The origin of handshaking

握手礼节的来源

林晓洁供稿

Handshaking seems like a gesture that has been around forever. Indeed, a throne base from the reign of ancient Assyria's Shalmaneser III in the 9th century BC clearly shows two figures clasping hands. As an ancient custom, the root of handshaking seems lost to the sands of time.

握手作为一种打招呼的方式似乎一直都存在。确实，公元前9世纪亚述国王撒缦以色三世统治时期的宝座上就刻着两个人握手的图案。握手作为一种古老的习俗，随着时间的流逝，看起来似乎已经难寻根源。

Historians who have pored over old etiquette books have noticed that handshaking in the modern sense of a greeting doesn't appear until the mid-19th century, when it was considered a slightly improper gesture that should only be used with friends. 

熟读礼仪典籍的历史学家注意到，握手作为现代问候方式直到19世纪中期才出现，当时握手被认为是一种有点不得体的姿势，只有在朋友之间才能使用。

Traditionally, the origin of handshaking is often given to the Quakers. But as Dutch sociologist Herman Roodenburg—the chief authority for the history of handshaking—wrote in a chapter of an anthology called A Cultural History of Gesture, "More than in any other field, that of the study of gesture is one in which the historian has to make the most of only a few clues".

传统上，人们通常认为贵格会信徒是最早用握手来打招呼的人。但荷兰社会学家赫尔曼·卢登伯格——研究握手史的权威人物——在选集《手势的文化历史》的一章中写道：“和其他领域相比，历史学家只能通过寥寥无几的线索来研究手势。”

One of the earliest clues he cites is a 16th-century German translation of the French writer Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel. When one character meets Gargantua, Rabelais writes (in one modern English translation), "he was greeted with a thousand caresses, a thousand embraces, a thousand good-days."

他提到的最早的一个线索是16世纪法国作家拉伯雷的《巨人传》的德语译本。在现代英语译本中，当一个角色遇到卡冈都亚时，拉伯雷写道：“欢迎他的是一千个爱抚、一千个拥抱和一千个问候。”

There's additional evidence for a handshaking tradition in that era: In 1607 the author James Cleland (believed to have been a Scotsman living in England) proclaimed that instead of things like bowing down to everyone's shoes and kissing hands, he'd rather "retain our good old Scottish shaking of the two right hands together at meeting".

还有一个握手传统起源于那个年代的证据：1607年作家詹姆士·克雷兰德（据认为是生活在英格兰的一个苏格兰人）宣称，与其让他深深地鞠躬和亲吻别人的手，他宁愿“保持古老的苏格兰习俗，在会面时伸出右手相握”。

A popular hypothesis suggests that Cleland's statements against bowing were actually a wish to go back to a potentially very traditional (though poorly recorded) method of greeting in Europe. As the centuries progressed, handshaking was replaced by more 'hierarchical' ways of greeting—like bowing. According to Roodenburg, handshaking survived in a few niches, like in Dutch towns where they'd use the gesture to reconcile after disagreements. Around the same time, the Quakers—who valued equality—also made use of the handshake. Then, as the hierarchies of the continent weakened, the handshake re-emerged as a standard greeting among equals—the way it remains today.

一个流传较广的假说认为，克雷兰德反对鞠躬的声明其实是想重新采用欧洲传统的问候方式（尽管鲜有记载）。几百年间，握手被更为“等级化”的问候方式取代了——比如鞠躬。卢登伯格称，握手作为打招呼的方式在一些偏僻的地方保留了下来，比如荷兰的某些城镇居民会用握手来言和。大约在同一时期，重视平等的贵格会信徒也采用了握手的问候方式。随着欧洲大陆的等级制度被削弱，握手重新成为地位相同的人之间通用的打招呼方式，并一直延续至今日。

As for why shaking hands was deemed a good method of greeting, rather than some other gesture, the most popular explanation is that it incapacitates the right hand, making it useless for weapon holding. In the 19th century it was argued that shaking hands without removing gloves was quite rude and required an immediate apology. One 1870 text explains that "this idea would also seem to be an occult remnant of the old notion that the glove might conceal a weapon."

至于为什么是握手而非其他手势被视为一种打招呼的好方法，最普遍的解释是它占用了右手，使人无法持有武器。在19世纪，人们认为戴着手套握手是一种相当无礼的行为，需要立即为之道歉。1870年的一段文字解释说“这种想法似乎也是老观念的一种神秘延续，旧时认为手套可能会隐藏武器”。

【VOCABULARY】

1. reign n. 君主统治时期

2. throne n. 王座

3. etiquette n. 礼节

4. hypothesis n. 假说 

5. hierarchical adj. 分层的

6. reconcile vt. 使和解

7. incapacitate vt. 使不能

8. occult adj. 神秘的

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