8. Food
The Rājpūts eat the flesh of clean animals, but not pigs or fowls. They are, however, fond of the sport of pig-sticking, and many clans, as the Bundelas and others, will eat the flesh of the wild pig. This custom was perhaps formerly universal. Some of them eat of male animals only and not of females, either because they fear that the latter would render them effeminate or that they consider the sin to be less. Some only eat animals killed by the method of jatka or severing the head with one stroke of the sword or knife. They will not eat animals killed in the Muhammadan fashion by cutting the throat. They abstain from the flesh of the nīlgai or blue bull as being an animal of the cow tribe. Among the Brāhmans and Rājpūts food cooked with water must not be placed in bamboo baskets, nor must anything made of bamboo be brought into the rasoya or cooking-place, or the chauka, the space cleaned and marked out for meals. A special brush of date-palm fibre is kept solely for sweeping these parts of the house. At a Rājpūt banquet it was the custom for the prince to send a little food from his own plate or from the dish before him to any guest whom he especially wished to honour, and to receive this was considered a very high distinction. In Mewār the test of legitimacy in a prince of the royal house was the permission to eat from the chief’s plate. The grant of this privilege conferred a recognised position, while its denial excluded the member in question from the right to the succession.[17] This custom indicates the importance attached to the taking of food together as a covenant or sacrament.