[173] See Harper's _Latin Dictionary_, s. vv. "sal," "salio," "saltus." It is evident that the primitive popular mind recognized salt as a peculiarly acceptable offering in sacrifice to God or the gods, and that its very name in various combinations seemed to suggest the aspiring or uprising heavenward. X SALT IN EXORCISM AND DIVINATION The line between sacrificial offerings and offerings for the purpose of exorcising evil spirits, or of propitiating good spirits, is not always a clear line even in the mind of the offerer; but there are uses of salt among primitive peoples which must be placed under the head of exorcisms and divinations, and as an accompaniment of incantations, rather than under the head of sacrifices, even though they may be only perversions of the original idea of sacrifice. Burckhardt tells of the burning of salt, by way of exorcism, among the people of Daraon, on the borders of Upper Egypt and Nubia. His caravan was about being loaded for a journey. "Just before the lading commenced," he says, "the Ababde women appeared with earthen vessels in their hands, filled with burning coals. They set them before the several loads, and threw salt upon them. At the rising of the bluish flame produced by the burning of the salt, they exclaimed, 'May you be blessed in going and in coming!' The devil and every evil genius are thus, they say, removed."[174] [174] Burckhardt's _Travels in Nubia_, p. 157. Among Muhammadan Arabs, in and out of Egypt, salt is sprinkled on the floors of every apartment in the houses, on the last night of the month of Ramadan, accompanied by the words, "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful!" This is because the evil jinn, or genii, are supposed to be confined in prison during that month, and the sprinkling of salt, with the prescribed invocation, ensures protection from them as they renew their work of harm. Salt is also sprinkled on the floor after the birth of a child, as a propitiatory offering for mother and child, against the influence of the evil eye.[175] [175] Lane's _Arabian Society in the Middle Ages_, pp. 41, 188. In China, on the eve of the new year, salt is thrown into the fire, and the manner of its burning is taken as an indication, favorable or unfavorable, for the coming year. It is a species of divination by salt.[176] In Japan, the burning of salt, or the offering it in this way to the gods, is a propitiatory sacrifice in time of danger; and it is scattered at the threshold for a similar purpose after a funeral.[177] In Syria, also, the burning of a lump of salt in the fire is resorted to as a means of exorcising the malevolent spirit which afflicts one through the "evil eye."[178] [176] Doolittle's _Social Life of the Chinese_, II., 58 f. [177] Griffis's _Mikado's Empire_, pp. 467, 470; Bird's _Untrodden Tracks in Japan_, I., 392. [178] George A. Ford, in _The Church at Home and Abroad_, Dec., 1889, p. 501.