When then we find Porphyry, in his life of Pythagoras (§ 43), saying that Pythagoras bade his followers "abstain from beans as from human flesh," we may reasonably infer that beans were regarded, in the folk-lore of the day, as resembling some part of the human body, and as having a mysterious affinity with it. This conjecture receives some support from the fact that, whereas Porphyry explains all the other "symbols" as allegorical statements of various moral and civic duties, he explains this by a piece of folk-lore of the same kind as the modern popular belief that a hair kept in water will turn into an eel. The exact part of the body to which beans were supposed to bear a resemblance may be difficult at this distance of time to determine. The passage in Porphyry gives some hints.[95] A more interesting fact is that, according to Herodotus, ii. 37, the Egyptians had the same aversion to eating beans, and that Egyptian priests might not even look at a bean, so unclean was it considered. From this passage it is usually inferred that Pythagoras obtained this piece of his doctrine from the Egyptians; and V. D. Link (_Die Urwelt_, 225) sought to support the inference by the suggestion that the prohibition originally had reference to the sacred Egyptian bean, and was subsequently extended to the common bean (_faba vulgaris_). Pursuing this line of thought, we are at once struck by the fact that the sacred Egyptian bean (_nelumbium speciosum_) is a lotus; and the lotus, both as a plant and as a symbol,[96] carries our thoughts to India. We thus seem to see a piece of folk-lore migrating, along with the plant to which it was attached, from India to Egypt, from Egypt to Europe. But when did this interesting migration take place? The prohibition was known pretty early in Sicily, for it makes its appearance in the fragments of Empedocles, who was born at Agrigentum, B.C. 490. We can, however, trace it back much earlier in Italy. There it dates from pre-historic times, for it was one of the taboos laid upon the flamen Dialis. And the idea that beans were human flesh is implied in the part which they played in the funeral ceremonies of the primitive Italians. That part is remarkably interesting. Plutarch tells us that "the solemne suppers and bankets at funerals for the dead were usually served with pulse above all other viands." This is a strange contrast to the aversion shown otherwise for eating beans, and it cries aloud for explanation.