82 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. X. 



his hands. It was adorned with bands embroidered in five colors, and 

 the emperor having the ta kuei in his girdle and the chen kuei in his 

 hands offered, during the spring, the sacrifice to the Sun in the morning 

 (Biot, Vol. I, p. 484). * According to the opinion of the commentators 

 of the Han period, designs of hills were engraved on the symbol of 

 sovereign power {chen kuei). This view doubtless arose from the fact 

 that the word chen in the designation of this tablet means not only 

 pacification, submission, power, but is also the name given to the four 

 protecting mountains of the frontier; hence the subsequent illustrators 

 represented this tablet with a conventional design of four hills simply 

 based on this misunderstanding. There can be no doubt that the mean- 

 ing of chen kuei is plainly tablet of power or emblem of sovereignty, 

 and that it has no reference to the four mountains in whose worship 

 it serves no function. 2 We shall see from the actual specimen of Wu 

 that the chen kuei was unadorned indeed, and this is quite in harmony 

 with the spirit of the Chou time, all the jade objects of which are of 

 extreme simplicity. It is entirely out of the question that mountain 

 scenery, as the epigones will make us believe, was carved on these 

 jade implements which are connected with most primitive and primeval 

 ideas. These mountain drawings are downright inventions of the Sung 

 period, and suspicion must increase, as different conceptions of them 

 exist. 



One may be viewed, e. g., in the book of Gingell, p. 33, where the 

 tablet ends above in a pointed angle, and where the four hills are 

 arranged in one vertical row, one placed above the other; also the silken 

 band is here added. This illustration is identical with that in the 

 KHen-lung edition of the Rituals. Another cut is inserted in the 

 Dictionary of Couvreur, p. 433, in which the tablet is surmounted 

 by a rounded knob, and where two hills are placed side by side in the 

 upper part and two others in the same way at the foot. 



The fact that these imperial emblems were not ornamented is plainly 

 borne out by the wording of the Li ki, for "acts of the greatest reverence 

 admit of no ornament" (Legge, Vol. I, p. 400; Couvreur, Vol. I, 

 p. 549), and for this reason, the ta kuei of the sovereign was not carved 

 with any ornaments; as added in another passage (Couvreur, p. 600), 

 because it was only the simplicity of the material which was appre- 

 ciated. 3 



1 Compare De Groot, The Religious System of China, Vol. VI, p. 1172. 



2 This is expressly stated also by the K'ien-lung editors of the Chou li : by means 

 of the chen kuei, the sovereign rules (chin) and pacifies the empire. 



3 This entire disquisition of the Li ki is highly instructive and of primary impor- 

 tance. In some ceremonial usages the multitude of things formed the mark of dis- 

 tinction, in others the paucity of things formed the mark of distinction; in others 



