MUTILATIONS. 55 



it) the hand of a slain enemy, is joined to the arrows &quot; 

 another instance, added to those already given, in. which 

 hands, or parts of them, are brought home to show victory. 



We have proof that in some cases living vanquished 

 men, made Landless by this kind of trophy-taking, are 

 brought back from battle. King Osymandyas reduced the 

 revolted Bactrians; and as shown &quot; on the second wall &quot; of 

 the monument to him &quot; the prisoners are brought forward : 

 they are without their hands and members.&quot; But though a 

 conquered enemy may have one of his hands taken as a 

 trophy without much endangering his life, loss of a hand so 

 greatly diminishes his value as a slave, that some other 

 trophy is naturally preferred. 



The like cannot, however, be said of a finger. That 

 fingers are sometimes carried home as trophies we have just 

 seen; and that conquered enemies, mutilated by loss of fin 

 gers, are sometimes allowed to live as slaves, the Bible 

 yields proof. In Judges i. G, 7, we read: &quot; Adoni-bezek 

 [the Canaanite] fled; and they pursued after him, and 

 caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes. And 

 Adoni-bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their 

 thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat 

 under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me. 7 

 Hence, then, the fact that fingers are, in various places, cut 

 off and offered in propitiation of living rulers, in propitiation 

 of dead rulers, and in propitiation of dead relatives. The 

 sanguinary Fijians, extreme in their loyalty to cannibal 

 despots, yield sundry illustrations. Describing the . se 

 quence of an alleged insult, Williams says: &quot; A messenger 

 was . . . sent to the chief of the offender to demand an 

 explanation, which was forthwith given, together with the 

 fingers of four persons, to appease the angry chieftain.&quot; 

 On the occasion of a chief s death, &quot; orders were issued that 

 one hundred fingers should be cut off; but only sixty were 

 amputated, one woman losing her life in consequence.&quot; 

 Once more, a child s hand &quot; was covered with blood, which 



