(M67) The miraculous virtue ascribed to menstruous blood is well illustrated in a story told by the Arab chronicler Tabari. He relates how Sapor, king of Persia, besieged the strong city of Atrae, in the desert of Mesopotamia, for several years without being able to take it. But the king of the city, whose name was Daizan, had a daughter, and when it was with her after the manner of women she went forth from the city and dwelt for a time in the suburb, for such was the custom of the place. Now it fell out that, while she tarried there, Sapor saw her and loved her, and she loved him; for he was a handsome man and she a lovely maid. And she said to him, “What will you give me if I shew you how you may destroy the walls of this city and slay my father?” And he said to her, “I will give you what you will, and I will exalt you above my other wives, and will set you nearer to me than them all.” Then she said to him, “Take a greenish dove with a ring about its neck, and write something on its foot with the menstruous blood of a blue-eyed maid; then let the bird loose, and it will perch on the walls of the city, and they will fall down.” For that, says the Arab historian, was the talisman of the city, which could not be destroyed in any other way. And Sapor did as she bade him, and the city fell down in a heap, and he stormed it and slew Daizan on the spot.(207) (M68) According to the Talmud, if a woman at the beginning of her period passes between two men, she thereby kills one of them; if she passes between them towards the end of her period, she only causes them to quarrel violently.(208) Maimonides tells us that down to his time it was a common custom in the East to keep women at their periods in a separate house and to burn everything on which they had trodden; a man who spoke with such a woman or who was merely exposed to the same wind that blew over her, became thereby unclean.(209) Peasants of the Lebanon think that menstruous women are the cause of many misfortunes; their shadow causes flowers to wither and trees to perish, it even arrests the movements of serpents; if one of them mounts a horse, the animal might die or at least be disabled for a long time.(210) In Syria to this day a woman who has her courses on her may neither salt nor pickle, for the people think that whatever she pickled or salted would not keep.(211) The Toaripi of New Guinea, doubtless for a similar reason, will not allow women at such times to cook.(212) The Bhuiyars, a Dravidian tribe of South Mirzapur, are said to feel an intense dread of menstrual pollution. Every house has two doors, one of which is used only by women in this condition. During her impurity the wife is fed by her husband apart from the rest of the family, and whenever she has to quit the house she is obliged to creep out on her hands and knees in order not to defile the thatch by her touch.(213) The Kharwars, another aboriginal tribe of the same district, keep their women