As the primitive and more natural method of commingling bloods, in the blood-covenant, by sucking each other’s veins, or by an inter-transference of blood from the mutually opened veins, was in many regions superseded by the symbolic laving, or sprinkling, or anointing, with blood; and as the blood of the lower animals was often substituted, vicariously, for human blood;--so the blood and wine which were commingled for mutual drinking in the covenant-rite, or which were together poured out in libation, when the covenant was between man and the Deity, came, it would appear, to be represented, in many cases, by the wine alone. First, we find men pledging each other in a sacred covenant, in the inter-drinking of each other’s blood mingled with wine. They called their covenant-draught, “assiratum,” or “vinum assiratum”; “wine, covenant-filled.” By and by, apparently, they came to count simple wine--“the blood of grapes”[391]--as the representative of blood and wine, in many forms of covenanting. This mutual drinking, as a covenant-pledge, has been continued as an element in the marriage ceremony, the world over, down to the present time. It would even seem that the gradual changes in the methods of this symbolic rite could be tracked, through its various forms in this ceremony, in different portions of the world. Among the wide-spreading ’Anazeh Bed´ween, the pouring out of a blood libation is still the mode of completing the marriage-covenant. “When the marriage day is fixed,” says Burckhardt,[392] “the bridegroom comes with a lamb in his arms to the tent of the father of his bride, and then, before witnesses, he cuts its throat. As soon as the blood falls upon the earth, the marriage ceremony is regarded as complete.” Among the Bed´ween of Sinai, as Palmer tells us,[393] the bride is sprinkled with the blood of the lamb, before she is surrendered to the bridegroom. Lane’s mention of the prominence of outpoured blood at the weddings of the Copts in Cairo, has already been cited.[394] Among the Arabs, since the days of Muhammad, wine has been generally abjured, and coffee now commonly takes its place as a drink, in all ordinary conferences for covenanting. In Borneo, among the Dayaks, the bride and the bridegroom sit side by side, facing the rising sun. Their parents then besprinkle them with the blood of some animal, and also with water. “Each being next presented with a cup of arrack, they mutually pour half into each other's cup, take a draught, and exchange vessels.”[395] In Burmah, among the Karens, water is poured upon the bride as she enters the bridegroom’s house. When she is received by the bridegroom, “each one then gives the other to drink, and each says to the other, ‘Be faithful to thy covenant.’ This is the proper marriage ceremony, and the parties are now married.”[396]