8 DANIEL WILSON ON THE RIGHT 
This preferential use of one hand as the more skilful, and hence the more honoured 
member, at an early stage in the use of weapons of war, or in the apt labours of the 
husbandman or craftsman, finds confirmation from another line of evidence. The pre- 
valence of a decimal system of numerals among widely severed nations, alike in ancient 
and modern times, has been universally ascribed to the simple process of counting with 
the aid of the fingers. Mr. Francis Galton, in his “ Narrative of an Exploration in Tropical 
Africa,” when describing the efforts of the Damaras at computation, states that the mental 
effort fails them beyond ‘ree. “ When they wish to express four, they take to their fingers, 
which are to them as formidable instruments of calculation as a sliding rule is to an 
English school-boy. They puzzle very much after five, because no spare hand remains to 
grasp and secure the fingers that are required for units.” Turning to the line of evidence 
which this primitive method of computation suggests, some striking analogies reveal a 
recognition of ideas common to the savage and to the cultivated Greek and Roman. 
Donaldson, in his “New Cratylus,’ in seeking to trace the first ten numerals to their 
primitive roots in Sanskrit, Zend, Greek and Latin, derives seven of them from the three 
primitive prenominal elements. But five, nine and ten are referred directly to the same 
infantile source of decimal notation, suggested by the ten fingers, as that which has been 
recognised in similar operation among the Hawaians and the Maoris of New Zealand. 
“One would fancy, indeed, without any particular investigation of the subject, that the 
number five would have some connection with the word signifying ‘a hand’, and the 
number {ex with a word denoting the ‘right hand’; for in covnting with our fingers we 
begin with the little finger of the left hand.” Hence the familiar idea, as expressed in its 
simplest form, where Hesoid (Op. 740) calls the hand réyro£or, the five-branch ; and 
hence also zeurad£w, primarily to count on five fingers. 4 
Bopp, adopting the same idea, considers the Sanskrit pan’-cha as formed of the copula- 
tive conjunction added to the neuter form of pa, one, and so signifying “ and one.” Benary 
explains it as an abbreviation of pén-i-cha, ‘and the hand”—the conjunction being 
equally recognisable in pan'’-cha, 7év-re and quin-que. This, they assume, expressed the idea 
that the enumerator then began to count with the other hand; but Donaldson ingeniously 
suggests the simpler meaning, that after counting four, the whole hand was opened and 
held up. To reckon by the hand was, accordingly, to make arough computation, as in the 
“Wasps,” of Aristophanes, where Bdelycleon bids his father, the dicast, “ first of all caleu- 
late roughly, not by pebbles, but amo xe1pôs, With the hand.” 
The relation of deSza to déx-a and dextra, déu-a, decem, Seu-610s, decster, illustrates the 
same idea. Grimm, indeed, says, “ In counting with the fingers, one naturally begins with 
the left hand, and so goes on tothe right. This may explain why, in different languages, 
the words for he left refer to the root of five, those for the right to the root of ten.” Hence also 
the derivation of finger, through the Gothic, and Old High German, from the stem for 
“five” and “left” ; while the Greek and Latin da@xrvios and digitus, are directly traceable 
to déexv and decem. The connexion between apiorepad and sinistra is also traced with little 
difficulty ; the sibilant of the latter being ascribed to an initial digamma, assumed in the 
archaic form of the parent vocabulary. Nor is the relationship of deS:a with digitus a 
far-fetched one. As the antique custom was to hand the wine from right to left, so it may 
be presumed that the ancients commenced counting with the left hand, in the use of that 
primitive abacus, finishing with the dexter or right hand at the tenth digit, and so 
completing the decimal numeration. 
