Feb., 1912. Jade. 115 



"For his memorandum-tablet, the Son of Heaven used a piece of 

 sonorous jade; J the prince of a state, a piece of ivory; a great officer, 

 a piece of bamboo, ornamented with fishbone; 2 ordinary officers might 

 use bamboo, adorned with ivory at the bottom" (Legge, Li Ki, Vol. II, 

 p. 12). The great importance attached to these tablets appears from 

 the following paragraph: "When appearing before the Son of Heaven, 

 and at trials of archery, there was no such thing as being without this 

 tablet. It was contrary to rule to enter the grand ancestral temple 

 (ta miao) without it. During the five months' mourning, it was not 

 laid aside. When the prince, bare-headed, performed a funerary 

 ceremony, 3 he laid it aside. When he put it in his girdle again, he 

 was obliged to wash his hands; but afterwards, though he might have 

 had a function to fulfill at court, it was not necessary to wash the 

 hands. Whoever had something he desired to call to the attention of 

 the ruler or to illustrate before him, used the tablet. Whoever went 

 before him and received his orders, wrote them down on the tablet. 

 For all these purposes the tablet was used, and therefore it was or- 

 namented (with reference to the rank of the bearer). The tablet was 

 two feet and six inches (52 cm) long; its width at the middle was three 

 inches (6 cm), and it tapered at the ends to two inches and a half 

 (5 cm)." These tablets had the shape of a shuttle and apparently 

 were different from those described above. 



Also in K'ang-hi's Dictionary we find that the dictionary Kuang 

 yiin (T'ang period) defines the word Ving as "a designation for a jade 

 {yii ming)" the dictionary Po ya (or Kuang ya) of the third century as 

 a hu, and that the Commentary to the Tso chuan gives the full defini- 

 tion of "a jade writing-tablet" {Ving yii hu ye). Although nowhere 

 expressly mentioned, we may infer that the writing on these memoranda 

 of jade, ivory, and bamboo could easily be erased to make place for 

 other notes, and that this constituted their principal difference from 

 the bamboo or wooden documents and books which were to be per- 

 manent. From other facts known to us, we are justified in concluding 



1 K'iu yii. Legge's translation is based on the explanation of the Shuo win 

 {yii k'ing ye); Couvreur's translation "fine jade" is justified by the Kuang yiin 

 {met yii ye). This means that it is not known what variety of jade was understood 

 by this name. 



'Legge's rendering is correct, and there is no reason, in the light of archaeological 

 facts, to conjecture with K'ung Ying-ta (Couvreur, Li Ki, Vol. I, p. 698, Note) 

 that it was an ornament made from the barb of a crocodile or made in shape of a 

 barb. We now have a number of pieces of ancient pottery unglazed and red-burnt 

 called by the Chinese archaeologists yii ku kuan, i. e. "fishbone jars" in which small 

 pieces of white gypsum are inlaid in the surface, doubtless for the purpose of giving 

 it a glittering aspect, and perhaps for some symbolical reason still unknown to us. 

 In the same way as pottery, I believe that also the bamboo tablets hu were inlaid 

 with gypsum. 



3 1 here deviate from Legge's translation and follow Cauvreur. 



