The lower castes will take food cooked with water outside the house in the fields, and are looked down upon for doing this, so that those who aspire to raise their social position abandon the practice, or at least pretend to do so.

Sir J.G.

Frazer quotes a passage showing that the ancient Brahmans considered the sacrificial rice-cakes cooked with water to be transformed into human bodies.

[209] The Urdu word _bali_ means a sacrifice or offering, and is applied to the portion of the daily meal which is offered to the gods and to the hearth-fire.

Thus all grain cooked with water is apparently looked upon as sacred or sacramental food, and it is for this reason that it can only be eaten after the purificatory rites already described.