io2 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. X. 



which purpose bronze tallies in the shape of a tiger are used at 

 present." 1 



In the Chou li, two kinds of these chang are distinguished, the one 

 ^^ being the ya chang mentioned, the other being 

 called chung chang, i. e. middle chang, both of the 

 same length of nine inches (seven for the body 

 and two for the point or tooth). The present 

 specimen in Fig. 35, however, is seventeen inches 

 and a half long, so that Wu, because of this dis- 

 crepancy, suspects that it is an object of the time 

 posterior to the Eastern Chou, i. e. of the time 

 in the latter part of the Chou dynasty reckoned 

 from b. c. 722. The Chinese illustrators like Nieh 

 Tsung-i of the Sung period, the author of the San 

 li f w, have depicted this instrument in the form of 

 a rectangle with a sloping row of seven saw-like 

 teeth in the upper edge, taken in by the explana- 

 tions of commentaries speaking of a plurality of 

 teeth which, as we noted, exists in our specimen, 

 but which must not be imagined in a continuous 

 row. Wu's specimen is a palpable and living reality, 

 Nieh's drawing a fantasy corresponding to no real 

 or possible object. 



We see that all these jade symbols of sovereign 

 power are imitations of implements and derive their 

 shapes from hammers and knives, possibly also 

 from lance and spear-heads. This investigation 

 unveils a new aspect of most ancient Chinese reli- 

 gion, for I concur with Prof. De Groot (7. c.) in 

 the opinion that these emblems were originally 

 connected with some form of solar worship. In the 

 Chou period, only slight vestiges of this cult 

 appear on the surface ; the emblems themselves 

 had then sunk into a mere conventional and 

 traditional, nay, an hieroglyphic use within the 

 boundaries of the rigid official system. The 

 geometric forms and lines of these emblems 

 were curiously explained in the sense of sober 

 moral household maxims as they befitted a 

 patriarchal government based on an ethical 

 state policy. These rational reflections growing out of Confucian 

 1 I. e. in the Han period. 



Jf 



Fig. 35. 

 Jade Tablet, ya chang. 



