Introduction. 2.5 



While from about the Christian era Turkistan became the chief 

 source for the supply of jade to China, to which Yunnan and Burma 

 were later added, neither Turkistan nor Yunnan come into question 

 in very early times. The jades used in the period of the Chou, and 

 most of those of the Han dynasty, were quarried on the very soil of 

 China proper, as we know from the accounts of the Chinese, and as 

 we can still ascertain from the worked jade pieces of those periods 

 which in quality and color are widely different from any produced in 

 Turkistan and Burma. In Bishop's work (Vol. I, p. 9) it is said: 

 "Jade has not yet actually been seen in situ by any competent observer 

 in any of the eighteen provinces of China proper, and it is permissible, 

 meanwhile, to doubt its occurrence and to await more certain evidence. 

 The interior of China is almost unexplored from a geological or mineral- 

 ogical point of view. . . . There may have been ancient quarries 

 which have long since been exhausted ; the material of some of the older 

 carved pieces is certainly different in many respects from anything 

 produced now, and seems to point to lost sources of supply." This 

 supposition is quite correct and is confirmed by the results of many 

 inquiries which I had occasion to make at several times in Si-ngan fu 

 and other places of Shensi Province: all Chinese questioned by me, 

 experts in antiquarian matters, agree in stating that the jades of the 

 Chou and Han dynasties are made of indigenous material once dug 

 on the very soil of Shensi Province, that these quarries have been 

 long ago exhausted, no jade whatever being found there nowadays. 

 My informants pointed to Lan-t'ien and Feng-siang fu as the chief 

 ancient mines. 



As early as in the Shu king (Tribute of Yu, 19) and in the geography 

 of the Chou li, a trade is mentioned consisting of jade and other minerals 

 in the territory of Yung-chou comprising the northern part of the 

 present province of Shensi between the river Wei in the south and the 

 Ordos region in the north (Hirth, /. c, p. 122). As we now have an 

 opportunity of studying a great number of ancient Chou and Han 

 specimens of jade in the Bishop and Mrs. Blackstone collections, we 

 may now establish the fact with a high degree of certainty that the 

 Chou jades without exception, and the greater part of the Han jades, 

 are made of indigenous material, quarried on the domain of the earliest 

 settlements of the Chinese which they had naturally well explored. 

 This conviction agrees very well with the traditions of the Chinese, as 

 we shall see presently. It requires but little experience and routine 

 work along these lines to distinguish these ancient jades with their 

 salient characteristics of structure and color, and their additional 

 historic qualities acquired in the graves, from the Turkistan and 



