714 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
outline of their extended hand, thus leaving the portions of rock covered perfectly 
clean, whilst the space between their fingers and elsewhere around about becomes 
covered with the black substance. This drawing is not very common. I found sey- 
eral specimens near the Sabdover river. I have, however, been informed that it has 
been seen in other and distant parts of Australia. 
Renan (a@) says in the chapter on the Nomad Semites: 
The real monuments of the period were, as in the case with all people who can not 
write, the stones which they reared, the columns erected in memory of some event, 
and upon which was often represented a hand, whence the name of iad [finger post]. 
Major Conder (c) writes that in Jerusalem a rough representation of 
a hand is marked by the native races on the wall of every house while 
building. Some authorities connect it with the five names of God, and 
it is generally considered to avert the evil eye. The Moors generally, 
and especially the Arabs in Kairwan, apply paintings of red hands 
above the doors and on the columns of their houses as talismans to 
drive away the envious. Similar hand prints are found in the ruins of 
El] Baird near Petra. Some of the quaint symbolism connected with 
horns is supposed to originate from such hand marks. The same people 
make the gesture against the evil eye by extending the five fingers of 
the left hand. 
H. Clay Trumbull (b) gives the following: 
It is a noteworthy fact that among the Jews in Tunis, near the old Phenician 
settlement of Carthage, the sign of a bleeding hand is still an honored and a sacred 
symbol as if in recognition of the covenant-bond of their brotherhood and friendship. 
“What struck me most in all the houses,” says a traveler (Chevalier de Hesse- 
Wartege) among these Jews, ‘‘ was the impression of an open bleeding hand on every 
wall of each floor. However white the walls, this repulsive (yet suggestive) sign 
was to be seen everywhere.” 
The following is extracted from Panjab Notes and Queries, Vol. 1, 
No. 1 (October, 1883), p. 2: 
At the Temple of Balasundari Devi at Tilokputr, near Nahan, the priests stamp a 
red hand on the left breast of the coat of a pilgrim who visits the temple for the first 
time to show that he has, as it were, paid for his footing. If the pilgrim again visits 
the temple and can show the stamp he pays only 4 annas as his fee to the priests. 
Gen. A. Hontum-Schindler, Teheran, Persia, in a letter of December 
19, 1888, tells: 
All through Persia, principally in villages though, a rough representation of a 
hand, or generally the imprint of a right hand, in red, may be seen on the wall or 
over the door of a house whilst in building, or on the wall of a mosque, booth, or 
other public building. It is probably an ancient custom, although the Persians con- 
nect it with Islam, and they say that the hand represents that of Albas, a brother of 
Husain (a grandson of the prophet Mohammed), who was one of the victims at the 
massacre of Kerbela in 680, and who had his right hand cut off by el Abrad ibu _ 
Shaibin. In India I have noticed similar marks, hands, or simply red streaks. 
In Journal of the Proc. Royal Soc. Antiq., Ireland, I, 3, fifth series, 
1890, p. 247, is the following: 
The hand an emblem of good luck in Ireland.—In Maj. Conder’s “Syrian Stone 
Lore,” published for the Palestine Exploration Committee by Bentley & Son (1886), 
p. 71, occurs the following passage: ‘‘Among other primitive emblems used by the 
