Page:Hindu Feasts Fasts and Ceremonies.djvu/49

Rh rajahs give large donations to Brahmans on this occasion. Nearly 90 per cent. of the copper-plate grants of the Vijayanagar period of the 15th and 16th centuries A. D. are donations of villages and of property to Brahmans by the Hindu kings of Vijayanagar on the occasions of either a solar or a lunar eclipse. Even now in Travancore, Mysore, Baroda and other Native States, the Brahmans are most munificently remunerated on eclipse occasions.

The belief that an eclipse is a calamity to the sun or the moon is such a strong Hindu belief that no marriages take place in the months in which an eclipse falls. Even the most educated Hindu who has taken his degree, with special distinction in astronomy probably, undergoes all the Hindu rites on the occasion. The eclipse time is considered a most auspicious time for mastering the incantations for exorcising the evil effects of serpent bite, or scorpion-sting, and of devils, and many specialists in these directions would be seen standing in water and muttering these incantations.