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.[387]

+206+. The essence of fasting is the avoiding of defiling food; this
conception may be traced in all instances of the practice, though it may
be in some cases reenforced by other considerations, and is sometimes
spiritualized. The efficacy of sacred food would be destroyed if it
came in contact with common food, or it might itself become
destructive.[388] A sacred ceremony demands a sacred performer, one who
has not taken a defiling substance into his being. Death diffuses
defilement, and makes the food in the house of the deceased dangerous.

+207+. Other ideas may here come in: abstinence may be a sign or a
result of grief, though this does not seem likely except in refined
communities; or its ground may be fear of eating the ghost, which is
believed to be hovering about the dead body;[389] it is hardly the
result of "making excessive provision for the dead."[390] Special
communion with supernatural Powers, by magicians and others (including
conditions of ecstasy), requires ritual purity, and similar preparation
of the body is proper when it is desired to avert the anger of a deity
or to do him honor.

+208+. Once established, the custom has maintained itself in the higher
religions[391] in connection with more or less definite spiritual aims
and with other exercises, particularly prayer. The dominant feeling is
then self-denial, at the bottom of which the conviction appears to be
that the deity demands complete subordination in the worshiper and is
displeased when he asserts himself. This conviction, which is a
fundamental element in all religious thought, pertains properly only to
inward experience, but naturally tends to annex nonspiritual acts of
self-abnegation like fasting. As a moral discipline, a training in the
government of self and a preparation for enduring times of real
privation, fasting is regarded by many persons as valuable. Its power to
isolate the man from the world and thus minister to religious communion
differs in different persons. The Islamic fast of Ramadan is said to
produce irritability and lead to quarrels. In general, fasting tends to
indu