150 CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



knights and sometimes to esquires; &quot; tlic right noble,&quot; 

 &quot; the honourable-minded,&quot; used to gentlemen; and even 

 to men addressed as Mr., such laudatory prefixes as &quot; the 

 worthy and worshipful.&quot; Along with nattering epithets 

 there spread more involved flatteries, especially observable 

 in the East, where both are extreme. On a Chinese in 

 vitation-card the usual compliment is &quot; To what an ele 

 vation of splendour will your presence assist us to rise! &quot; 

 Tavernier, from whom I have quoted the above example 

 of scarcely credible flattery from the Court of Delhi, adds, 

 &quot; this vice passeth even unto the people; &quot; and he says that 

 his military attendant, compared to the greatest of con 

 querors, was described as making the world tremble when 

 he mounted his horse. In these parts of India at the pres 

 ent day, an ordinary official is addressed &quot; My lord, there 

 are only two who can do anything for me: God is the first, 

 and you are the second; &quot; or sometimes, as a correspondent 

 writes to me &quot; Above is God, and your honour is below; 

 i Your honour has power to do anything; ? You are our 

 king and lord; ? You are in God s place. 



On reading that in Tavernier s time a usual expression 

 in Persia was &quot; Let the king s will be done,&quot; recalling the 

 parallel expression &quot; Let God s will be done,&quot; we are 

 reminded that various of the glorifying speeches made to 

 kings parallel those made to deities. Where the militant 

 type is highly developed, and where divinity is ascribed to 

 the monarch, not only after death but before, as of old in 

 Egypt and Peru, and as now in Japan, China, and Siam, it 

 naturally results that the eulogies of visible rulers and of 

 rulers who have become invisible, are the same. Having 

 reached the extreme of hyperbole to the king when living, 

 they cannot go further to the king when dead and deified. 

 And the identity thus initiated continues through subse 

 quent stages with deities whose origins are no longer trace 

 able. 



