aw it, he was set by the Emperor of Delhi to wrestle against
the two most famous Imperial wrestlers. These could not overcome him
fairly, so they made a stratagem, and while one provoked him in front
the other secretly took hold of his _choti_ behind. When Mana started
forward his _choti_ was thus left in the wrestler's hands, and though
he conquered the other wrestler, showing him the sky as it is said,
the loss of his _choti_ deprived him for ever after of his virtue as a
Hindu and in no small degree of his renown as an ancestor. [310] Thus
it seems clear that a special virtue attaches to the _choti_. Before
every warlike expedition the people of Minahassa in Celebes used to
take the locks of hair of a slain foe and dabble them in boiling water
to extract the courage; this infusion of bravery was then drunk by
the warriors. [311] In a modern Greek folk-tale a man's strength lies
in three golden hairs on his head. When his mother plucks them out,
he grows weak and timid and is slain by his enemies. [312] The Red
Indian custom of taking the scalp, of a slain enemy and sometimes
wearing the scalps at the waist-belt may be due to the same relief.

In Ceram the hair might not be cut because it was the seat of a man's
strength; and the Gaboon negroes for the same reason would not allow
any of their hair to pass into the possession of a stranger. [313]

10. Hair of kings and priests

If the hair was considered to be the special source of strength and
hence frequently of life, that of the kings and priests, in whose
existence the primitive tribe believed its own communal life to be
bound up, would naturally be a matter of peculiar concern. That it
was so has been shown in the _Golden Bough_. Two hundred years ago
the hair and nails of the Mikado of Japan could only be cut when he
was asleep. [314] The hair of the Flamen Dialis at Rome could be cut
only by a freeman and with a bronze knife, and his hair and nails when
cut had to be buried under a lucky tree. [315] The Frankish kings were
never allowed to crop their hair; from their childhood upwards they
had to keep it unshorn. The hair of the Aztec priests hung down to
their hams so that the weight of it became very troublesome; for they
might never crop it so long as they lived, or at least till they had
been relieved from their office on the score of old age. [316] In the
Male Paharia tribe from the time that any one devoted himself to the
profession of priest and a