SALUTATIONS or GREETINGS, the customary forms of kindly or respectful address, especially on meeting or parting or on occasions of ceremonious approach. Etymologically salutation (Lat. salutatio, "wishing health") refers only to words spoken.
Forms of salutation frequent among savages and barbarians may persist almost unchanged in civilized custom. The habit of affectionate clasping or embracing is seen at the meetings of the Andaman islanders and Australian blacks, or where the Fuegians in friendly salute hug "like the grip of a bear." This natural gesture appears in old Semitic and Aryan custom.
The salute by smelling or sniffing (often called by travellers "rubbing noses") belongs to Polynesians, Malays, Burmese and other Indo-Chinese, Mongols, etc., extend ing thence eastward to the Eskimo and westward to Lapland.
The kiss, the salute by tasting, appears constantly in Semitic and Aryan antiquity. Herodotus describes the Per sians of his time as kissing one another—if equals on the mouth, if one was somewhat inferior on the cheek (Herod. i. 134). In Greece, in the classic period, it became customary to kiss the hand, breast or knee of a superior. In Rome the kisses of in feriors became a burdensome civility (Martial xii. 59). The early Christians made it the sign of fellowship: "greet all the brethren with an holy kiss." Of more ceremonial form is the kiss of peace given to the newly baptized and in the celebration of the Eucharist, which is retained by the Greek church. After a time, by ecclesiastical regulations, men were only allowed to kiss men, and women women, and eventually in the Roman Catholic Church the ceremonial kiss at the communion was only exchanged by the ministers, a relic or cross called an oscula toriurn or pax being carried to the people to be kissed. While the kiss has thus been adopted as a religious rite, its original social use has continued. Among men, however, it has become less effusive. Court ceremonial keeps up the kiss on the cheek between sovereigns and the kissing of the hand by subjects. When these osculations cease to be performed they are still talked of by way of politeness: Austrians say, "lass d' Hand!" and Spaniards, "Beso a V d. las manos!" ("I kiss your hand !").
Strokings, pattings and other caresses have been turned to use as salutations.
Weeping for joy is sometimes affected as a salu tation. Highly ceremonious weeping is performed by several rude races when, meeting after absence, they renew the lamenta tions over those friends who have died in the meantime. Among the Australian natives, the male nearest of kin presses his breast to the newcomer's, and the nearest female relative, with piteous lamentations, embraces his knees with one arm, while with the other she scratches her face till the blood drops. Obviously this is mourning. So, too, the New Zealand tangi is performed at the reception of a distinguished visitor, whether he has really dead friends to mourn or not. Weeping, as A. R. Brown has shown, is for the Andamanese a rite for the revival of sentiments that have lain dormant, the renewal of interrupted social relations and for the recognition of a change in personal relations.
Cowering or crouching is a natural gesture of fear or inability to resist. Its extreme form is lying prostrate, face to the ground. In barbaric society, as soon as distinctions are marked between master and slave, chief and commoner, these tokens of submission become salutations. The sculptures of Egypt and Assyria show the lowly prostrations of the ancient East, while in Dahomey or Siam subjects crawl before the king. A later stage is to suggest, but not actually perform, the prostra tion, as the Arab bends his hand to the ground and puts it to his lips or forehead, or the Tongan would touch the sole of a chief's foot, thus symbolically placing himself under his feet.
Kneeling prevails in the middle stages of culture, as in the ceremonial of China; Hebrew custom sets it rather apart as an act of homage to a deity; mediaeval Europe dis tinguishes between kneeling in worship on both knees and on one knee only in homage.