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]