SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 277 



TARTAR MANNERS AT FOOD. 



P. 56. 



The uncleanly modes of Tartar eating impressed me- 

 dieval travellers as much as the moderns : ' And after 

 they have eaten, or even whilst in the middle of their 

 eating, they lick their fingers with tongue and lips, and 

 wipe them on their sleeves, and afterwards, if any grease 

 still remains upon their hands, they wipe them on their 

 shoes. And thus do the folk over all those countries, 

 including western and eastern Tartars, except the Hindus, 

 who eat decently enough, though they, too, eat with their 

 hands.' '— [Y.] 



MONGOL ORIENTATION. 

 P. 64. 



It seems likely that Colonel Prejevalsky has made 

 some mistake about this right-hand and left-hand matter, 

 from the want of good interpreters. Even if the fact were, 

 as he says, that the Mongols never say * to the right ' or 

 * to the left,' but only ' to the east * or 'to the west,' this 

 would be exactly what used to be alleged of North Britons, 

 among whom, in former days, Avhen a bench in church was 

 crowded, you might have heard a request for a neighbour 

 ' to sit zvast a bit.' 



If Colonel Prejevalsky will try to define the points of 

 the compass to himself, he will find that rigJit and left, with 

 respect either to the rising or to the midday sun, are the 

 ideas on which the meaning of those points ultimately 

 depends. 



Hence, in various languages we can trace that the words 

 implying either North and South or East and West, are 

 actually words properly meaning rigJit and left. E.g. in 

 Sanskrit we have Dakshina = * dexter,' but applied to the 

 south (whence Dcecan), though the corresponding sinister 



' Friar yordaitKs, p. 10. 



