Bengal.
The common way for illiterates to sign is to wet the tip of one finger with ink from a pen, and then touch the document (leaving a small black blot) where we touch a wafer. The mark so made is called 'tep-sai', 'tep' meaning 'pressure' by touch or grip, and 'sai' meaning 'token' (I do not know the etymology). I ask my readers now to compare the 'tep-sai' with the 'finger-print' alongside it, and to say whether the tep-sai could afford any means of identification by comparison with another blot from the same finger. Illiterates who can hold a pen make a cross, as we do, called 'dhera-sai'; others, more ambitious, indicate their caste by symbols. For the interest of the thing I give some tracings from a collection of such caste-marks which I had made for this purpose when I was Magistrate of Midnapore in 1865.
The token-signatures of those who cannot write or read, in several Castes. Year 1865. Date 8 February.
1. Cultivator; a harrow. 2. Barber; a mirror. 3. Shop-keeper; scales. 4. Carpenter; a chisel. 5. A Washerman's board. 6. Female; a bracelet. 7. Widow; a spindle. 8. Caste uncertain; scissors. 9. Family Priest; an almanac roll.
When I was introducing actual registration I asked the principal member of my Bar to give me his opinion about the new marks. His answer was as follows (the English is of course his own):
Hooghly,
The 21st Aug./77.
Dear Sir,
I have examined the impressions made in these papers, and I think each can be distinguished from the others. There are also so many peculiarities in each impression that it cannot be forged, and I think it would be a preventive to forgery if all documents, specially by females, or males who do not know to read or write, would contain impressions by fingers.
Yours faithfully,
Eshan Chundra Mitra.
I value this letter highly, for Eshan Chundra was Government Pleader at Hooghly, and in frequent request in Calcutta. No native lawyer of his large practice could have written thus if he had ever known of this method of signature before.
Trustworthy information in my hands is to the effect that attestations by the finger in China are like Bengali tep-sais, and nothing more.