EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 645 



this. Concerning certain ancient Central Americans, Herrera tells us 

 that they challenged neighboring peoples when " they wanted slaves ; 

 if the other party did not accept of the challenge, they ravaged their 

 country and cut off the noses of the slaves." And, describing a war 

 that went on during his captivity in Ashantee, Ramseyer says the 

 Ashantees spared one prisoner, " whose head was shaved, nose and 

 ears cut off, and himself made to carry the king's drum." 



Along with loss of nose occurs, in the last case, loss of ears, which 

 naturally comes next to be dealt with. This is similarly interpret- 

 able as having originated from trophy-taking, and having in some 

 cases survived ; if not as a mark of ordinary slavery, still, as a mark of 

 that other slavery which is often a punishment for crime. In ancient 

 Mexico " he who told a lie to the particular prejudice of another had 

 a part of his lip cut off, and sometimes his ears." Among the Hon- 

 duras people a thief had his goods confiscated, " and, if the theft was 

 very great, they cut off his ears and hands." One of the laws of an 

 adjacent ancient people, the Miztecs, directed the " cutting off of an 

 adulterer's ears, nose, or lips ; " and by some of the Zapotecas, " women 

 convicted of adultery had their ears and noses cut off." 



But though absence of ears seems more generally to have marked 

 a criminal than to have marked a vanquished enemy who, surviving 

 the taking of his ears as trophies, had become a slave, we may suspect 

 that it once did, among some peoples, mark an enslaved captive ; and 

 that, by mitigation, it gave rise to the method of marking a slave pre- 

 scribed of old among the Hebrews, and which still continues in the 

 East with a modified meaning. In Exodus xxi. 5, 6, we read that if, 

 after his six years' service, a purchased slave does not wish to be free, 

 his master shall "bring him to the door, or unto the door-post, and 

 his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve 

 him forever." Commenting on this ceremony, Knobel says : " In the 

 modern East, the symbol of piercing the ears is mentioned as the 

 mark of those who are dedicated. ... It expresses the belonging to 

 somebody." And since, where there grows up unqualified despotism, 

 private slavery is joined with public slavery, and the accepted theory 

 is that all subjects are the property of the ruler, we may suspect that 

 there hence results in some cases the universality of this mutilation. 

 " All the Burmese," says Sangermano, " without exception have the 

 custom of boring their ears. The day when the operation is performed 

 is kept as a festival ; for this custom holds, in their estimation, some- 

 thing of the rank that baptism has in ours." 



As bearing indirectly upon mutilations of this class, I may add the 

 curious fact named by Forsyth, that the Gond holds " his ears iu his 

 hands in token of submission." 



Jaws can be taken as trophies only from those whose lives are 

 taken. There are the teeth, however ; some of these may be extracted 



