y8 Hiitton Webster 



The ritualistic requirements for this ceremony do not include 

 the cessation of labor by the Brahmanical householder and his 

 family. It might, therefore, be argued that the new and full 

 moon observances were not originally dictated by a superstitious 

 regard for the lunar phases. The fasting on the upavasatha day 

 would then be merely a rite preliminary to the sacrifice on the 

 following day ; the association of the two ceremonies with new 

 and full moon would mean only that these two divisions of a 

 lunar month were chosen as convenient and conspicuous periods 

 for the performance of religious duties. That many so-called 

 lunar festivals have no connection with such lunar superstitions 

 as have been described, is a proposition so obvious as to require 

 no demonstration. To the present instance, however, these con- 

 siderations can scarcely apply. It is well known that the upava- 

 satha was a fast preparatory to the offering of the " moon plant," 

 the intoxicating soma, whose personification and deification are 

 assigned to a date earlier than that of the Vedas themselves. In 

 the Rig Veda soma is occasionally identified with the moon ; ac- 

 cording to some authorities soma, everywhere in the Rig Veda, 

 means the moon. During post-Vedic times, in any case, the 

 moon-god was regularly conceived as represented on earth by the 

 mysterious soma plant.'* During this later period the regula- 

 tions previously cited for non-reading days to be observed by 

 pious Brahmans show clearly that the moon's changes were held 

 in superstitious regard as times peculiarly dangerous or polluting ; 

 such beliefs, leading to the cessation of labor at new and full 

 moon, are even now current in various parts of India (supra). 



The Buddhist sabbath or iiposatJia falls on the day of the full 



Books of the East, xii. i sq., cf., also 374 sq.). In the Institutes of Vishnu 

 (xlvii. 3) the new moon is a penitential fast day {S. B. E. vii. 152). Vari- 

 ous hmar penances are described in Mamt, xi. 217 sqq. For modern Brah- 

 mans the new and full moon days are regularly fast days (Dubois, Hindu 

 Manners, Customs, and Cermonies^ Oxford, 1906, p. 270). 



"A. Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, Breslau, 1891, i. 267 sqq., 336 

 sqq.; E. W. Hopkins, Religions of India, Boston, 1895, pp. 112 sqq. Cf. 

 also, Sacred Books of the East, xii. 176 sqq. (Satapatlta Brdhniana, i. 6, 

 4. 5 sqq.). 



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