“The seers, manes, gods, beings, and guests also make entreaty to those heads of families for support. (This duty must, therefore,) be done by a man of discernment.”[235]
“As all rivers, ... go to (their) resting-place in the ocean, so men of all orders depend on the householder.”[236]
Let a householder perform the household rites according to rule with the marriage fire and the accomplishment of the five sacrifices and the daily cooking. The sacrifices are:—
Teaching the Veda is the Veda sacrifice:
Offering cakes and water is the sacrifice to the manes:
An offering to fire (is the sacrifice) to the gods:
Offering of food (is the sacrifice) to all beings:
Honour to guests is the sacrifice to men.
“Whoever presents not food to those five, the gods, guests, dependents, the manes, and himself, though he breathe, lives not.”[237]
Honour paid to the guest.
The guest takes a very high place, and his presence is a revered addition to the family sacrifices; so much so that it was thought necessary to state definitely that “if the guest appears after the offering to all the gods is finished, one should give him food as best one can, but should not make (another) offering.”[238]
The same virtue seems to have been considered by the Greeks also to lie in the presence of the guest. In Euripides' Elektra, Aigisthos, hearing from Orestes that he and his friend are strangers, promptly invites them to share as his ξυνέστιοι in his impending sacrifice of a bull to the nymphs, promising to send them on their way in the morning.[239]
Earlier in the play during the plotting of Aigisthos' death, it is taken for granted that directly he sees them he will call them thus to join him at the sacrifice and the feast.[240]
Alkinoos expresses the feeling of the Homeric age when he says: