From the very fact that so little attention has been given to the primitive rite of blood-covenanting, in the studies of modern scholars, there is reason for supposing that the rite itself has very often been unnoticed by travelers and missionaries in regions where it was practiced almost under their eyes. Indeed, there is proof of this to be obtained, by comparing the facts recorded in this volume with the writings of visitors to the lands here reported from. Hence, it is fair to infer, that more or less of the brotherhoods or friendships noted among primitive peoples, without any description of the methods of their consummating, are either directly based on the rite of blood-covenanting, or are outgrowths and variations of that rite; as, for example, in Borneo, blood-tasting is sometimes deemed essential to the rite, and again it is omitted. It may be well, therefore, to look at some of the hints of blood-union among primitive peoples, in relationships and in customs where not all the facts and processes involved, are known to us. Peculiarly is it true, that wherever we find the idea of an absolute merging of two natures into one, or of an inter-union or an inter-changing of two personalities in loving relation, there is reason for suspecting a connection with the primitive rite of inter-union through a common blood flow. And there are illustrations of this idea in the Old World and in the New, all along the ages. It has already been mentioned (page 109, _supra_) that, in India, the possibility of an inter-union of two natures, and of their inter-merging into one, is recognized in the statement that “the heart of Vishnu is Sivâ, and the heart of Sivâ is Vishnu”; and it is a well-known philosophical fact that man must have an actual basis of human experience for the symbolic language with which he illustrates the nature and characteristics of Deity. In the most ancient portion of the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead,[741] there is a description of the inter-union of Osiris and Rā, not unlike that above quoted concerning Sivâ and Vishnoo. It says, that “Osiris came to Tattu (Mendes) and found the soul of Rā there; each embraced the other, and become as one soul in two souls”[742]--as one life in two lives; or, as it would be phrased concerning two human beings united in blood-friendship, “one soul in two bodies”; a common life in two personalities. Again it is said in an Egyptian sacred text, “Rā is the soul of Osiris, and Osiris is the soul of Rā.”[743]