Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/462

 420 The Principles of Fasting.

But in several cases fasting is distinctly a survival of an expiatory sacrifice. The sacrifice of food offered to the deity was changed into the " sacrifice " involved in the abstinence from food on the part of the worshipper. We find that among the Jews the decay of sacrifice was accompanied by a greater frequency of fasts. It was only in the period immediately before the exile that fasting began to acquire special importance ; and the popular estimation of it went on increasing during and after the exile, partly at least from a feeling of the need of religious exercises to take the place of the suspended temple services.^ Like sacrifice, fasting was a regular appendage to prayer, as a means of giving special efficacy to the supplication ;- fasting and praying became in fact a constant combination of words.^ And equally close is the connection between fasting and almsgiving — a circumstance which deserves special notice where, as I have shown in another place, almsgiving is regarded as a form of sacrifice or has taken the place of it.* In the penitential regulations of Brahmanism we repeatedly meet with the combination "sacrifice, fasting, giving gifts;^ or also fasting and giving gifts, without mention being made of sacrifice.^ Among the Jews each fast-day was virtually an occasion for almsgiving, in accordance with the rabbinic saying that " the reward

^ Benzinger, in Encyclopedia Biblica, ii. 1 508. Nowack, Lehrbuch der hebrdischen Archdologie, ii. 271.

^ Low, Gesanimelte Schriften, i. 108. Nowack, op. cit. ii. 271. Benzinger, in Encyclopedia Biblica, ii. 1507.

^Judith, iv. 9, II. Tobit, xii. 8. Ecclesiasliciis, xxxiv. 26. St. Luke, ii- 37-

■* Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, i. 565 sqq. ^ Gautajna, xix. II. Vasishtha, xxii. 8. Baudh&yana, ii. 10. 9. ^ Vasishtha, xx. 47.

'' Kohler, 'Alms,' in Jewish Encyclopedia, i. 435. Low, op. cit. i. 108. Cf. Tobit, xii. 8. Katz, Der wahre Talmudjude, p. 43.