BOURKE. ] CORDS OF THE BRAHMANS. 565 
Parsis], showing their joint Aryan origin in high Asia, for the thread is of the very 
highest antiquity. The Parsi does not, however, wear his thread across the shoulder, 
and knows nothing of the all-but-forgotten origin of its required length. He wears 
it next to his skin, tied carefully round the waist, and used to tie it round his right 
arm, as is still the custom with some classes of Brahmins who have lost purity of 
caste by intermarriage with lower classe-.' 
At the baptism or investiture of the thread, which takes the place of the Christian 
confirmation ceremony, but between the ages of 7 and 9, Fire and Water are the 
great sanctifying elements, and are the essentials. The fire is kindled from the 
droppings of the sacred cow, then sprinkled over with holy water and blessed; and 
when so consecrated by the priest it is called ‘‘ Holy Fire.”? 
“The Brahmans, the Rajas, and the Merchants, distinguish themselves 
from the various casts of Sudras by a narrow belt of thread, which they 
always wear suspended from the left shoulder to the opposite haunch 
like a sash.”* But,as Dubois speaks of the division of all the tribes 
into “Right-hand and Left-hand,” a distinction which Coleman‘ ex- 
plains as consisting in doing exactly contrariwise of each other, it is 
not a very violent assumption to imagine that both the present and a 
former method of wearing the izze-kloth, akin to that now followed by 
the Apache, may once have obtained in India. The sectaries of the 
two Hands are bitterly antagonistic and often indulge in fierce quarrels, 
ending in bloodshed.° 
“ All the Brahmans wear a Cord over the shoulder, consisting of three 
black twistsof cotton, each of them formed of several smaller threads. 
. . . The three threads are not twisted together, but separate from 
one another, and hang from the left shoulder to the right haunch. 
When a Brahman marries, he mounts nine threads instead of three.” 
Children were invested with these sacred cords at the age of from 7 
to 9. The cords had to be made and put on with much ceremony, and 
only Brahmans could make them. According to Dubois, the material 
was cotton; he does not allude to buekskin.® 
Coleman? gives a detailed description of the manner in which the 
sacred thread of the Brahmans is made: 
The sacred thread must be made by a Brahman. It consists of three strings, each 
ninety-six hands (forty-eight yards), which are twisted together: it is then folded 
into three and again twisted; these are a second time folded into the same number 
and tied at each end in knots. It is worn over the left shoulder (next the skin, ex- 
tending half way down the right thigh), by the Brahmans, Ketries and Vaisya castes. 
The first are usually invested with it at eight years of age, the second at eleven, and 
the Vaisyaattwelve. . . . The Hindus of the Sutra caste do not receive the 
poita. 
The ceremony of investiture comprehends prayer, sacrifice, fasting, 
etc., and the wearing of a preliminary poita “ of three threads, made of 
the fibers of the swru, to which a piece of deer’s skin is fastened.” ® 
This piece of buckskin was added no doubt in order to let the neophyte 
1 Forlong, Rivers of Life, vol. 1, p. 328. 5 Mythology of the Hindus, pp. 9, 10, 11. 
2 Thid., p. 323. 6 Thid., p. 92. 
3 Dubois, People of India, p. 9. 7 Thid., p. 155. 
4 Mythology of the Hindus. * Tbid., pp. 135, 154, 155. 
