^6 Hutton Webster 



of the new moon, the full moon, or on three days before the full 

 moon.*"^ 



Among peoples of archaic culture there are numerous illustra- 

 tions of lunar festivals and of the abstinence which so generally 

 attends them. The evidence from India is particularly instruc- 

 tive and deserves extended consideration. Professor Wester- 

 marck, who has given some examples of the superstition under 

 discussion, quotes the statement in the Vishnu Purana that he 

 who attends to secular afifairs on the days of the new or the full 

 moon goes to the Rudhiranda hell, whose wells are blood. ^' With 

 the development of the complex Brahmanic ritual, holy and un- 

 lucky days in India became almost identical with the days when 

 the sacred books should not be read. Thus the laws of Manu re- 

 quired a learned Brahman not to recite the Veda on the new 

 moon day, nor on the fourteenth and eighth days of each half- 

 month, nor on the full moon day. It is said that " the new-moon 

 day destroys the teacher, the fourteenth day the pupil, the eighth 

 and full-moon days destroy all remembrance of the Veda ; let 

 him therefore avoid reading on those days."*'^ This injunction, 

 moreover, is repeated for a great variety of other critical occa- 

 sions : during a heavy thunderstorm or an eclipse ; or when an 

 earthquake occurs. A like prohibition followed after events 

 causing pollution ; a Brahman, for example, should not read the 

 Vedas in a village through which a corpse had been taken, or near 

 a burning-ground.*"* Some of these taboos have endured till the 

 present time, the eighth day of each fortnight, held sacred to 

 Durga, being a period when no study is allowable for a pious 

 Hindu.'o 



'■"Jagor, in Vcrhandlungeii der Berliner GcscUschaft filr Anthropologie, 

 Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, 1876, p. 201. 



^''Vishnu Purana, translated by H. H. Wilson, London, 1S40, p. 209; 

 Westermarck, op. cit., ii. 284. The modern Puranas, in their existing 

 form, were all written after the sixth century, A. D., and hence are a 

 relatively late production of Brahmanical thought. 



"^ Laws of Manu, translated by G. Biihler, Sacred Books of the East, 

 XXV. iv. 113 sq. 



"' Ibid., iv. loi sqq. 



"' Monier-Williams, Brdlunaiiisiii and Hinduism,^ New York, 1891, p. 433. 



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