ompared with the practices found to exist among most primitive races,
the mutilations the Chinese were in the habit of inflicting were but
few. They flattened the skulls of their babies by means of stones, so
as to cause them to taper at the top, and we have already seen what
they did to their spines; also the mutilations in warfare, and the
punishments inflicted both within and without the law; and how filial
children and loyal wives mutilated themselves for the sake of their
parents and to prevent remarriage. Eunuchs, of course, existed in great
numbers. People bit, cut, or marked their arms to pledge oaths. But
the practices which are more peculiarly associated with the Chinese
are the compressing of women's feet and the wearing of the queue,
misnamed 'pigtail.' The former is known to have been in force about
A.D. 934, though it may have been introduced as early as 583. It did
not, however, become firmly established for more than a century. This
'extremely painful mutilation,' begun in infancy, illustrates the
tyranny of fashion, for it is supposed to have arisen in the imitation
by the women generally of the small feet of an imperial concubine
admired by one of the emperors from ten to fifteen centuries ago
(the books differ as to his identity). The second was a badge of
servitude inflicted by the Manchus on the Chinese when they conquered
China at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Discountenanced by
governmental edicts, both of these practices are now tending toward
extinction, though, of course, compressed feet and 'pigtails' are
still to be seen in every town and village. Legally, the queue was
abolished when the Chinese rid themselves of the Manchu yoke in 1912.

Funeral Rites

Not understanding the real nature of death, the Chinese believed
it was merely a state of suspended animation, in which the soul
had failed to return to the body, though it might yet do so,
even after long intervals. Consequently they delayed burial, and
fed the corpse, and went on to the house-tops and called aloud
to the spirit to return. When at length they were convinced that
the absent spirit could not be induced to re-enter the body, they
placed the latter in a coffin and buried it--providing it, however,
with all that it had found necessary in this life (food, clothing,
wives, servants, etc.), which it would require also in the next (in
their view rather a continuation of the present existence than the
beginning of anot