Note 449 — III. INDICATIONS OF THE RITE IN THE BIBLE.

Bearing in the flesh the marks of one’s devotedness to a divinity, is a widely observed custom in the East. Burton tells of the habit, in Mekkeh, of cutting three parallel gashes down the fleshy cheek of every male child; and of the claim by some that these gashes “were signs that the scarred [one] was the servant of Allah’s house” (Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medinah, third ed., p. 456). In India, there are various methods of receiving such flesh-marks of devotedness. “One of the most common consists in stamping upon the shoulders, chest, and other parts of the body, with a red-hot iron, certain marks, to represent the armor [or livery] of their gods; the impressions of which are never effaced, but are accounted sacred, and are ostentatiously displayed as marks of distinctions” (Dubois’s Des. of Man. and Cust. in India, Part III., chap. 3). “From henceforth let no man trouble me,” says Paul: “for I bear branded on my body the marks of Jesus” (Gal. 6 : 17).