[127] Irenaeus, quoted by Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, v. 24 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, Ser. Graeca, xx. 501). Cf. Funk, ‘Die Entwicklung des Osterfastens,’ in Theologische Quartalschrift, lxxv. 181 sqq.; Duchesne, Christian Worship, p. 241.
[128] Tertullian, De jejuniis, 2 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 956).
[129] St. Jerome, Commentarii in Jonam, 3 (Migne, op. cit. xxv. 1140). St. Augustine, Epistola LV (alias CXIX), ‘Ad inquisitiones Januarii,’ 15 (Migne, xxxiii. 217 sq.). Funk, loc. cit. p. 209.
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;[130] and all over Germany there is a popular belief that anybody who eats during a thunderstorm will be struck by the lightning.[131] When the Todas know that there is going to be an eclipse of the sun or the moon, they abstain from food.[132] 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.[133] 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;[134] 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.”[135] Many 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[136]—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.[137] Brahmins fast at the equinoxes, solstices, conjunctions of planets, and on the days of the new and full moon.[138] The Buddhist Sabbath, or Uposatha, 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.[139]
[130] Schönwerth, Aus der Oberpfalz, iii. 55.
[131] Haberland, in Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsychologie, xviii. 258.
[132] Rivers, op. cit. p. 592 sq.
[133] Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, i. 21 sq.
[134] Laws of Manu, iv. 55.
[135] Shâyast Lâ-Shâyast, ix. 8.