Considering that the idea of sacrifice being a conductor of imprecations has hitherto almost entirely escaped the notice of students of early religion, it is impossible to say how widely it prevails and whether it also occurs in the savage world. We know that the practice of cursing a god not only was familiar to the ancient nations of culture, including the Egyptians,[101] Hebrews, and other Semites,[102] but is common among peoples like the South African Bechuanas[103] and the Nagas of India.[104] And that the shedding of blood is frequently applied as a means of transferring curses is suggested by various cases in which, however, the object of the imprecation is not a god but a man. We have previously noticed the reception sacrifices offered to visiting strangers, presumably for the purpose of transmitting to them conditional curses;[105] and a very similar idea seems to underlie certain cases of oath-taking. Sometimes the oath is taken in connection with a sacrifice made to a god, and then the sanctity of the sacrificial animal naturally increases the efficacy of the self-imprecation. In other instances the oath is taken on the blood of an animal which is killed for the purpose, apparently without being sacrificed to a god. But in either case, I believe, the blood of the animal is thought not only to add supernatural energy to the oath, but to transfer, as it were, the self-imprecation to the very person who pronounces it. The Mrús, a Chittagong hill tribe, “will swear by one of their gods, to whom, at the same time, a sacrifice must be offered.”[106] Among the ancient Norsemen both the accused and the accuser grasped the holy ring kept for that purpose on the altar, stained with the blood of a sacrificial bull, and made oath by invoking Freyr, Niordr, and the almighty among the Asas.[107] At Athens a person who charged another with murder made an oath with imprecations upon himself and his family and his house, standing upon the entrails of a boar, a ram, and a bull, which had been sacrificed by special persons on the appointed days.[108] Tyndareus “sacrificed a horse and swore the suitors of Helen, making them stand on the pieces of the horse,” the oath being to defend Helen and him who might be chosen to marry her if ever they should be wronged.[109] One of the three binding forms of oath prevalent among the Sânsiya in India is to “kill a cock and pouring its blood on the ground swear over it.”[110] When the Annamese swear by heaven and earth, they often kill a buffalo or he-goat and drink its blood.[111] Among the ancient Arabs comrades in arms swore fidelity to each other by dipping their hands in the blood of a camel killed for the purpose.[112]
[101] Book of the Dead, ch. 125.
[102] Exodus, xxii. 28. 1 Samuel, xvii. 43. Isaiah, viii. 21.
[103] Chapman, Travels in the Interior of South Africa, i. 45 sq.
[104] Woodthorpe, ‘Wild Tribes inhabiting the so-called Naga Hills,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xi. 70.
[105] Supra, [i. 590 sq.]
[106] Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. 233. Cf. ibid. p. 244 (Pankhos and Bunjogees).
[107] Landnámabók, iv. 7 (Islendínga Sögur, i. 258). Lea, Superstition and Force, p. 27. Keyser, Efterladte Skrifter, ii. pt. i. 388. Gummere, Germanic Origins, p. 301.
[108] Demosthenes, Oratio (xxiii.) contra Aristocratem, 67 sq., p. 642.
[109] Pausanias, iii. 20. 9. For Homeric oath sacrifices see Iliad, iii. 260 sqq.; xix. 250 sqq.; Keller, Homeric Society, p. 176 sqq.