Where palmistry is said to come from

Cheiro 1897 says the most ancient records are among the Hindus, and that the knowledge spread with Hindu teaching. In his telling it was practiced in China, Tibet, Persia and Egypt in far-distant ages, and the clear form we know came from Greece. He names Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Pliny and others as supporters. Cheiro 1916 gives a shorter list of India, China, Persia, Egypt and Rome.

Heron-Allen 1885 builds the Greek case on a passage in Aristotle's History of Animals. It says people whose hands are crossed by two lines the whole way are long-lived, and those not so crossed are short-lived. Heron-Allen takes the two lines to be the head and life lines, which is his reading. He also tells the story that Aristotle found an Arabic treatise in gold letters on an altar of Hermes in Egypt and sent it to Alexander, with one Hispanus translating it into Latin. Cheiro tells the tale differently and makes Hispanus the finder.

Other books claim an older start. Saunders 1663 calls the art as ancient as Man himself, Baughan 1891 puts it close to astrology in age and ties the two together, and Desbarrolles credits Chaldean shepherds with first recognizing three worlds, the material, the moral and the divine.

None of these books gives a number of years, and the figure of five thousand years sometimes repeated for India has no source among them. The only five thousand years in d'Arpentigny's text refers to the Hindu social order, which he discusses through castes and the Laws of Manu, and not to palmistry. Cheiro's proof for India is a book he says he saw there, which cannot be checked.