握手禮節(jié)的來源

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.

握手作為一種打招呼的方式似乎一直都存在。確實，公元前9世紀亞述國王撒縵以色三世統(tǒng)治時期的寶座上就刻著兩個人握手的圖案。握手作為一種古老的習俗，隨著時間的流逝，看起來似乎已經(jīng)難尋根源。

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.

熟讀禮儀典籍的歷史學家注意到，握手作為現(xiàn)代問候方式直到19世紀中期才出現(xiàn)，當時握手被認為是一種有點不得體的姿勢，只有在朋友之間才能使用。

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".

傳統(tǒng)上，人們通常認為貴格會信徒是最早用握手來打招呼的人。但荷蘭社會學家赫爾曼·盧登伯格——研究握手史的權(quán)威人物——在選集《手勢的文化歷史》的一章中寫道：“和其他領(lǐng)域相比，歷史學家只能通過寥寥無幾的線索來研究手勢。”

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."

他提到的最早的一個線索是16世紀法國作家拉伯雷的《巨人傳》的德語譯本。在現(xiàn)代英語譯本中，當一個角色遇到卡岡都亞時，拉伯雷寫道：“歡迎他的是一千個愛撫、一千個擁抱和一千個問候。”

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".

還有一個握手傳統(tǒng)起源于那個年代的證據(jù)：1607年作家詹姆士·克雷蘭德(據(jù)認為是生活在英格蘭的一個蘇格蘭人)宣稱，與其讓他深深地鞠躬和親吻別人的手，他寧愿“保持古老的蘇格蘭習俗，在會面時伸出右手相握”。

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.

一個流傳較廣的假說認為，克雷蘭德反對鞠躬的聲明其實是想重新采用歐洲傳統(tǒng)的問候方式(盡管鮮有記載)。幾百年間，握手被更為“等級化”的問候方式取代了——比如鞠躬。盧登伯格稱，握手作為打招呼的方式在一些偏僻的地方保留了下來，比如荷蘭的某些城鎮(zhèn)居民會用握手來言和。大約在同一時期，重視平等的貴格會信徒也采用了握手的問候方式。隨著歐洲大陸的等級制度被削弱，握手重新成為地位相同的人之間通用的打招呼方式，并一直延續(xù)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."

至于為什么是握手而非其他手勢被視為一種打招呼的好方法，最普遍的解釋是它占用了右手，使人無法持有武器。在19世紀，人們認為戴著手套握手是一種相當無禮的行為，需要立即為之道歉。1870年的一段文字解釋說“這種想法似乎也是老觀念的一種神秘延續(xù)，舊時認為手套可能會隱藏武器”。