Is there not, indeed, a trace of the primitive custom—thus recognized in all quarters of the globe—of absorbing the life of a slain one by drinking in his blood, in our common phrase, “blood-thirstiness,” as descriptive of a life-seeker? That phrase certainly gains added force and appropriateness, in the light of this universal idea.

It is evident that the wide-spread popular belief in nature-absorption through blood-appropriation, has included the idea of a tribal absorption of new life in vicarious blood. Alcedo, a Spanish-American writer, has illustrated this in his description of the native Araucanians of South America. When they have triumphed in war, they select a representative prisoner for official and vicarious execution. After due preparation, they “give him a handful of small sticks and a sharp stake, with which they oblige him to dig a hole in the ground; and in this they order him to cast the sticks one by one, repeating the names of the principal warriors of his country, while at the same time the surrounding soldiers load these abhorred names with the bitterest execrations. He is then ordered to cover the hole, as if to bury therein the reputation and valor of their enemies, whom he has named. After this ceremony, the toqui, or one of his bravest companions to whom he relinquishes the honor of the execution, dashes out the brains of the prisoner with a club. The heart is immediately taken out, and presented palpitating to the general, who sucks a little of the blood, and passes it to his officers, who repeat in succession the same ceremony.”[271] And in this way the life of the conquered tribe passes, symbolically, into the tribal life of the conquerors.

Burckhardt was so surprised at a trace of this idea in Nubia, that he could hardly credit the information concerning it; “although several persons asserted it to be a fact,” he says; “and he heard no one contradict it.”[272] As he learned it: “Among the Hallenga, who draw their origin from Abyssinia, a horrible custom is said to attend the revenge of blood. When the slayer has been seized by the relatives of the deceased, a family feast is proclaimed, at which the murderer is brought into the midst of them, bound upon an angareyg; and while his throat is slowly cut with a razor, the blood is caught in a bowl, and handed round amongst the guests; every one of whom is bound to drink of it, at the moment the victim breathes his last.” The forfeited life of the murderer here seems to be surrendered to, and formally appropriated by, the family, or clan, which he had, to the same extent, depleted of character and life.

A practice not unlike this is reported of the Australians, in their avenging the blood of a murdered person. They devour their victims; who are selected from the tribe of the murderer, although they may be personally, innocent of the murder. The tribe depleted by the murder, replaces its loss by blood—which is life—from the tribe of the murderer. Indeed, “when any one of a tribe [in New South Wales] dies a natural death, it is usual to avenge [or to cancel] the loss of the deceased by taking blood from one or other of his friends.”[273] In this way, the very life and being of those whose blood is taken, go to restore to the bereaved ones the loss that death has brought to them.

Strange as this idea may seem to us, its root-thought, as a fact, is still an open question in the realm of physiological science. The claim is positive, in medical works, that insanity has been cured by the transfusion of a sane man’s blood;[274] that a normal mind has been restored, through a normal life gained in new blood. Moreover, the question, how far the nature, or the characteristics, of an organism, are affected, in blood transfusion, by the nature, or the characteristics, of the donor of the transfused blood, is by no means a settled one among scientists. Referring to a series of questions in this line, propounded by Robert Boyle, more than two centuries ago, Roussel has said, within the past decade: “No one has been able to give any positive answers to them, based upon well-conducted operations”; and, “they still await solution in 1877, as in 1667.”[275]

4. LIFE FROM ANY BLOOD, AND BY A TOUCH.

Because blood is life, all blood, and any blood, has been looked upon as a vehicle of transferred life. And because blood is life, and the heart is a fountain of blood, and so is a fountain of life,—a touch of blood, or, again, the minutest portion of a vital and vivifying heart, has been counted capable of transferring life, with all that life includes and carries; just as the merest cutting of a vine, or the tiniest seed of the mightiest tree, will suffice as the germ of that vine or that tree, in a new planting. The blood, or the heart, of the lower animals, has been deemed the vehicle of life and strength, in its transference; and a touch from either has been counted potent in re-vivifying and in improving the receiving organism.

Thus, for example, Stanley, in the interior of Africa, having received “a fine, fat ox as a peace-offering,” from “the great magic doctor of Vinyata,” when making a covenant of blood with him,[276] was requested to return the heart of the ox to the donor; and he acceded to this request. After this, Stanley’s party was several times assailed by the Wanyaturu, from the neighborhood of Vinyata. Thereupon his ally Mgongo Tembo explained, says Stanley: “That we ought not to have bestowed the heart of the presented ox upon the magic doctor of Vinyata; as by the loss of that diffuser of blood, the Wanyaturu believed we had left our own bodies weakened, and would be an easy prey to them.”[277]

Another modern traveler in Equatorial Africa finds fresh bullock’s blood counted a means of manhood. While the young Masâi man is passing his novitiate into warrior life, he seeks new strength by taking in new blood. Having employed medical means to rid his system of the remains of all other diet, says Thompson, the novice went to a lonely place with a single attendant; they taking with them a living bullock. There “they killed the bullock, either with a blow from a rungu, or by stabbing it in the back of the neck. They then opened a vein and drank the blood fresh from the animal.” After this, the young man gorged himself with the bullock’s flesh.[278] And whenever the Masâi warriors “go off on war-raids they also contrive to eat a bullock [after this fashion], by way of getting up their courage.”[279]

Again, it is said, that Arab women in North Africa give their male children a piece of the lion’s heart to eat, to make them courageous.[280] And an English traveler in South Africa[281] describing the death of a lion shot by his party, says: “Scarcely was the breath out of his body than the Caffres rushed up, and each took a mouthful of the blood that was trickling from the numerous wounds; as they believe that it is a specific which imparts strength and courage to those who partake of it.”

That the transference of life, with all that life carries, can be made by the simplest blood-anointing, as surely as by blood absorption, is strikingly illustrated by a custom still observed among the Hill Tribes of India. The Bheels, are a brave and warlike race of mountaineers, of Hindostan. They claim to have been, formerly, the rulers of all their region; but, whether by defeat in war, or by voluntary concession, to have yielded their power to other peoples—whom they now authorize to rule in their old domain. “The extraordinary custom, common to almost all the countries [of India] that have been mentioned,” says Sir J. Malcolm,[282] “of the tika, or mark that is put upon the forehead of the Rajput prince, or chief, when he succeeds to power, being moistened with blood taken from the toe or thumb of a Bhill, may be received as one among many proofs of their having been formerly in possession of the principalities, where this usage prevails.

... The right of giving the blood for this ceremony, is claimed by particular families; and the belief, that the individual, from whose veins it is supplied, never lives beyond a twelvemonth, in no degree operates to repress the zeal of the Bhills to perpetuate an usage, which the Rajput princes are, without exception, desirous should cease.” The Bheels claim that the right to rule is vested in their race; but they transfer that right to the Rajpoot by a transfer of blood—which is a transfer of life and of nature. Thus the Bheels continue to rule—in the person of those who have been vivified by their blood.

So, again, among the ancient Caribs, of South America, “‘as soon as a male child was brought into the world, he was sprinkled with some drops of his father’s blood’; the father ‘fondly believing, that the same degree of courage which he had himself displayed, was by these means transmitted to his son.’”[283] Here it is evident, that the voluntary transfusion of blood is deemed more potent to the strengthening of personal character, than is the transmission of blood by natural descent.

In South Africa, among the Amampondo, one of the Kaffir tribes, it is customary for the chief, on his accession to authority, “to be washed in the blood of a near relative, generally a brother, who is put to death on the occasion, and his skull used as a receptacle for his blood.”[284] In order to give more life and more character than the ordinary possession to the newly elevated chieftain, the family blood is withdrawn from the veins of one having less need of it, that it may be absorbed by him who can use it more imposingly.

In the Yoruba country, in Central Africa, “when a beast is sacrificed for a sick man, the blood is sprinkled on the wall, and smeared on the patient’s forehead, with the idea, it is said, of thus transferring to him the [divinely] accepted victim’s life.” Life is life, and whether that life be in the blood of one organism or of another, of man or of an inferior animal, its transference carries with it all that life includes. That seems to be the thought in Yoruba; and, as all life is of supernatural origin and preservation, its transference can be by a touch as easily as by any other method.[285]

5. INSPIRATION THROUGH BLOOD.

The inspiring power of blood, is a thought that runs all through the early Norseland legends. Thus, Kvaser, according to the Scandinavian mythology, was a being created by the gods with preternatural intelligence. Kvaser traversed the world, teaching men wisdom; but he was treacherously murdered by the dwarfs Fjalar and Gala. The dwarfs let Kvaser’s blood run into two cups and a kettle. “The name of the kettle is Odrœrer, and the names of the cups are Son and Bodn. By mixing up his blood with honey, they composed a drink of such surpassing excellence, that whoever partakes of it acquires the gift of song.”[286] And that was the origin of poetry in the world; although there have been a good many imitations of the real article since that day.

So, again, in the Elder Edda, the hero Sigurd killed Fafner, at the instigation of Fafner’s brother Regin. Regin cut out the heart of his brother, and gave it to Sigurd to roast, while he drank the blood of the murdered one. Touching the bleeding heart with his fingers, and then putting his fingers into his mouth, Sigurd found that he was now able to understand the voice of birds; and thenceforward he was a hero inspired.[287] Afterwards he gave his bride, Gudrun, “to eat of the remnant of Fafnir’s heart; so she grew wise and great-hearted.”[288]

Down to the present time, there are those in the far East, and in the far West, who seek inspiration by blood-drinking. All along the North Pacific coast, the shamanism of the native tribes shows itself in a craving for blood as a means and as an accompaniment of preternatural frenzy. The chief sorcerer, or medicine-man, has his seasons of demoniacal possession, when he can communicate with the powers of the air. At such times he is accustomed to spring upon the members of his tribe, and bite out from their necks or bodies the bleeding flesh, as a help to inspiration and debauch. None would venture to resist these blood-thirsty assaults; but the scars which result are always borne with pride.[289]

Another phase of this universal idea is reported by a recent traveler in the Himalayan districts of India; where, as he thinks, the forms of religion ante-date in their origin those of Hindooism, or of Brahmanism, and “have descended from very early ages.” When a favor is sought from a local divinity, “it is the chela [or primitive seer] who gasps out the commands of the deoty [the ‘deity’], as he [the chela] shivers under the divine afflatus, and [under] the vigorous application of the soongul, or iron scourge.” But before the chela can have “the divine afflatus” he must drink-in living blood. Thus, this traveler witnessed an appeal to the snake-god, Kailung Nag, for fine weather for the sowing of the crops. The sacrificial sheep was procured by the people; the ceremonies of wild worship, including music, dancing, incense-burning, and bodily flagellations, proceeded. “At length, all being ready, the head of the victim was struck off with an axe. The body was then lifted up by several men, and the chela, seizing upon it like a tiger, drank the blood as it spurted from the neck. When all the blood had been sucked from the carcass, it was thrown down upon the ground, amid yells and shouts of ‘Kailung Maharaj ki jai!’ [‘Victory to the great king Kailung’]. The dancing was then renewed, and became more violent, until after many contortions, the chela [now blood-filled] gasped out that the deota accepted the sacrifice, and that the season would be favorable. This was received with renewed shouts, and the chela sank down upon the ground in a state of exhaustion.”[290]

In the folk-lore of Scotland, as representing the primitive traditions of Western Europe, there are illustrations of the idea that the blood of the gods was communicated to earthly organisms. Thus, a scientific antiquarian of Scotland records in this line: “There was a popular saying that the robin”—the robin red-breast—“had a drop of God’s blood in its veins, and that therefore to kill or hurt it was a sin, and that some evil would befall any one who did so; and, conversely, any kindness done to poor robin would be repaid in some fashion. Boys did not dare to harry a robin’s nest.” On the other hand, the yellow-hammer and the swallow were said, each “to have a drop of the Devil’s blood in its veins”; so the one of these birds—the yellow-hammer—was “remorselessly harried”; and the other—the swallow—“was feared, and therefore let alone.”[291] A similar legendary fear of the swallow, and the guarding of his nest, accordingly, exists in Germany and in China.[292]

Another indication of the belief, that human blood has a vital connection with its divine source, and is under the peculiar oversight of its divine Author, is found in the wide-spread opinion that the blood of a murdered man will bear witness against the murderer, by flowing afresh at his touch; the living blood crying out from the dead body, by divine consent, in testimony of crime against the Author of life. Ancient European literature teems with incidents in the line of this “ordeal of touch.”

Thus it was, according to the Nibelungen Lied, that Kriemhild fastened upon Hagan the guilt of murdering her husband Siegfried; when Hagan and his associates were gathered for the burial of the hero.

Under Christian II., of Denmark, the “Nero of the North,” early in the sixteenth century, there was a notable illustration of this confidence in the power of blood to speak for itself. A number of gentlemen being together in a tavern, one evening, they fell to quarreling, and “one of them was stabbed with a poniard. Now the murderer was unknown, by reason of the number [present]; although the person stabbed accused a pursuivant of the king’s who was one of the company. The king, to find out the homicide, caused them all to come together in the stove [the tavern], and, standing round the corpse, he commanded that they should, one after another, lay their right hand on the slain gentleman’s naked breast, swearing that they had not killed him. The gentlemen did so, and no sign appeared against them. The pursuivant only remained, who, condemned before in his own conscience, went first of all and kissed the dead man’s feet. But, as soon as he had laid his hand upon his breast, the blood gushed forth in abundance, both out of his wound and his nostrils; so that, urged by this evident accusation, he confessed the murder, and was by the king’s own sentence, immediately beheaded.”[294]

A striking example of the high repute in which this ordeal of touch was formerly held, and of the underlying idea on which its estimate was based, is reported from the State Trials of Scotland. It was during the trial of Philip Standsfield, in 1688, for the murder of his father, Sir James. The testimony was explicit, that when this son touched the body, the blood flowed afresh, and the son started back in terror, crying out, “Lord, have mercy upon me!” wiping off the blood, from his hand, on his clothes. Sir George M’Kenzie, acting for the State, at the inquest, said concerning this testimony and its teachings: “But they, fully persuaded that Sir James was murdered by his own son, sent out [with him] some surgeons and friends, who having raised the body, did see it bleed miraculously upon his touching it. In which, God Almighty himself was pleased to bear a share in the testimonies which we produce: that Divine Power which makes the blood circulate during life, has oft times, in all nations, opened a passage to it after death upon such occasions, but most in this case.”[295]

Mr. Henry C. Lea, in his erudite work on Superstition and Force, has multiplied illustrations of the ordeal of touch, or of “bier-right,” all along the later centuries.[296] He recalls that “Shakspeare introduces it, in King Richard III., where Gloster interrupts the funeral of Henry VI., and Lady Anne exclaims:

He refers to the fact that it was an old-time Jewish custom to ask pardon of a corpse for any offences committed against the living man, laying hold of the great toe of the corpse while thus asking; and if the asker had really inflicted any grievous injury on the deceased, the body was supposed to signify that fact by a copious hemorrhage from the nose.[297] “This, it will be observed,” he adds, “is almost identical with the well-known story which relates that, when Richard Cœur-de-Lion hastened to the funeral of his father, Henry II., and met the procession at Fontevraud, the blood poured from the nostrils of the dead king, whose end he had hastened by his disobedience and rebellion.” Mr. Lea shows that in some instances the bones of a murdered man are said to have given out fresh blood when handled by a murderer as long as twenty years, or even fifty, after the murder; and he gives ample evidence that a belief in this power of blood to speak for itself against the violator of God’s law, still exists among the English-speaking people, and that it has manifested itself as a means of justice-seeking, in the United States, within a few years past.

6. INTER-COMMUNION THROUGH BLOOD.

Whatever has been man’s view of sin and its punishment, and of his separation from God because of unforgiven sin (I speak now of man as he is found, without the specific teachings of the Bible on this subject), he has counted blood—his own blood, in actuality or by substitute—a means of inter-union with God, or with the gods. Blood is not death, but life. The shedding of blood, Godward, is not the taking of life, but the giving of life. The outflowing of blood toward God is an act of gratitude or of affection, a proof of loving confidence, a means of inter-union. This seems to have been the universal primitive conception of the race. And an evidence of man’s trust in the accomplished fact of his inter-union with God, or with the gods, by blood, has been the also universal practice of man’s inter-communion with God, or with the gods, by his sharing, in food-partaking, of the body of the sacrificial offering, whose blood is the means of the divine-human inter-union.

Perhaps the most ancient existing form of religious worship, as also the simplest and most primitive form, is to be found in China, in the state religion, represented by the Emperor’s worship at the Temple of Heaven, in Peking. And in that worship, the idea of the worshiper’s inter-communion with God, through the body and blood of the sacrificial offering, is disclosed, even if not always recognized, by all the representative Western authorities on the religions of China.

“The Chinese idea of a sacrifice to the supreme spirit of Heaven and of Earth is that of a banquet. There is no trace of any other idea,” says Dr. Edkins.[298] Dr. Legge,[299] citing this statement, expands its significance by saying: “The notion of the whole service [at the Temple of Heaven] might be that of a banquet; but a sacrifice and a banquet are incompatible ideas.”[300] He then shows that the Chinese character tsî, signifying “sacrifice,” “covers a much wider space of meaning than our term sacrifice [as he seems to view our use of that term].” Morrison gives as one of the meanings of tsî, “That which is the medium between, or brings together, men and Gods”; and Hsü Shan “says, that tsî is made up of two ideograms;—one the primitive for spiritual beings, and the other representing a right hand and a piece of flesh.” Legge adds: “The most general idea symbolized by it is—an offering whereby communication and communion with spiritual beings [God, or the gods] is effected.”[301]

Dr. S. Wells Williams says, that “no religious system has been found among the Chinese which taught the doctrine of the atonement by the shedding of blood”; and this he counts “an argument in favor of their [the Chinese] antiquity”; adding that “the state religion ... has maintained its main features during the past three thousand years.”[302] Williams here, evidently, refers to an expiatory atonement for sin; and Legge has a similar view of the facts.[303] The idea of an approach to God through blood—blood as a means of favor, even if not blood as a canceling of guilt—is obvious, in the outpouring of blood by the Emperor when he approaches God for his worship in the Temple of Heaven. The symbolic sacrifice in that worship, which precedes the communion, is of a whole “burnt offering, of a bullock, entire and without blemish”;[304] and the blood of that offering is reverently poured out into the earth,[305] to be buried there, according to the thought of man and the teachings of God in all the ages. It is even claimed that as early as 2697 B. C., it was the blood of the first-born which must be poured out toward God—as a means of favor—in the Emperor’s approach for communion with God; “a first-born male,” being offered up “as a whole burnt sacrifice,” in this worship.[306] Surely, in this surrender of the first-born, there must have been some idea of an affectionate offering, in the gift of that which was dearest, even if there was no idea of substitution by way of expiation; something in addition to the simple idea of “a banquet”; something which was an essential preliminary to the banquet.

Access to God being attained by the Emperor, the Emperor enjoys communion with God in the Temple of Heaven. It is after the outpouring of blood, and the offering of the holocaust, that—in a lull of the orchestral music, in the great annual sacrifice—“a single voice is heard, on the upper terrace of the altar, chanting the words, ‘Give the cup of blessing, and the meat of blessing.’ In response, the officer in charge of the cushion advances and kneels, spreading the cushion. Other officers present the cup of blessing and the meat of blessing [which have already been presented Godward] to the Emperor, who partakes of the wine and returns them. The Emperor then again prostrates himself, and knocks his forehead three times against the ground, and then nine times more, to represent his thankful reception of the wine and meat [in communion].”[307]

The evidence is abundant, that the main idea of this primitive and supreme service in the religions of China, is the inter-communion of the Emperor with God. And there is no lack of proof that in China, as elsewhere all the world over, blood—as life—is the means of covenanting in an indissoluble inter-union; of which inter-union, inter-communion is a result and a proof.

In China, as also in India,[308] when the sacrifice of human beings was abolished, it was followed by the sacrifice of the horse. And the horse-sacrifice is still practised in some parts of the Chinese Empire, on important occasions. A white horse is brought to the brink of a stream, or a lake, and there sacrificed, by decapitating it, “burying its head below low-water mark, but reserving its carcase for food.”[309] In a description of this sacrifice, in honor of a certain goddess, as witnessed by Archdeacon Gray,[310] it is said: “Its blood was received in a large earthenware jar, and a portion carried to the temple of the aforesaid goddess; when all the villagers rushed tumultuously to secure a sprinkling of blood on the charms which they had already purchased. The rest of the blood was mingled with sand,” and taken with various accessories, in a boat. “This boat headed a long procession of richly carved and gilded boats, in which were priests, both Buddhist and Taouists, and village warriors discharging matchlocks to terrify the water-devils; while the men in the first boat sprinkle the waters, as they advance, with blood-stained sand.”

So, again, it is the blood of a cock,—not the body but the blood,—which is made the propitiatory offering to the goddess known as “Loong-moo, or the Dragon’s Mother,” on the river junks of China. The blood is sprinkled on the deck, near a temporary altar, where libations of wine have already been poured out by master of this junk, who is the sacrificer. Afterwards, bits of silver paper are “sprinkled with the blood, and then fastened to the door-posts and lintels of the cabin”;[311] as if in token of the blood-covenant between those who are within those doors and the goddess whose substitute blood is there affixed. And this precedes the feast of inter-communion.[312]

Nor are indications wanting, that the idea of inter-union with the gods by blood was originally linked with, if it were not primarily based upon, the rite of blood-covenanting between two human friends. Thus, Archdeacon Gray unconsciously discloses traces of this rite, in his description of the exorcising of demons from the body of a child, by a Taouist priest, in Canton.[313] Certain preliminary ceremonies were concluded; which were supposed to drive out the demons. “The priest then proceeded to uncover his [own] arm, and made an incision with a lancet in the fleshy part. The blood which flowed from the wound, was allowed to mingle with a small quantity of water in a cup. The seal of the temple, the impression of which was the name of the idol, was then dipped into the blood, and stamped upon the wrists, neck, back and forehead[314] of the poor heathen child.” By this means, that child was symbolically sealed in covenant relations with the god of that temple, by the substitute blood of that god’s representative priest.

Thus, also, Dr. Legge, referring to old-time covenantings in China, says:[315] “Many covenants were made among the feudal princes,—made over the blood of a victim, with which each covenanting party smeared the corners of his mouth [which is one form of tasting];[316] while an appeal was addressed to the invisible powers to inflict vengeance on all who should violate the conditions agreed upon [the ordinary imprecatory prayers in the rite of blood-covenanting].” A symbolic inter-union of blood is a basis of inter-communion between two human beings, as also between the human and the divine beings even in China—where, perhaps, that idea would be least likely to be looked for.

It is a common opinion, that in no part of the world is there a more general prejudice against blood-shedding, or the taking of animal life, than in India. And it certainly is a fact, that the great religious systems, of Brahmanism and of Booddhism, which have controlled the moral sense of the peoples of India for a score or two of centuries, have exerted themselves, in the main, to the inculcation of these views as to the sacredness of blood and of life—or of blood which is life. Hence, we would naturally look, in India, only for traces, or vestiges, of the primitive, world-wide idea of inter-communion with God, or with the gods, through a divine-human inter-union by blood. Nor are such traces and vestiges lacking in the religious customs of India.

In India, as in China, human sacrifices, especially the sacrifice of the first-born son, were formerly made freely, as a means of bringing the offerer into closer relations with the gods, through the outpoured blood.[317] It was the blood, as the life, which was believed to be the common possession of gods, men, and beasts; hence the final substitution, in India, of beasts for men, in the blood-covenanting with the gods. On this point, the evidence seems clear.

The Vedas, or sacred books of the Brahmans, teach, indeed, that the gods themselves were mere mortals, until by repeated offerings of blood in sacrifice, to the Supreme Being, they won immortality from him; which is only another way of making the claim, put forward by the immortalized-mortal, in the Book of the Dead, of ancient Egypt, that the mortal became one with the gods through an interflow of a common life in the common blood of the two. Mortals gave the blood of their first-born sons in sacrifice to the Supreme Being. Then the Supreme Being gave the blood of his first-born male in sacrifice. Thus, the nature of the favored mortals and the nature of the Supreme Being became one and the same. Dr. Monier Williams cites freely from the Vedas in the direction of this great truth; although he does not note its bearing on the blood-covenant rite. Thus, in “the following free translation of a passage of the Satapatha-brāhmana:

“And again in the Taittirīya-brāhmana: ‘By means of the sacrifice the gods obtained heaven.’” In the Tāndya-brāhmanas: “The lord of creatures offered himself a sacrifice for the gods.” “And again, in the Satapatha-brāhmana: ‘He who, knowing this, sacrifices with the Purusha-medha, or sacrifice of the primeval male, becomes everything.’”[318]

That it was the blood, which was the chief element in the covenanting-sacrifice, is evident from all the facts in the case. Thus, in the Aitareya-brāhmana, it is said: “The gods killed a man for their victim [of sacrifice]. But from him thus killed, the part which was fit for a sacrifice went out and entered a horse. Thence, the horse became an animal fit for being sacrificed. The gods then killed the horse, but the part of it fit for being sacrificed went out of it and entered an ox. The gods then killed the ox, but the part of it fit for being sacrificed went out of it and entered a sheep. Thence it entered a goat. The sacrificial part remained for the longest time in the goat; thence it [the goat] became preeminently fit for being sacrificed!” Indian history shows that this has been the progress of reform, from the days of human sacrifice downward. “It is remarkable that in Vedic times, even a cow ... was sometimes killed; and goats, as is well known, are still sacrificed to the goddess Kālī.”[319] Kalī, also called Doorgā, is the blood-craving goddess. The blood of one human victim, it is said, “gives her a gleam of pleasure that endures a thousand years; and the sacrifice of three men together, would prolong her ecstacy for a thousand centuries.”[320]

Bishop Heber indicates the “sacrificial part” of the goat as he saw it offered at a temple of Kālī in Umeer. He was being shown by his guide through that city, on his first visit there, and the guide proposed a look at the temple. “He turned short, and led us some little distance up the citadel, then through a dark, low arch into a small court, where, to my surprise, the first object which met my eyes was a pool of blood on the pavement, by which a naked man stood with a bloody sword in his hand.... The guide ... cautioned me against treading in the blood, and told me that a goat was sacrificed here every morning. In fact a second glance showed me the headless body of the poor animal lying before the steps of a small shrine, apparently of Kali. The Brahman was officiating and tinkling his bell.... The guide told us, on our way back, that the tradition was, that, in ancient times a man was sacrificed here every day; that the custom had been laid aside till Jye Singh [the builder of Umeer] had a frightful dream, in which the destroying power appeared to him, and asked why her image was suffered to be dry [It is blood, not flesh, that moistens]. The Rajah, afraid to disobey, and reluctant to fulfil the requisition to its ancient extent of horror, took counsel and substituted a goat [in which as well as in man there is blood—which is life—which is the chief thing in a sacrifice Godward] for the human victim; with which the

was graciously pleased to be contented.”[321]

“I had always heard, and fully believed till I came to India,” says Bishop Heber, “that it was a grievous crime, in the opinion of the Brahmans, to eat the flesh or shed the blood of any living creature whatever. I have now myself seen Brahmans of the highest caste cut off the heads of goats, as a sacrifice to Doorga; and I know from the testimony of Brahmans, as well as from other sources, that not only hecatombs of animals are often offered in this manner, as a most meritorious act (a Rajah, about twenty-five years back [say about A. D. 1800], offered sixty thousand in one fortnight); but that any persons, Brahmans not excepted, eat readily [in inter-communion] of the flesh which has been offered up to one of their divinities.”[322]

Clearly, the idea of inter-communion with the gods, on the basis of the inter-flow of blood, exists in many Brahmanic practices of to-day. It still finds its expression in the occasional “Sacrifice of the Yajna, at which a ram is immolated.” It is claimed by the Brahmans that “this sacrifice is the most exalted and the most meritorious of all that human beings can devise. It is the most grateful to the gods. It calls down all sorts of temporal blessings, and blots out all the sins that can have been accumulated for four generations.” The ram chosen for this sacrifice must be “entirely white, and without blemish: of about three years old.” Only Brahmans who are free from physical infirmities and from ceremonial defects can have a part in its offering, “at which no man of any other caste can be present.” Because of the Brahmanic horror of the shedding of blood, the victim is smothered, or “strangled”; after which it is cut in pieces, and burned as an oblation. “A part, however, is preserved for him who presides at the sacrifice, and part for him who is at the expense of it. These share their portions with the Brahmans who are present; amongst whom a scuffle ensues, each striving for a small bit of the flesh. Such morsels as they can catch they tear with their hands, and devour as a sacred viand [the meat of inter-communion with the gods]. This practice is the more remarkable, as being the only occasion in their [the Brahmans’] lives when they can venture to touch animal food.” “This most renowned sacrifice ... is one of the six privileges of the Brahmans”; and it would seem that its offering may now be directed to any one of the divinities, at the preference of the offerer. Formerly there was also the “Great Sacrifice of the Yajna,” which is no longer in use. “At this sacrifice,” in its day, “every species of victim was immolated; and it is beyond doubt that human beings even were offered up; but the horse and the elephant were the most common.”[323] So, there has never been an entire absence from the Brahmanic practices of an inter-communion with the gods through an inter-union by blood.

Even more remarkable than this canonical sacrifice of the Yajna, with its accompanying inter-communion, are some of the occult sacrifices to the gods of the Hindoo Pantheon, in which all the ordinary barriers of caste are disregarded, in the un-canonical but greatly prized services of inter-communion with the gods on the basis of an inter-flow of blood. The offerings of blood-flowing sacrifices, including even the cow, are made before the image of Vishnoo; or, more probably of Krishna as one of the forms of Vishnoo. The spirituous liquors of the country are also presented as drink-offerings. Then follows the inter-communion. “He who administers [at the offering to the god] tastes each species of meat and of liquor; after which he gives permission to the worshipers to consume the rest. Then may be seen men and women rushing forward, tearing and devouring. One seizes a morsel, and while he gnaws it, another snatches it out of his hands, and thus it passes on from mouth to mouth till it disappears, while fresh morsels, in succession, are making the same disgusting round. The meat being greedily eaten up, the strong liquors and the opium [which have all been offered to the gods] are sent round. All drink out of the same cup, one draining what another leaves, in spite of their natural abhorrence of such a practice.... All castes are confounded, and the Brahman is not above the Pariah.... Brahmans, Sudras, Pariahs, men and women, swill the arrack which was the offering to the Saktis, regardless of the same glass being used by them all, which in ordinary cases would excite abhorrence. Here it is a virtuous act to participate in the same morsel, and to receive from each other’s mouths the half-gnawn flesh.”[324]

The fact that this service is of so disgusting a character, does not lessen its importance as an illustration of a primitive custom degraded by successive generations of defiling influences. It still stands as one of the proofs of the universal custom of an attempted inter-communion with the gods through an inter-union by blood. Indeed, there are many traces, in India, of the survival of this primitive idea. Referring to the worship of Krishna, under the form of Jagan-natha (or Juggernaut, as the name is popularly rendered) a recent writer on India says: “Before this monstrous shrine, all distinctions of caste are forgotten, and even a Christian may sit down and eat with a Brahman. In his work on Orissa, Dr. W. W. Hunter, says, that at the ‘Sacrament of the Holy Food’ he has seen a Puri priest receive his food from a Christian’s hand.... This rite is evidently also a survival of Buddhism [It goes a long way back of that]. It is remarkable that at the shrine of Vyankoba, an obscure form of Siva, at Pandharpur, in the Southern Maratha country, caste is also in abeyance, all men being deemed equal in its presence. Food is daily sent as a gift from the god to persons in all parts of the surrounding country, and the proudest Brahman gladly will accept and partake of it from the hands of the Sudra, or Mahar, who is usually its bearer. There are two great annual festivals in honor of Jagan-natha.... They are held everywhere; but at Puri they are attended by pilgrims from every part of India, as many as 200,000 often being present. All the ground is holy within twenty miles of the pagoda, and the establishment of priests amounts to 3000. The ‘Sacrament of the Holy Food’ is celebrated three times a day.”[325]

Thus it is evident that the idea of inter-communion with the gods has not been lost sight of in India, even through the influence of Brahmanism and Booddhism against the idea of divine-human inter-union by blood—which is life. Indeed, this idea so pervades the religious thought of the Hindoos, that the commands are specific in their sacred books, that a portion of all food must be offered to the spirits, before any of it is partaken of by the eater. “It is emphatically declared that he who partakes of food before it has been offered in sacrifice as above described, eats but to his own damnation;”[326] unless he discerns there the principle of divine-human inter-communion, he eats to his own spiritual destruction.[327]

And just here it is well to notice an incidental item of evidence that in India, as in the other lands of the East, the sacrifices to the gods were in some way linked with the primitive rite of human covenanting by blood. An Oriental scholar has called attention to the origin of the nose-ring, so commonly worn in India, as described in the Hindoo Pāga-Vatham.[328] The story runs, that at the incarnation of Vishnoo as Krishna, the holy child’s life was sought, and his mother exchanged her infant for the child of another woman, in order to his protection. In doing so, she “bored a hole in the nose of her infant, and put a ring into it as an impediment and a sign. The blood which came from the wound was as a sacrifice to prevent him from falling into the hand of his enemies.” And, to this day, the nose-ring has two names, indicative of its two-fold purpose. “The first [name] is nate-kaddan, which signifies ‘the obligation or debt a person is under by a vow’; the second [name] is mooka-taddi, literally ‘nose-impediment or hindrance,’ that is, to sickness or death.” The child’s blood is given in covenant obligation to the gods, and the nose-ring is the token of the covenant-obligation, and a pledge of protected life. When a Hindoo youth who has worn a nose-ring would remove it, on the occasion of his marriage, he must do so with formal ceremonies at the temple, and by the use of a liquid “which represents blood,” composed of saffron,[329] of lime, and of water. A young tree must also be planted in connection with this ceremony, as in the ceremony of blood-covenanting in some portions of the East.[330] These symbolisms can hardly fail to be recognized as based on the universal primitive rite of blood-covenanting.[331]

The very earliest records of Babylon and Assyria, indicate the outreaching of man for an inter-union with God, or with the gods, by substitute blood, and the confident inter-communion of man with God, or with the gods, on the strength of this inter-union by blood. There is an Akkadian poem which clearly “goes back to pre-Semitic times,” with its later Assyrian translation, concerning the sacrifice to the gods, of a first-born son.[332] It says distinctly: “His offspring for his life he gave.” Here is obviously the idea of vicarious substitution, of life for life, of the blood of the son for the blood of the father, but this substitution does not necessarily involve the idea of an expiatory offering for sin; even though it does include the idea of propitiation. Abraham’s surrender of his first-born son to God was in proof of his loving trust, not of his sense of a penalty due for sin. Jephthah’s surrender of his daughter was on a vow of devotedness, not as an exhibit of remorse, or of penitence, for unexpiated guilt. In each instance, the outpouring of substitute blood was in evidence of a desire to be in new covenant oneness with God. Thus Queen Manenko and Dr. Livingstone made a covenant of blood vicariously, by the substitution of her husband on the one part, and of an attendant of Livingstone, on the other part.[333] So, also the Akkadian king may have sought a covenant union with his god—from whom sin had separated him—by the substitute blood of his first-born and best loved son.

Certain it is, that the early kings of Babylon and Assyria were accustomed to make their grateful offerings to the gods, and to share those offerings with the gods, by way of inter-communion with the gods, apart from any sense of sin and of its merited punishment which they may have felt.[334] Indeed, it is claimed, with a show of reason, that the very word (surqinu) which was used for “altar” in the Assyrian, was primarily the word for “table”; that, in fact, what was later known as the “altar” to the gods, was originally the table of communion between the gods and their worshipers.[335] There seems to be a reference to this idea in the interchanged use of the words “altar” and “table” by the Prophet Malachi: “And ye say, Wherein have ye despised thy name? Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar? And ye say, Wherein have ye polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of the Lord is contemptible.”[336] So again, in Isaiah 65 : 11: “But ye that forsake the Lord, that forget my holy mountain, that prepare a table for Fortune, and that fill up mingled wine unto Destiny; I will destine you to the sword, and ye shall all bow down to the slaughter.”

See, in this connection, the Assyrian inscription of Esarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib,[337] in description of his great palace at Nineveh: “I filled with beauties the great palace of my empire, and I called it ‘The Palace which Rivals the World.’ Ashur, Ishtar of Nineveh, and the gods of Assyria, all of them, I feasted within it. Victims precious and beautiful I sacrificed before them, and I caused them to receive my gifts. I did for those gods whatever they wished.”[338] It is even claimed by Assyrian scholars, that in this inter-communion with the gods, worshipers might partake of the flesh of animals which was forbidden to them at all other times[339]—as among the Brahmans of India, to-day.

In farther illustration of the truth, that inter-communion with the gods was shown in partaking of sacred food with the gods, H. Fox Talbot, the Assyriologist, says of the ancient Assyrian inscription: “There is a fine inscription, not yet fully translated, describing the soul in heaven, clothed in a white radiant garment, seated in the company of the blessed, and fed by the gods themselves, with celestial food.”[340]

Among the Parsees, or the Zoroastrians, who intervene, as it were, between the primitive peoples of Assyria and India, and the later inhabitants of the Persian empire, there prevailed the same idea of divine-human inter-union through blood, and of divine-human inter-communion through sharing the flesh of the proffered and accepted sacrifice, at the altar, or at the table, of the gods, Ormuzd and Ahriman. The horse was a favorite substitute victim of sacrifice, among the Parsees; as also among the Hindoos and the Chinese. Its blood was the means of divine-human inter-union. “The flesh of the victim was eaten by the priest and the worshipers; the ‘soul’ [the life, the blood], of it only was enjoyed by Ormazd.”[341] The communion-drink, in the Parsee sacrament, as still observed, is the juice of the haoma, or hom. “Small bread [or wafers] called Darun, of the size of a dollar, and covered with a piece of meat, incense, and Haoma, or Hom,” the juice of the plant known in India as Soma, are used in this sacrament. “The Darun and the Hom [having been presented to the gods] are afterwards eaten by the priests,” as in communion.[342] This is sometimes called the “Sacrament of the Haoma.”[343]

In ancient Egypt, it seems to have been much as in China, and India, and Assyria. Substitute blood was a basis of inter-union between man and the gods; and a divine-human inter-communion was secured as a proof and as a result of that inter-union. That it was human blood which was, of old in Egypt, poured out as a means of this inter-union (in some cases at least) seems clear. It is declared by Manetho, and Diodorus, and Athenæus, and Plutarch, and Porphyry.[344] It is recognized as proven, by Kenrick[345] and Ebers[346] and other Egyptian scholars. Wilkinson, it is true, was unwilling to accept its reality, because, in his opinion, “it is quite incompatible with the character of a nation whose artists thought acts of clemency towards a foe worthy of record, and whose laws were distinguished by that humanity which punished with death the murder even of a slave”;[347] and he prefers to rest on “the improbability of such a custom among a civilized people.” Yet, a single item of proof from the monuments would seem sufficient to settle this question, if it were still deemed a question. The ideogram which was employed on the seal of the priests, authorizing the slaying of an animal in sacrifice, “bore the figure of a man on his knees, with his hands tied behind him, and a sword pointed at his throat.”[348]

Herodotus,[349] describing the magnificent festival of Isis, at Busiris, says that a bull was sacrificed on that occasion; and we know that in every such sacrifice the blood of the victim was poured out as an oblation, at the altar.[350] When the duly prepared offering was consumed upon the altar, those portions of the victim which had been reserved were eaten by the priest and others.[351] Herodotus says, moreover, that some of the Greeks who were present at this festival, were in the habit of causing their own blood to flow during the consuming of the sacrifice, as if in proof of their desire for inter-union with the goddess, as precedent to their inter-communion with her. He says: “But as many of the Karians as are dwelling in Egypt, do yet more than these [native Egyptians], inasmuch as they cut their foreheads with swords;[352] and so they are shown to be foreigners and not Egyptians.”[353]

It would even seem that in Egypt, as in other parts of the primitive world, the prohibition of the eating of many sacred animals applied to the eating of them when not offered in sacrifice. Because those animals became, as it were, on the altar, or on the table, of the gods, a portion of the gods themselves, they must not be eaten except by those who discerned in them the body of the gods, and who were entitled to share them in inter-communion with the gods.[354]

The monumental representations of the other world show the gods sharing food and drink with the souls of the deceased.[355] And the idea of a divine-human inter-communion through the partaking by gods and men of the food provided for, or accepted by, the former, runs all through the Egyptian record. A remarkable illustration of this idea is found in an extended inscription from the tomb of Setee I., whose daughter is supposed to have been the finder of the infant Moses. In this inscription, which is sometimes called the Book of Hades, or more properly the Book of Amenti, the Sun-god Rā is represented as passing through Amenti—or the under world—on his nocturnal circuit, and speaking words of approval to his disembodied worshipers there.[356] “These are they who worshiped Rā on the earth, ... who offered their oblations.... They are [now] masters of their refreshments; they take their meat; they seize their offerings in the porch of him, whose being is mysterious.... Rā says to them, Your offerings are yours; take your refreshment.” Again and again the declaration is made of “the elect,” of those who are greeted by Rā in Amenti: “Their food is (composed) of Rā’s bread; their drink [is] of his liquor tesher [a common word for “red,” often standing for “blood”[357]]”. And yet again: “Their food is to hear the word of this god.”[358] “Their food is that of the veridical [the truth-speaking] ones. Offerings are [now] made to them on earth; because the true word is in them.”[359]

Thus there was inter-communion between man and the gods in ancient Egypt, on the basis of a blood-made inter-union between man and the gods; as there was also in primitive Assyria and Babylon, in primitive India, and in primitive China.

Turning now from the far East to the far West, we find that Central American and South American history and legends tend to illustrate the same primitive belief, that inter-communion with the gods was to be secured by the hearty surrender of self—as evidenced by the tender of personal, or of substitute blood. A Guatemalan legend has its suggestion of that outreaching of man for fire from heaven, which is illustrated in the primitive and the classic myths of the ages.[360] The men of Guatemala were without the heaven-born fire, and they turned, in their longing, to the Quiché god, Tohil, seeking it from him, on such terms as he might prescribe. “The condition finally named by the god was, that they consent to ‘unite themselves to me, under their armpit, and under their girdle, and that they embrace me, Tohil’; a condition not very clearly expressed [says a historian], but which, as is shown by what follows, was an agreement to worship the Quiché god, and sacrifice to him their blood, and, if required, their children. They accepted the condition, and received the fire.”[361]

In the light of the prevailing customs of the world, concerning this rite of blood-covenanting, the requirements of the Quiché god were clearly based on the symbolism of that rite; as the historian did not perceive, from his unfamiliarity with the rite. If men would be in favor with that god, and would receive his choicest gifts, they must unite themselves to him; must enter into oneness of nature with him, by giving of their blood, from “under their armpit, and under their girdle”; from the source of life, and at the issue of life; for themselves and for their seed; and they must lovingly embrace their covenant-god, accordingly. And in the counsel given to those new worshipers, it was said: “Make first your thanksgiving; prepare the holes in your ears; [blood was drawn from the ears, as well as from other parts of the body, in Central American worship; indeed one of their festivals was ‘the feast of piercing the ears,’ suggesting a similar religious custom in India;[362]] pierce your elbows; and offer sacrifice. This will be your act of gratitude before God.”[363]

Among all these aboriginal races of Central America, not only was the flesh of the sacrificial offerings eaten as in communion with the gods; but the blood of the offerings, and also the blood of the offerers themselves, was sometimes sprinkled upon, or commingled with, those articles of food, which were made a means of spiritual inter-communion with their deities. Cakes of maize sprinkled with their own blood, drawn from “under the girdle,” during their religious worship, were “distributed and eaten as blessed bread.”[364] Moreover, an image of their god, made with certain seeds from the first fruits of their temple gardens, with a certain gum, and with the blood of human sacrifices, was partaken of by them reverently, under the name, “Food of our soul.”[365] At the conclusion of one of the great feasts of the year at Cuzco, in Peru, the worshipers “received the loaves of maize and the sacrificial blood, which they ate as a symbol of brotherhood with the Ynca”[366]—who claimed to be of divine blood and of divine power.