Feb., 1912. Jade. 73 



The fact that stone implements were once more widely distributed 

 in China than the actual finds hitherto made will allow us to conclude, 

 may be traced from some survivals existing in other forms. We 

 shall meet a number of such survivals in the group of jade symbols 

 which, during the Chou period, were emblems of rank and dignity; 

 part of these are traceable to former implements, as e. g. the imperial 

 emblem of sovereignty to an original hammer. These types will be 

 discussed in the following chapter. By comparing a jade chisel with 

 one of bronze (p. 39), we have made the acquaintance of another 

 kind of survivals, — of stone forms in bronze. Many types of bronze 

 chisels and hatchets bear indeed such a close resemblance to corre- 

 sponding jade objects that the assumption of an historical connection 

 between the two groups is forcibly impressed upon our minds. As 

 the number of such bronze implements in our collection, however, is 

 too large, and this subject would require a long digression into the 

 bronze age, I must leave it here and come back to it in a future mono- 

 graph on these bronze objects. 



I wish to call attention in this connection only to one type of a 

 stone-form survival in bronze which thus far has become known to us 

 in China only in this material, but whose origin most probably goes 

 back to an older form in stone. This type has been rather unfortu- 

 nately termed shoulder-headed celt; I prefer to adhere to the term 

 spade-shaped celt familiar to us in America where this stone imple- 

 ment widely occurs, 1 because it is more appropriate to the matter, 

 for in all likelihood this implement was once really a spade. 



The Chinese admit that in ancient times coinage was unknown and 

 only barter practised, or as one Chinese author puts it: "In ancient 

 times they carried on trade merely by using what they possessed in 

 exchange for what they did not possess." 2 Lumps of metal, metal 

 implements, cloth and silk, also shells seem to have taken the place 

 of money. This primary exchange of actual implements may have 

 led to the practice of casting miniature tools and inscribing them with 

 a fixed valuation. The word tsHen which long ago assumed the mean- 

 ing of money, once occurs in the Shi king (but pronounced tsien) in the 

 sense of a hoe; also the Shuo win attributes this former meaning to 

 the word and defines it as an agricultural implement. 3 A coin current 

 during the Chou dynasty under the name "spade-money" (ch'an pi) 

 reveals the form of a spade or shovel 4 and may have been derived from 



1 Compare Moorehead, The Stone- Age of North America, Vol. I, p. 335, pp. 418 

 et seq. 



2 L. C. Hopkins in Journal Royal Asiatic Society, 1895, p. 329. 



3 G. Schlegel (Uranographie chinoise, p. 273) takes it in the sense of "sickle." 

 4 Hopkins, /. c, p. 324. 



