Page:Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet vol 1 (1876).djvu/349



The uncleanly modes of Tartar eating impressed medieval travellers as much as the moderns: 'And after they have eaten, or even whilst in the middle of their eating, they lick their fingers with tongue and lips, and wipe them on their sleeves, and afterwards, if any grease still remains upon their hands, they wipe them on their shoes. And thus do the folk over all those countries, including western and eastern Tartars, except the Hindus, who eat decently enough, though they, too, eat with their hands.' —[Y.]

It seems likely that Colonel Prejevalsky has made some mistake about this right-hand and left-hand matter, from the want of good interpreters. Even if the fact were, as he says, that the Mongols never say 'to the right' or 'to the left,' but only 'to the east' or 'to the west,' this would be exactly what used to be alleged of North Britons, among whom, in former days, when a bench in church was crowded, you might have heard a request for a neighbour 'to sit wast a bit.'

If Colonel Prejevalsky will try to define the points of the compass to himself, he will find that right and left, with respect either to the rising or to the midday sun, are the ideas on which the meaning of those points ultimately depends.

Hence, in various languages we can trace that the words implying either North and South or East and West, are actually words properly meaning right and left. E.g. in Sanskrit we have Dakshina = 'dexter,' but applied to the south (whence Deccan), though the corresponding sinister