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OF THE HINDUS.
199
Aditya-vára, Ravi-várd, or Rabi-bár in the barbarized vernacular, Dies Solis, or Sunday, is one of every seven. This is somewhat different from the seventh Tithi or lunar day, but a sort of sanctity is, or at least was, attached even to Sunday, and fasting on it was considered obligatory or meritorious'. But the religious Fasti of the Hindus confine their instructions to the Tithi, and declare, that whoever worships the sm, on the seventh day of the moon's increase, with fasting, and offerings of white oblations, as white flowers and the like, and whoever fasts on the seventh of the inoon's wane, and offers to the sun red flowers and articles of a red colour, is purified from all iniquity and goes after death to the solar spliere?. The worship of the sm, on the seventh of the dark fortnight, seems to have gone out of use, but that on the seventh of the light fortnight is strongly recommended in various authorities, beginning with this seventh of Mágha and continuing throughout the year. In connexion with this observance, different modes of abstinence are enjoined for each succeeding luar day, such as taking, during the day, small quantities only of milk, or ghee, or water, or acrid leaves ; or fasting wholly from sunset on the sixth till after morning ablutions on the eighth; thence this day is
The jackall declines touching the sinewy meshes of the noose, because it is Sunday.--Hitopadeśa [I, p. 21, 1.21, ed. Lassen et Schlegel].
? Commentary on Tithi Tattwa.
