Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/349

Rh there is a second feast to attend to the important step of giving him his first solid food. Two years later, the child has his head shaved, his nails pared, and his ears bored, with many ceremonies, to the sound of music. Again, at about nine years of age, comes the more important and complicated ceremony of investing him with the sacred cord of one hundred and eight threads, made of cotton gathered and spun by Brahmins. This cord he ever after wears over his left shoulder and across the breast to the right hip. At this time he is first taught the unspeakably sacred prayer called the gayatri, which no other ear must ever hear, and now he becomes a “twice-born” Brahmin. Having been espoused at about sixteen to a girl four or five years old, and married to her when she has attained womanhood, he becomes qualified for the duties, honours, and privileges of the priesthood.

The Brahmin must eat no meat, nor any thing that has had life; he must drink no spirituous liquors. He must use no vessel for cooking or eating that has been used by any one of a lower caste; if a Sudra but look upon the pot in which his rice is boiling, it must be broken. He cannot receive water or cooked