[93] Judges, xix. 20. 1 Chronicles, xii. 18. Cf. Keil, Manual of Biblical Archæology, ii. 183.
[94] Laws of Manu, ii. 125.
[95] Wundt, Ethik, p. 179.
Salutations may consist not only in words spoken, but in conventional gestures, either accompanied by some verbal expression or performed silently.[96] They may be tokens of submission or reverence, as cowering, crouching, and bowing. Or they may originally have been signs of disarming or defencelessness, as uncovering some particular portion of the body. Von Jhering suggests that the offering of the hand belongs to the same group of salutations, its object being to indicate that the other person has nothing to fear;[97] but in many cases at least handshaking seems to have the same origin as other ceremonies consisting in bodily contact. Salutatory gestures may express not only absence of evil intentions but positive friendliness; among respectable Moors it is a common mode of greeting that each party places his right hand on his heart to indicate, as Jackson puts it, “that part to be the residence of the friend.”[98] Various forms of salutation by contact, such as clasping, embracing, kissing, and sniffing, are obviously direct expressions of affection;[99] and we can hardly doubt that the joining of hands serves a similar object when we find it combined with other tokens of goodwill. Among some of the Australian natives, friends, on meeting after an absence, “will kiss, shake hands, and sometimes cry over one another.”[100] In Morocco equals salute each other by joining their hands with a quick motion, separating them immediately, and kissing each his own hand. The Soolimas, again, place the palms of the right hands together, carry them then to the forehead, and from thence to the left side of the chest.[101] But bodily union is also employed as a method of transferring either blessings or conditional curses, and it seems probable that certain salutatory acts have vaguely or distinctly such transference in view. Among the Masai, who spit on each other both when they meet and when they part, spitting “expresses the greatest goodwill and the best of wishes”;[102] and in a previous chapter I have endeavoured to show that the object of certain reception ceremonies is to transfer a conditional curse to the stranger who is received as a guest.[103] On the same principle as underlies these ceremonies, handshaking may be a means of joining in compact, analogous to a common meal[104] and the blood-covenant.[105]
[96] See Tylor, ‘Salutations,’ in Encyclopædia Britannica, xxi. 235 sqq.; Ling Roth, ‘Salutations,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xix. 166 sqq.
[97] von Jhering, Der Zweck im Recht, ii. 649 sqq.
[98] Jackson, Account of Timbuctoo, &c. p. 235.
[99] See infra, on the [Origin and Development of the Altruistic Sentiment].
[100] Hackett, ‘Ballardong or Ballerdokking Tribe,’ in Curr, The Australian Race, i. 343.
[101] Laing, Travels in the Timannee, Kooranko, and Soolima Countries, p. 368.