into the hollow of their hands, and dropping a little into that of the adoptive child, pronounce aloud before the assembly: ‘We have acquired this child to our stem, and we incorporate him into it.’ Upon which they drink the saffron-water, and rising up, make a profound obeisance to the assembly; to which the officiating Brahmans reply by the word, ‘Asirvadam.’”[404] It seems to me in every way probable, that in primitive times the blood of the child adopted, and of the parents adopting him, was partaken of by the three parties (as now throughout the East, in the case of the blood-covenanting of friends), in order that the child and his new parents might be literally of one blood. But, with the prejudice which grew up against blood-drinking, in India, the saffron-water came to be used as a substitute for blood; even as the blood of the grape came to be used instead of human blood, in many other portions of the world. In China, an important rite in the marriage ceremony is the drinking of “the wedding wine,” from “two singularly shaped goblets, sometimes connected together by a red silk, or red cotton, cord, several feet long.” After their worship of their ancestral tablets, the bride and the bridegroom stand face to face. “One of the female assistants takes the two goblets ... from the table, and having partially filled them with a mixture of wine and honey, she pours some of their contents from one [goblet] into the other, back and forth several times. She then holds one to the mouth of the groom, and the other to the mouth of the bride; who continue to face each other, and who then sip a little of the wine. She then changes the goblets, and the bride sips out of the one just used by the groom, and the groom sips out of the one just used by the bride, the goblets oftentimes remaining tied together [by the red cord]. Sometimes she uses one goblet [interchanging its use between the two parties] in giving the wine.”[405] The Rev. Chester Holcombe, who has been a missionary in China for a dozen years or more, writes me explicitly: “I have been told that in ancient times blood was actually used instead of the wine now used as a substitute,” in this wedding-cup of covenanting. Again, Professor Douglas says,[406] that for a thousand years or so, it has been claimed that, at the birth of each two persons who are to be married, the red cord invisibly binds their feet together; which is only another way of saying that their lives are divinely inter-linked, as by the covenant of blood.