Note 40 — Chapter VI

By προσκύνησις I understand the salutation, in use among the Romans, of carrying the points of the fingers to the mouth, and kissing them, which is the customary mode still practised throughout Turkey from an inferior to a superior. Our word adoration (os, oris) is derived from this gesture, and by no means implies prostration or genuflexion. Sir R. K. Porter, in his Travels in Persia, p. 665, I think, makes a mistake, in attributing this mode of salutation to another cause. His words are—“In front of the sovereign appears a man in a short tunic and plain bonnet, carrying his right hand to his mouth, to prevent his breath exhaling towards the august personage.” Sir R. seems not to have been aware that the answer to every question put by a great man to an inferior is accompanied by this very gesture. Facciolati (Tot. Lat. Lex.) defines adoratio by “precatio, manu ad os admotâ et flexo corpore facta.”