THE CUSTOMS Of VARIOUS RACES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2728, 27 June 1906, Page 78

THE CUSTOMS Of VARIOUS RACES.

Queer as it may seem, the relative value of push and of pull is a plain fact of nature. If anybody doubts it, let him consider the following details, in which the Statesman shows the difference between the Asiatic and the European : In India, a man digging in the garden does not throw the earth from him, as the English gardener does, but pulls it toI "ward him. The carpenter sawing wood does not drive the saw, but pulls it, in token of which the teeth of an Indian saw are set in the opposite way from those of an English saw. Even when the Indian workman has been induced to adopt the labour-saving machinery introduced from Europe he shows a strange perversity in sacrificing part of the benefit through his habit of preferring to pull rather than to push. Thus, in turning a wheel, a>> -.< .aiswjj, water from a well or working a crane! instead of pushing the handle down and so getting the benefit of the weight of his body, he pulls it up, and so sacrifices that natural advantage. For tne same reason the wheelbarrow, has never become naturalised in India, although specially suited for a country where roads afft still comparatively few, but footpaths abound. The Indian drill works in the opposite direction from the European bit and brace, and the pot is stirred not from left to right, as in the "West, but from right to left. The -same rule holds good in weapons of warfare '"»■•> Indian sword is made lor cutting, noi ior thrusting, and the common daos or daggers are on the same principle. The Indian, in the use of the weapons Nature has provided for offence and defence, does not hit out .straight' from the shoulder like the European, but" strikes from above downward, a- . ron. right to left with a sweeping mo\«jii.eut. -Nor is the back-handed slap of which mosi English school boys have had personal experience known in the East. Kicking out is also rare, although it is coming in with football. Another physical exercise in which the difference is very marked is swimming. In India the arms are not extended outward, as in Europe, but the stroke is downward and inward. Nor does the Indian take a header into the water with arms extended. Those wfto have seen the famous divers at Delhi and elsewhere diving from the roofs of mosques into- adjacent tanks will remember" that they came down feet forerrost and assumed a squatting attitude before reaching the water. Then in riding the Indian horseman keeps his position, not like the European (by holding on by the extensor muscles of "the thign with toes, directed ixward), but by grasping the saddle with the flexors— that is to say, with the calves of his legs, the toes being directed outward. An Indian scavenger sweeps toward himself, not away, like his brother in the West.. When the Indian beckons some one to approach he does so with the palm of the hand downward; the European in the corresponding act turns the palm upward. Even in Indian writing there is an avoidance of movement of extension. This is very apparent in the case of Persian, which is written from right to left but it also holds good in Hindi and other Sanskrit languages. Nearly all the strokes are written downward ; the upward sweeps common in English writing are very rare. ■ /