Thus far philological evidence clearly points to a very wide prevalence of the recognition of right-handedness; and when we turn from this to the oldest sources of direct historical evidence, the references abundantly confirm the same conclusions. The earliest ascertained historical record of left-handed dexterity is familiar to all. The references to this in the Book of Judges show that the skill of the left-handed among the tribe of Benjamin was specially noted, while at the same time the very form of the record marks the attribute as exceptional; and all the more so as occurring in the tribe whose patronymic—ben yamin, the son of the right hand,—so specially indicates the idea of honour and dignity constantly associated with the right hand throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. When, as we read in the Book of Judges, the Lord raised up as a deliverer of Israel from the oppression of Eglon, King of Moab, Ehud, the son of Gera, he was a Benjamite, a man left-handed. He accordingly fashioned for himself a two-edged dagger, which he girt under his raiment upon his right thigh; and thus armed he presented himself as the bearer of a present from the children of Israel to the king, and sought a private interview, saying, “I have a secret errand unto thee, O king.” The special fitness of the left-handed emissary, as best suited for the daring act required of him, is in itself a proof that it was an exceptional attribute. The express mention that he girded his dagger on his right thigh is significant. It was doubtless assumed that when he reached with his left hand towards the weapon concealed under his raiment, the motion would not excite suspicion. A later chapter of the same venerable historical record furnishes the account of a body of seven hundred chosen marksmen, all left-handed, selected from the same tribe for their pre-eminent skill. The incident is noteworthy, and recalls the mode of selection of the three hundred chosen men with whom Gideon overthrew the Midianites. As the host of Israel passed over a stream their leader noted that the greater number, pausing, stooped down on their knees and tarried to drink; but the hardy warriors, eager for the fight, hastily dipped up the water in their hand, and snatching a draught passed on. By these did Gideon, the son of Joash, discomfit the hosts of the Midianites. The number of the left-handed Benjamites does not furnish any evidence that this specialty was more prevalent among them than other tribes. But it is not difficult to conceive of some resolute combatant, endowed with the capacity of a leader, and conscious of his own skill in the use of his weapons in his dexterous left hand, banding together under his leadership a company selected on account of their manifesting the same exceptional dexterity. With this as the indispensable requisite, he was able to muster a body of seven hundred marksmen, all men of his own tribe, every one of whom was left-handed, and could sling stones at a hair’s-breadth and not miss. To the naturally left-handed man such dexterity is in no degree surprising. Among the instinctively left-handed, those with whom the bias is slight readily yield to the influence of example and education, and so pass over to the majority. Only those in whom the propensity is too strong to yield to such influences remain. They are, therefore, exceptionally dexterous with their left hand; and are thus not only distinguished from the equally expert right-handed, but are, still more, an exception to the large majority in whom the bias is so slight, and the dexterity so partial, that their practice is little more than a compliance with the usage of the majority.
It is important to keep in view the fact that the relative numbers furnished by the narrative in the Book of Judges do not suggest that the tribe of Benjamin differed in the above respect from other tribes. Of twenty-six thousand Benjamites that drew the sword, there were the seven hundred left-handed slingers, or barely 2·7 per cent, which does not greatly differ from the proportion noted at the present time. In the song of triumph for the avenging of Israel over the Canaanites, in the same Book of Judges, the deed of vengeance by which Sisera, the captain of the host of Jabin, King of Canaan, perished by the hand of a woman, is thus celebrated: “She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workman’s hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera.” Here, as we see, while their deliverer from the oppression of the Moabites is noted as a Benjamite, a left-handed man; Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, is blessed above women, who with her right hand smote the enemy of God and her people. Along with those references may be noted one of a later date, recorded in the first Book of Chronicles. When David was in hiding from Saul at Ziklag there came to him a company of Saul’s brethren of Benjamin, mighty men, armed with bows, who could use both the right hand and the left in hurling stones and shooting arrows out of a bow. These latter, it will be observed, are noted not as left-handed, but ambidextrous; but this is characteristic of all left-handed persons as an inevitable result of education or compliance with the prevailing usage; though even amongst them the unwonted facility with both hands rarely, if ever, entirely supersedes the greater dexterity of the left hand. Possibly the patronymic of the tribe gave significance to such deviations from normal usage; but either for this or some unnoted reason the descendants of Benjamin, the Son of the Right Hand, appear to have obtained notoriety for exceptional aptitude in the use of either hand.
CHAPTER VII
THE COMPASS POINTS
Guided by my own personal experience, now extending over a good deal more than threescore and ten years, the Benjamites of Saul’s host, who could hurl stones with equal facility by either hand, seem to me greatly more surprising and exceptional than the left-handed company of seven hundred, every one of whom could sling stones at a hair’s-breadth and not miss. It is contrary to the nearly universal and almost inevitable preferential use of one hand. It naturally followed on such preference that this unvarying employment led not only to its receiving a distinctive appellation, but that the term so used came to be associated with ideas of dignity, honour, and trust; and as such is perpetuated in the languages both of civilised and savage races. But this suggests another inquiry of important significance in the determination of the results. The application of the Latin dexter to “right-handedness” specifically, as well as to general dexterity in its more comprehensive sense, points, like the record of the old Benjamites, to the habitual use of one hand in preference to the other; but does it necessarily imply that their “right hand” was the one on that side which we now concur in calling dexter or right? In the exigencies of war or the chase, and still more in many of the daily requirements of civilised life, it is necessary that there should be no hesitation as to which hand shall be used. Promptness and dexterity depend on this, and no hesitation is felt. But, still further, in many cases of combined action it is needful that the hand so used shall be the same; and wherever such a conformity of practice is recognised the hand so used, whichever it be, is that on which dexterity depends, and becomes practically the right hand. The term yamin, “the right hand,” already noted as the root of the proper name Benjamin, and of the tribe thus curiously distinguished for its left-handed warriors and skilled marksmen, is derived from the verb yāmăn, to be firm, to be faithful, as the right hand is given as a pledge of fidelity, e.g. “The Lord hath sworn by his right hand” (Isa. lxii. 8). So in the Arabic form, bimin Allah, by the right hand of Allah. So also with the Hebrews and other ancient nations, as still among ourselves, the seat at the right hand of the host, or of any dignitary, was the place of honour; as when Solomon “caused a seat to be set for the king’s mother; and she sat on his right hand” (1 Kings ii. 19). Again, the term is frequently used in opposition to semol, left hand; as when the children of Israel would pass through Edom; “We will go by the king’s high way; we will not turn to the right hand nor to the left” (Num. xx. 17).
But a further use and significance of the terms helps us to the fact that the Hebrew yamin and our right hand are the same. In its secondary meaning it signified the “south,” as in Ezekiel xlvii. 1: “The forefront of the house stood toward the east, and the waters came down from under from the right side of the house, at the south side of the altar.” The four points are accordingly expressed thus in Hebrew: yamin, the right, the south; kedem, the front, the east; semol, the left, the north; achor, behind, the west. To the old Hebrew, when looking to the east, the west was thus behind, the south on his right hand, and the north on his left. This determination of the right and left in relation to the east is not peculiar to the Hebrews. Many nations appear to have designated the south in the same manner, as being on the right hand when looking to the east. Its origin may be traced with little hesitation to the associations with the most ancient and dignified form of false worship, the paying divine honours to the Sun, as he rises in the east, as the Lord of Day. Thus we find in the Sanskrit dakshina, right hand, south; puras, in front, eastward; apara, paçchima, behind, west; uttara, northern, to the left. The old Irish has, in like manner, deas or ders, on the right, southward; oirthear, in front, east; jav, behind, west; tuath, north, from thuaidh, left. An analogous practice among the Eskimos, though suggested by a different cause, illustrates a similar origin for the terms “right” and “left.” Dr. H. Fink in a communication to the Anthropological Institute (June 1885) remarks: “To indicate the quarters of the globe, the Greenlanders use at once two systems. Besides the ordinary one, they derive another from the view of the open sea, distinguishing what is to the left and to the right hand. The latter appears to have been the original method of determining the bearings, but gradually the words for the left and the right side came to signify at the same time ‘south’ and ‘north.’”
A diverse idea is illustrated by the like secondary significance of the Greek σκαιός, left, or on the left hand; but also used as “west,” or “westward,” as in the Iliad, iii. 149, σκαιαὶ πύλαι, the west gate of Troy. The Greek augur, turning as he did his face to the north, had the left—the sinister, ill-omened, unlucky side,—on the west. Hence the metaphorical significance of ἀριστερός, ominous, boding ill. But the Greeks had also that other mode of expressing the right and left already referred to, derived from their mode of bearing arms. Ancient sculpture, the paintings on tombs and fictile ware, Egyptian, Assyrian, and classic statuary, all illustrate the methods of carrying the shield, and of wielding the sword or spear. Hence the shield-hand became synonymous with the left. The word ἀριστερός has also been interpreted as “the shield-bearing arm.”
Among the Romans we may trace some survival of the ancient practice of worshipping towards the east, as in Livy, i. 18, where the augurs are said to turn the right side to the south, and the left side to the north. But the original significance of turning to the east had then been lost sight of; and the particular quarter of the heavens towards which the Roman augur was to look appears to have been latterly very much at the will of the augur himself. It was, at any rate, variable. Livy indicates the east, but Varro assigns the south, and Frontinus the west. Probably part of the augur’s professional skill consisted in selecting the aspect of the heavens suited to the occasion. But this done, the flight of birds and other appearances on the right or on the left determined the will of the gods. “Why,” asks Cicero, himself an augur, “why should the raven on the right and the crow on the left make a confirmatory augury?” “Cur a dextra corvus, a sinistra cornix faciat ratum?” (De Divin. i.) The left was the side on which the thunder was declared to be heard which confirmed the inauguration of a magistrate, and in other respects the augur regarded it with special awe. But still the right side was, in all ordinary acceptance, the propitious one, as in the address to Hercules (Æn. viii. 302)—
Salve, vera Jovis proles, pecus addite divis;
Et nos et tua dexter adi pede sacra secundo.
The traces of a term of common origin for right (south) in so many of the Indo-European languages is interesting and suggestive, though the ultimate word is still open to question. How the equivalent terms run through the whole system may be seen from the following illustrations: Sanskrit, dakshina (cf. deccan); Zend, dashina; Gothic, taihs-vo; O.H. German, zëso; Lithuanian, deszine; Gaelic, dheas; Erse, dess (deas); Latin, dexter; Greek, δεξιός, etc. The immediate Sanskrit stem daksh means “to be right, or fitting”; secondarily, “to be dexterous, clever,” etc. This is evidently from a root dek, as the western languages show. It was usual at an earlier period to trace the whole to the root dik, to show, to point; but this is now given up. Probably the Greek δέκ-ομαι (δέχομαι), take, receive, preserves the original stem, with the idea primarily of “seizing, catching.” This leads naturally to a comparison of δάκτ-υ-λος, finger, and dig-i-tus, δοκ-ά-νη, fork, etc. (see Curtius’s Outlines of Greek Etymology).