128 CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



sively polite, they bring a quantity of ashes or pipeclay in a piece of 

 skin, and, taking up haridl uls, rub it on the chest and upper front 

 part of each arm.&quot; 



Moreover, we are shown how in this case, as in all other 

 cases, the ceremony undergoes abridgment. Of these same 

 Balonda, Livingstone says, &quot; the chiefs go through the 

 manoeuvre of rubbing the sand on the arms, but only make 

 a feint of picking up some.&quot; On the Lower Xiger, the 

 people when making prostrations &quot; cover them [their 

 heads] repeatedly with sand; or at all events they go 

 through the motion of doing so. &quot;Women, on perceiving 

 their friends, kneel immediately, and pretend to pour sand 

 alternately over each arm.&quot; In Asia this ceremony was, 

 and still is, performed with like meaning. As expressing 

 political humiliation it was adopted by the priests who, when 

 going to implore Florus to spare the Jews, appeared &quot; with 

 dust sprinkjed in great plenty upon their heads, with bosoms 

 deprived of any covering but what was rent.&quot; In Turkey, 

 abridgments of the obeisance may yet be witnessed. At a 

 review, even officers on horseback, saluting their superiors, 

 &quot; go through the form of throwing dust over their heads; &quot; 

 and when a caravan of pilgrims started, spectators &quot; went 

 through the pantomime of throwing dirt over their heads.&quot; 

 Hebrew records prove that this sign of submission made 

 before visible persons, was made before invisible persons 

 also. Along with those blood-lettings and markings of the 

 flesh and cuttings of the hair which, at funerals, were used 

 to propitiate the ghost, there went the putting of ashes on 

 the head. The like was done to propitiate the deity; as 

 when &quot; Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon 

 his face before the ark of the Lord until the eventide, he 

 and the elders of Israel, and put dust upon their heads.&quot; 

 Even still this usage occurs among Catholics on occasions of 

 special humiliation. 



388. &quot;We must again return to that original obeisance 

 which first actually is, and then which simulates, the 



