DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.636#0436
CHAPTER XVI.
Hindu Fasts, Festivals, and Holy Days.
No country upon earth rejoices in a longer list of holidays,
festivals (utsava), and seasons of rejoicing, qualified by fasts
(upavasa, vrata), vigils (jagarana), and seasons of mortification,
than India. Most of these fasts and festivals are fixed to
take place on certain lunar days (tithi), each lunation or
period of rather more than twenty-seven solar days being
divided into thirty of these lunar days, fifteen of which during
the moon's increase constitute the light half of the month,
and the other fifteen the dark half. Some festivals, however,
are regulated by the supposed motions of the sun. To de-
scribe all the fasts and festivals would require a volume.
I can only indicate some of those most commonly observed.
And first, with regard to the general custom of fasting, it
may be worth while to point out that no Christian man—be
he Roman Catholic or Anglican—not even the most austere
stickler for the most strict observance of every appointed
period of humiliation and abstinence, can for a moment hope
to compete with any religious native of India—Hindu or
Muhammadan—who may have entered on a course of fasting,
abstinence, and bodily maceration.
In point of fact, the constant action of a tropical climate,
and the peculiar social habits of the sons of the soil in
Eastern countries continued for centuries, have induced a
condition of body which enables them to practise the most
severe and protracted abstinence with impunity, and even
with benefit; while European Christians, who, with a view
of increasing their influence, endeavour to set an example
Hindu Fasts, Festivals, and Holy Days.
No country upon earth rejoices in a longer list of holidays,
festivals (utsava), and seasons of rejoicing, qualified by fasts
(upavasa, vrata), vigils (jagarana), and seasons of mortification,
than India. Most of these fasts and festivals are fixed to
take place on certain lunar days (tithi), each lunation or
period of rather more than twenty-seven solar days being
divided into thirty of these lunar days, fifteen of which during
the moon's increase constitute the light half of the month,
and the other fifteen the dark half. Some festivals, however,
are regulated by the supposed motions of the sun. To de-
scribe all the fasts and festivals would require a volume.
I can only indicate some of those most commonly observed.
And first, with regard to the general custom of fasting, it
may be worth while to point out that no Christian man—be
he Roman Catholic or Anglican—not even the most austere
stickler for the most strict observance of every appointed
period of humiliation and abstinence, can for a moment hope
to compete with any religious native of India—Hindu or
Muhammadan—who may have entered on a course of fasting,
abstinence, and bodily maceration.
In point of fact, the constant action of a tropical climate,
and the peculiar social habits of the sons of the soil in
Eastern countries continued for centuries, have induced a
condition of body which enables them to practise the most
severe and protracted abstinence with impunity, and even
with benefit; while European Christians, who, with a view
of increasing their influence, endeavour to set an example