86 



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



commentaries, so that Biot translates tablette au corps inclint and 

 Couvreur tablette du corps droit. But what does that mean? Couv- 

 reur gives a reproduction of this tablet on which is engraved the 

 figure of a man with long sleeves standing and holding a tablet in his 

 hands. If the proposed reading shen should refer to this figure, it is 

 just a subsequent and secondary reflection as this figure itself, which 

 certainly cannot be a production of the Chou period, but is also a 

 comment and the outcome of a misled imagination of the epigones. 



& *t 



Fig. i 8. Fig. 19. 



Jade Disk with •'Grain" Pattern. Jade Disk with "Rush" Pattern. 



According to the Notions of the Sung Period (from the Palace Edition of the Li ki). 



I think the wording of the text simply says what the written symbol 

 implies, — sin kuei, a tablet of credence, a badge of trust and confi- 

 dence. 



The feudal prince of the third rank (po) is honored with a jade 

 tablet seven inches long, called kung kuei "curved tablet." 1 The word 

 kung seems to imply also the idea of submission or subordinance. Figure 

 17 shows the conception of this tablet in the K'ien-lung period which 

 seems to come nearer to reality than the figure of the San li Vu or 

 Leu king Vu reproduced by Couvreur. 



While the tablets of the three first feudal ranks belong to the class 

 of kuei, i. e. oblong, flat, angular jade plaques, those assigned to the 

 fourth and fifth ranks are jade disks or perforated circular plaques 



translated by Biot (Vol. I, p. 485): kuei du corps penchi or tablette au corps 

 droit (Vol. II, p. 520) with reference to the engraved figure of a man holding a tablet 

 (in Couvreur, p. 433) which is, of course, a late invention of the Sung period con- 

 ceived of in justification of this commentatorial explanation. 



