Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture v1.c6.61

v1.c6.61

⁴ All that is broken, torn, or harmed is in Brahmanic belief uncanny and calamitous. The Jātaka, which often mocks at superstition, has a pretty tale of a man, one of whose garments the mice gnawed, and who then looked on this as an embodied curse and evil boding of dreadful things. His son had to take it with all speed on a stick to the place of dead bodies (No. 87). Cp. Rhys Davids, *Buddhist Suttas*, p. 171; J. v. Negelein, *Traumschlüssel des Jagaddeva*, p. 209; MBh., xiii, 104.49, 59, 66; xvi, 2.5; J. J. Meyer, *Altind. Rechtsschr.*, espec. p. 440, addit. to p. 360. Moreover in the German Middle Ages also, it was believed that anyone who had his clothing gnawed by mice would have a mishap. *Ztschr. d. Ver. f. Volksk.*, Bd. 11, p. 278. The fruit that birds have pecked must not be eaten, otherwise atonement must be made by strict mortification. Vasiṣṭha, xiv, 33; Viṣṇu, xxiii, 49; ii, 17; Manu, iv, 208; Gautama, xvii, 10. It is otherwise in Viṣṇu, xxiii, 49; Vasiṣṭha, xxviii, 8; Baudhāyana, i, 5, 9.2; according to which the bird that throws down a fruit by pecking at it does not make it unclean.