$6 The Diamond 



"the country contains much gold, silver, and rare precious stones, par- 

 ticularly the jewel that shines at night (ye kuang p l i ^kJ%J>zL )> or the 

 'jewel of noctural luminosity,' and the moonlight pearl (or 'pearl as 



which was reported to the Chinese to shine at night. This holds good also of the 

 term ming ytie chu. In T'oung Pao (1913, p. 341) and Chinese Clay Figures (p. 151) 

 I pointed out that the two terms are employed as early as the Shi ki of Se-ma Ts'ien. 

 The passage occurs in the Biography of Li Se (Ch. 87, p. 2 b), who is ill-famed for 

 the extermination of Confucian literature under the Emperor Ts'in Shi, and who died 

 in 208 B.C. (Giles, Biographical Dictionary, p. 464). In another passage of the same 

 work the two terms "moonlight (or moon-bright) pearl" and "night-shining jade- 

 disk" are coupled together, used in a figurative sense (Petillon, Allusions litt£raires, 

 p. 242; Lockhart, Manual of Chinese Quotations, p. 397). A third passage leaves 

 no doubt of what Se-ma Ts'ien understood by a moonlight pearl. In his chapter 

 treating divination from the tortoise-shell (Ch. 128, p. 2b), he defines the term thus: 

 "The moonlight pearl is produced in rivers and in the sea, hidden in the oyster- 

 shell, while the water-dragon attacks it. When the sovereign obtains it, he will hold 

 in submission for a long time the foreign tribes residing in the four quarters of the 

 empire." The moonlight pearl, accordingly, was to Se-ma Ts'ien and his contempo- 

 raries a river or marine pearl of fine quality, worthy of a king, a foreign origin of it 

 not being necessarily implied. The philosopher Mo Ti or Mo-tse, who seems to have 

 lived after Confucius and before Mfing-tse, mentions the night-shining pearl (ye kuang 

 chi chu) in an enumeration of prominent treasures; but I am not convinced of the 

 authenticity of the text published under his name, which was doubtless fabricated 

 by his disciples (compare Grube, Geschichte der chinesischen Litteratur, p. 129), 

 and tampered with by subsequent editors. The mention of this pearl in Mo Ti and 

 in other alleged early Taoist writers (compare the questionable text of the Shi i ki, 

 quoted by de Groot, Religious System of China, Vol. I, p. 278) may be a retro- 

 spective interpolation as well. Se-ma Ts'ien must be regarded as the only early 

 author whose references in this case may be relied upon as authentic and contempo- 

 raneous. (The uncritical notes of T. DE Lacouperie, Babylonian and Oriental 

 Record, Vol. VI, 1893, p. 271, with their fantastic comment, are without value.) It 

 seems to me, that, in applying the identical terms to real objects encountered in the 

 Hellenistic Orient, the Chinese named these with reference to that passage of Se-ma 

 Ts'ien by way of a literary allusion, and that for this reason the word p'i, in this 

 instance, is not to be accepted literally, as has been done by Chavannes (T'oung 

 Pao, 1907, p. 181 : "l'anneau qui brille pendant la nuit"), but that the term ye kuang 

 p'i represents an undivided unit denoting a precious stone. Further, this is cor- 

 roborated by two facts, — first, that the ancients speak of precious stones, not of 

 rings or disks brilliant at night; and, second, that Yu Huan (220-265), in his Wei Ho, 

 has altered the term ye kuang p'i into ye kuang chu ("night-shining pearl or gem") 

 with regard to Ta Ts'in, evidently guided by a correct feeling that this modification 

 would more appropriately conform to the object. Moreover, there are neither in 

 Greek nor in Latin any exact equivalents which might have served as models for the 

 two Chinese expressions; the Chinese, indeed, possessed the latter before coming into 

 contact with the Hellenistic-Roman world; ye kuang ("light of the night") is an 

 ancient term to designate the moon, which appears in Huai-nan-tse (Schlegel, 

 Uranographie chinoise, p. 610). This point of terminology, however, must be dis- 

 tinguished from the matter-of-fact problem. Whatever the origin of the Chinese 

 terms may be, from the time of intercourse with Ta Ts'in, they strictly refer to a 

 certain group of gems occupying a conspicuous place in the antique world and deeply 

 impressing the minds of the Chinese. All subsequent Chinese allusions to such gems, 

 even though connected with domestic localities, imply distinct reminiscences of the 

 former indelible experience made in the Hellenistic Orient. 



