EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 643 



fifteen thousand Bulgarian captives of sight, " the nation was awed 

 by this terrible example." 



Just adding that the bearing of a mutilation, thus becoming the 

 mark of a subject race, survives as a token of submission when the 

 trophy-taking which originated it has disappeared, let us now note 

 the different kinds of mutilations, and the ways in which they sev- 

 erally enter into the three forms of control political, religious, and 

 social. 



When the Araucanians on going to war send messengers summon- 

 ing confederate tribes, these messengers carry certain arrows as their 

 credentials; and, "if hostilities are actually commenced, the finger 

 or (as Alcedo will have it) the hand of a slain enemy is joined to the 

 arrows" another instance added to those already given, in which 

 hands cut off are brought home to show victory. 



"We have proof that in some cases living vanquished men, made 

 handless by this kind of trophy-taking, are brought back from battle. 

 King Osymandyas reduced the revolted Bactrians ; and " on the sec- 

 ond wall " of the monument to him " the prisoners are brought for- 

 ward : they are without their hands and members." But, though a 

 conquered enemy may have one of his hands taken as a trophy with- 

 out much endangering his life, loss of a hand so greatly diminishes 

 his value as a slave that some other trophy is naturally preferred. 



The like cannot, however, be said of a finger. That fingers are 

 sometimes carried home as trophies we have seen ; and that conquered 

 enemies, mutilated by loss of fingers, are sometimes allowed to live as 

 slaves, the Bible yields proof. In Judges i. 6, 7, we read : " Adoni- 

 bezek [the Canaanite] fled ; and they pursued after him, and caught 

 him, and cut off his thumbs and his great-toes. And Adoni-bezek 

 said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great- 

 toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table : as I have done, so 

 God hath requited me." Hence, then, the fact that fingers are, in va- 

 rious places, cut off and offered in propitiation of living rulers, in pro- 

 pitiation of dead rulers, and in propitiation of dead relatives. The san- 

 guinary Feejeeans, extreme in their loyalty to cannibal despots, yield 

 sundry illustrations. Describing the sequence of an alleged insult, 

 Williams says : " A messenger was .... sent to the chief of the 

 offender to demand an explanation, which was forthwith given, to- 

 gether with the fingers of four persons, to appease the angry chief- 

 tain." Again, on the occasion of a chief's death, " orders were issued 

 that one hundred fingers should be cut off; but only sixty were am- 

 putated, one woman losing her life in consequence." And once more: 

 a child's hand "was covered with blood, which flowed from the 

 stump where, shortly before, his little-finger had been cut off, as a 

 token of affection for his deceased father." This propitiation of the 

 dead by offering amputated fingers occurs elsewhere. When, among 



