Feb., 1912. Jade. 129 



this arrangement was intentional and suggestive of a turning motion of 

 these creatures when the wheel moved. This one seems to be an excep- 

 tionally good specimen, for the four others in our collection are not as 

 elaborate and have not the saddle. Two of these have a plain disk, one 

 has it chased with scroll-work which is brought out also on the mantle 

 of the cylinder. In length, they are 8, 8.5, 11.5 and 18 cm. The wings 

 surmounting the tiger-head are presumably connected with the idea of 

 the winged wheel. All these peculiar features show that there is no con- 

 nection between this type and those pieces of jade which are simply so 

 designated from a very slight outward resemblance. What neither the 

 Ku yu t'u p'u nor Dr. Bushell have tried to explain, is just this very 

 peculiar form of these jade pieces which are hollowed out into a tube, but 

 quadrangular outside; the bronze wheel-nave mountings are naturally 

 round or cylindrical. It was by no means an easy task to carve a piece 

 of jade into this singular shape to which a particular significance must 

 have been due, but which has no meaning and no sense in the purpose 

 alleged. The Chinese, surely, would not have wasted so much labor 

 without aim and raison d'etre. 



The so-called jade chariot was reserved for the emperor and used 

 by him only on occasions when he offered a sacrifice. Suppose that it 

 was the wheel-naves which were adorned with jade (a supposition not 

 warranted by any ancient text), and that the objects figured in the 

 Ku yu t'u p'u are to be identified with them, how is it that this work 

 can figure six specimens of this type, that Wu Ta-ch'eng can even 

 produce thirty-six, that one is in the Bishop collection, and three in 

 my own, making a total of forty-six? It is not likely that such a 

 number has survived from the time of the Chou when this object must 

 have been of greatest rarity and was made but individually for a much 

 restricted imperial use. The specimens in question have all been found 

 in graves, but certainly not in imperial graves. How should it have 

 occurred that these objects of an alleged imperial prerogative came to 

 be dispersed among the graves of the people who could not have been 

 entitled to them? And what was their meaning and purpose in the 

 graves? To this question, the speculative theory of the Ku yii t'u p'u 

 does not give any answer. 



This whole theory is absurd and simply based on a misunderstand- 

 ing which, as we shall see, probably goes back to a definition of the 

 dictionary Shuo wen which remarks that these objects resemble wheel- 

 naves which certainly does not mean that they are such. A friend of 

 mine pursuing ethnological studies in Peking once showed me a knife 

 which he had just picked up in a hardware store, and passed it as the 

 instrument by means of which the Chinese cut fish into pieces. On 



