That the transference of life, with all that life carries, can be made by the simplest blood-anointing, as surely as by blood absorption, is strikingly illustrated by a custom still observed among the Hill Tribes of India. The Bheels, are a brave and warlike race of mountaineers, of Hindostan. They claim to have been, formerly, the rulers of all their region; but, whether by defeat in war, or by voluntary concession, to have yielded their power to other peoples--whom they now authorize to rule in their old domain. “The extraordinary custom, common to almost all the countries [of India] that have been mentioned,” says Sir J. Malcolm,[282] “of the _tika_, or mark that is put upon the forehead of the Rajput prince, or chief, when he succeeds to power, being moistened with blood taken from the toe or thumb of a Bhill, may be received as one among many proofs of their having been formerly in possession of the principalities, where this usage prevails. ... The right of giving the blood for this ceremony, is claimed by particular families; and the belief, that the individual, from whose veins it is supplied, never lives beyond a twelvemonth, in no degree operates to repress the zeal of the Bhills to perpetuate an usage, which the Rajput princes are, without exception, desirous should cease.” The Bheels claim that the right to rule is vested in their race; but they transfer that right to the Rajpoot by a transfer of blood--which is a transfer of life and of nature. Thus the Bheels continue to rule--in the person of those who have been vivified by their blood. So, again, among the ancient Caribs, of South America, “‘as soon as a male child was brought into the world, he was sprinkled with some drops of his father’s blood’; the father ‘fondly believing, that the same degree of courage which he had himself displayed, was by these means transmitted to his son.’”[283] Here it is evident, that the voluntary transfusion of blood is deemed more potent to the strengthening of personal character, than is the transmission of blood by natural descent. In South Africa, among the Amampondo, one of the Kaffir tribes, it is customary for the chief, on his accession to authority, “to be washed in the blood of a near relative, generally a brother, who is put to death on the occasion, and his skull used as a receptacle for his blood.”[284] In order to give more life and more character than the ordinary possession to the newly elevated chieftain, the family blood is withdrawn from the veins of one having less need of it, that it may be absorbed by him who can use it more imposingly.