The Principles of Fasting.
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food, if eaten, would burn up their bowels.[1] In Easter Island the nearest relatives of the dead are for a year or even longer obliged to abstain from eating potatoes, their chief article of food, or some other victuals of which they are particularly fond.[2] Certain Papuans and various tribes in the Malay Archipelago prohibit persons in mourning from eating rice or sago.[3] In the Andaman Islands mourners refuse to partake of their favourite viands.[4] After the death of a relative the Tipperahs abstain from flesh for a week.[5] The same is the case with the Arakh, a tribe in Oudh, during the fifteen days in the month of Kuâr which are sacred to the worship of the dead.[6] Among the Nayādis of Malabar the relatives of the deceased are not allowed to eat meat for ten days after his death.[7] According to Toda custom the near relatives must not eat rice, milk, honey, or gram, until the funeral is over.[8] Among the Hindus described by Mr. Chunder Bose a widow is restricted to one scanty meal a day, and this is of the coarsest description and always devoid of fish, the most esteemed article of food in a Hindu lady's bill of fare. The son, again, from the hour of his father's death to the conclusion of the funeral ceremony, is allowed to take only a meal consisting of atab rice, a sort of inferior pulse, milk, ghee, sugar, and a few fruits, and at night a little milk, sugar, and fruits—a régime which lasts ten days in the
- ↑ Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 203.
- ↑ Geiseler, Die Oster-Insel, pp. 28, 30.
- ↑ Wilken, 'Ueber das Haaropfer, und einige andere Trauergebräuche bei den Völkern Indonesien's,' in Revue coloniale internationale, iv. 348 sq.
- ↑ Man, 'Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 142, 353.
- ↑ Browne, quoted by Dalton, op. cit. p. 110.
- ↑ Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, i. 84.
- ↑ Thurston, in the Madras Government Museum's Bulletin, iv. 76.
- ↑ Idem, ibid. i. 174. Dr. Rivers says (Todas, p. 370) that, among the Todas, a widower is not allowed to eat rice nor drink milk, and that on every return of the day of the week on which his wife died he takes no food in the morning but only has his evening meal. The same holds good for a widow.
