FINGEK-PRINT SYSTEM — LAUFER. 635 



Dictionary, one pertaining to bills of divorce which, are authenticated 

 by a print of the hand of the husband, and the phrase ta shou yin, 

 "to produce a hand seal"; that is, to make an impress with the 

 blackened pahn.^ 



The Chmese origin of the fmger-print system has been upheld by 

 several writers on the subject.^ The correspondent of the Evening 

 Post quoted at the beginning of this paper said: "As a matter of fact, 

 it is one of those cherished western institutions that the Chinese have 

 calmly clauned for then- own, and those who doubt this may be con- 

 vinced by actual history, showing it to have been employed in the 

 police courts of British India for a generation or so back." In 1908 

 Prof. Giles,^ the well-lvnown smologue, wi'ote: "It should always be 

 remembered that the wonderful system of identification by finger 

 prints was borrowed straight from China, where it has been in vogue 

 for many centuries." But this "straight from China" is the very 

 difficult point in the matter. While the chronological priority of the 

 Chinese in the practice of finger prints may be satisfactorily estab- 

 lished, there is no evidence to show that Herschel received a stimulus 

 directly from China, nor that the people of India, from whom Herschel 

 may well have borrowed the idea, were ever influenced m this direc- 

 tion by the Chinese. As a matter of principle it should be stated that 

 it is most unlikely that a complex series of ideas as presented by the 

 finger-print process was several times evolved by different nations 



1 It should not be supposed that this is a common Chinese practice. It may be a local custom of which 

 Schlegel heard in Amoy or its vicinity, where he derived his knowledge. The Chinese marriage and divorce 

 laws (comp. P. Hoang, Le mariage chinois au point de vue l(5gal, Shanghai, 1898) make no reference to 

 such procedure. J. Doolittle (Social Life of the Chinese, London, 1S6.S, p. 75) has the following: "It is 

 not necessary for the husband, In giving a bill of divorcement to his wife, to do it in the presence of an 

 officer of the Government as witness in order to make it legal. Ho does it on his own authority and in 

 his own name. It is often ^vritten in the presence of her parents and in their house. Very few divorces 

 occur in China." In a recent work (Dr. L. Wieger's Moral Tenets and Customs in China. Texts in 

 Chinese, translated and annotated by L. Davrout, Ilo-kien-fu, 1913, on plate opposite p. 193) is illustrated 

 a divorce bill stamped with the hand and foot of the husband in black ink. It is remarked in the text 

 that tne impress of a finger is sometimes used as a seal, that the paper would be invalid without such a 

 stamp, and that in case of contestation the document thus stamped proves the divorce. 



2 In the second chapter of his "Finger Prints," wliicli treats of the iirevious use of them, Galton refers 

 also to many impressions of fingers found on ancient pottery, as on Roman tiles. These nail marks, used 

 ornamentally by potters, especially in prehistoric pottery, are well known to every archeologist, but they 

 move on a line in psycliological and technical regard entirely ditferoiit from the finger-print system and 

 can not by any means be connected with its history, as Galton incUnes to establish. Thus also the coin 

 of the T'ang dj-nasty, "bearing a nail mark of the Empress Wen-te in relief" and flgined by Galton, does 

 not belong at all to this category. The Chinese works on numismatics (e. g., K'in-ting ts'ien lu, ch. 11, 

 p. 2,ch.lG, p.l4) explain this mark occurringonmany issues of the T'ang and Sung djoiasties— apparently 

 the mark of a mint— as a picture of the crescent of the moon. Ilandcock (Mesopotamian Archeology, Lon- 

 don, 1912, p. 83) has an allusion to "fmger-marked bricks" of the Sargon period. This vague hint, from 

 which no inference whatever as to the use of these marks for identification can be dra\v^l, has led astray a 

 well-known egyptologist into proclaiming the origin of tlie hivention of finger prhils in Babylonia, but as 

 this statement appeared only in sensational newspaper reports, I refrain from discussing it. Finger marks 

 may naturally arise anywhere where potters handle bricks or jars, but every expert in finger prints will agree 

 with me that these are so superficial as to render them useless for identification. A clear and useful finger 

 impression in clay presupposes a willful and energetic action, while the potter touches the clay but slightly. 

 However this may be, we are not willing to admit as evidence for a finger-print system any finger marks 

 of whatever kind occurring in pottery of any part of the world, unless strict proof can be furnished that 

 such marks have actually served for the purpose of identification. 



s Adversaria Sinica, No. 6, p. 183. 



