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



6. Sword Ornaments of Jade 



Wu Ta-ch'eng reports that he owns in his private collection an 

 ancient two-edged bronze sword having a sword-guard of jade and a 

 hilt of the same material, the bronze and jade parts being cleverly 

 joined together. The age of such swords, he adds, cannot be made 

 out definitely, as sword-guards occur both in bronze and in jade. An 

 allusion to a sword-guard of jade is met in the "Annals of the Former 

 Han Dynasty" (Ts'ien Han shu) in the chapter Hiung-nu chuan "Mem- 

 oirs of the Hiung-nu (Huns) " where it is on record that the Shen-yii 

 (sovereign) of the Huns received as a gift from China a two-edged sword 

 with jade fittings. 1 This passage is explained by the commentaries 

 that the hilt, the ring-shaped knob surmounting the hilt, and the guard 

 were made of jade, a statement which agrees with the specimen of Wu. 

 On this occasion the famous Yen Shih-ku (579-645 a. d.) imparts to us 

 three words then current for the designation of a sword-guard : pi which 

 means nose, wei which means protector, accordingly corresponding to 

 our word guard, and a complicated character composed with the radical 

 for jade (yil) and likewise reading wei. 2 In all probability the latter 

 word and character have been coined ad hoc, in order to designate the 

 special sword-guards made of jade. In the " Biography of Wang Mang " 

 contained in the same annals, it is noted that odd bits of jade (sui yil) 

 were chosen for their manufacture. 



In our collection there is a beautiful specimen of a jade sword-guard 

 of the Han period, remarkable for its artistic design and splendid work- 

 manship. It is shown on Plate XXXV, Fig. 1 in three views; ia ex- 

 hibits its front on which one hydra is carved. Fig. ib shows the opposite 

 side on which two hydras are displayed, while Fig. 3c represents the 

 lower side with the perforation in which the hilt and blade of the sword 

 join. In Fig. 2 of the same Plate is illustrated an ancient bronze sword- 

 guard acquired by me in Si-ngan fu covered with a thick layer of fine 

 patina, plain and unadorned, but in the rhomboidal outline and in the 



1 According to the Annals of the Wei dynasty ( Wei shu) the emperor W£n pos- 

 sessed a two-edged sword (kien), the head of which was mounted with brilliant 

 pearls, and the hilt adorned with jade of Lan-t'ien (Lan yu). It was customary for 

 him to hand it to his followers in order to ward off the evil influences of spirits. 



2 The character will be found in Figs. 1 77-1 81 representing jade sword-guards. 

 It is omitted in Giles's Dictionary. Yen Shih-ku defines also the word sun (Giles 

 No. 4906 "knob on the guard of a sword"); it is, according to him "the horizon ta' 

 part overlapping the mouth of the sword." This cannot be the guard, as the latter 

 is explained by three other words, but only the flat projecting rim occurring on the 

 top of the two-edged bronze swords. The editors of the Kin-shih so are of the same 

 •opinion; they give the drawing of an ancient sword with the nomenclature of the 

 single parts and denote the part in question by the word sun. The "Japanese us 

 the character for this word in writing their word tsuba which means sword-guard. 



