The Diamond-Point 29 



The kun-wu sword of Lie-tse has repeatedly tried the ingenuity of 

 sinologues. Hirth, 1 who accepted the text at its surface value, re- 

 garded this sword as the oldest example in Chinese records of a weapon 

 made from iron or steel ; and while the passage could not be regarded as 

 testimony for the antiquity of the sword-industry in China, it seems to 

 him to reflect the legendary views of that epoch and to hint at the fact 

 that the forging of swords in the iron-producing regions of the north-west 

 of China was originally invested in the hands of the Huns. Thus 

 Hirth finally arrived at the conclusion that the kun-wu sword may 

 actually mean "sword of the Huns." Faber, the first translator of 

 Lie-tse, regarded it as a Damascus blade; and Forke 2 accepted this 

 view. F. Porter Smith 3 was the first to speak of a kun-wu stone, 

 intimating that "extraordinary stories are told of a stone called kun-wu, 

 large enough to be made into a knife, very brilliant, and able to cut 

 gems with ease." He also grouped this stone correctly with the dia- 

 mond, but did not cope with the problem involved. 



The Shi chou ki ("Records of Ten Insular Realms"), a fantastic 

 description of foreign lands, attributed to the Taoist adept Tung-fang 

 So, who was born in 168 B.C., 4 has the following story: " On the Floating 

 Island (Liu chou) which is situated in the Western Ocean is gathered a 

 quantity of stones called kun-wu tL -§-^5 • When fused, this stone 

 turns into iron, from which are made cutting-instruments brilliant and 

 reflecting light like crystal, capable of cutting through objects of hard 

 stone (jade) as though they were merely clayish earth." 6 



Li Shi-ch£n, in his Pen ts'ao kang tnu* quotes the same story in his 

 notice of the diamond, and winds up with the explanation that the 

 kun-wu stone is the largest of diamonds. The text of the Shi chou ki, 

 as quoted by him, offers an important variant. According to his 

 reading, kun-wu stones occur in the Floating Sand (Liu-sha) of the 

 Western Ocean. 7 The latter term, as already shown, in the Chinese 



1 Chinesische Ansichten uber Bronzetrommeln, pp. 20, 21. 



1 Mitteilungen des Seminars, Vol. VII, I, p. 162. This opinion was justly criti- 

 cised by the late E. Huber {Bull, de I'Ecolefrancaise, Vol. IV, p. 1 129). 



1 Contributions toward the Materia Medica of China, p. 75. 



4 The work is adopted in the Taoist Canon (L. Wieger, Taoisme, Vol. I, No. 593). 

 The authorship of Tung-fang So is purely legendary, and the book is doubtless 

 centuries later. Exactly the same text is given also in the Lung yii ho t'u (quoted in 

 Yuan kien lei han, Ch. 323, p. 1; and in the commentary to Shi ki, Ch. 117, p. 2 b), 

 a work which appears to have existed in the fourth or fifth century (see Bretschnei- 

 der, Bot. Sin., pt. 1, No. 500). 



6 P'ei win yunfu, Ch. 100 A, p. 16; or Yuan kien lei han, Ch. 26, p. 32 b. 

 'Ch. 10, p. 12. 



7 Also the Wu li siao shi (Ch. 8, p. 22) has this reading. 



