The origin and development of the moral ideas

The custom of fasting after a death has been ascribed to different causes by different writers. Mr. Spencer believes that it has resulted from the habit of making excessive provision for the dead.88 But although among some peoples the funeral offerings no doubt are so extensive as to reduce the survivors to poverty and starvation,89 I have met with no statement to the effect that they are anxious to give to the deceased all the eatables which they possess, or that the mourning fast is a matter of actual necessity. It is always restricted to some fixed period, often to a few days only, and it prevails among many peoples who have never been known to be profuse in their sacrifices to the dead. With reference to the Chinese, Dr. de Groot maintains that the mourners originally fasted with a view to being able to sacrifice so much the more at the tomb; and he bases this conclusion on the fact that the articles of food which were forbidden till the end of the deepest mourning were the very same as those which in ancient China played the principal part at every burial sacrifice.90 But this prohibition may also perhaps be due to a belief that the offering of certain victuals to the dead pollutes all food belonging to the same species.

Professor Wilken, again, suggests that the mourners abstain from food till they have given the dead his due, in order to show that they do not wish to keep him waiting longer than is necessary and thus make him kindly disposed towards them.91 This explanation presupposes that the fast is immediately followed by offerings or a feast for the dead. In some instances this is expressly said to be the case;92 the ancient Chinese, for instance, observed a special fast as an introductory rite to the sacrifices which they offered to the manes at regular periods after the demise and even after the close of the mourning.93 But generally there is no indication of the mourning fast being an essential preliminary to a sacrifice to the dead, and in an instance mentioned above the funeral feast regularly precedes it.94

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