury it with the dead in the grave.​[711] [Sidenote: Contagious magic of placenta and navel-string in Africa, especially among the Baganda.]