II. Why Brâhmaṇs cannot eat in the Dark.

Among Hindûs, especially among Brâhmaṇs of the Madras Presidency—and I now see from personal observation that it is the same in the Bombay Presidency also—there is a custom, while taking their meals, of leaving their food uneaten when it so happens that from any cause the light is blown out. Of course this could occur only in the night-time. Such mishaps now-a-days take place only in poor families, sitting down to supper with a single light. Hence the following story, told as the origin of this custom, is beginning to be forgotten. It runs as follows:—

The son-in-law also went home. All his joy vanished; how could he be happy after his promise to the crocodile. Still, to give no uneasiness to the aged parents of his wife, he underwent all the ceremonies of the marriage. Only five more ghaṭikâs remained for him to live in the world, as he thought. He, in a few words, explained everything to his wife, and asked her permission to leave her. She showed no sign of sorrow, preached to him about the iron hand of fate, and that he must undergo what was written on his forehead. She most willingly gave him permission to go, and he returned to the tank even a ghaṭikâ earlier, and called the crocodile, who came and seized him.

At this moment a certain light glittered before the eyes of the crocodile and vanished. It was a woman that did it. The wife, after consoling her husband, and preaching to him about the supremacy of fate, had accompanied him unobserved with a lighted lamp concealed in a vessel. Just when the crocodile applied its teeth to the leg of her husband, she took the lamp out, flashed it before the crocodile’s eyes, and quenched it. Nor was it without its intended effect. The crocodile left the husband to himself, and said, “You had better go now; I will never touch you after seeing a lamp extinguished when I began my meal to-day.” The husband was astonished at the device of his wife, and still more at the faithful observance of a rule in an unreasonable beast. From that day it was fixed that men, who are still more reasonable, should never eat when the lamp is blown out.

Another story is told. In a remote village there lived a poor woman, who laboured from morning till night in different houses, and returned to her hut with two measures of rice. That quantity would serve for ten ordinary persons. Being extremely poor, she used to keep no lamp, but cook her rice in the dark, only guided by the light of the fire. When she sat down for her meal even the light of the fire faded; so she had to eat in the dark. Though she used the full two measures of rice that she brought away every day, her hunger was never satisfied; she was always in extreme want.