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28 A Forke, Lun--hêng, Par II (Berlin, 1911), p. 275. – Many ideas of Chinese palmistry are directly borrowed from India. Prominent among these is the exaltation of long arms reaching down to the knees, which appears among the beauty marks of the Buddha and is in fact an ancient Aryan conception of the ruler (A. Grünwedel, Buddhist Art in India, p. 162; Laufer, Dokumente, pp. 166, 167). With the Indians as with the Persians, this is an old mark of noble birth (compare the name Longimanus, old Persian Darghabazu, Sanskrit Dirghabahu). In China we meet the notion that a man whose hand reaches below his knees will be among the bravest and worthiest of his generation, but one whose hand does not reach below his waist will ever be poor and lowly (Giles, 1. C., p. 181). In regard to Liu Pei (162--223 A.D.), it is on record that his ears reached to his shoulders and his hands to his knees (Giles, Biographical Dictionary, p. 516). |