Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/448

 4o6 The Principles of Fasting.

do not see the corpse ; they must abstain from flesh and wine so long as the dead body is in the house ; ^ and on the evening of mourning the members of the family may not eat their own food, but are supplied with food by their friends.'^ Among the Arabs of Morocco, if a person has died in the morning, no fire is made in the whole village until he is buried, and in some parts of the country the inmates of a house or tent where a death has occurred, abstain from making fire for two or three days. In Algeria " des que quel- qu'un est mort, on ne doit pas allumer de feu dans la maison pendant trois jours, et il est defendu de toucher a de la viande rotie, grillee ou bouillie, a moins qu'elle ne vienne de quelqu'un de dehors."^ In China, for seven days after a death, " no food is cooked in the house, and friends and neighbours are trusted to supply the common necessaries of life." * There is no sufficient reason to assume that this practice of abstaining from cooking food after a death is a survival of a previous mourning fast, but the two customs seem partly to have a similar origin. The cooking may contaminate the food if done in a polluted house, or by a polluted individual. The relatives of the dead, or persons who have handled the corpse, are regarded as defiled ; hence they have to abstain from cooking food, as they have to abstain from any kind of work,'' and from sexual inter-

^ Bodenschatz, Kirchliche Verfassutig der heutigeti Jiideji, iv. 177.

^Buxtorf, Syjiagoga Judaica (1680), p. 707.

""Certeux and Carnoy, VAlgirie traditionelle, p. 220.

^ Gray, China, i. 287 sq.

"'Egede, Description of Greenland, p. 149 sq. Nelson, 'Eskimo about Bering Strait,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Eihn. xviii. 319. Maccauley, 'Seminole Indians of Florida,' ibid. v. 52. Jochelson, ' Koryak Religion,' in Jesitp North Pacific Expedition, vi. 104. Kloss, In the Andainans and Nicobars, p. 305 (Kar Nicobarese). Turner, Samoa, p. 146. Campbell, Second Journey in the Interior of South Africa, ii. 204 (Bechuanas). Casalis, Basutos, p. 260.