In the old Roman calendar I find it observed on this day (the 12th of March), that a dole is made of soft beans. I can hardly entertain a doubt but that our custom is derived from hence. It was usual among the Romanists to give away beans in the doles at funerals; it was also a rite in the funeral ceremonies of heathen Rome. There is a great deal of learning in Erasmus's _Adages_ concerning _the religious use of beans_, which were thought to belong to the dead. An observation which he gives us of Pliny concerning Pythagoras's interdiction of the pulse, is highly remarkable. It is "that beans contain the souls of the dead." For which cause also they were used in the Parentalia. Plutarch also, he tells us, held that pulse to be of the highest efficacy for invoking the manes. Ridiculous and absurd as these superstitions may appear, it is yet certain that our _carlings_ deduce their origin from thence. On the interdiction of this pulse by Pythagoras, the following occurs in Spencer _De Leg. Hebr._, lib. i. p. 1154.:--
"Quid enim Pythagoras, ejusque præceptores, Ægypti Mystæ, adeo leguminum, fabarum imprimis, esum et aspectum fugerent; nisi quod cibi mortuorum coenis et exequiis proprii, adeoque polluti et abominandi haberentur," &c.--Brand's _Observations on Popular Antiquities_, Ellis's ed., vol. i. pp. 95-99.
In the notes in loco is mentioned "a practice of the Greek church, not yet out of use, to set boyled corne before the singers at their commemorations of the dead," v. _Gregorii Opusc._, p. 128. The length of this reply will not admit of my here enumerating the other emblems of the resurrection of the body used by the fathers and other writers. I shall therefore conclude with an extract from Rennel's _Geographical System of Herodotus_, p. 632., relating to the Pythagorean prohibition of beans:--
"The Bengalese have the _Nymphæa nelumbo_ in their lakes and inundations; and its fruit certainly resembles at all points that of the second species of water-lily described by Herodotus; that is, it has the form of the orbicular wasp's nest; and contains kernels of the size and shape of a small bean. Amongst the Bramins this plant is held _sacred_; but the kernels, which are of a better flavour than almonds, are almost universally eaten by the Hindoos.