Feb., 191 2. Jade. 103 



state wisdom can certainly lay no claim to representing an original 

 or primeval stage of symbolism. On the contrary, they indicate a 

 recasting of primeval ideas of a remote antiquity into the particular 

 mould of the spirit of the Chou time. In the same manner, as 

 these ceremonial insignia point back to primitive implements from 

 which they were developed, so also the ideas associated with them 

 in the age of the Chou point to a more rudimentary and elementary 

 form of symbolism and worship. The Chou emperor worshipped 

 the sun by holding in his hands the hammer-shaped jade symbol 

 of sovereignty. This means, in my opinion, that at a prehistoric age 

 a jade (or perhaps common stone) hammer was regarded as the actual 

 image of the solar deity worshipped by the sovereign, and I believe 

 that the burial of jade implements in the Chou period, discussed in the 

 previous chapter, was as a last survival also connected with this ancient 

 cult of the sun. We thus find in prehistoric China the same condition 

 of religious beliefs as is pointed out for prehistoric Europe. 



Sophus Muller (Urgeschichte Europas, p. 151, Strassburg, 1905) 

 sums up as follows: "On Crete, the axe was worshipped; it was not a 

 symbol, but the direct image of the deity; supernatural power resided 

 in it. The same ideas must have obtained also in other parts of Greece 

 and the rest of Europe; in Italy and Scandinavia, there are stone and 

 bronze hatchets, either too small or too large for real use; in Scandinavia, 

 there are large and small hatchets of amber; in the French stone cham- 

 bers or on stones freely exposed, axe-blades and shafted axes are carved 

 in. Everywhere, the axe appears, but not a deity holding it, as in the 

 subsequent mythologies. The sun was worshipped as a deity; the 

 round disk appears carved on stone slabs in Scandinavia, England 

 and Ireland, as it plays a role in religious representations also in the 

 south and in the orient. The personal solar god, however, arises in 

 Greece but late in the last millennium b. c, and from the northern 

 regions of Europe we are ignorant of an image of him. The fact 

 that originally an impersonal solar deity was adored is best confirmed 

 by the bronze solar disk on a chariot drawn by a horse from Nord- 

 Seeland (Denmark)." 



