Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/393

 __ ___ _ ._ ,i.V*.- _¢_v__, _ _ ll .. - -._ ~..--.»-¢`..- ~. /~_ ses. vi. oar. 27, 1900.1 NOTES AND QUERIES. 323 on which the king or queen trod became taboo (‘Encyc. Br1t.,’ xxiii. 16)° Japan has many spots, whereon men of public merit or great power trod, carefully; avoided bYy the commonpeo lein their wal s(see,e.g., uasa, ‘Bunkwai iakki Furoku,’ ed. 1891, p. 5); in China, after the coronation of Tsien Liau (died 1032), a edestal for the Buddha’s statue was formed of) the stone on which he used to tread in his infancy (‘Yuen~kien-lui-han,’ xxvi. 26% and even Maitréya himself, the cxpecte Messiah of the Buddhists, with a retinue of saints and ods, is said to come on fixed days down to the land of Ho-kia-tiau to revere the sacred prints of the last four Buddhas existing there on a blue rock (ib., cccxvi. 6 a). Arising out of the general conception that hoth foot and footstep of man partake of his characteristic power, there are many practices founded on the sympathy which is supppsed to unite them. In Melanesia the mot er and the sons-in-law, or the brothers and sisters, take care to avoid treading on each other’s steps, and do not walk on the shore until the waves have washed them away (Ratzel, op. cit., vol. i. p. 277). In Japan the servant, tired of a long-sitting guest of his master, would resort to burning moxa on the under surface of his sandal to cause him suddenly to hurry home (Kiseki, ‘Mincho Taiheiki, 1717, tom. ii. ch. i. ; Kiyu, ‘ Kanemochi Katagi,’ 1770, tom. v. ch. ii.); Grimm speaks of a German custom of shrivelling up an enemy by hangin u and letting dry a iece of turf on wqiicfi he trod ; and, according to Leland, a popular cure for the gout in Italy is to spit thrice on the footprint of the person to be cured and at the same time to repeat a spell (J. E. Crombie in Folk-Lore, vo . vi. p. 273, 1895). But setting aside all these semi-religious ideas, which, taken together, serve to ex- plain the reason why foot-outlines came to serve as records o a pil rimage or visit, something more must be san? of the origin of the essentially religious ideas attached to the holy footprints which so many people worship. The foot is the lowest part of the human body, therefore everywhere throughout all ages the act of bowing to the others foot or its impression is acknowledged as a most full expression of the utmost humiliation of one who thus betakes himself to a superior for help. So one Chinese addresses another asi “Tsuh-h1a,” meaning “You under whose foot 1 I remain” (Kiu Hai-shan, ‘Ku-sze-tsing-ww kau,’ ed. Arakawa, 1682, tom. ii. fol. 23 b);, and there is a very popular adage in China: l “In ordinary days even the offering of a joss-stick is neglected; on occasion of an emergency even the Buddha’s footstep we on our head.” For the same reason the iamese use a phrase “To reach his golden feet” for admittance to the ro al presence (Crawford, ‘Journal of an Emgassy to the Courts of Siam and Cochin-China,’ 1828, pf 373); and an Indian story tells us how ishnu, the very god who, with three steps, took possession of the world (Cox, ‘ Mythology of the Aryan Nations,’ 1870, vol. ii. p. 104), was declared by Bhrigu to be the only deity entitled to the worshi of gods and men in consequence of his liaving esteemed the latter’s kick as an honour (L. R. Vaidya, ‘The Standard Sanskrit-English Dictionary,’ Bom- bay, 1889, p. 877). That some peoples from very early times paid particular attention to the ever un- changing and individually distinct furrows on the foot as well as the hand is well attested by the ancient Chinese custom of using their prints for personal identification (cf. my etter in Nature, vol. li. pp. 199-200, 1894; Schmeltz in the Internal. Archiv fiir Ethno- graphic, vol. viii. p. 170, 1895), and by the old Cambodjan usage of keepin them as a memorial of an individual (quoted above from Moura). Naturally such a practice caused many peculiar configurations to be found formed by those-furrow lines. Thus the Chinese emperor Yu (c. 2205 B.c.) and the Tauist philosopher Lao-tsze (fifth century B.c.) are said to have been born with esoteric characters on their soles (‘ Yuen-kien-lui-han,’ xlviii. 22 b; cccxviii. 6 a). Besides, Lao-tsze is said to have had there the aus icious figure of a turtle, which is also attributed to the Em£eror Kau-Shuen (reigned 73-49 B.c.) and Li u, an eminent Confucianist (philosopher (second century A.D.). The Bud ha himself is said to have ascribed the netted lines on his hand and foot to his never having hurt any member of other families in his former existences (Tau-shi, op. cit., tom. ix. fol. 17, seqq.). The thirty-fourth of his eighty secondary marks is that his soles possess each one hundred and eight auspicious figures, the principal one of these being ggnerally the tclmkra, “wheel” (Momer- illiams, op. cit., p. 513). All these figures altogether symbolize that everything in this universe is subject to the Buddha (Bastian, l.c.). The veneration paid to such a footprint appears to have been very old in India; for the Jainist-s, the ancient rivals of the Buddhists, have preserved to this day the worship of their saints’ footmarks, coloured either_white orlblack and with small gilded