1618.—"The King (Shāh 'Abbās) halted and looked at the Sultan, the latter on both knees, as is their fashion, near him, and advanced his right foot towards him to be kissed. The Sultan having kissed it, and touched it with his forehead ... made a circuit round the king, passing behind him, and making way for his companions to do the like. This done the Sultan came and kissed a second time, as did the other, and this they did three times."—P. della Valle, i. 646.
[c. 1686.—"Job (Charnock) made a salam Koornis, or low obeisance, every second step he advanced."—Orme, Fragments, quoted in Yule, Hedges' Diary, Hak. Soc. ii. xcvii.]
1816.—"Lord Amherst put into my hands ... a translation ... by Mr. Morrison of a document received at Tongchow with some others from Chang, containing an official description of the ceremonies to be observed at the public audience of the Embassador.... The Embassador was then to have been conducted by the Mandarins to the level area, where kneeling ... he was next to have been conducted to the lower end of the hall, where facing the upper part ... he was to have performed the ko-tou with 9 prostrations; afterwards he was to have been led out of the hall, and having prostrated himself once behind the row of Mandarins, he was to have been allowed to sit down; he was further to have prostrated himself with the attendant Princes and Mandarins when the Emperor drank. Two other prostrations were to have been made, the first when the milk-tea was presented to him, and the other when he had finished drinking."—Ellis's Journal of (Lord Amherst's) Embassy to China, 213-214.
1824.—"The first ambassador, with all his following, shall then perform the ceremonial of the three kneelings and the nine prostrations; they shall then rise and be led away in proper order."—Ceremonial observed at the Court of Peking for the Reception of Ambassadors, ed. 1824, in Pauthier, 192.
1855.—"... The spectacle of one after another of the aristocracy of nature making the kotow to the aristocracy of the accident."—H. Martineau, Autobiog. ii. 377.
1860.—"Some Seiks, and a private in the Buffs having remained behind with the grog-carts, fell into the hands of the Chinese. On the next morning they were brought before the authorities, and commanded to perform the kotou. The Seiks obeyed; but Moyse, the English soldier, declaring that he would not prostrate himself before any Chinaman alive, was immediately knocked upon the head, and his body thrown upon a dunghill" (see China Correspondent of the Times). This passage prefaces some noble lines by Sir F. Doyle, ending:
"Vain mightiest fleets, of iron framed;
Vain those all-shattering guns;
Unless proud England keep, untamed,
The strong heart of her sons.