Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/444

402 case of a Brahmin and thirty-one days in the case of a Sûdra. In some of the sacred books of India it is said that, during the period of impurity, all the mourners shall abstain from eating meat. In China "meat, must, and spirits were forbidden even in the last month of the deepest mourning, when other sorts of food had long been allowed already."

The custom of fasting after a death has been ascribed to different causes by different writers. Mr. Spencer believes that it has resulted from the habit of making excessive provision for the dead. But although among some peoples the funeral offerings no doubt are so extensive as to reduce the survivors to poverty and starvation, I have met with no statement to the effect that they are anxious to give to the deceased all the eatables which they possess, or that the mourning fast is a matter of actual necessity. It is always restricted to some fixed period, often to a few days only, and it prevails among many peoples who have never been known to be profuse in their sacrifices to the dead. With reference to the Chinese, Dr. de Groot maintains that the mourners originally fasted with a view to being able to sacrifice so much the more at the tomb; and he bases this conclusion on the fact that the articles of food which were forbidden till the end of the deepest mourning were the very same as those which in ancient China played the principal part at every burial sacrifice. But this prohibition may also perhaps be due to a belief that the offering of certain victuals to the dead pollutes all food belonging to the same species.