CEREMONIES IN COOKING AND EATING.

Each time before cooking, if it be in the house, the floor and part of the wall should be plastered with cowdung and earth, and if it be in the woods, as much ground as will hold the materials and the cooking utensils. No one but the person* who cooks may occupy the spot, and he must first bathe and put on a loin-cloth and cover his head and thus complete his meal. If a piece of paper or dirty rag or other such thing fall on the plastered space, the food is spoilt. He must bathe again and newly plaster the ground and provide fresh materials. The cook must be either the mistress of the family or a Bráhman whose special duty this may be, or a relation, or the master of the house himself.

Before eating, the place where they sit must be plastered in the same way, and they occupy it without spreading any covering on the ground, but a stool or a wooden board, bare as aforesaid, may be used.

Next, the following five ceremonies are regarded as indispensable:— (1). Reading some portion of the Vedas. (2). Sprinkling water as a liba­tion to departed ancestors. (3). Placing some food in front of the idol. (4). Throwing a little food on the ground in the name of the deities. (5). Giving some to the poor. First the children eat, then the relations satisfy themselves, after which the man himself partakes, but not out of the same dish with another even though it be a child. None but the cook may bring any provisions to the gathering. If by accident his hand touches any one, or he is touched by others, whatever food he holds in his hand at the time he must throw away, and bathing anew, bring fresh materials; unless the cook be a woman, for whom it will suffice to wash her hands and feet. The cook eats last of all. In drinking also, each person must have a separate vessel.

Formerly it was the custom for a Bráhman to eat at the house of a Bráhman or of a Kshátriya or of a Vaiśya, and a Kshátriya might eat at any house but that of a ´Súdra; and a Vaiśya in the same way; but in this cycle of the Kali Yuga, each must take his meal in the house of his own caste. The utensils from which they eat are generally the leaves of trees, and fashioned of gold, silver, brass, and also of bell-metal, and they avoid the use of copper, earthenware, and stone vessels. They also consider it improper to eat from a broken dish or from the leaves of the bar or banyan tree (ficus Indica), the pipal, (ficus religiosa) and the swallow-wort (Ascle­peas gigantea).* To eat twice either in the night or day is not approved.