Note 39 — Chapter VI · SOME RURAL FESTIVALS AND CEREMONIES.

They do not employ Brâhmans in the worship, because, they say, a Brâhman was the first cultivator of betel. Through his neglect the plant grew so high that he used his sacred thread to fasten up the tendrils, but as it still shot up faster than he could supply thread, its charge was given to a Kâyasth or writer. Hence it is that a Brâhman cannot enter a betel garden without defilement.39 In another form of the story, the thread of the Brâhman grew up to the sky and became a betel tendril. So, in a Tartar story, the hop plant originates from the bow-string of a man that had been turned into a bear.40