CEREMONIAL RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 221 



king, whose &quot; palace must not be passed without marks of 

 reverence &quot; duly prescribed, and &quot; severe punishments fol 

 low any inattention to these requirements,&quot; and where, in 

 social intercourse, &quot; mistakes in these kinds of duties [obei 

 sances] may be punished with the baton by him against 

 whom they have been committed.&quot; 



Along with this rigour of ceremonial rule we find great 

 deiiniteness. In Fiji there are &quot; various forms of saluta 

 tion, according to the rank of the parties ; and great attention 

 is paid to insure that the salutation shall have the proper 

 form: &quot; such precision naturally arising where loss of life or 

 fingers follows breach of observance. A kindred precision 

 is similarly caused in the tyrannically-governed African 

 kingdoms, such as Loango, where a king killed his own son, 

 and had him quartered, because the son happened to see 

 his father drink; or such as Ashantee, where there is much 

 &quot; punctilious courtesy, and a laboured and ceremonious 

 formality.&quot; And this defiiiiteness characterizes observ 

 ances under the despotisms of the remote East. Of the 

 Siamese La Loubere says &quot; In the same ceremonies they 

 always say almost the same things. The king of Siam him 

 self has his words almost told [ contees] in his audiences of 

 ceremony.&quot; So, too, in China, in the imperial hall of audi 

 ence &quot;stones are inlaid with plates of brass, on which are en 

 graved in Chinese characters the quality of the persons who 

 are to stand or kneel upon them; &quot; and as Hue says, &quot; it is 

 easier to be polite in China than elsewhere, as politeness is 

 subject to more fixed regulations.&quot; Japan, also, shows us 

 this precise adjustment of the observance to the occasion : 

 11 The marks of respect to superiors . . . are graduated 

 from a trifling acknowledgment to the most absolute pros 

 tration.&quot; &quot; This state of things is supported by law as well 

 as custom, and more particularly by the permission given to 

 a two-sworded man, in case of him feeling himself insulted, 

 to take the law into his own hands.&quot; ISTor does Europe in its 

 most militant country, autocratically ruled, fail to yield an 



