The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c11.31

v1.c11.31

**Fourth objection :** One most important mark of reverence to a god is the eating of the remnants of offerings made to him. This is called “taking the Mahāprasāda”, *mahāprasāda sevana*, and no votary can forego it. But in the case of Śiva, this is forbidden. At all the great temples of Viṣṇu, Kālī, Durgā, and other gods and goddesses, the most important daily ceremony consists in offering large quantities of various articles of food, and subsequently distributing the same among the faithful; and no image of a god is anywhere kept which has not its daily allowance of some choice food according to the means of its votaries. But Śiva has no such allowance assigned to him. With the exception of the presiding divinity of the great temple at Bhuvaneśvara and of two or three others, no image of Śiva, not even the idol in the celebrated fane of Benares, has anything like a large supply of sweetmeats, and rarely any cooked food¹³ served to it, and even the most orthodox Śivite thinks it positively sinful to eat of food offered to this divinity. The prohibition occurs in the *Bahvṛca Gṛhya Pariśiṣṭa*, and it runs thus: “Leaves, flowers, fruits, and water, become unfit to be eaten after being offered to Śiva: but they become pure after being brought into contact with an ammonite stone, *Śālagrāma*”.¹⁴ The Purāṇas, as also the Smṛti digests and the Tantras, have