The original sacrifice was that in which the community of kinsmen
ate together the flesh of their divine or totem animal-god and drank
its blood. In early religion the tribal god was the ancestor and
relative of the tribe. He protected and fostered the tribe in its
public concerns, but took no special care of individuals; the only
offences of which he took cognisance were those against the tribe as
a whole, such as shedding a kinsman's blood. At periodical intervals
the tribe renewed their kinship with the god and each other by eating
his flesh together at a sacrificial meal by which they acquired his
divine attributes; and every tribesman was not only invited, but
bound, to participate. "According to antique ideas those who eat and
drink together are by this very act tied to one another by a bond of
friendship and mutual obligation. Hence when we find that in ancient
religions all the ordinary functions of worship are summed up in the
sacrificial meal, and that the ordinary intercourse between gods and
men has no other form, we are to remember that the act of eating and
drinking together is the solemn and stated expression of the fact that
all who share the meal are brethren, and that the duties of friendship
and brotherhood are implicitly acknowledged in their common act. [357]
The one thing directly expressed in the sacrificial meal is that
the god and his worshippers are commensals, but every other point in
their mutual relations is included in what this involves. Those who
sit at meat together are united for all social effects; those who do
not eat together are aliens to one another, without fellowship in
religion and without reciprocal social duties. The extent to which
this view prevailed among the ancient Semites, and still prevails
among the Arabs, may be brought out most clearly by reference to the
law of hospitality. Among the Arabs every stranger whom one meets
in the desert is a natural enemy, and has no protection against
violence except his own strong hand or the fear that his tribe will
avenge him if his blood be spilt. But if I have eaten the smallest
morsel of food with a man I have nothing further to fear from him;
'there is salt between us,' and he is bound not only to do me no harm,
but to help and defend me as if I were his brother. So far was this
principle carried by the old Arabs that Zaid-al-Khail, a famous
warrior in the days of Muhammad, refused to slay a vagabond who
carried off his camels, because the thief had surreptitiously drunk
from his father's milk-bowl before committing the theft." [358] It is
in this idea that the feeling of hospitality originally arose. Those
who ate together the sacred food consisting of the body of the god
were brothers, and bound to assist each other and do each other no
harm; and the obligation extended in a modified form to all food
partaken of together, more especially as with some races, as the
ancient Romans and the Hindus, all the regular household meals are
sacred; they may only be partaken of after purifying the body, and a
portion of the food at each meal is offered to the gods. "There was
a sworn alliance between the Lihyan and the Mostalic--they were wont
to eat and drink together. This phrase of an Arab narrator supplies
exactly what is wanted to define the significance of the sacrificial
meal. The god and his worshippers are wont to eat and drink together,
and by this token their fellowship is declared and sealed." [359]