Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/452

 4IO The Principles of Fasting.

Tertullian, when a Montanist disputing against the Catholics, says that the only legitimate days for Chris- tian fasting were those in which the Bridegroom was taken away.^ Subsequently, however, the forty hours were extended to forty days, in imitation of the forty days' fasts of Moses, Elijah, and Christ.^

Not only on a death, but on certain other occasions, food is supposed to pollute or injure him who partakes of it, and is therefore to be avoided. In Pfalz the people maintain that no food should be taken at an eclipse of the sun ; ^ and all over Germany there is a popular belief that anybody who eats during a thunderstorm will be struck by the lightning.* When the Todas know that there is going to be an eclipse of the sun or the moon, they abstain from food."^ Among the Hindus, while an eclipse is going on, " drinking water, eating food, and all household business, as well as the worship of the gods, are all prohibited " ; high-caste Hindus do not even eat food which has remained in the house during an eclipse, but give it away, and all earthen vessels in use in their houses at the time must be broken.^ Among the rules laid down for Snatakas, that is, Brahmanas who have completed their studentship, there is one which forbids them to eat, travel, and sleep during the twilight ; ^ and in one of the Zoroastrian Pahlavi texts it is said that " in the dark it is not allowable to eat food, for the demons and fiends seize upon one-third of the

^Tertullian, De jejuniis, 2 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 956).

2 St. Jerome, Co7nmentarii in Jonam, 3 (Migne, op. cit. xxv. 1 140). St. Augustine, Epistola LV (alias CXIX), 'Ad inquisitiones Januarii,' 15 (Migne, xxxiii. 217 sq.). Funk, lac. cit. p. 209.

^Schonwerth, Aus der Oherpfalz, iii. 55.


 * Haberland, in Zeitschr. f. Volkerpsychologie, xviii. 258.

5 Rivers, op. cit. p. 592 sq.

''Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, i. 21 sq.

7 Laws of ManUf iv, 55.