Since the removal of the hair is held to involve a certain loss of strength and power, it should only be effected at certain seasons and not on auspicious days. A man who has male children should not have his head shaved on Monday, as this may cause his children to die. On the other hand, a man who has no children will fast on Sunday in the hope of getting them, and therefore he will neither shave his head nor visit his wife on that day. A Hindu must not be shaved on Thursday, because this is the day of the planet Jupiter, which is also known as Guru, and his act would be disrespectful to his own guru or preceptor. Tuesday is Devi’s day, and a man will not get shaved on that day; nor on Saturday, because it is Hanumān’s day.[41] On Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays he may be shaved, but not if the day happens to be the new moon, full moon, or the Ashtami or Ekadashi, that is the eighth or eleventh day of the fortnight. He should not shave on the day that he is going on a journey. If all these rules were strictly observed there would be very few days on which one could get shaved, but many of them are necessarily more honoured in the breach. Wednesdays and Fridays are the best days for shaving, and by shaving on these days a man will see old age. Debtors are shaved on Wednesdays, as they think that this will help them to pay off their debts. Some Brāhmans are not shaved during the month of Shrāwan (July), when the crops are growing, nor during the nine days of the months of Kunwār (September) and Chait (March), when a fast is observed and the jawaras[42] are sown. After they have been shaved high-caste Hindus consider themselves impure till they have bathed. They touch no person or thing in the house, and sometimes have the water thrown on them by a servant so as to avoid contact with the vessels. They will also neither eat, drink nor smoke until they have bathed. Sometimes they throw so much water over the head in order to purify themselves as to catch a bad cold. In this case, apparently, the impurity accrues from the loss of the hair, and the man feels that virtue has gone out of him. Women never shave their hair with a razor, as they think that to do so would make the body so heavy after death that it could not be carried to the place of cremation. They carefully pluck out the hair under the armpits and the pubic hair with a pair of pincers. A girl’s hair may be cut with scissors, but not after she is ten years old or is married. Sometimes a girl’s hair is not cut at all, but her father will take a pearl and entwine it into her hair, where it is left until she is married. It is considered very auspicious to give away a girl in marriage with hair which has never been cut, and a pearl in it. After marriage she will take out the pearl and wear it in an ornament.
18. Reasons why the hair was considered the source of strength
The above evidence appears to indicate that the belief of a man’s strength and vigour being contained in his hair is by no means confined to the legend of Samson, but is spread all over the world. This has been pointed out by Professor Robertson Smith,[43] Professor Wilken and others. Sir J.G. Frazer also adduces several instances in the Golden Bough to show that the life or soul was believed to be contained in the hair. This may well have been the case, but the hair was also specialised, so to speak, as the seat of bodily vigour and strength. The same idea appears to have applied in a minor measure to the nails and teeth. The rules for disposing of the cut hair usually apply to the parings of nails, and the first teeth are also deposited in a rat’s hole or on the roof of the house. As suggested by Professor Robertson Smith it seems likely that the strength and vigour of the body was believed to be located in the hair, and also to a less extent in the nails and teeth, because they grew more visibly and quickly than the body and continued to do so after it had attained to maturity. The hair and nails continue to grow all through life, and though the teeth do not grow when fully formed, the second teeth appear when the body is considerably developed and the wisdom teeth after it is fully developed. The hair grows much more palpably and vigorously than the nails and teeth, and hence might be considered especially the source of strength. Other considerations which might confirm the idea are that men have more hair on their bodies than women, and strongly built men often have a large quantity of hair. Some of the stronger wild animals have long hair, as the lion, bear and wild boar; and the horse, often considered the embodiment of strength, has a long mane. And when anger is excited the hair sometimes appears to rise, as it were, from the skin. The nails and teeth were formerly used on occasion as weapons of offence, and hence might be considered to contain part of the strength and vigour of the body.
Finally, it may be suggested as a possibility that the Roundheads cut their hair short as a protest against the superstition that a soldier’s hair must be long, which originated in the idea that strength is located in the hair and may have still been current in their time. We know that the Puritans strove vainly against the veneration of the Maypole as the spirit of the new vegetation,[44] and against the old nature-rites observed at Christmas, the veneration of fire as the preserver of life against cold, and the veneration of the evergreen plants, the fir tree, the holly, and the mistletoe, which retained their foliage through the long night of the northern winter, and were thus a pledge to man of the return of warmth and the renewal of vegetation in the spring. And it therefore seems not altogether improbable that the Puritans may have similarly contended against the superstition as to the wearing of long hair.
[1] This article is compiled from papers by Mr. Chatterji, retired E.A.C., Jubbulpore; Professor Sadāshiva Jairām, M.A., Hislop College, Nagpur; and Mr. C. Shrinivas Naidu, First Assistant Master, Sironcha, Chānda; and from the Central Provinces District Gazetteers.
[2] Mr. Crooke’s Tribes and Castes, art. Nai.
[3] Tribes and Castes, art. Nai, para. 5.
[4] The following account is largely taken from Mr. Nesfield’s Brief View of the Caste System, pp. 42, 43.
[5] Eighteenth Century Middle-Class Life, by C.S. Torres, in the Nineteenth Century and After, Sept. 1910.