The first-pregnancy rite, colloquially the ‘lap-filling’. It is preceded by the Rakhadi, when the husband’s sister ties a guardian thread round the pregnant woman’s right wrist in the fifth month.

The birth-rite, done on the sixth day. A paper and pen are set by the newborn in the belief that Vidhatri, the goddess of fate, writes the child’s future on its brow. Lapsi — sweetened wheat — is then shared among at least seven related families.

The ritual smearing of honey and water on the child’s tongue. It is believed the child’s nature is formed by whoever gives it — hence the reproach, ‘who gave you your galthuthi?’, and the praise that a good trait was ‘well digested with the galthuthi’.

The naming, done by the father’s sister with an astrologer consulted for the auspicious hour — though, unlike among the Brahmins, the name does not follow the birth-star. Anna-prashana, the child’s first feeding, follows in the sixth to eighth month.

The first hair-clipping, performed according to vows taken by the family’s ancestors before a particular deity — so that the rite varies from lineage to lineage. The sacred-thread ceremony (Upanayana) was kept only by ruling and very wealthy urban houses.

The first feeding of grain, given by the father, a grandparent or the father's sister — the child's formal welcome to the family table.

Until eight or ten a Rajput girl wore a boy's dress; at her wedding her husband's father ceremonially presented her first set of woman's clothes — the crossing into womanhood marked in cloth.

The Dadas are dead ancestors remembered for valour in battle or leadership. A stone carved with a horse and rider — a Surdhan — is set where such an ancestor fell, and worshipped once a year. A Rajput bride bows before the Surdhan on leaving her village, and the marriage knot is often untied and re-tied before the Dadas.

The Shikotar is the dead wife of a village Rajput whose married desires went unfulfilled. Installed in a niche in the women’s room and offered an evening lamp, she is worshipped by the wives — but never by the daughters — of the village, and appeased with the ritual food Sondardun (rice cooked with treacle) when a child falls ill.

The rural Rajput has the cult of the Bhuva (shaman), who becomes possessed as the medium of the Kuldevi or a Surdhan and effects curative magic. By a form of divination called ‘grain-looking’ — a pinch of grains scattered and counted — the Bhuva reads whether the goddess is favourable and what offering will cure the sick.

Randal, held to be the wife of the Sun-god, is worshipped across many castes. At a marriage the women invoke her with an almost ecstatic dance, jumping before her coconut idol — dressed in a red chundadi on a copper jug — a worship confined to Saurashtra and not known in Rajasthan.

Hospitality had its own rites: the offering of kasumba among the ruling class, and the shikar (hunt). Diet followed sect — the Shaiva Rajput kept to meat and could take liquor, while the Swaminarayan and Arya Samaj followers turned to vegetarianism and abstinence, so that a ‘vegetarian Rajput’ often meant a Swaminarayan one.