to suck from their left breast.[1] The Kayans of Borneo used to offer human sacrifice when a great chief took possession of a newly built house; in one late case, about 1847, a Malay slave girl was bought for the purpose and bled to death, the blood, which alone is efficacious, being sprinkled on the pillars and under the house, and the body being thrown into the river.[2] The same ideas appear among the indigenes of India, alike in North Bengal and in the Deccan, where the blood alone of the sacrificed animal is for the deities, and the votary retains the meat.[3] Thus, in West Africa, the negroes of Benin are described as offering a cock to the idol, but it receives only the blood, for they like the flesh very well themselves;[4] while in the Yoruba country, 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 victim's life.[5] The Jewish law of sacrifice marks clearly the distinction between shedding the blood as life, and offering it as food. As the Israelites themselves might not eat with the flesh the blood which is the life, but must pour it on the earth as water, so the rule applies to sacrifice. The blood must be sprinkled before the sanctuary, put upon the horns of the altar, and there sprinkled or poured out, but not presented as a drink offering — 'their drink-offerings of blood will I not offer.'[6]
Spirit being considered in the lower animism as somewhat of the ethereal nature of smoke or mist, there is an
- ↑ Smith, 'Virginia,' in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 41; see J. G. Müller, p. 143; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 207. Comp. Meiners, vol. ii. p. 89. See also Bollaert in 'Mem. Anthrop. Soc.' vol. ii. p. 96.
- ↑ 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. iii. p. 145. See also St. John, 'Far East,' vol. i. p. 160.
- ↑ Hodgson, ' Abor. of India,' p. 147; Hunter, 'Rural Bengal,' p. 181; Forbes Leslie, 'Early Races of Scotland,' vol. ii. p. 458.
- ↑ Bosman, 'Guinea,' letter xxi. in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 531. See also Waitz, vol. ii. p. 192.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Psychologie,' p. 96.
- ↑ Levit. i. &c.; Deuteron. xii. 23; Psalm xvi. 4.
