In the old Scandinavian legends, there are indications of the traditional belief in the power of transferred life through a bath of blood. Siegfried, or Sigurd, a descendant of Odin, slew Fafner, a dragon-shaped guardian of ill-gotten treasure. In the hot blood of that dragon, he bathed himself, and so took on, as it were, an outer covering of new life, rendering himself sword-proof, save at a single point where a leaf of the linden-tree fell between his shoulders, and shielded the flesh from the life-imparting blood.[246] On this incident it is, that the main tragedy in the Nibelungen Lied pivots; where Siegfried’s wife, Kriemhild, tells the treacherous Hagan of her husband’s one vulnerable point: “Said she, My husband’s daring, and thereto stout of limb; Of old, when on the mountain he slew the dragon grim, In its blood he bathed him, and thence no more can feel, In his charmed person, the deadly dint of steel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . “As from the dragon’s death-wounds gushed out the crimson gore, With the smoking torrent, the warrior washed him o’er. A leaf then ’twixt his shoulders fell from the linden bough; There, only, steel can harm him; for that I tremble now.”[247] Even among the blood-reverencing Brahmans of India, there are traces of this idea, that life is to be guarded by the outpoured blood of others. In the famous old work, “Kalila wa-Dimna,” there is the story of a king, named Beladh, who had a vision in the night, which so troubled him that he sought counsel of the Brahmans. Their advice was, that he should sacrifice his favorite wife, his best loved son, his nephew, and his dearest friend, in conjunction with other valued offerings to the gods. “It will be necessary for you, O King,” they said, “when you have put to death the persons we have named to you, to fill a cauldron with their blood, and sit upon it; and when you get up from the cauldron, we, the Brahmans, assembled from the four quarters of the kingdom, will walk around you, and pronounce our incantations over you, and we will spit upon you, and wipe off from you the blood, and will wash you in water and sweet-oil, and then you may return to the palace, trusting in the protection of heaven against the danger which threatens you.”[248] Here, the king’s offering to the gods, was to be of that which was dearest to him; and the bath of blood was to prove to him a cover of life. King Beladh wisely said, that if that were the price of his safety he was ready to die. He would not prolong his life at such a cost. But the story shows the primitive estimate of the life-giving power of blood, among the Hindoos.