156 CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



still earlier times it was employed to ascribe dignity, is in 

 ferable from the fact that during the .Merovingian period 

 in France, the kings ordered that they should be addressed 

 in the plural. Whoever fails to think that calling him 

 &quot; yon/ once served to exalt the person addressed, will be 

 aided by contemplating this perversion of speech in its 

 primitive and more emphatic shape; as in Samoa, where 

 they say to a chief &quot; Have you two come? &quot; or &quot; Are you 

 two going? &quot; 



398. Since they state in words what obeisances ex 

 press by acts, forms of address of course have the same gen 

 eral relations to social types. The parallelisms must be 

 noted. 



Speaking of the Dacotahs, who are politically unorgan 

 ized, and who had not eA T en nominal chiefs till the whites be 

 gan to make distinctions among them, Burton says &quot; Cere 

 mony and manners in our sense of the word they have 

 none; &quot; and he instances the entrance of a Dacotah into a 

 stranger s honse with a mere exclamation meaning &quot; &quot;Well.&quot; 

 Bailey remarks of the Vcddahs that in addressing others, 

 &quot; they nse none of the honorifics so profusely common in 

 Singhalese; the pronoun to* them/ being alone used, 

 whether they are addressing each other or those whose posi 

 tion would entitle them to outward respect.&quot; These cases 

 will sufficiently indicate the general fact that where there is 

 no subordination, speeches which elevate the person spoken 

 to and abase the person speaking, do not arise. Con 



versely, where personal government is absolute, verbal 

 self-humiliations and verbal exaltations of others assume 

 exaggerated forms. Among the Siamese, who are all slaves 

 of the king, an inferior calls himself dust under the feet 

 of a superior, while ascribing to the superior transcendent 

 powers; and the forms of address, even between equals, 

 avoid naming the person addressed. In China, where there 

 is no check on the power of the &quot; Imperial Supreme/ the 



