Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/453

 The Principles of Fasting. 411

wisdom and glory of him who eats food in the dark."^ Many Hindus who revere the sun do not break their fast in the morning till they catch a clear view of it, and do not eat at all on days when it is obscured by clouds^ — a custom to which there is a parallel among some North American sun-worshippers, the Snanaimuq Indians belonging to the Coast Salish, who must not partake of any food until the sun is well up in the sky.^ Brahmins fast at the equinoxes, solstices, conjunctions of planets, and on the days of the new and full moon* The Buddhist Sabbath, or Uposatha, which occurs on the day of full moon, on the day when there is no moon, and on the two days which are eighth from the full and new moon, is not only a day of rest, but has also from ancient times been a fast-day. He who keeps the Sabbath rigorously abstains from all food between sun- rise and sunset, and, as no cooking must be done during the Uposatha, he prepares his evening meal in the early morning before the rise of the sun.*

Among the Jews there are many who abstain from food on the day of an eclipse of the moon, which they regard as an evil omen.*' We have also reason to believe that the Jews were once in the habit of observing the new moons and Sabbaths not only as days of rest, but as fast-days ; and there can be little doubt that the Jewish Sabbath originated in the belief that it was in- auspicious or dangerous to work on the seventh day,

^ ijh&yast La-Shayast, ix. 8.

^Wilson, Works, i. 266. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, ii. 285. Crooke, Things Indian, p. 214.

^Boas, loc, cit. p. 51.

•* Dubois, Description of the People of India, p. 160. See also supra, P- 395 ^17-

'^ Childers, Dictionary of the Pali Language, p. 535. Kern, Der Budd- kistnus, ii. 258.

'' Buxtorf, op. cit, p. 477.