An extraordinary mode of swearing, akin to the oaths already noticed, is recorded by Ysbrant Ides in his Travels from Moscow to China (London, 1705, and reprinted in the second volume of Harris's Collection):—
"Two Tunguzian hostages falling out, one accused the other before the Waywode (or Viceroy) of having conjured his deceased brother to death. The Waywode asked the accuser if he would, according to the Tunguzian custom, put the accused to his oath? To this he answered in the affirmative; after which the accused took a live dog, laid him on the ground, and with a knife stuck him into the body, just under his left foot, and immediately clapped his mouth to the wound, and sucked out the dog's blood as long as he could come at it; after which he lift him up, laid him on his shoulders, and clapped his mouth again to the wound in order to suck out the remaining blood. An excellent drink indeed! And this is the greatest oath and most solemn confirmation of the Truth amongst them; so that on credit of this the accused was set free, and the accuser punished for his false accusation."
The dog, designed, as Cicero observes, for man's use, was doubtless selected for his sagacity and faithfulness; and by Loccenius, in his Leges W. Gothicæ, "tria canum capita" are stated to have been "Hunnorum gentis insignia," the progenitors of the Tunguzians, p. 107. In Northern Europe "sanguine Deos placari creditum; canibus etiam cum hominibus permistè in luco suspensis." (Ibid. p. 105.)
Among the northern nations, not only their testimoniary oaths were thus sanctioned by blood, but their confederative also, in which their fraternisation was symbolised by reciprocal transfusion of blood.
"Dear as the blood that warms my heart."
Gray's Bard.
It was the custom of the Scythians "non dextras tantum implicare, sed pollices mutuo vincire, nodoque perstringere; mox sanguine in artus extremos se effundente levi ritu cruorem elicere, atque invicem lambere." (Hanseanius De Jurejurando Verterum.) Quintus Curtius remarks that among the Hindoos (between whom and the Scythians Sir W. Jones and other ethnographers have observed various traces of affinity) the joining of right hands was their usual mode of salutation; "dextra fidei sedes."
En passant, I have elsewhere seen the opinion quoted by a correspondent (Vol. ii., p. 464), "Sedem animæ in digitis ponunt," attributed to the Hindoos. Query, Has not the profession of θεληται (see Dr. Maitland on Mesmerism) prevailed among them? Their propensity to conjuring is so proverbial, that, according to a writer in the Asiatic Researches, that term is derived from one of their tribes. See also on their witchcrafts, Acosta's East and West Indies, chap. xxvi.
Before I dismiss the subject of swearing, permit me to observe what appears to me to be the origin of the apothegm "Fiat Justitia, ruat Cœlum" (Vol. ii., p. 494.), which, with a slight change, was afterwards adopted by Ferdinand, emperor of Austria.
May it not have originated in an oath similar to that of Chaganus, king of the Huns, recorded by Otrokoesi, in his Historiæ Hungaricæ?—