Every evening, Wilmington daily commercial., 1906-05-07
PUSH BEATS PULL.
Fact Demonstrated In the Customs oi
Various Races.

Queer as it may seem, the relative
value of push and Of pull is a plain
fact of nature. If anybody doubts it,
let him consider the following details,
in which the Statesman shows the diff
ference between the Asiatic and the
European:
In India, man digging in the gar
den does not throw the earth from
him, as the English gardener does, but
pulls it toward him. The carpenter
saving wood does not drive the saw,
but pulls it, in token of which fact the
teeth of an Indian saw are set in the
opposite way from those of an English
saw. Even when the Indian workman
has been induced to adopt the labor
saving machinery introduced from
Europe he shows a strange perversity
in sacrificing part of the benefit
through his habit of preferring to
pull rather than to push.
thus, in turning a wheel, as in rails
ing water from a we'll or working a
crane, instead of pushing the handle
down and 80 getting the benefit of the
weight of his body, he pulls it up,
and so sacrifices that natural advant-
age. For the same reason the wheel
barrow has never become naturalized
in India, although specially suited for
country where roads are still compara-
lively few, but footpads abound. The
Indian drill works in the opposite
direction from the European bit and
brace, and the pot is stirred not from
left to right, as in the West, but from
right to left.
The same rule holds good in weapons
q mo 90 uha Tudtur, or.r,rI s- -, L..
for cutting, not for thrusting, and the
common daos and daggers are on the
same principle.
weapons nature has provided for offence
and defence, does not hit out straight
from the shoulder like the European,
but strikes from above downward, ol
from right to left with a sweeping
movement.
Nor is the baokhanded slap Of which
most English school boys have had
personal experience known in the East.
Kicking ont is also rare, although il
is coming in with football. Another
physical exercise in which the differ
ence is very marked is swimming. In
India the arms are not extended out.
ward, as in Europe, but the stroke il
downward and inward
Nor does the Indian take header
into the water with arms extended.
Those who have seen the famous divers
at Delhi and elsewhere diving from the
roofs of mosques into adjacent tanks
will remember that they came doWr
feet foremost and assumed a squattine
attitude before reaching the water.
Then in riding the Indian horsemar
keeps his position, not like the Euro
pean by holding on by the extensol
muscles of the thigh with toes directed
inward), but by grasping the saddle
with the fiexors-that is to say, witt
the calves Of his legs, the toes being
directed outward. An Indian scaven.
ger sweeps toward himself, not away,
like his brother in the West.
When the Indian beckons some one
to approach he does 80 with the palm
of the hand downward the European
in the corresponding act turns the
palm upward. Even in Indian writing
there is an avoidance of movement Of
extension.
This is very apparent in the case oi
Persian, which is written from right
to left, but it also holds good in Hind
and other Sanskrit languages. Nearl,
all the strokes are written downward
the upward sweeps common in English
writing are very rare.