i 5 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



marks of submission were carried to great extremes, an instance has al- 

 ready been given indicating the natural genesis of this action. A sign of 

 humility in ancient Peru was to have the hands bound and a rope round 

 the neck ; that is, the condition of captives was simulated. Proof that 

 it has been a common practice to make prisoners of war defenseless by 

 tying their hands is superfluous ; and, indeed, the fact that, among our- 

 selves, men charged with crimes are handcuffed by the police when 

 taken, sufficiently shows how obviously suggested is this method of ren- 

 dering prisoners impotent. If there needs further reason for conclud- 

 ing that bound hands, at first distinguishing the conquered man, hence 

 came to be an adopted mark of subjection, we have it in two strange 

 customs found in Africa and China respectively. When the King cf 

 Uganda returned the visit of Captains Speke and Grant, " his brothers, 

 a mob of little ragamuffins, several in handcuffs, sat behind him. . . . 

 It was said that the king, before coming to the throne, always went 

 about in irons, as his small brothers now do." And then, of the Chinese, 

 Doolittle tells us that " on the third day after the birth of a child .... 

 the ceremony of binding its wrists is observed. . . . These things are 

 worn until the child is fourteen days old .... sometimes .... for 

 several months, or even for a } r ear. ... It is thought that such a tying 

 of the wrists will tend to keep the child from being troublesome in after- 

 life." 



Such indications of its origin, joined with such examples of derived 

 practices, force on us the inference that raising the joined hands as part 

 of that primitive obeisance signifying absolute submission was in real- 

 ity offering of the hands to be bound. The above-described attitude of 

 the Khond exhibits the act in its original form ; and on reading in Hue 

 that "the Mongol hunter saluted us, with his clasped hands raised to 

 his forehead," or in Drury that when the Malagasy approach a great man 

 they hold the hands up in a supplicatory form, we cannot doubt that this 

 position of the hands now expresses reverence because it originally im- 

 plied subjugation. Of the Siamese, so abject in their political condition 

 and so servile in their usages, La Loubere says, " If you extend your hand 

 to a Siamese, to place it in his, he carries both his hands to yours as if 

 to place himself entirely in your power." And that the presentation of 

 the joined hands has the meaning here suggested is otherwise shown us. 

 In Unyanyembe, " when two of them meet, the Wezee puts both his 

 palms together, these are gently clasped by the Watusi" (a man of a 

 more powerful race) ; and in Sumatra the salutation "consists in bend- 

 ing the body, and the inferior's putting his joined hands between those 

 of the superior, and then lifting them to his forehead." By these cases 

 we are reminded that a kindred act was once a form of submission in 

 Europe. When doing homage, the vassal, on his knees, placed his 

 joined hands between the hands of his suzerain. 



That here, again, an attitude signifying political subordination be- 

 comes an attitude of religious devotion, scarcely needs pointing out. 



