654 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



effect with it a union which on the one side implies submission, and 

 on the other side friendliness. 



On this hypothesis we have a reason for the great prevalence of 

 self-bleeding as a funeral-rite, not among existing savages only, but 

 among ancient and partially-civilized peoples the Jews, the Greeks, 

 the Huns, the Turks. We are shown how there arise kindred rites as 

 permanent propitiations of those more dreaded ghosts which become 

 gods such offerings of blood (now taken from slain victims, now 

 from their own bodies, and now from their newly-born infants) as 

 those which the Mexicans gave the idols of their cannibal deities ; 

 such offerings as were implied by the self-gashings of the priests of 

 Baal ; and such as were sometimes made even in propitiating Jahveh 

 as by the fourscore men who came from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria. 

 Moreover, the instances of bloodletting as a complimentary act in 

 social intercourse cease to be inexplicable. During a Samoan mar- 

 riage-ceremony the friends of the bride, to testify their respect, 

 " took up stones and beat themselves until their heads were bruised 

 and bleeding." In his account of the Central Americans, Martyr 

 says, " When the Indians of Potonchan receive new friends, ... as 

 a proof of friendship, they, in the sight of the friend, draw some blood 

 .... from the tongue, hand, or arm, or from some other part." 



Here, however, my purpose in naming these offerings of blood 

 under the head of mutilations is not so much to show their kinship of 

 origin as to prepare the way for explaining the mutilations which re- 

 sult from them. 



Gashings and tearings of the flesh make wounds which leave scars. 

 If the blood-offerings which entail them are made by relatives to the 

 departed spirit of an ordinary person, these scars are not likely to 

 have any permanent significance ; but, if they are made in propitia- 

 tion of some deceased chief, not by his relatives alone, but by unre- 

 lated members of the tribe who stood in awe of him and fear his ghost, 

 then like other mutilations they become signs of subjection. The 

 Huns who " at the burial of Attila cut their faces with hollow 

 wounds," in common with the Turks who did the like at royal fu- 

 nerals, thus inflicted on themselves marks which thereafter distin- 

 guished them as servants of their respective rulers. So, too, did the 

 Lacedaemonians, who, " when their king died, had a barbarous custom 

 of meeting in vast numbers, where men, women, and slaves, all mixed 

 together, tore the flesh from their foreheads with pins and needles 

 . . . . to gratify the ghosts of the dead." Customs of this kind would 

 sometimes have further results. With the apotheosis of some notable 

 king whose conquests gave him the character of founder of the na- 

 tion, such marks, borne not by his contemporary followers only, but 

 imposed by them on their children, might become national marks. 



That the scars caused by propitiatory bloodletting at funerals do 



