[92] Selenka, Sonnige Welten, p. 90 (Dyaks). Black, ‘Fasting,’ in Encyclopædia Britannica, ix. 44.
[93] de Groot, op. cit. (vol. ii. book) i. 656.
It seems that Sir J. G. Frazer comes much nearer the truth when he observes that people originally fasted after a death “just in those circumstances in which they considered that they might possibly in eating devour a ghost.”[95] Yet I think it would generally be more correct to say that they were afraid of swallowing, not the ghost, but food polluted with the contagion of death. The dead body is regarded as a seat of infection, which defiles anything in its immediate neighbourhood, and this infection is of course considered particularly dangerous if it is allowed to enter into the bowels. In certain cases the length of the mourning fast is obviously determined by the belief in the polluting presence of the ghost. The six days’ fast of the Paressí coincides with the period after which the dead is supposed to have arrived in heaven no longer to return; and they say that anybody who should fail to observe this fast would “eat the mouth of the dead” and die himself.[96] Frequently the fasting lasts till the corpse is buried; and burial is a common safeguard against the return of the ghost.[97] The custom of restricting the fast to the daytime probably springs from the idea that a ghost cannot see in the dark, and is consequently unable to come and pollute the food at night. That the object of the fast is to prevent pollution is also suggested by its resemblance to some other practices, which are evidently intended to serve this purpose. The Maoris were not allowed to eat on or near any spot where a dead body had been buried, or to take a meal in a canoe while passing opposite to such a place.[98] In Samoa, while a dead body is in the house, no food is eaten under the same roof; hence the family have their meals outside, or in another house.[99] The Todas, who fast on the day when a death has taken place, have on the following day their meals served in another hut.[100] In one of the sacred books of India it is said that a Brâhmana “shall not eat in the house of a relation within six degrees where a person has died, before the ten days of impurity have elapsed”; in a house “where a lying-in woman has not yet come out of the lying-in chamber”; nor in a house where a corpse lies;[101] and in connection with this last injunction we are told that, when a person who is not a relation has died, it is customary to place at the distance of “one hundred bows” a lamp and water-vessel, and to eat beyond that distance.[102] In one of the Zoroastrian books Ormuzd is represented as saying, “In a house when a person shall die, until three nights are completed … nothing whatever of meat is to be eaten by his relations”;[103] and the obvious reason for this rule was the belief that the soul of the dead was hovering about the body for the first three nights after death.[104] Closely related to this custom is that of the modern Parsis, which forbids for three days all cooking under a roof where a death has occurred, but allows the inmates to obtain food from their neighbours and friends.[105] Among the Agariya, a Dravidian tribe in the hilly parts of Mirzápur, no fire is lit and no cooking is done in the house of a dead person on the day when he is cremated, the food being cooked in the house of the brother-in-law of the deceased.[106] In Mykonos, one of the Cyclades, it is considered wrong to cook in the house of mourning; hence friends and relatives come laden with food, and lay the “bitter table.”[107] Among the Albanians there is no cooking in the house for three days after a death, and the family are fed by friends.[108] So also the Maronites of Syria “dress no victuals for some time in the house of the deceased, but their relations and friends supply them.”[109] When a Jew dies all the water in the same and adjoining houses is instantly thrown away;[110] nobody may eat in the same room with the corpse, unless there is only one room in the house, in which case the inhabitants may take food in it if they interpose a screen, so that in eating they do not see the corpse; they must abstain from flesh and wine so long as the dead body is in the house;[111] and on the evening of mourning the members of the family may not eat their own food, but are supplied with food by their friends.[112] Among the Arabs of Morocco, if a person has died in the morning, no fire is made in the whole village until he is buried, and in some parts of the country the inmates of a house or tent where a death has occurred, abstain from making fire for two or three days. In Algeria “dès que quelqu’un est mort, on ne doit pas allumer de feu dans la maison pendant trois jours, et il est défendu de toucher à de la viande rôtie, grillée ou bouillie, à moins qu’elle ne vienne de quelqu’un de dehors.”[113] In China, for seven days after a death “no food is cooked in the house, and friends and neighbours are trusted to supply the common necessaries of life.”[114] There is no sufficient reason to assume that this practice of abstaining from cooking food after a death is a survival of a previous mourning fast, but the two customs seem partly to have a similar origin. The cooking may contaminate the food if done in a polluted house, or by a polluted individual. The relatives of the dead, or persons who have handled the corpse, are regarded as defiled; hence they have to abstain from cooking food, as they have to abstain from any kind of work,[115] and from sexual intercourse.[116] Hence, also, they are often prohibited from touching food; and this may in some cases have led to fasting, whilst in other instances they have to be fed by their neighbours.[117]
[95] Frazer, ‘Certain Burial Customs as illustrative of the Primitive Theory of the Soul,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xv. 94. See also Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, pp. 270, 590.
[96] von den Steinen, op. cit. p. 434 sq.
[97] Infra, on [Regard for the Dead].
[98] Polack, Manners ani Customs of the New Zealanders, i. 239.
[99] Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 228. Idem, Samoa, p. 145.
[100] Thurston, in the Madras Government Museum’s Bulletin, i. 174.