Turning, however, to the languages of the East, where the binding vow of blood-friendship was pledged in the drink of wine and blood, or of blood alone, from time immemorial, we have no difficulty in finding the meaning of “assir.” _Asar_ (אָסַר) is a common Hebrew word, signifying “to bind together”--as in a mutual covenant. _Issar_ (אִסָּר), again, is a vow of self-renunciation. Thus we have _Asar issar ’al nephesh_ (נֶפֶשׁ עַל אִסָּר אָסַר) “To bind a self-devoting vow upon one’s life”[120]--upon one’s blood; “for the blood is the life.”[121] In the Arabic, also, _asara_ (اسر) means “to bind,” or “to tie”; while _asar_ (اسر) is “a covenant,” or “a compact”; and _aswâr_ (اسوار) is “a bracelet”; which in itself is “a band,” and may be “a fetter.”[122] So, again, in the Assyrian, _esiru_ ([Illustration]) is in its root form “to bind”; and as a substantive it is “a bracelet,” or “a fetter.”[123] The Syriac gives _esar_ ([Illustration]), “a bond,” or “a belt.”[124] All these, with the root idea, “to bind”--as a covenant binds. In the light of these disclosures, it is easy to see how the “issar” or the “assar,” when it was a covenant of blood, came to be counted by the Latins the blood which was a covenant. 7. THE BOND OF THE COVENANT. Just here it may be well to emphasize the fact, that, from time immemorial, and the world over, the armlet, the bracelet, and the ring, have been counted the symbols of a boundless bond between giver and receiver; the tokens of a mutual, unending covenant. Possibly,--probably, as I think,--this is in consequence of the primitive custom of binding, as an amulet, the enclosed record--enclosed in the “house of the amulet”[125]--of the covenant of blood on the arm of either participant in that rite; possibly, again, it is an outgrowth of the common root idea of a covenant and a bracelet, as a binding agency.