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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[SEPTEMBER, 1896.
a sign of very high honour. This, like other English customs, may have come from the Romans to whom a grasp of the right hand was a form of oath, a strong union of souls.77 In Scotland, a bargain is cleached by a shake of the hand.Te Among the Greeks, palm-tickling was a sign of fellowship in the Eleusinian mysteries. And the modern mystics, the Freemasons, mark with a special grip the communion of spirit among the initiated.80 Freemasons also practice a form of funeral hand-shaking. In this, which is known as the chaine d'union, the brethren form a circle round the grave, each with his arms crossed over his chest, his right hand holding his left neighbour's left and his left hand holding his right neighbour's right.81 The Coorgs of Southern India shake hands when they meet. They also shake hands over an agreement.62 In Nubia, when men have been some time separate, on meeting, they kiss and shake bands :83 the apparent object of the grip as well as of the kiss is to restore their former sameness of spirit. As a rule, the sense of the kiss-salute is to suck evil into the saluter. A few cases, like the Nubian case, seem rather to have their explanation in the attempt to secure sameness of spirit. Among Egyptian Musalmans, the son kisses the father's hand, the wife the husband's, the slave or servant the master's. If the master is a great man the servant kisses his sleeve or the hem of his garment.84 Even in this instance it seems probable that the kiss is to suck evil ont of the person salated. Still the Christian kiss of peace and kiss of charity, which all members of the early congregations interchanged, shew a wide belief that a spirit passes in a kiss. This seems to have been a Greek belief, since in the Greek salute the kiss was accompanied with an embrace,86 whose object can scarcely have been other than to secure sameness of spirit. Rubbing, like embracing, would secure sameness of spirit. When the balf-Papuan-half-Malay people of Micronesia meet, they smell each other and rub noses.86 The Black-fect North American Indians, in saluting, rub their nose on a friend's back.97 In Canada, when Red Skins meet, they rub each other's stomach, arm and head.99 In 1800, in North Scotland, when the friends of the bride and bridegroom met between Banns' Sunday and the marriage day, they rabbed shoulders. To get the infection of marriage, suggests Mr. Gregor,89 perhaps rather to secure sameness of spirit and so prevent disputes arising till the wedding was over. In Normandy and Brittany, the peasants keep up the salute of striking head against head on the two sides of the brow. Among the Dhangars of Poona, when a widow marries, a chief rite is to knock together the heads of the widow and of the bridegroom. When two people are needlessly quarrelsome, a common advice is to knock their heads together. The object in this and other head-knocking salutes may be to obtain sameness of spirit in the persons whose heads are knocked together. Still it seems more natural to suppose that the head-knocking of the quarrellers will drive out of both of them the devil of contention, and that, in the case of the Dhangar second marriage, the main object is to knock out the troublesome ghost of the deceased husband. The people of Camene salute their friends by cutting themselves and giving their friends blood to drink.02 An Ethiopian, in salating, takes the robe of the person saluted, and ties it about himself, leaving the person saluted almost naked.93 This may be a symbolic binding of the saluter, as if under the orders of the saluted. It is perhaps more probable that the root idea is to secure a sameness of spirit by binding both the saluter and the saluted with the same cloth. The sacramental forms of salute, that is, those salutes whose object is either to become possessed by the spirit saluted or to bring
TT Potter's Antiquities, Vol. I. p. 295.
18 Napier's Folk-Lore, p. 100. T9 King's Gnostics and their Remains, p. 121.
* Op. cit. p. 121. Compare Mackay'a Freemasonry, p. 351 : "Freemasons make a (special) grip of the right hand the token of a covenant of friendship. 81 Mackay's Freemasonry, p. 50.
82 Rice's Mysore, Vol. III. pp. 219, 233. 33 Burkhardt's Nubia, p. 225.
** Lane's Modern Egyptians, p. 200. # Potter's Antiquities, Vol. II. p. 370.
Reville les Religions des Peuples non Civilises, Vol. II. p. 136. 67 Op. cit. Vol. I. p. 204.
88 Op. cit. Vol. I. p. 203. 89 An Echo of the Olden Time from the North of Scotland. 9 Reville les Religions des Peuples non Civilisés, Vol. I. p. 208. 91 Bombay Gaxetteer, Vol. XVIII. p. 885. 9 Hone's Table Book, p. 187. » Op. cit. p. 187.
