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



chapter of these two emblems, but in the section on the jade symbols 

 of Heaven, as they belong typologically to the series of pi. 



The main differences of the tablets of rank consisted not only in 

 their length and in their shape, but also in the quality of the material. 

 The Son of Heaven alone was entitled to the privilege of using pure 

 white jade of uniform color, while the princes from the first to the 

 third rank were restricted to the use of jades of mixed colors (Biot, 

 Vol. II, p. 521). 1 



Jade tablets were also to be sent along with presents of which six 

 kinds were distinguished {leu pi): these were horses accompanied by 

 the tablet kuei; furs presented with the tablet chang; plain silks with 

 the jade ring pi; variegated silks with the jade tube ts'ung; embroidered 

 silks with the jade carving in shape of a tiger {hu) ; and silks embroid- 

 ered in black and white with the huang, a semicircular jade piece. 2 



We have seen that the chen kuei or tablet of power was the symbol 

 of imperial sovereignty. Wu Ta-ch'eng has discovered a specimen 

 which he believes he is justified in identifying with this object, and which 

 appears as the first illustration in his book, reduced to i 7 <j of the original. 

 It is here reproduced in Fig. 20. It is of dark-green jade mottled in 

 various colors. The small essay dwelling on this interesting object 

 displays a great deal of acumen on the part of the author and does 

 much credit to his critical faculty which dares to oppose the sanctioned 

 interpretations of the past. He takes the statement of the Chou li 

 (Biot, Vol. II, p. 522) as his starting-point and discusses the meaning 

 of the sentence that the tablet {kuei) of the Son of Heaven had a pi 

 in the centre. This word is written in the ancient text in a purely 

 phonetic way, — as then so often occurred, — with the character pi 

 meaning "to be necessary" (Giles No. 8922), i. e. the classifier has 

 evidently been omitted. The commentator Cheng had proposed to 

 read pi (Giles No. 9001) with the meaning of "fringe, cord." Thus, 

 also Biot joining this opinion translated that the tablet carried by the 

 emperor has in the middle a cord called pi. Wu rejects this view on 

 the ground that in the present tablet the perforation has a circumference 

 of three inches, that from the upper periphery of this\circle to the upper 

 edge there is an interval of four inches and a half, and not quite so much 

 from the lower periphery down to the lower edge; in other words, the 

 perforation is situated almost in the centre of the tablet and is much 

 too large to make it possible to suppose that it might have merely served 



1 The interpretation of this passage by the commentary of Cheng Ngo seems 

 to me an arbitrary opinion which the wording of the text does not bear out. 



2 The conventional Chinese designs of the first four tablets see in Gingell, p. 38. 



