of the) blood was an announcement that the victim was complete within and without. This announcement showed the value set on its being perfect[1]. The offering of the blood was because of the breath which is contained in it. They offered (specially) the lungs, the liver, and the heart, doing honour to those parts as the home of the breath.
21. In offering the millet and the glutinous millet, they presented the lungs along with it. In offering the various prepared liquors, they presented the bright water;—in both cases acknowledging their obligations to the dark and receding influence (in nature). In taking the fat of the inwards and burning it, and in taking the head up (to the hall), they made their acknowledgments to the bright and active influence.
22. In the bright water and the clear liquor the thing valued was their newness. All clarifying is a sort of making new. The water was called "bright" because the principal in the service had purified it.
23. When the ruler bowed twice with his head to the ground, and, with breast bared, himself applied
- ↑ From the middle of paragraph 10 to 18 inclusive is not in the expurgated edition, which closes with the nineteenth paragraph and the half of the twenty-first. I need not quote Callery's translation of this portion, but he says on it;—"Ce passage est un de ceux qui se refusent le plus à la traduction, et qui renferment, au fond, le moins d'idées claires et raisonnables. L'auteur a voulu, ce me semble, donner une explication mystique à des mots et à des coutumes qui n'en étaient point susceptibles, et il lui est arrivé, comme à certains commentateurs bibliques du moyen âge, de faire un galimatias, auquel lui même, sans doute, ne comprenait rien."—On what the author says about the hair and blood, compare vol. iii, page 370.
