dietary law

Judaism.

law dealing with foods permitted to be eaten, food preparation and combinations, and the utensils and dishes coming into contact with food. Cf. kashruth.

[1925-30]

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▪ religion

Introduction

      any of the prescriptions as to what may or may not be eaten (food) under particular conditions. These prescriptions and proscriptions are sometimes religious; often they are secular; frequently, they are both.

      This article surveys the variety of laws and customs pertaining to food materials and the art of eating in human societies from earliest times to the present. It will be seen that behaviour in respect to food—whether religious, secular, or both—is institutionalized behaviour and is not separate or apart from organizations of social relations.

      By an institution is meant here a stable grouping of persons whose activities are designed to meet specific challenges or problems, whose behaviour is governed by implicit or explicit rules and expectations of each other and who regularly use special paraphernalia and symbols in these activities. Social institutions are the frames within which man spends every living moment. This survey explores the institutional contexts in which dietary laws and food customs are cast in different societies; the attempt will also be made to show that customs surrounding food are among the principal means by which human groups maintain their distinctiveness and help provide their members with a sense of identity.

      Other points of view about food customs cover a wide range. What may be labelled an ecological approach suggests that food taboos (taboo) among a group's members prevent over-utilization of particular foods to maintain a stable equilibrium in the habitat. Recently, investigators of such customs have been exploring the hypothesis that they provide an adaptive distribution of protein and other nutrients so that these may be evenly distributed in a group over a long period instead of being consumed at one time of the year. The ecological approach also suggests that many food taboos are directed against women to maintain a low population level; this seems to be an adaptive necessity in groups at the lowest technological levels, in which there is a precarious balance between population and available resources.

      There are also psychological approaches to food customs. Psychoanalytic writers speculate that food symbolizes sexuality or identity because it is the first mode of contact between an infant and its mother. This point of view is most clearly exemplified in ideas that attitudes toward food, established early in life, tend to shape attitudes toward money and other forms of wealth and retentiveness or generosity. According to Claude Lévi-Strauss (Lévi-Strauss, Claude), a French anthropologist, the categories represented in food taboos enable people to order their perceptions of the world in accordance with the principle of polarities that govern the structure of the mind. Thus, they aid in maintaining such dichotomies as those between nature and culture or between man and animal.

Nature and significance

      There are no universal food customs or dietary laws. Nor are food customs and dietary laws confined to either preliterate (“primitive”) or advanced cultures; such regulations are found at all stages of development. Nevertheless, different types of regulations in respect to food are characteristic of groups at different levels of cultural or socio-technological development.

      Each society has attached symbolic value to different foods. These symbolizations (religious symbolism and iconography) define what may or may not be eaten and what is desirable to eat at different times and in different places. In most cases, such cultural values bear little relationship to nutritive factors. As a result, they often seem difficult to explain. Moreover, dietary customs and laws are resistant to rational argument and change. For example, experts from health and nutritional agencies find it difficult to persuade mothers to give cow's milk to children in societies in which it is looked upon as undesirable. Such customs and laws also prevent people from adopting alternative foods during periods of shortage. During and after World War II, some Indians (India) refused to eat Western wheat and rioted and died rather than accept it.

Food as a material expression of social relationships

      Cutting across dietary laws and customs is the more general association of food and drink with those social interactions that are considered important by the group. In many societies the phrase “We eat together” is used by a man to describe his friendly relationship with another from a distant village, suggesting that even though they are not neighbours or kinsmen they trust one another and refrain from practicing sorcery against each other. Among the Nyakyusa of Tanzania, “for conversation to flow merrily and discussion to be profound, there must be . . . ‘the wherewithal for good fellowship,' that is, food and drink—and very great stress is laid on sharing these.” In Old Testament times, almost every pact, or covenant, was sealed with a common meal; eating together made the parties as though members of the same family or clan. Conversely, refusal to eat with someone was a mark of anger and a symbol of ruptured fellowship. Eating salt with one's companions meant that one was bound to them in loyalty; references to this are found in the New Testament.

      Such sentiments, however, are not confined to tribal or ancient cultures. In Israeli kibbutzim (kibbutz) (communal settlements), the communal dining room is a keystone institution, and commensality is one of the hallmarks of kibbutz life. The decline of communal eating and the increasing frequency of refrigerators, cooking paraphernalia, and private dining in kibbutz homes is regarded by some observers as a sign of the imminent demise of kibbutzim. In many U.S. communes there is a single facility for cooking and dining. Dinners must be taken communally; private dining is taken as a signal that one is ready to leave the group.

      The provision of food and drink, if not actual feasting, is characteristic of rites of passage (rite of passage)—i.e., rites marking events such as birth, initiation ceremonies, marriage, and death—in almost all traditional cultures and in some modern nontraditional groups as well. The reason for this is that these events are regarded as being of importance not only to the individual and his family but also to the group as a whole because each event bears in one way or other on the group's continuity.

      Furthermore, food and drink are almost universally associated with hospitality. In most cultures, there are explicit or implicit rules that food or drink be offered to guests, and there are usually standards prescribing which foods and drinks are appropriate. Reciprocally, these sets of rules also assert that guests are obligated to accept proffered food and drink and that failure to do so is insulting. In many societies, there are prescribed ritual exchanges of food when friends meet. Food is thus one of the most widespread material expressions of social relationships in human society.

Regulations about the quantity of food and drink consumed

      It is extraordinarily rare for cultures to condone gluttony, the conventional exaggerations of the eating behaviour of the ancient Roman elite notwithstanding. Most people cannot afford to be gluttons. There are more examples of the other extreme, asceticism, though these too are infrequent.

      A clear-cut example of gastronomic asceticism is provided by Indians of the U.S (United States). Northeast, such as the Mi'kmaq (Micmac), Innu (Montagnais), and Ojibwa. It was an ideal among them to eat sparingly. Preparation for this attitude began in early childhood with short fasts (fasting) of a day or two, culminating in the puberty fast; the latter lasted about 10 days, during which time the child was isolated in a tiny wickiup without food or water. The puberty fast also had important religious significance. During the fast, the child had to supplicate the deities for a vision (easily induced under such conditions), which came in the form of a supernatural figure, usually in animal shape; this was to become his guardian spirit.

      Rules pertaining to drink are even more varied. Tribal groups throughout the world (except in Oceania and most of North America) knew alcohol (alcohol consumption); in each case, this led to the adoption of rules concerning its use.

      Although a high intake of alcohol always has physiological effects, people's comportment is determined more by what their society tells them is the way to behave when consuming alcohol than by its toxic effects. In many societies, drinking is an established part of the total round of social activities. Robert McC. Netting, a U.S. anthropologist, observed that the Kofyar of northern Nigeria “make, drink, talk, and think about beer.” All social relations among them are accompanied by its consumption, and fines are levied in beer payments. Ostracism takes the form of exclusion from beer drinking; they “certainly believe that man's way to god is with beer in hand.” Their beer, however, is weak in alcoholic content and is quite nutritious, and they rarely consume European beer and never distilled liquor. Among Central and South American (American Indian) peasants, men are allowed or required to drink themselves into a state of stupefaction during religious celebrations (fiestas); though this drinking is frequent and heavy, it does not appear to result in addiction. Representative of the other extreme are the Hopi and other Indian tribes of the U.S. Southwest who have banned all alcoholic beverages (and almost all narcotics), asserting that these substances threaten their way of life.

      Most cultures, however, prescribe moderation in drinking. In ancient Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia, history of), beer played an important role in temple services and in the economy; but the code of Hammurabi (Hammurabi, Code of)—the monument of law named after the king of Babylon—strictly regulated tavern keepers and servants (these places were supposed to be avoided by the social elite). Similar patterns obtained in ancient Egypt. The ancient Greeks (ancient Greek civilization) sought to attribute their intellectual and material culture to the introduction of vine and olive growing. The use of wine was quite general in biblical times; it belonged to the category of indispensable provisions listed in the Old Testament in the Book of Judges (chapter 13) and the First Book of Samuel (chapters 16 and 25). Wine was no less important in New Testament times; in Revelation to John (chapter 6) it is said that only wine and oil are to be protected from the apocalyptic famine. Wine is also frequently used in biblical imagery. In both Testaments, however, wine is both praised and condemned.

Use of food in religion

      The most widespread symbolic use of food is in connection with religious behaviour. In fact, eating and drinking are minimal elements in most religious behaviour and experience, whether in eating, sacrifice, or communion. According to many anthropologists, there are essentially two reasons for this. First, religion is one of the systems of thought and action by which the members of a group express their cohesiveness and identity. Implicitly or explicitly, the members of every cultural group assert that its unity and distinctiveness derive from the deity or deities associated with it. Religion is a tie that binds. But no symbolic activity in human society stands alone and without material representation. Like all other symbolizations of institutional relationships, those of religion must also have substantial form. Food and drink—and their ingestion—are among the most important substances of religion.

      The second reason, closely related to the foregoing, is that one element of dogma in every religion is the definition of polluting, or supernaturally dangerous, objects or personal states. Just as there is no objective or scientific connection between the nutritive qualities of different foods and the symbolic values attached to them, there is no objective relationship between an object or a personal state and its definition as polluting. Cultures vary in the objects and states that are defined as defiling, such as saliva, sneezing, menstruation, killing an enemy in warfare, a corpse, parturition, but cutting across these is the belief held in every religion that there are foods and drinks that are polluting or defiling.

      As Mary Douglas, a British anthropologist, has suggested in her analysis of the religiously sanctioned food taboos in Leviticus (chapter 11) and Deuteronomy (chapter 14), Purity and Danger, concepts of pollution and defilement are among the means used by preliterate or tribal societies to maintain their separateness, boundedness, and exclusivity; thus, these concepts and rules contribute strongly to the sense of identity—the social badges—that people derive from participation in the institutions of their firmly bounded or encapsulated groups. More concretely, when a person proclaims his affiliation with and allegiance to a particular group that he regards as his self-contained universe and beyond whose margins he sees danger, threat, and alienation, he simultaneously invokes—explicitly or implicitly—the many badges of his social identity; these include the totem (i.e., the emblem of a family or clan) that he may not eat, the foods that are regarded as defiling, the drinks that he must avoid, the sacred meals in which he participates, and the other rituals associated with his exclusive group. He thereby asserts his separateness from people in all other groups—usually referred to in pejorative terms—and his identification with the members of his own group. Food customs are not always formalized, however; they are sometimes cast in terms of preference. Americans, for example, unless they are members of ethnic or religious groups that have their own dietary laws, often shun the “exotic” foods of alien cultures; but these avoidances are not phrased in religious or other institutional terms.

Laws and customs at different stages of social development

      Although there are dietary laws and customs in all societies, groups differ in this regard in two important ways: in the range or extent of foods that are defined as polluting or tabooed and in conceptualizations of the consequences resulting from violations of these laws and customs. In comparing societies, however, it must be remembered that the range of variability among them is so great that it would be necessary to list hundreds of societies and their customs to get a complete and detailed picture of their food customs and laws. For purposes of both economy and conceptual coherence it is necessary to group societies into levels, or stages, of social and technological development and to compare these; in this approach, individual societies are regarded as special or particular exemplary cases of the general class of the level of development in which the groups are found or classed.

Hunter-gatherers (hunting and gathering culture)

      The earliest cultural level that anthropologists know about is generally referred to as hunting-gathering. Hunter-gatherers are always nomadic, and they live in a variety of environments. Some, as in sub-Saharan Africa and India, are beneficent environments; others, such as those of the Arctic or North American (American Indian) deserts, are harsh and dangerous. Encampments of hunter-gatherers are usually small (generally fewer than 60 persons) and are constantly splitting up and recombining. An important rule among almost all hunter-gatherers is that every person physically present in a camp is automatically entitled to an equal share of meat brought into the group whether or not he has participated in the hunt; this rule does not usually extend to vegetables or fruits and nuts.

      It may be thought that hunter-gatherers who live in habitats of scarcity and in which hunting is dangerous would try to make maximum use of all potentially available food; they are, however, also characterized by customs and beliefs that proscribe certain foods or at least limit their consumption. Many Alaskan Eskimo groups, for instance, make a sharp distinction between land and sea products; the Eskimo believe that products of the two spheres should be kept separate, maintaining that land and sea animals are repulsive to each other and should not be brought together. Thus, for example, before hunting caribou (a spring activity), a man must clean (purification rite) his body of all the seal grease that has accumulated during the winter; similarly, before whaling in April, the individual's body must be washed to get rid of the scent of caribou. Weapons used for hunting caribou should not be used at sea; implements used at sea, however, may be used to hunt caribou. If these rules are violated, the hunter or whaler will be unsuccessful in his food quest; the consequences of this, of course, can be dire.

      In addition, the Eskimo observe food taboos in connection with critical periods of the individual's life and development. Among the most outstanding of these are the food taboos that a woman is subject to for four or five days after giving birth. She may not eat raw meat or blood and is restricted to those foods that are believed to have beneficial effects on the child. For example, it is felt that she should eat ducks' wings to make her child a good runner or paddler. Because the Eskimo are often beset by food shortages, they sometimes have to eat forbidden foods. In such cases, there are several things that a person can do to neutralize the taboo. He first rubs the forbidden food over his body and then hangs the meat outside and allows it to drain. Another act that is regarded as particularly efficacious is to stuff a mitten into the collar of his parka with the hand side facing outward; it is believed that the harmful effects of the taboo food go into the mitten and travel away from him.

      There are, of course, other food avoidances observed by the Eskimo, but these examples will suffice to illustrate the basic principles of dietary customs and laws among hunter-gatherers. First, the taboos are always thought to have magical consequences for the individual; observing them will assure health and strength, violating them will result in illness and weakness for the person or, in the case of a parturient mother, for her child. Second, food taboos are generally associated with critical periods during the life cycle, as in pregnancy, menses, illness, or dangerous hunts. Third—and this is true of almost all societies, not only those of hunter-gatherers—in every group's system of thought there are categories or types of foods that are regarded as dangerous, defiling, or undesirable. At first glance, these rules and customs seem arbitrary and capricious, but evidence is accumulating that there are rational elements in them. Although it would be difficult in the present stage of knowledge to apply this principle to every dietary taboo or custom in every society, it seems that prohibitions are placed on those foods that are the most difficult and dangerous to procure. Sometimes, however, these foods are also highly prized.

Corporate kin (kinship) groups

      With the development of corporate kin groups in social history, largely (but not exclusively) as an accompaniment of horticultural cultivation, a significant change occurred in the role of food in institutional life. Underlying the development of corporate kin groups was the development of the notion of exclusive rights to territory claimed by a group of kinsmen. This exclusive territoriality was probably designed, in large measure, to protect investments of time and effort in particular plots. The solidarity and sense of kin-group exclusiveness implicit in a corporate kin group grew out of kin-group ownership of the land and the individual's reliance on interhousehold cooperation in his productive activities. Such groups quickly evolve insignia, rules, and symbols that represent their ideals of exclusivity and inalienability of social relations; food plays an important role in this. Hence, taboos are thought to have consequences for the group as a whole rather than for the individual alone.

      Another significant accompaniment of the development of corporate kin groups is the elaboration of initiatory rites, which mark an individual's transition from childhood to full membership in his community or kin group; they confer citizenship in the fullest sense of the term. Such events are celebrated by feasts (feast), reciprocal exchanges of food, and food taboos, in addition to the ceremonial rituals themselves. Preparations for these feasts sometimes occupy the group for several months, especially when it is necessary to acquire from relatives and friends the animals that will be slaughtered and eaten, because it is rare for one family, or even one village, to own enough animals for a proper feast. They lay the groundwork for one of the basic rules of the group into which the individual is being initiated, namely, that the distribution of food (and interhousehold cooperation in its acquisition) is one of the most significant ways in which he and the members of the group are knit together.

      Feasting is also an integral element of religious assemblages and ritual in these societies, as are offerings to deities, whether spirits or ancestors. Because one of the main purposes of religious activity is to symbolize the solidarity of the group, food is used as a material representation of this cohesiveness. Additionally, it is believed in almost all tribal societies, whether or not they are characterized by corporate groupings, that all plant and animal foodstuffs are made available to man through the beneficence of the gods. Man's relationship with the deities in tribal societies is always, in part, an economic one involving the deities' provision of food. A gift from the gods must be balanced by a reciprocal gift to them from their adherents. In prayer, men thank their deities for these gifts; in sacrifice and offerings, they offer gifts to their deities.

Chiefdoms (chief)

      The next major social and political developments in human history are the appearance of institutions in which political and economic power is exercised by a single person (or group) over many communities. Often referred to as chiefdoms by anthropologists, this development signalled a process evident today throughout the world, namely, the steady growth of centralized power and authority at the expense of local and autonomous groupings.

      Political authority in chiefdoms is inseparable from economic power, including the right by rulers to exact tribute and taxation. One of the principal economic (wealth and income, distribution of) activities of the heads of chiefdoms is to stimulate the production of economic surpluses, which they then redistribute among their subjects on different types of occasions, such as feasts in the celebration of religious ceremonies and rites of passage of members of chiefly families, and during periods of famine. The accumulation of these surpluses requires conservation policies. Because techniques of food preservation were poorly developed in preliterate chiefdoms, the heads of chiefdoms often adopted the policy of placing taboos—often phrased in religious terms—on different crops or areas where food could be gathered or hunted, forbidding the consumption of such foods until the prohibitions were lifted. These taboos, however, were not exclusively for the purpose of conservation; they were also occasionally designed to underwrite higher standards of living for the chiefs themselves. For instance, in some Polynesian societies, as in Samoa, fishermen were required to obey a taboo that a portion of their catch must be given to the chief. The penalties for violating such taboos were supernaturally produced illness or other misfortunes.

Complex societies

      As societies became increasingly complex, heterogeneous, and divided along lines of caste, class, and ethnic affiliation, their dietary customs became correspondingly less uniform because they mirrored these divisions and inequalities. Although these distinctive customs are almost always placed in the context of religious belief and practice, according to many anthropologists, the dietary observances in everyday behaviour are primarily shaped by economic and social considerations; moreover, observances at the village level rarely correspond directly to formal prescriptions and proscriptions.

      The dietary laws and customs of complex nations and of the world's major religions, which developed as institutional parts of complex nations, are always based on the prior assumption of social stratification, traditional privilege, and social, familial, and moral lines that cannot be crossed. Taboos and other regulations in connection with food are incompatible with the idea of an open society. Nevertheless, complex nations were characterized by caste organizations that, in almost all cases, religion helped to legitimate. Caste systems, in addition to their other characteristics, are supported by deeply felt fears of pollution or contamination as a result of unguarded contact of the more “pure” with those who are less “pure.”

      Although there is no doubt that the development of caste is linked to some form of occupational separation in a society, which, in turn, leads to the development of ideas concerning the separation of unclean persons from the ordinary or of the ordinary from the superpure, there is considerable controversy over the origins of caste systems. Regardless of the origins, however, the separation of castes is always mirrored in rules for eating that, when breached, represent a threat to the social order and to the individual's sense of identity. There is also a question among scholars whether or not caste is unique to India. Nevertheless, in Japan as well as India, eating together implies social and ritual equality, as it does in the United States, where, unlike Japan and India, food-related caste behaviour has not been institutionalized in religion (largely because of the U.S. history of religious freedom, which has promoted religious diversity). In India and Japan a person who cooks for another and serves his food must be equal or superior in rank to the recipient of the food; only in this way can the latter avoid pollution. By contrast, in the caste system of the United States before the civil-rights movement, a black might cook and serve food to, but not eat with, whites. Violation of these eating taboos constitutes defiance of caste, and observance of the etiquette is evidence of the acceptance of caste.

Rules and customs in world religions

Judaism (Hebraic law)

      Perhaps the best known illustration of the idea that the dietary laws and customs of a complex nation and its religion are based on the prior assumption of social stratification or, at least, of a sense of separateness, is provided by Judaism as spelled out in the Mosaic Law (Torah) in the Old Testament books of Leviticus (chapter 11) and Deuteronomy (chapter 14). Prohibited foods may not be consumed in any form: all animals—and the products of animals—that do not chew the cud and do not have cloven hoofs (e.g., pigs, horses); fish without fins and scales; the blood of any animal; shellfish (e.g., clams, oysters, shrimp, crabs) and all other living creatures that creep; and those fowl enumerated in the Bible (e.g., vultures, hawks, owls, herons). All foods outside these categories may be eaten (kosher).

Interpretation of Jewish laws

      Mary Douglas has offered probably the most cogent and widely accepted interpretation of these laws in her book Purity and Danger. She suggests that these notions of defilement are rules of separation; they symbolize and help maintain the biblical notion of the separateness of the Hebrews from other societies. A central element in her interpretation is that each of the injunctions is prefaced by the command to be holy and that it is the distinction between holiness and abomination that enables these restrictions to make sense. “Holiness means keeping distinct the categories of creation. It therefore involves correct definition, discrimination, and order.” The Mosaic dietary laws exemplify holiness in this sense. The ancient Hebrews were pastoralists, and cloven-hoofed and cud-chewing hoofed animals are proper food for such people; hence, Douglas maintains, they became part of the social order and were domesticated as slaves. Pigs and camels do not meet the criteria of animals that are fit for pastoralists. As a result, they are excluded from the realm of propriety. Douglas notes that there is remarkable consistency in Mosaic dietary laws. The Bible “allots to each element its proper kind of animal life. In the firmament two-legged fowls fly with wings. In the water scaly fish swim with fins. On the earth four-legged animals hop, jump, or walk. Any class of creatures which is not equipped for the right kind of locomotion in its element is contrary to holiness.” People who eat food that is “out of place,” as it were, such as four-footed creatures that fly, are themselves unclean and are prohibited from approaching the Temple.

      There is, however, another dimension to Old Testament food customs. In addition to expressing their separateness as a nation—membership in which was ascribed by birthright—Israelite food customs also mirrored their internal divisions, which were castelike and were inherited. Though the rules of separation referred primarily to the priests (priesthood), they also affected the rest of the population. The priest's inherent separateness from ordinary men was symbolized by the prescription that he must avoid uncleanness more than anyone else. He must not drink wine or strong drink, and he must wash his hands and feet before the Temple service. Explicit in Old Testament prescriptions is that an offering sanctifies anyone who touches it; therefore, often the priests alone were permitted to consume it.

      These rules symbolizing the priestly group's castelike separateness also validated a system of taxation benefitting them, couched in terms of offerings, sacrifice, first-fruit ceremonies, and tithes. The religious rationalization of taxation is illustrated in the Old Testament by the first-fruits (agriculture, origins of) ceremony. Fruit trees were said to live their own life, and they were to remain untrimmed for three years after they were planted. But their fruits could not be enjoyed immediately: God must be given his share in the first-fruit ceremonies. These first fruits represent the whole, and the entire power of the harvest—which is God's—is concentrated in them. Sacrifice is centred around the idea of the first-fruits offering. Its rationalization was that everything belonged to God; the central point in the sacrifice is the sanctification of the offering, surrendering it to God. Its most immediate purpose was to serve as a form of taxation to the priests; only they were considered holy enough to take possession of it.

Elaboration of the Jewish laws

      After the exile of the Jews from Palestine following the conquest by Rome in the 1st century AD, a remarkable elaboration in their dietary laws occurred, probably as a result of the Jews' attempts to maintain their separateness from nations into whose midst they were thrust. Many customs evolved that have taken on the force of law for those Jews who have sought to maintain a traditional way of life. For example, the Bible does not prescribe ritual slaughter of animals, yet this practice has taken on the same compulsion as the taboo on pigs and camels; a permitted food (e.g., cattle, chicken) that has not been ritually slaughtered is now regarded to be as defiling as pork. Similarly, one of the hallmarks of the Passover holiday in Judaism is the eschewal of all foods containing leaven, the consumption only of foods that have been designated as “kosher for Passover,” and the use of special sets of utensils that have not been used during the rest of the year. But these, too, are postbiblical customs that have been given the force of law; the Bible prescribes nothing more than eating unleavened bread during the Passover season.

      Further elaborations on the Mosaic Law in regard to food can be observed in the dietary customs of certain groups of modern Jews in their daily lives. In the pre-World War II eastern European Jewish community (or shtetl), behaviour in regard to food not only included the biblical prescriptions and proscriptions but, in many ways, resembled the behaviour of people in the corporate communities of tribal societies. The major life crises were celebrated by feasts or other uses of food. Wine and other foods were integral parts of circumcision ceremonies and of a boys' attainment of ritual majority (Bar Mitzwa). Weddings were also celebrated with huge feasts that required weeks, if not months, of preparation, and guests were seated at the wedding feast according to their social rank. Following the wedding celebration, grain was sprinkled on the couple's heads, apparently to promote fertility. Those who visited mourners were to eat hardboiled eggs or other circular food because roundness symbolizes mourning.

      Aside from the daily requirements of following the Mosaic dietary laws, which apply to everyone, the heaviest burden for maintaining these observances falls on the women; their ritual and secular statuses are always inferior to the men's. It is the task of the housewife to be sure that meat and dairy foods are not mixed, that ritually slaughtered meat is not blemished, and that cooking equipment and dishes and utensils for meat and dairy are rigidly separated. The only personal states of ritual pollution relating to food in shtetl culture also refer only to women. For instance, a woman who has not been ritually cleansed after her menses must not make or touch pickles, wine, or beet soup. If she violates this customary rule, it is believed that these foods will spoil.

      A further illustration of the idea that dietary rules and customs are inextricably associated with the maintenance of group separateness is provided by one sect of Jews in the United States, those who refer to themselves as Ḥasidim (Pious Ones). These people live in self-contained enclaves; most of them are immigrants from the shtetl. In addition to preserving their distinctiveness from surrounding non-Jewish communities, they are equally devoted to preserving their distinctiveness vis-à-vis other Jews; no matter what their degrees of piety, the latter are regarded by Ḥasidim as nonreligious.

      This is clearly reflected in their behaviour in regard to food. The Ḥasidim assert that the larger Jewish community (and its rabbis) do not meet Ḥasidic standards and qualifications in the manufacture, preparation, handling, and sale of food; even non-Ḥasidic ritual slaughterers are classed with assimilated Jews who do not observe dietary laws at all. Hence, their food products are regarded as forbidden, and Ḥasidim consider only their own products as permissible for consumption. Even neutral foods, such as vegetables, are defined as nonkosher if handled by a non-Ḥasid since there is always the suspicion that it may come into contact with nonkosher—and thus contaminating—matter. Thus, for instance, only milk that they designate as “Jewish” can be used; only noodles prepared by someone from the Ḥasidic community may be consumed because there is the suspicion that eggs with a drop of blood (which are forbidden) may have been used in the noodles' preparation; only approved sugar may be used; and even paper bags that hold food come under these restrictions because only a member of the community is above the suspicion that forbidden matter has been included in the glue that is used in manufacturing the bags.

      The extremity of Ḥasidic strictures with regard to food has to be viewed in the context of their setting in the United States and not only in the light of their Jewish sources. The Ḥasidim regard the growing secularization of U.S. life as the greatest threat to the perpetuation of the ancient tradition of Judaism; their extremism is the wall they have erected to stave off this danger of threatened assimilation.

Black Muslim movement (Nation of Islam)

      Until relatively recently, the separatism of African Americans was underwritten by an intricate combination of law and custom. The attempt of the United States government to achieve an integration of blacks and whites in daily social, economic, and political life was viewed by some African Americans as a threat to their social identity. Ideologies designed to legitimate the maintenance of their social identity began to develop, especially after the desegregation decision of the Supreme Court in 1954, the most notable of which is that of the Nation of Islam (the Black Muslims). In their attempt to separate themselves from the larger aggregate of African Americans, as well as from the rest of U.S. society, the Black Muslims sought to develop a separate social identity by adopting a set of symbols to which they attached particular meanings. A person's membership in the group depended not only on assuming a Muslim name but also on eating certain foods and avoiding the use of, for example, alcohol and tobacco. Forbidden foods include meats and fish proscribed by the Bible and Qurʾān and also more than a dozen vegetables that were staples in the slave diet.

Islām

      Islāmic dietary laws—as spelled out in the Qurʾān—also illustrate their relationship to the establishment of a sense of social identity and separateness. Muḥammad (Muhammad), the founder of Islām, was among other things a political leader who welded a nation out of the mutually warring tribes of Arabia. His religious ideology legitimated the unification of these autonomous tribes and his own paramount rule over them. The main religious tenets of Islām were derived from Judaism and early Christianity, and it is clear from the Qurʾān that Islām was intended to encompass all aspects of life.

      Muḥammad apparently knew more about Judaism than about Christianity, and many of his strictures in the Qurʾān were explicit in establishing distinctions between Arabs and Jews. This is evident in his dietary regulations, which borrow heavily from Mosaic Law. Specifically, Muḥammad proscribed for Muslims the flesh of animals that are found dead, blood, swine's flesh, and food that had been offered or sacrificed to idols. The most radical departure of Qurʾānic from Mosaic dietary laws was in connection with intoxicating beverages. Though Jews frown upon alcoholic beverages, they do not forbid them, and wine is an important element in many rituals and feasts; Muḥammad, however, absolutely forbade any such beverages.

      Specific departures from Mosaic and Christian dietary rules notwithstanding, Islām represents a more fundamental removal from all other major religions: what is polluting, forbidden, and enjoined for one person in Islām applies equally to all. Islām's sharpest contrast in this regard is to the religions of India. This difference is highlighted by the fact that Muslims of all social statuses in an Indian village eat freely with each other, worship in the same mosques, and participate in ceremonies together.

Christianity

      Christianity did not develop elaborate dietary rules and customs. This probably grew out of the controversy between the Judaizing and Hellenizing branches of the church during the earliest years of Christianity over whether or not to observe Mosaic food laws. The Council of Jerusalem settled on the formula that meat offered to idols, blood, and things strangled must be abstained from, thus freeing the Gentiles in all other respects from the law. The apostle Paul's position on the matter, however, was that “nothing is unclean in itself”; and it was thus that the New Testament repudiated the entire body of laws of purity, especially those pertaining to food. Jesus is said to have declared that defilement could not be caused by any external agent. The apostle Peter's vision of the sheet lowered from heaven and containing all types of animals that the divine voice pronounced clean and fit for food provided the church with a mandate to abandon the Old Testament food laws.

      Food, however, in terms of the Last Supper and the Eucharist, plays an important role in Christianity. As told by the early Christians, Jesus foresaw his death and performed a simple ceremony during a last meal to bring home the significance of his death to the Twelve: he broke a loaf into pieces and gave it to them saying, “Take this, it is my body.” After they had eaten, he took the cup of wine and said, “This is my blood.”

      During the 1st century AD, Christian communities developed into self-contained units with an organized life of their own. When they were beginning to see themselves as a church, they held two separate kinds of services: (1) meetings on the model of the synagogue that were open to inquirers and believers and consisted of readings from the Jewish scriptures and (2) agapē (agape), or “love feasts,” for believers only. The latter was an evening meal in which the participants shared and during which a brief ceremony, recalling the Last Supper, commemorated the Crucifixion. This was also a thanksgiving ceremony; the Greek name for it was eucharist, meaning “the giving of thanks.” This common meal gradually became impracticable as the Christian communities grew larger, and the Lord's Supper was thereafter observed at the conclusion of the public portion of the scripture service; the unbaptized withdrew so that the baptized could celebrate together.

      Thus, from the very inception of Christianity, food and beverage has symbolized that religious experience is not purely personal but also communal. Moreover, differences in interpretation of the Lord's Supper have provided some of the contrasts among the major Christian churches. The opposing views of Roman Catholics and Protestants over whether the Eucharist bread is changed in substance or is a symbol (religious symbolism and iconography) of the flesh of Christ is an example of the role of food as a representation of religious differences within Christianity.

      The rituals of the Eucharist provide the clearest examples in the Christian churches or confessions of the relationship between social stratification and food behaviour. Christianity, unlike Judaism or Hinduism and other Asian religions, was never tied to a caste system; correspondingly, it repudiated the entire body of purity–pollution laws of the Old Testament. Christianity was, however, part of the early European social system that was based on clear-cut separations of social classes. Religious food customs in Christianity, most notably in the Eucharist, reflect this.

      The first Christian churches developed alongside the most rigid social stratification in European history, with elaborate notions of class authority and superiority and subordination. The separation of those in authority from the masses of ordinary people is mirrored in the Roman eucharistic ritual in which the sacrament's celebrant—the officiating priest—partook of the bread and wine first and then served only the bread to those of the faithful who wished it.

      With the Reformation during the 16th century, which was (among other things) an overthrow of the traditional social order, a slight but important change in the eucharistic ritual was introduced, reflecting the weakening—but not the abandonment—of stratification and its attendant hierarchies of authority. In many Protestant (Protestantism) confessions the officiating minister also partook of the bread and wine first, then served it to the congregation. In the Presbyterian ritual, the minister partook first and then served it to the elders who then served the people. Although this continued to reflect a system of stratification, it was a radical departure from the Roman (Roman Catholicism) rule that only the officiating priest (priesthood) could serve everyone. These rules for both Roman Catholics and Protestants are gradually changing in the 20th century.

      Until relatively recently, the most notable dietary law in Christianity was the Roman Catholic prescription to abstain (fasting) from eating meat on Friday. This ban was lifted as part of the modernization of Roman Catholicism that was begun during the reign of Pope John XXIII. In Roman Catholic abstinence meat is forbidden, but there is no restriction on the amount of food eaten; fasting means that the quantity of food is also restricted. Historically, there have been several categories of fasts. The 40 days of Lent have traditionally been a period of mortification, including practices of fast and abstinence; the rules, however, have been greatly modified in recent years. Ember Days (Ember Days and Ember Weeks)—a Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at each of the four seasons—seem to be survivals of full weekly fasts formerly practiced four times a year. Vigils are single fast days that have been observed before certain feast days and other festivals. Rogation Days are the three days before Ascension Day and are marked by a fast preparatory to that festival; they seem to have been introduced after an earthquake about 470 as penitential rogations, or processions, for supplication.

      Also important in the Christian complex of fasting is that associated with monastic (monasticism) life. Mortification is seen as essential to the practice of asceticism, and, in many rules of monastic life, fasting is regarded as one of the most efficient exercises of mortification.

Religions of India

      It is in the religions of India that one can most clearly observe the principles outlined above concerning the relationship between dietary laws and customs and the existence of social stratification, traditional privilege, and social, familial, and moral lines that cannot be crossed. Hinduism provides the best example, although the same principles also obtain in the religions of Jainism and Sikhism.

      Food observances help to define caste ranking: Brahmins (Brahman) are the highest caste because they eat only those foods prepared in the finest manner (pakkā); everyone else takes inferior (kaccā) food. Pakkā food is the only kind that can be offered in feasts to gods, to guests of high status, and to persons who provide honorific services. Food is regarded as pakkā if it contains ghee (clarified butter), which is a very costly fat and which is believed to promote health and virility. Kaccā is defined as inferior because it contains no ghee; it is used as ordinary family fare or as daily payment for servants and artisans. When food serves as payment for services (e.g., barbering), the quality of the food depends on the relative ranks of the parties to the transaction; the person making the payment gives inferior food, such as coarser bread, to a lower ranking person performing the service. Performance of a service denotes that a person is ready to accept some kind of food, and giving food denotes an expectation that a service will be performed. Members of subordinate castes pick up the dirty plates of members of superior castes, as at village feasts. Food left on plates after eating is defined as garbage (jūṭhā); it is felt to have been polluted by the eater's saliva. This garbage may be handled in the family by a person whose status is lower than the eater's, such as a wife. Such food may be fed to domestic animals; among humans outside the family it can only be given to members of the lowest castes, such as sweepers. The highest Brahmins do not accept any cooked food from members of any other caste, but uncooked food may be received from or handled by members of any caste. Nor will such Brahmins accept water across caste lines. Cow's milk is ritually pure and cannot be defiled, but a Brahmin will not accept milk from an untouchable—a member of the lowest caste groups—lest it has been diluted with water.

      Water is easily defiled, but, if it is running in a stream or standing in a reservoir, it is not polluted even by an untouchable in it. Water in a well or container, however, is defiled by direct or indirect contact with a person of low caste. Thus, a ritually observant Brahmin will not allow a low-caste person to draw water from his well, although this rule is lapsing, possibly because of the introduction of plumbing and the removal of water from the list of scarce resources.

      In the general Hindu system of purity–pollution, meats are graded as to their relative amount of pollution. Eggs are the least and beef the most defiling; but the highest caste Brahmins avoid all meat products absolutely. Also, certain strong foods (e.g., onions and garlic) are thought to be inappropriate to Brahminical status. Alcohol too is prohibited; it is not considered polluting in itself, but the prohibition seems related to the Brahminical value of self-control. Alcohol's manufacture and trade is confined to members of lower castes.

      People who eat at each other's feasts hold equal rank. People who eat at every house in a village occupy a very low status, and refusal to take food from another constitutes a claim to higher caste rank. More generally, givers of food outrank receivers. This, however, is a definition of collective, not of individual, rank. If a member of one caste gives food to a member of a second, all members of the first caste are regarded as higher than a third, even if there is no direct transaction between the first and third castes. Thus, the behaviour of every person in a village has consequences for the entire village.

      In actual practice, however, there is not an automatic enactment of these formal rules in village life; instead, they vary considerably according to local conditions. For instance, one of the formal rules of Hindu religious caste organization is that vegetarians outrank meat eaters, because contact with killed animals is regarded as polluting. Nevertheless, McKim Marriott, a U.S. anthropologist who has investigated village caste relationships, has found instances in which meat eaters outrank vegetarians. He concludes from his observations that it is caste rank—mostly in terms of the kinds of work that people in different castes do—that determines purity and pollution. In daily social relations this sometimes means that a caste of sufficiently high status may not be demeaned by receiving food from a lower caste if the latter is not too far below and if the proper food and vessels are used.

      Status (social status) is rarely immutable over long stretches of time. In most societies, people who occupy low status try to exploit every opportunity to improve their position, and, Marriott found, Indian villagers are no exception. Because food in this culture is one of the principal indices of rank, it is used as a pawn in manoeuvres for social mobility. Specifically, members of a low caste will try to gain dominance over persons in another by feeding them, although the latter cannot be too far above the upwardly mobile group. There is no direct way of forcing a higher group to accept food; one of the techniques most often used is for the lower caste to threaten to withhold services unless a heretofore slightly higher caste receives food from the former. Such mobility, as noted earlier, affects not only the two castes concerned but also all other groups in the village, and the manoeuvring involves everyone in the community.

      Marriott's emphasis on occupation (and, therefore, rank) as the determinant of food customs has not been accepted by all students of Indian society. He continues to leave some aspects of caste behaviour unexplained, such as the extreme statuses of Brahmins and untouchables, to say nothing of the existence of the total caste system itself and the mechanisms by which it is maintained. These problems have yet to be worked out. In any case, there can be no doubt that concepts of pollution and purity in regard to food in India, as everywhere else, are governed by a systematic set of rules analogous to a language's grammar and that applications of the rules are logical and consistent within the grammatical framework. Observations of daily village life do not contradict this concept of the codification of food rules; they only suggest that earlier “grammars” may have been too narrowly conceived.

Buddhism

      Buddhism is, perhaps, the most difficult religion to discuss in terms of dietary laws and customs because it does not have any unity; its tradition has a complex history, and individual believers are characterized by varied faiths. Though Buddhism originated in India, it also diffused to—and had a great impact on—Ceylon, Tibet, China, and Japan. In each case, it was reshaped to conform with local conditions, especially those of social stratification. For example, most of the countries of Southeast Asia have caste systems in which there are outcastes or untouchables; Buddhism has been important in supporting such systems. Specifically, untouchability and the occupation of butchering animals tend to go together both in Buddhism and in many of the countries of Southeast Asia. But Burma (Myanmar), where Buddhism is the dominant religion, is an exception; having no caste system, Burmese society has not made butchering a basis of untouchability.

      Buddhism developed its own class distinctions, most notably between the monastic elite and the lay devotees. The social and political ethic of the laity was based on a merit-making ethic that was geared primarily to the urban mercantile and artisan classes. Thus, Buddhism claimed from its inception to be a Middle View (Mādhymika (Mādhyamika)), opposed equally to the extremes of sensuousness and indulgence and of self-mortification. This Middle View was exemplified in the “five precepts”: no killing, stealing, lying, adultery, or drinking of alcoholic beverages. These precepts were translated into an ethic of moderation in diet. A person must allay his hunger so that he may practice the religious life. Buddhism holds that man is weak and helpless by himself; thus it sees the purpose of religious action as bringing a return from the deities. Deriving from this is the practice of holding ritual vegetarian feasts for large numbers of monks, a noble patron, or for the benefit of a departed soul to promote health and longevity. Another Buddhist custom is the issuing of a prohibition against killing animals to end a drought or to speed the recovery of a sick emperor. According to the Vedic treatise the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, food, when enclosed in the body, is linked to the body by means of the vital airs. The essence of food is invisible. Food is the highest of all things that can be swallowed, and food and breath are both gods.

      The prohibition of killing animals is more stringent in Buddhism than the injunction against eating them. Buddhism allows pure flesh to be eaten if it has not been procured for eating purposes or if the eater has not supposed it to be. The sin is upon the slayer, not the eater. This notion has been used in India and Japan to justify the outcasting or untouchability of butchers.

Religions of China

      China is an example of the proposition offered above that religion alone does not give rise to eating rules; instead, religion serves to legitimate customary patterns of behaviour and social relations that emerge out of economic (especially occupational) and political relationships. Although China was under strong Buddhist influence, the Chinese never developed the institution of untouchability or outcaste. Indeed, Buddhism did not really penetrate China until after the beginning of the 2nd century AD; during the previous century, Buddhism was confined to foreigners in the northern commercial cities.

      Before 200 BC (the approximate beginning of the Han dynasty), Chinese culture was based on a rather elaborate system of social stratification in which mobility was rare and difficult. It was, in other words, a relatively closed social system, if not feudal. During this time, there were restrictions on the consumption of food: beef, mutton, and pork were to be eaten by an emperor; beef by feudal lords; mutton by high-ranking state ministers; pork by lower ministers; fish by generals; and vegetables by commoners (who probably could not afford meat or fish anyway). Officials, in fact, were known as “meat eaters,” and it was generally only the aged commoners who were allowed to eat meat.

      During this time, military affairs and sacrifices were considered the two most important things in the state. Sacrifice was inseparable from veneration of the ancestors, and almost no ceremonies were conducted without sacrifice and offerings. These ceremonies were integral features of daily life and, as a result, foodstuffs became associated with the moral code that was based on maintaining fixed social and political relationships. God and ancestors were often referred to as those “who are sacrificed to,” and disobedience to them was believed to result automatically in catastrophe. Ceremonies marking important personal transitions (e.g., initiation to adulthood and marriage) were held in the ancestral temple and were accompanied by feasts and sacrifices to the ancestors.

      Ancestral veneration and the ethos of religiously validated legitimate authority remained as integral features of Chinese culture until the most recent years. Religious belief and observance notwithstanding, however, Chinese culture underwent a drastic change with the establishment of the Han dynasty. Most notably, the social class system was opened up—at least ideally—by the adoption of the principle of recruitment for public office; in later dynasties, this was expanded into the well-known system of written examinations, of grading officeholders by merit, and other features of the famous Chinese civil service. Correlated with the removal of the barriers to social mobility and establishment of the principle of ideally open recruitment to the civil service, the pre-Han food restrictions disappeared. This was also the time of Buddhism's greatest thrusts into Chinese thought and life.

      Food continued to occupy an important social and religious place in villages, at least until the establishment of the People's Republic of China. For instance, marriage ceremonies traditionally last four days; the highlight of each day's celebration is a feast or sacrifice to the ancestors, sometimes both. Feasts and sacrifices are also important features of funerals, some of which are marked by two feasts in one day. These ceremonial (rite of passage) occasions often work considerable economic hardship on families, forcing many of them into debt.

Yehudi A. Cohen

Religions of Japan and Korea

      Japan and Korea exhibit many of the same characteristics with respect to food customs as India, though with much less elaboration, and thereby the same relationships to Buddhism, though in an opposite direction. These relationships to Buddhism are also highlighted by contrasting Japan and Korea with China. Whereas post-Han China placed emphasis on achieved status and on personal superiority rather than on considerations of race or blood as a basis of social position, Japan and Korea (and also Tibet) established and continued a system of hereditary status and outcasting. As in India, therefore, the Japanese and Koreans considered pollution to be a hereditary taint; Buddhism played a major role in the legitimation of this ideology.

      Outcastes in Japan traditionally were referred to pejoratively as eta (burakumin) (literally, “pollution abundant”). The accepted usage now is burakumin (meaning “hamlet people”), although this term has also taken on pejorative connotations. They are discriminated against in employment and intermarriage, live rurally or in slum conditions, have the lowest educational levels in the nation, and often suffer from malnutrition. In the past they were required to wear special clothing, slippers, and hairstyles; to stay away from other households; to remain in their own hovels at night; and to prostrate themselves before higher-caste people.

      The history of the Japanese caste system in respect to food customs gives important clues to its origin. Among the ancient Japanese, meat was included in the diet, and the flesh of animals, fishes, and birds was offered to the gods as sacrifice. The flesh of ox, horse, dog, monkey, and fowl was prohibited, but that of deer, rabbit, and pig was not. During the 8th century AD the Japanese began to depend mostly upon plant rather than animal foods. In Japan's limited territory, it is understandable that cattle were raised for plowing and other agricultural work rather than for meat and milk. In 741 a law was passed forbidding the killing of cattle and horses, the latter being necessary for military as well as productive purposes. This provided a conducive atmosphere for Buddhist influences in the 6th and 7th centuries (primarily from China and Korea) that stressed the abhorrence and ritual impurity of blood and death.

      Buddhism, however, was only one of several sources of outcasting slaughterers and butchers. During the 8th century, Shintō—the only indigenous religion of Japan—began to stress concepts of uncleanness as things that are displeasing to the gods: wounds, disease, death, menstruation, and childbirth; and this too contributed strongly to the development of eta status. It was apparently about this time that the belief developed in Japan that a person's association with blood and death changed his nature; this contamination not only carried over to a man's descendants but was thought to be communicable. It was apparently also at this time that Japanese cuisine began to favour fish (especially raw fish) as a staple source of protein.

      Important in this connection is that occupational specialization began to flourish in Japan during the 9th and 10th centuries; by this time, Buddhism was widespread in Japan. Traditional occupational roles became spheres of monopoly; in the face of competition from economically specialized groups who forced them out, people dealing with slaughtering, butchering, and tanning began to form guilds. This was rationalized by Buddhist and Shintō ideas that occupations associated with animal slaughter and processing (confined to eta) should be separated from the general body of commoner and slave occupations.

      During the Heian period (794–1185), communities whose members were engaged in occupations related to death and animal products were forced outside the normal society, and they thus came to form the main body of outcastes in Japan. Increasingly, the latter were outcasted and considered untouchable, a pattern that reached its heights in the Tokugawa period (1603–1867). By the 17th century, the idea developed—supported by Shintō and Buddhism—that eating the flesh of all animals caused pollution for 100 days. After the mid-19th century, though, largely because of the emerging influence of Western cultural habits, meat consumption began to be more widespread in Japan, and among some Japanese the consumption of beef became associated with progress and enlightenment.

      Soon after the Meiji Restoration (1868) the caste system and the legal discrimination against the eta were abolished. Outcasting, however, dies slowly. Though the egalitarian ideologies of modern industrialization are incompatible with caste, outcasting tends to remain in Japan and, alongside it, some of the food customs associated with the caste system. As in India, eating together (along with marriage and social visiting) between untouchables and members of normal society is disdained. In many parts of Japan, especially in traditional villages, the diet remained largely vegetarian until after World War II, when the consumption of meat and other Western dietary practices rapidly increased. Even the consumption of milk, which had been considered unclean, became common.

Yehudi A. Cohen Ed.

Additional Reading

General works include Donald E. Carr, The Deadly Feast of Life (1971), a popular account of food habits and nutritional behaviour; Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966), a definitive source; and Craig McAndrew and Robert B. Edgerton, Drunken Comportment: A Social Explanation (1969), an exploration of the ways people are expected to behave under the influence of alcohol in different cultures.The following discuss food customs and dietary laws in tribal societies: Raymond Firth, We, the Tikopia: A Sociological Study of Kinship in Primitive Polynesia (1936); Meyer Fortes, “Pietas in Ancestor Worship,” Jl. R. Anthrop. Inst., 91:166–191 (1961), reprinted in Man in Adaptation, vol. 3, The Institutional Framework, ed. by Yehudi A. Cohen, pp. 207–226 (1971); and Margaret Mead, The Mountain Arapesh, vol. 2 (1970).The basic sources for Judaism and Christianity are, of course, the Old Testament (especially Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14, and the prophets) and the New Testament (especially Acts, Luke, Mark, and Romans). See also Johannes Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture, 4 vol. (1926–40); and Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog, Life Is with People (1952, reprinted 1962), on the shtetl.The following Islāmic sources may be consulted: the Quʾrān; Ameer Ali, Mohammedan Law, 5th ed., 2 vol. (1929); and Charles C. Torrey, The Jewish Foundation of Islam (1933).Sources on Indian systems include Louis Dumont, Homo hierarchicus, essai sur le système des castes (1967; Eng. trans., Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications, 1970); Edward B. Harper (ed.), Religion in South Asia (1964), especially Harper's “Ritual Pollution As an Integrator of Caste and Religion,” pp. 151–196; Edmund R. Leach (ed.), Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon, and North-west Pakistan (1960); David G. Mandelbaum, Society in India, 2 vol. (1970); McKim Marriott, “Caste Ranking and Food Transactions: A Matrix Analysis,” Structure and Change in Indian Society, ed. by Milton B. Singer and Bernard S. Cohn, pp. 133–171 (1968); Kenneth K.S. Ch'en, Buddhism: The Light of Asia (1968); and Charles Norton Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism: An Historical Sketch, 3 vol. (1921).For the dietary laws and customs of Japan and China, see Robert N. Bellah, Tokugawa Religion (1957); George De Vos and Hiroshi Wagatsuma (eds.), Japan's Invisible Race: Caste in Culture and Personality (1966); Kenneth K.S. Ch'en, Buddhism in China (1964); and Arthur F. Wright, Buddhism in Chinese History (1959).

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