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Updated: May 6, 2025
Such canons are found in Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam, and in minor bodies like the Essenes, Mormons, and others, but not among the Chinese, Greeks, and Romans; Brahmanism occupies a middle ground it regards the Veda and the accessory books as entitled to great reverence, but has never drawn the line between sacred and nonsacred writings so sharply as has been done in the group named above.
Apparently, however, all these usages of purification by fasting go back to the idea that the body, which is identified with the human personality, is in its ordinary state nonsacred and therefore unfit for the performance of a sacred act, and that it is rendered especially unfit by contact with a ritually unclean thing.
+603+. In general, sacred seasons, times of great communal ceremonies, demand the avoidance of ordinary pursuits, which, it is feared, may imperil the success of the ceremonies by necessitating contact with things infected or nonsacred. For Greece we have the Plynteria, on the principal day of which work was suspended; in Rome the feriae were such days, regular or occasional.
The methods commonly employed are mimic representations of rainfall or of a storm. The Australian Arunta have a rain clan whose function is to bring the desired supply by nonsacred dancing festivals and sacred ceremonies. A more advanced method is to dip a stone, as rain-god, into a stream. Certain American tribes assign the duty of rain making to secret societies or to priests.
Ordinary food, nourishing the body and becoming a part of it, thus maintains it in its nonsacred character. This point of view appears in the practice of administering a purge as a means of ceremonial purification; the Nandi, for example, give a purge to a girl before her circumcision, and in some cases to any one who has touched a taboo object.
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