no Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. X. 



two characters Uu-U (Giles No. 7248, p. 908 b) into liu-li (Giles 

 No. 7244). Thus, the ancients pronounced in their provincial speech 

 pi-ya. At present, they are seldom seen in China, though in Turkistan 

 (Si yii) they may be still constantly met with. Hence, at the time of 



the Han, they 

 >~^£ were considered 

 as 'marvellous 

 objects of good 

 omen.' This is, 

 however, a sub- 

 ject not easily 

 settled, but one 

 awaiting the in- 

 vestigation of a 

 widely read 

 scholar." 



This discus- 

 sion opens a wide 

 perspective into 

 many archaeolog- 

 ical questions. It 

 is evident that 

 our author is 

 right in pointing 

 to the similarity 

 in the construc- 

 tion of this piece 

 with the preced- 

 ing specimen 

 silan-ki; we have 

 here the same 



division into three sections and a similar arrangement of notches in 

 each, but they are irregular and differ in number in each section, so 

 that this object may be different after all, or may have been employed 

 for another purpose. 



The identification with the / yii rests on the ground that the jade 

 of the mountain I-wu-lu was recognized to be of a substance similar 

 to that in this ancient jade ring ; we have no means to check this state- 

 ment, though it may very well be so. At all events, this is more plau- 

 sible than to regard the object as an ancient pi-liu-li. The only rep- 

 resentation of this ring appears on the Han bas-reliefs of Wu-liang 

 (Fig. 39), where it is a plain ring without notches, identical in shape 



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Fig. 39. 



The Ring pi-liu-li (from Kin-shih so). 



