CONSIDERABLE evidence exists in the medical and ritualistic texts of India that Caesarean Section, i. e. the incising of the abdominal wall and uterus to deliver a child near or at the natural time of birth, has been practiced in India from very ancient times down to the present day. In its ritualistic aspect the operation was obviously made for three reasons, one practical, the others religious: to save the life of the unborn child; to render the body of the dead undelivered woman pure for the priestly ritual of cremation; and to produce the body of the embryo-child for burial according to the regulations which prohibit the cremation of children under two years of age. The Baudhdyanapitrmedhas-dtra2 and the Vaikhanasagyhyas-atra8 describe the practice as follows: If the child still lives, the mother's corpse is taken to the place of cremation and cut open with a knife by the husband or son or someone taking their place. The karta looks upon the delivered child and says, May my son live many years in felicity. The child is washed, given over to a wet nurse, and placed to the breast. Butter sacrifices are placed in the mother's womb, the wound is sewed up with a needle, and the corpse is washed, laid upon the pyre, and cremated in the usual manner. These directions are early, but their exact date cannot be determined. They are perhaps not later than 200 B. c. but undoubtedly describe a practice existing in some form long before that date. No actual prescription has been found declaring that a child near or at the time of birth should be removed from the womb of its dead mother so that it can be buried, while the mother is cremated. But from the knowledge that in post-Rgvedic times 4 infants under two years of age had to be buried it is reasonable to infer that such