RIOHTHANDEDNESS. 213 



tion with the word signifying a hand, and the number ten with a word 

 denoting the right hand; for in counting with our fingers we begin 

 vrith the little finger of the left hand, and so on till we get to the little 

 finger of the right hand." Hence the familiar idea, as expressed in its 

 simplest form, where Hesiod (Op. 740) calls the hand T.ivroZov^ the 

 five-branch ; and hence also T:afj-d!^co, primarily to count ou five fingers. 



Bopp, adopting the same idea, considers the Sanscrit pan'-cha as 

 formed of the copulative conjunction added to the neuter form of pa, 

 one, and so signifying "and one." Benary explains it as an abbrevia- 

 tion of pan' i-cha, "and the hand;" the conjunction being equally 

 recognisable in pan'-cha, quin-que, and Ttiv-re. 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 a rough computation, as 

 in the "Wasps" of Aristophanes, where Bdelycleon bids his father, 

 theDicast, "first of all calculate roughly, not by pebbles, but, a-Ko ^sipoq, 

 with the hand." 



The relation of ds^id to dixa and dextra, di/.-a decern, 8sy.-(Tc6<;, decster, 

 all illustrate the same idea. Grimm, indeed, says, "In counting with 

 the fingers, one naturally begins with the left hand, and so goes on to 

 the right. This may explain why, in different languages, the words 

 for the left refer to the root of Jive, 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 Jive and left; while the Greek 

 and Latin ddxTuXo<; and digitus, are directly traceable to dixa and decern. 

 The connexion between apicrrspd and sinistra is also traced with little 

 diflSiculty, the sibilant of the latter being ascribed to an initial digarama, 

 assumed in the archaic form of the parent vocabulary. Nor is the 

 relationship of ds^id 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 countiog 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. 



The inferior relation of the left to the right hand was also in(^icated 

 in the use of the former for lower, and the latter for higher numbers 

 beyond ten. In reckoning with their fingers, both Greeks and Romans 

 counted on the left hand as far as a hundred, then on the right hand to 

 two hundred, and so on alternately, the even numbers being always 



