It is a common opinion, that in no part of the world is there a more general prejudice against blood-shedding, or the taking of animal life, than in India. And it certainly is a fact, that the great religious systems, of Brahmanism and of Booddhism, which have controlled the moral sense of the peoples of India for a score or two of centuries, have exerted themselves, in the main, to the inculcation of these views as to the sacredness of blood and of life--or of blood which is life. Hence, we would naturally look, in India, only for traces, or vestiges, of the primitive, world-wide idea of inter-communion with God, or with the gods, through a divine-human inter-union by blood. Nor are such traces and vestiges lacking in the religious customs of India. In India, as in China, human sacrifices, especially the sacrifice of the first-born son, were formerly made freely, as a means of bringing the offerer into closer relations with the gods, through the outpoured blood.[317] It was the blood, as the life, which was believed to be the common possession of gods, men, and beasts; hence the final substitution, in India, of beasts for men, in the blood-covenanting with the gods. On this point, the evidence seems clear. The Vedas, or sacred books of the Brahmans, teach, indeed, that the gods themselves were mere mortals, until by repeated offerings of blood in sacrifice, to the Supreme Being, they won immortality from him; which is only another way of making the claim, put forward by the immortalized-mortal, in the Book of the Dead, of ancient Egypt, that the mortal became one with the gods through an interflow of a common life in the common blood of the two. Mortals gave the blood of their first-born sons in sacrifice to the Supreme Being. Then the Supreme Being gave the blood of his first-born male in sacrifice. Thus, the nature of the favored mortals and the nature of the Supreme Being became one and the same. Dr. Monier Williams cites freely from the Vedas in the direction of this great truth; although he does not note its bearing on the blood-covenant rite. Thus, in “the following free translation of a passage of the Satapatha-brāhmana: ‘The gods lived constantly in dread of Death-- The mighty Ender--so, with toilsome rites They worshiped, and repeated sacrifices, Till they became immortal.’” “And again in the Taittirīya-brāhmana: ‘By means of the sacrifice the gods obtained heaven.’” In the Tāndya-brāhmanas: “The lord of creatures offered himself a sacrifice for the gods.” “And again, in the Satapatha-brāhmana: ‘He who, knowing this, sacrifices with the _Purusha-medha_, or sacrifice of the primeval male, becomes everything.’”[318]