The fundamental reason upon which the use of the drinking reed is based is that the warrior or devotee shall not let water touch his lips. It is strange to find among the regulations with regard to taking water by the warrior caste: "He shall not sip water while walking, standing, lying down, or bending forward."[233]
The Dharma-sûtra, traditionally connected with the Rishi-Vasishtha, of the Seventh Mandala of the Rig-Veda, is a relic of a Vedic school of the highest antiquity. Its seat was in the present northwestern provinces of India, and, like the Dharmasâstra of Gautama, it is the sole surviving record from this source.[234]
There was another service performed by reeds or tubes in the domestic economy of nations around the north pole. As the Apache are derived from an Arctic ancestry it does not seem amiss to allude to it. Lord Lonsdale, in describing the capture of a whale which he witnessed, says that the Eskimo women "first of all gathered up the harpoons and then pulled out all the spears. As each spear was withdrawn a blow-pipe was pushed into the wound and the men blew into it, after which the opening was tied up. When every wound had been treated in this manner the whale resembled a great windbag and floated high in the water."
In the National Museum at Washington, D. C., there are many pipes made of the bones of birds, which were used by the Inuit as drinking tubes when water had to be taken into the mouth from holes cut in the ice. These drinking tubes seem to be directly related to our subject, although they may also have been used as Lonsdale describes the pipes for blowing the dead whale full of air. Another point to be mentioned is that the eagle pipe kept in the mouth of the young warrior undergoing the torture of the sun dance among the Sioux and other tribes on the plains is apparently connected with the "bebedero del Sol" of the peoples to the south.[235]
The use of this drinking reed, shown to have been once so intimately associated with human sacrifice, may have disappeared upon the introduction of labrets, which seem, in certain cases at least, to be associated with the memory of enemies killed in battle, which would be only another form of human sacrifice. This suggestion is advanced with some misgivings, and only as a hypothesis to assist in determining for what purpose labrets and drinking tubes have been employed. The Apache have discontinued the use of the labret, which still is to be found among their congeners along the Lower Yukon, but not among those living along the lower river.[236] According to Dall the custom was probably adopted from the Inuit; he also shows that whenever labrets are worn in a tribe they are worn by both sexes, and that the women assume them at the first appearance of the catamenia.
"This is to be noted, that how many men these Savages [Brazilians] doe kill, so many holes they will have in their visage, beginning first in their nether lippe, then in their cheekes, thirdly, in both their eye-browes, and lastly in their eares."[237]
Cabeza de Vaca speaks of the Indians near Malhado Island, "They likewise have the nether lippe bored, and within the same they carrie a piece of thin Cane about halfe a finger thicke."[238] Herrera relates very nearly the same of the men of "Florida": "Traìan una tetilla oradada, metido por el agujero un pedaço de Caña, i el labio baxero tambien agujereado, con otra caña en èl."[239] But Herrera probably obtained his data from the narrative of Vaca.
In looking into this matter of labrets as connected or suspected as being in some way connected with the drinking reed, we should not expect to find the labret adhering very closely to the primitive form, because the labret, coming to be regarded more and more as an ornament, would allow greater and greater play to the fancy of the wearer or manufacturer, much the same as the crosses now worn by ladies, purely as matter of decoration, have become so thoroughly examples of dexterity in filagree work as to have lost the original form and significance as a declaration of faith. But it is a subject of surprise to find that the earlier writers persistently allude to the labrets in the lips of the Mexican deities, which probably were most tenacious of primitive forms, as being shaped like little reeds—"cañutillos."
Herrera says of Tescatlipoca: "Que era el Dios de la Penitencia, i de los Jubileos ... Tenia Çarcillo de Oro, i Plata en el labio baxo, con un cañutillo cristalino, de un geme de largo."[240] The high priest, he says, was called topilçin, and in sacrificing human victims he wore "debaxo del labio, junto al medio de la barba, una pieça como cañutillo, de una piedra açul."[241]