Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/78

 beginning of the religious ceremonies of this period of life that, in the same island, when girls are entering into womanhood, their parents invite all the unmarried women of the settlement to a feast, at which presents are distributed among them. At least it is worthy of remark that "none but females are pressent" on these occasions (Ib., p. 184).

When we rise higher in the scale of culture, we no longer find the painful rites by which savage nations mark the appearance of the sexual instinct. The sacred ceremony of investiture with the thread, which distinguished the twice-born classes among the Hindus, was performed at this age. The code of Manu is explicit on the subject. "In the eighth year from the conception of a Brahman, in the eleventh from that of Kshatriya, and in the twelfth from that of a Vaisya, let the father invest the child with the mark of his class." In the case of children who desire to advance more rapidly than usual in their vocation, "the investiture may be made in the fifth, sixth, or eighth years respectively. The ceremony of investiture hallowed by the gayatri must not be delayed, in the case of a priest, beyond the sixteenth year; nor in that of a soldier beyond the twenty-second; nor in that of a merchant beyond the twenty-fourth." Further postponement would render those who were guilty of it outcasts, impure, and unfit to associate with Brahmans (Manu, ii. 36-40).

Members of the kindred Parsee religion become responsible human beings after they have been girt with the kosti, or sacred girdle. The age at which this took place was formerly fifteen; and after they had once put them on, the Parsees might not remove their girdles, except in bed, without incurring serious guilt. This regulation applied equally to both sexes. Modern usage has advanced the investiture with the kosti to a much earlier period. It takes place in India at seven, and in Kirman at nine. In India, the child is held responsible in the eighth or tenth year for one half of its sins, the parents bearing the burden of the other half (Av., vol. i. p. 9; vol. ii. pp. 21., 22).

The young Jew "is looked upon as a man" at the age of thirteen, and is then bound "to observe all the commandments of the law." At this age he becomes "Bar-mizva," or a