Kotow', the ceremony of prostration, with striking of the forehead on the ground nine times, performed before the emperor of China. The British envoy, Lord Amherst, in 1816 refused to perform the degrading ceremony, and the point was finally conceded by the Chinese in the treaty of 1857. Kotowing is unknown outside of China.
Kotow'
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume 6: Humber to Malta, p. 457
Source scan(s): p. 0472