Feb., 191 2. Jade. 63 



In the fourth year of the period Ta-ming (460 a. d.) the governor 

 of Su-chou, 1 Liu Tao, descended into the river Pien and found a hatchet 

 of white jade which he presented to the Emperor. 2 



During the reign of the Emperor Su-tsung (756-762 a. d.) of the 

 T'ang dynasty, a Buddhist priest, Ni-chen-ju by name, made a present 

 to the Emperor of eight precious objects which he alleged to have 

 received from Heaven for transmission to the Son of Heaven. The 

 sixth of these was styled "Stones of the God of Thunder." It consisted 

 of two pieces having the shapes of hatchets, about four inches long and 

 over an inch wide; they were not perforated and hard like green jade. 3 



Tuan Ch'eng-shih, the author of the Yu yang tsa tsu, who died in 

 863 a. d., mentions stone axes occurring in a river in the district of 

 I-tao which is the ancient name for I-tu in King-chou fu, Hupeh; 

 some of them as big as ordinary (copper) axes, others small like a peck 

 {tou).' 



It seems that actual use of primitive jade axes was still made at the 

 court of the Mongol emperors in Peking; for, as Palladius 5 pointed out, 

 T'ao Tsung-i who wrote the interesting work Ch'o keng lu at the close 

 of the Yuan dynasty, mentions two life-guards standing next to the 

 Khan who held in their hands " natural" axes of jade. Palladius 

 adds that they were axes found fortuitously in the ground, probably 

 primitive weapons. 



Li Shih-chen, the great naturalist of the sixteenth century, 

 summed up the knowledge of his time regarding ancient stone imple- 

 ments in his Pen ts'ao kang mu (Section on Stones, Ch. 10) as follows. 

 He comprises them under the generic term p'i-li chen (or ts'en) which 

 means " stones 6 originating from the crash of thunder." Before giving 

 his own notes, he quotes Ch'en Tsang-k'i, the author of a Materia 

 medica under the T'ang dynasty in the first half of the eighth century 

 as saying: "Suchlike objects have been found by people who explored 

 a locality over which a thunderstorm had swert, and dug three feet 

 in the ground. They are of various shapes. There are those resem- 

 bling choppers and others like files. There are some pierced with two 



1 In Kiang-su Province. 



1 Sung shu, fujui chi (quoted in P'ei wen yun fu, Ch. 100 A, p. 213 a). 



3 G. Schlegel, /. c, p. 760. 



* Quoted in P'ei wen ytinfu, Ch. 100 A, p. 30 b. 



s Elucidations of Marco Polo's Travels in North-China (Journal China Branch 

 R. Asiatic Society, Vol. X, 1876, p. 43). 



6 The word chen (Giles No. 626) is properly a flat smooth stone block as occurring 

 on the bank of a river or brook used by women to beat clothes on when washing 

 them. Li Shih-chen remarks that of old this word was written with the character 

 chin meaning "needle" (Giles No. 615) "which is an insignificant mistake;" but 

 maybe stone needles really existed in ancient times. 



