meals
 餐食
 Meals
    are at the present day "eaten from a round table little higher
    than a stool, guests sitting cross-legged on mats or small
    carpets in a circle, and dipping their fingers into one large
    dish heaped with a mixture of boiled rice and other grain and
    meat. But in the time of our Lord, and perhaps even from the
    days of Amos (6:4, 7), the foreign custom had been largely
    introduced of having broad couches, forming three sides of a
    small square, the guests reclining at ease on their elbows
    during meals, with their faces to the space within, up and down
    which servants passed offering various dishes, or in the absence
    of servants, helping themselves from dishes laid on a table set
    between the couches." Geikie's Life of Christ. (Comp. Luke
    7:36-50.) (See ABRAHAM'S BOSOM; BANQUET; FEAST.)