Another preliminary ceremony is the family sacrament of the Meher or
marriage-cakes. Small balls of wheat-flour are kneaded and fried in
an earthen pan with sesamum oil by the eldest woman of the family. No
metal vessel may be used to hold the water, flour or oil required for
these cakes, probably because earthen vessels were employed before
metal ones and are therefore considered more sacred. In measuring the
ingredients a quarter of a measure is always taken in excess, such
as a seer [59] and a quarter for a seer of wheat, to foreshadow the
perpetual increase of the family. When made the cakes are offered to
the Kul Deo or household god. The god is worshipped and the bride and
bridegroom then first partake of the cakes and after them all members
of the family and relatives. Married daughters and daughters-in-law
may eat of the cakes, but not widows, who are probably too impure
to join in a sacred sacrament Every person admitted to partake of
the marriage-cakes is held to belong to the family, so that all
other members of it have to observe impurity for ten days after a
birth or death has occurred in his house and shave their heads for
a death. When the family is so large that this becomes irksome it is
cut down by not inviting persons beyond seven degrees of relationship
to the Meher sacrament This exclusion has sometimes led to bitter
quarrels and actions for defamation. It seems likely that the Meher
may be a kind of substitute for the sacrificial meal, at which all
the members of the clan ate the body of the totem or divine animal,
and some similar significance perhaps once attached to the wedding-cake
in England, pieces of which are sent to relatives unable to be present
at the wedding.