Note 59 — Chapter I · THE GODLINGS OF NATURE.
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The same feeling is also shown in the primitive taboo, which forbids that any holy thing, such as the blood of a tribesman, should fall upon the ground. Thus we are told that Kublai Khân ordered his captive Nayan “to be wrapped in a carpet and tossed to and fro so mercilessly that he died, and the Kaan caused him to be put to death in this way, because he would not have the blood of his Line Imperial spilt upon the ground, and exposed to the eye of heaven and before the sun.” Even some savages when they are obliged to shed the blood of a member of the tribe, as at the rite of circumcision, receive it upon their own bodies. The soul, in fact, is supposed to be in the blood, and any ground on which the blood falls becomes taboo or accursed.59