The Rajputs eat the flesh of clean animals, but not pigs or fowls. They
are, however, fond of the sport of pig-sticking, and many clans, as
the Bundelas and others, will eat the flesh of the wild pig. This
custom was perhaps formerly universal. Some of them eat of male
animals only and not of females, either because they fear that the
latter would render them effeminate or that they consider the sin
to be less. Some only eat animals killed by the method of _jatka_
or severing the head with one stroke of the sword or knife. They
will not eat animals killed in the Muhammadan fashion by cutting
the throat. They abstain from the flesh of the _nilgai_ or blue bull
as being an animal of the cow tribe. Among the Brahmans and Rajputs
food cooked with water must not be placed in bamboo baskets, nor must
anything made of bamboo be brought into the _rasoya_ or cooking-place,
or the _chauka_, the space cleaned and marked out for meals. A special
brush of date-palm fibre is kept solely for sweeping these parts of
the house. At a Rajput banquet it was the custom for the prince to
send a little food from his own plate or from the dish before him to
any guest whom he especially wished to honour, and to receive this was
considered a very high distinction. In Mewar the test of legitimacy in
a prince of the royal house was the permission to eat from the chief's
plate. The grant of this privilege conferred a recognised position,
while its denial excluded the member in question from the right to
the succession. [476] This custom indicates the importance attached
to the taking of food together as a covenant or sacrament.