1670, for the purpose of driving out the Tatars and restoring the previous dynasty, which was a Chinese dynasty. As the founder of the previous dynasty had been a Buddhist priest, this society was composed, at first, largely of priests, and had their meetings in Buddhist temples. Hence it has always been regarded as a traitorous association and prcscribed by the laws. The Taiping rebellion in 1850 to 1865 was an outcome of it. The chief of that rebellion was the head of the Triad Society, and proclaimed himself the emperor of the Great Peace Heavenly Kingdom. One of their vagaries was this, in order to conceal their Triad connection: The chief, in reading Christian books, found that the Christian God is regarded as a Trinity. Taking the word used by part of the missionary body to designate God, namely, Shangti, they designated themselves as the Shangti Association; that is, The Triune God Association.

"The initiation into this society is with the most solemn rites and binding oath. It is done in secret meeting, in a secret place, generally at night. Swords are crossed so as to form an arch, under which the new member passes, to imply that a sword is over the neck of any one who violates the covenant. Blood is drawn from his finger, and mixed with water, which he drinks. The members are called brethren, and the relation is more sacred and inviolable than that of brothers by birth. Any one who violates this covenant of brotherhood made with blood must be killed by the brotherhood. No one may protect, screen, or assist, in any way, such a delinquent, or, rather, false brother, one who had falsified such a solemn oath.

"From this narrative we see that this manner of adding sanctity to an oath in making an agreement or covenant by blood comes down from the earliest history of the Chinese people. The Triad Society adopted this manner of taking an oath to fulfil all the agreements and obligations of their covenant, written in thirty-six clauses, because it was the most solemn and obligatory of any known to them."

This blood-drinking as a means of courage inspiring is also linked

with the idea of blood-covenanting, in an illustration given by Herodotus1 out of the times of the Persian invasion of Egypt under Cambyses. One Phanes was blamed by the Greek and Carian allies of the Egyptians "for having [treacherously] led a foreign army into Egypt.” His sons were taken by the allies, and in the sight of both armies their throats were cut, one by one, the blood being received into goblets and mingled with wine and water; "all the allies drinking of the blood" as preliminary to a united onset against the enemy thus vicariously absorbed into the being of the allied forces.

"There is no doubt," says President Washburn, of Robert College, Constantinople," ,"2 that among the Sclavic races the blood-covenant [as described in this volume] still exists; especially in Montenegro and Servia." A recent German writer3 cites a Sclavic song which gives an illustration of this custom; the full meaning of which song he quite fails to comprehend, through his unfamiliarity with the rite itself. The song describes the slaughter on a battle-field at Mohaas, in Hungary, where the outpoured blood of the combatants was intercommingled in their death:

"There as well as here was lamentation;

Flooded o'er with blood the field of slaughter.

Dark alike was blood of Turk and Christian

Turk and Christian here by blood made brothers."

This tender reference to blood-brotherhood in death is supposed by the German writer to be made in keen irony, although he cites it from a people who are, in his opinion, less bigoted and fanatical than Muhammadans generally.

It has been already shown that Poseidonios tells of the custom,

1 Hist. III., II.

2 In a private letter to the author.

3 Dr. Friedrich S. Krauss, in a paper read before the American Philosophical Society, Oct. 2, 1885; in Proceedings of the Am. Phil. Soc., for January, 1886, pp. 87-94.

4 Page 320, supra.

among the primitive German peoples, of opening "the veins upon their foreheads, and mixing the flowing blood with their drink," as their method of entering into the blood-covenant. A trace of this primitive custom would seem to be found in a still extant method of making brotherhood among the students in German universities. Bayard Taylor describes this ceremony as he observed it at Heidelberg, in 1846.1 When new students are to be made “Burschen” (or fellows), while at the same time the bands of brotherhood are to be kept fresh and sacred among those who are already banded together in their student life, the "consecration song" of the Landesvater is sung with mutual beer-drinking and cap-piercing. The ceremony includes the striking of glasses together, as held in the right hand-before drinking; the crossing of swords, as held in the left hand; the piercing of each one's cap with a sword (the caps of all who take part in the ceremony being successively strung upon the two swords of those who conduct it); the exchanging of the cap-laden swords between those leaders; the return of each pierced cap to its owner; the resting of the ends of the crossed swords on the heads, covered by the pierced caps, of each pair participating in turn in the ceremony; with the singing in concert of the song of consecration, of which these two verses are an illustration :

"Take the beaker, pleasure seeker,

With thy country's drink brimmed o'er!

In thy left the sword is blinking,
Pierce it through the cap, while drinking
To thy Fatherland once more!

"In left hand gleaming, thou art beaming,
Sword from all dishonor free!

Thus I pierce the cap, while swearing,

It in honor ever wearing,

I a valiant Bursch will be!'

In this rite the cap instead of the head is punctured, and the beer

1 In Views Afoot, cited in Chambers's Cyclo. of Eng. Lit.

alone (beer as the popular substitute for wine) instead of the old-time draught of blood and wine is shared, in symbol of the cutting of the covenant of blood.

This cutting of the head, or of some other portion of the body, in order to let the blood flow out toward another as a symbol of life-giving, is a primitive custom which shows itself in many parts of the world. Bruce says: "As soon as a near relation dies in Abyssinia, a brother or parent, cousin-german or lover, every woman in that relation, with the nail of her little finger, which she leaves long on purpose, cuts the skin of both her temples, about the size of a sixpence; and therefore you see either a wound or a scar in every fair face in Abyssinia." Pitts tells of a practice in Algiers of cutting the arms in testimony of love showing toward the living, somewhat like that already referred to as prevalent in Turkey. Letting the blood flow over the dead, or for the dead, from gashes on the head or the breast or the limbs, is a custom among various tribes of North American Indians, and in different islands of the sea. 5 This would seem to be one of the primitive customs forbidden in the Mosaic law: "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead." 6

The primitive rite of blood-covenanting by the inter-transfusion of blood through the cutting of the clasped hands of the parties to the covenant, would seem to impart a new meaning to a divine assurance, in the words of the Evangelical Prophet, which has been deemed of peculiar tenderness and force-without its symbolism being fairly

1 Travels, III., 680.

2 A Faithful Account of the Religions and Manners of the Mahometans, Chap. 3. 8 See p. 85, supra. See also La Roque, cited in Harmer's Observations, V., 435. 4 See article on "Mortuary Customs of North American Indians," in First Ann. Rep. of Bureau of Ethnol., pp. 112, 159, 164, 183, 190.

5 See Angas's Sav. Scenes, I., 96, 315, 331; II., 84, 89 f., 212.

6 Lev. 19: 28; 21: 5; Deut. 14: 1.

understood. Herodotus tells of the rite of blood-covenanting among the Arabians, by cutting into the palms of the hands, in order that the blood of the two may be unalterably interchanged.1 Isaiah, writing not far from the time of Herodotus, uses this illustration of Jehovah's unfailing fidelity to his people: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, these may forget, yet will not I forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon [I have cut thee into] the palms of my hands." 2 A mother and a child were for a time as one; but they may be separated and become mutually forgetful. They, however, who have become as one personality, through an intermingling of their life-blood at the palm of the hand, cannot be wholly separated. Jehovah has covenanted with his people in a covenant that will never be forgotten by him. The covenant relation which thus makes a friend nearer and dearer than brother, or son, or daughter, or wife, it is which is referred to in the climax of human relationships in the law of Moses, as "thy friend which is as thine own soul; "4 such a friend, made by the covenant of the pierced hands, will never be forgotten by his other self.

It has been already mentioned that there were indications of the bloodcovenant and its involvings in the sacred writing of the Zoroastrians, 5 and in the writings of Herodotus with reference to the Persian invasion of Egypt, and now, as the last pages of this volume go to press, there comes an illustration of the existence of this rite in Persia in its primitive form at the present time.

Mr. J. H. McCormick, now of Schenectady, New York, was, for

3 The attempts to explain this figure of speech (see Rosenmüller, Stolberg, Burder, Roberts, etc.) by a reference to the custom of tattooing pictures of sacred shrines on the arms and breasts of pilgrims, gives no such idea as this of loving unity between God and his people, as more enduring than that of mother and child. • See p. 365 f.

4 Deut. 13: 6.

5 See p. 169.