when a girl reaches puberty, she fasts for the first four days and abstains from fresh meats of any kind throughout the whole period of her seclusion. "There was a two-fold object in this abstention. First, the girl, it was thought, would be harmed by the fresh meat in her peculiar condition; and second, the game animals would take offence if she partook of their meat in these circumstances," and would not permit her father to kill them.1 It should finally be noticed that, though the custom of fasting after a death in the main has a superstitious origin, there may at the same time be a physiological motive for it. Even the rudest savage feels afflicted at the death of a friend, and grief is accompanied by a loss of appetite. This natural disinclination to partake of food may, combined with superstitious fear, have given rise to prohibitory rules, nay, may even in the first instance have suggested the idea that there is danger in taking food. The mourning observances so commonly coincide with the natural expressions of sorrow, that we are almost bound to assume the existence of some connection between them, even though in their developed forms the superstitious motive be the most prominent. 3 An important survival of the mourning fast is the Lent fast. It originally lasted for forty hours only, that is, the time when Christ lay in the grave. Irenaeus speaks of the fast of forty hours before Easter, and Tertullian, when a Montanist disputing against the Catholics, says that the only legitimate days for Christian fasting were those in which the Bridegroom was taken away. Subsequently, however, the forty hours were extended to forty 1 Tout, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 136. 2 Cf. Mallery, 'Manners and Meals,' in American Anthropologist, i. 202; Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 213; Schurtz, Urgeschichte der Kultur, p. 587. 3 Cf. St. Matthew, ix. 15; St. Mark, ii. 20; St. Luke, v. 35. 5 Irenaeus, quoted by Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, v. 24 (Migne, Patrologie cursus, Ser. Graeca, xx. 501). Cf. Funk, Die Entwicklung des Osterfastens,' in Theologische Quartalschrift, lxxv. 181 sqq.; Duchesne, Christian Worship, p. 241. 5 Tertullian, De jejuniis, 2 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 956). days, in imitation of the forty days' fasts of Moses, Elijah, and Christ.1 3 Not only on a death, but on certain other occasions, food is supposed to pollute or injure him who partakes of it, and is therefore to be avoided. In Pfalz the people maintain that no food should be taken at an eclipse of the sun; and all over Germany there is a popular belief that anybody who eats during a thunderstorm will be struck by the lightning. When the Todas know that there is going to be an eclipse of the sun or the moon, they abstain from food. Among the Hindus, while an eclipse is going on, "drinking water, eating food, and all household business, as well as the worship of the gods, are all prohibited"; high-caste Hindus do not even eat food which has remained in the house during an eclipse, but give it away, and all earthen vessels in use in their houses at the time must be broken. Among the rules laid down for Snâtakas, that is, Brâhmanas who have completed their studentship, there is one which forbids them to eat, travel, and sleep during the twilight; and in one of the Zoroastrian Pahlavi texts it is said that "in the dark it is not allowable to eat food, for the demons and fiends seize upon one-third of the wisdom and glory of him who eats food in the dark."7 Many 8 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 St. 1 St. Jerome, Commentarii in Jonam, 3 (Migne, op. cit. xxv. 1140). Augustine, Epistola LV (alias CXIX), Ad inquisitiones Januarii,' 15 (Migne, xxxiii. 217 sq.). Funk, loc. cit. p. 209. 2 Schönwerth, Aus der Oberpfalz, iii. 55. 3 Haberland, in Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsychologie, xviii. 258. 4 Rivers, op. cit. p. 592 sq. 5 Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, i. 21 sq. 6 Laws of Manu, iv. 55. 7 Shayast La-Shayast, ix. 8. 8 Wilson, Works, i. 266. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, ii. 285. Crooke, Things Indian, p. 214. 9 Boas, loc. cit. p. 51. fast at the equinoxes, solstices, conjunctions of planets, and on the days of the new and full moon.' The Buddhist Sabbath, or Úposatha, which, as we have noticed above, 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 sunrise 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.3 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 fastdays; and the Hebrew Sabbath, as we have seen, in all probability owes its origin to superstitious fear of the changes in the moon. Or how shall we explain the curious rule which forbids fasting on a new moon and on the seventh day, if not as a protest against a fast once in vogue among the Jews on these occasions, but afterwards regarded as an illegitimate rite? This theory is not new, for Hooker in his Ecclesiastical Polity' observes that “it may be a question, whether in some sort they did not always fast on the Sabbath." He refers to a statement of Josephus, according to which the sixth hour " was wont on the Sabbath always to call them home unto meat," and to certain pagan writers who upbraided them with fasting on that day. In Nehemiah there is an indication that it was a custom to fast on the first day of the seventh month, 4 1 5 which is "holy unto the Lord"; and on the tenth day of the same month there was the great fast of atonement, combined with abstinence from every kind of work. I venture to think that all these fasts may be ultimately traced to a belief that the changes in the moon not only are unfavourable for work, but also make it dangerous to partake of food. The fact of the seventh day being a day of rest established the number seven as a sabbatical number. In the seventh month there are several days, besides Saturdays, which are to be observed as days of rest,3 and in the seventh year there shall be "a sabbath of rest unto the land." In these sabbatarian regulations the day of atonement plays a particularly prominent part. The severest punishment is prescribed for him who does not rest and fast on that day" from even unto even"; and it is on the same day that, after the lapse of seven times seven years, the trumpet of the jubilee shall be caused to sound throughout the land." Most of the rules concerning the day of atonement are undoubtedly postexilic. But the fact that no other regular days of fasting but those mentioned by Zechariah are referred to by the prophets or in earlier books, hardly justifies the conclusion drawn by many scholars that no such fast existed. It is extremely probable that the fast of the tenth day of the seventh month as a fast of atonement is of a comparatively modern date; but it is perhaps not too bold to suggest that the idea of atonement is a later interpretation of a previously existing fast, which was originally observed for fear of the dangerous quality attributed to the number seven. Why this fast was enjoined on the tenth day of the seventh month remains obscure; but it seems that the order of the month was considered more important than that of the day. Nehemiah speaks of a fast which 1 Nehemiah, viii. 9 sqq. See also Leviticus, xxiii. 24 sq.; Numbers, xxix. 1. Among the Babylonians, too, the seventh month had a sacred character (Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 681, 683, 686). Leviticus, xvi. 29, 31; xxiii. 27 sqq. Numbers, xxix. 7. 3 Leviticus, xxiii. 24, 25, 35, 36, 39. Numbers, xxix. 1, 12, 35. • Leviticus, XXV. Exodus, xxiii. 10 sq. 4. See also 5 Leviticus, xxiii. 29 sq. was kept on the twenty-fourth day of the seventh month.1 are 4 In other Semitic religions we meet with various fasts which in some way or other connected with astronomical changes. According to En-Nedim, the Harranians, or "Sabians," observed a thirty days' fast in honour of the moon, commencing on the eighth day after the new moon of Adsâr (March); a nine days' fast in honour of "the Lord of Good Luck " (probably Jupiter), commencing on the ninth day before the new moon of the first Kânûn (December); and a seven days' fast in honour of the sun, commencing on the eighth or ninth day after the new moon of Shobâth (February). The thirty days' fast seems to have implied abstinence from every kind of food and drink between sunrise and sunset, whereas the seven days' fast is expressly said to have consisted in abstinence from fat and wine. In Manichæism-which is essentially based upon the ancient nature religion of Babylonia, though modified by Christian and Persian elements and elevated into a gnosis -we meet with a great number of fasts. There is a continuous fast for two days when the sun is in Sagittarius (which it enters about the 22nd November) and the moon has its full light; another fast when the sun has entered Capricornus (which it does about the 21st December) and the moon first becomes visible; and a thirty days' fast between sunrise and sunset commencing on the day " when the new moon begins to shine, the sun is in Aquarius (where it is from about the 20th January), and eight days of the month have passed," which seems to imply that the fast cannot begin until eight days after the sun has entered Aquarius and that consequently, if the new moon 1 Nehemiah, ix. 1. 2 Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier, ii. 226, n. 247. 3 En-Nedim, Fihrist (book ix. ch. i.) i. 4; v. 8, 11 sq. (Chwolsohn, op. cit. ii. 6, 7, 32, 35 sq.). See also Chwolsohn, i. 533 sqq.; ii. 75 sq. 4 Chwolsohn, op. cit. ii. 71 sq. Abulfedâ, 6 (ibid. ii. 500). Cf. 5 En-Nedim, op. cit. v. 11 (Chwolsohn, op. cit. ii. 36). 6 Kessler, " Mani, Manichäer,' in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyclopädie f protestantische Theologie, xii. 198 sq. Harnack, History of Dogma, iii. 330. Idem, Manichæism,' in Encyclopædia Britannica, xv. 485. 6 |