Feb., 1912. Jade. 333 



"female" flutes is illustrated on Plate LXV, Fig. 1. They are finely 

 carved from a pure milk-white jade (49 cm long, diameter 2.5 cm) 

 with separate mouthpieces of green jade. They are formed into the 

 appearance of bamboo-stems, the joints being indicated by two parallel 

 incised circles, i. e., they are direct imitations of bamboo flutes. Besides 

 the nine holes visible in the illustration each piece has, further, two holes 

 side by side on the lower face in the second joint from below. 



Jade flutes are frequently alluded to in Chinese literature. The 

 Si king tsa hi relates that at Hien-yang there was a jade flute with twen- 

 ty-six holes. When the Emperor Kao-tsu first went to that place, 

 he spied it in the treasury and played on it, whereupon mountains and 

 groves with horses and chariots appeared in a mist, vanishing altogether 

 when he ceased playing (Bushell in Bishop, Vol. I, p. 49). The 

 "Records of Liang-chou" say: "In the 2nd year of the period Hien 

 ning (276 a. d.) brigands rifled the tomb of Chang Kiftn and obtained a 

 vessel of the type tsun carved from white jade, a musical pipe of jade 

 (yii siao) and a jade flute (yii ti), each of these three being a particular 

 object." 



The Sung Catalogue of Jades figures a number of jade flutes and 

 other musical instruments. 



Figures 2 and 3 of Plate LXV represent two girdle-ornaments of the 

 K'ien-lung period (173 6- 1795), both displaying the same motive "the 

 mother dragon watching her young one " in different modes of technique, 

 the one being a relief carving, the other being worked d jour. In Fig. 2 

 (14.5 cm long), the old dragon is cut out in full figure, and the cub is 

 crawling up its body; the jade is gray with a layer of yellow on the upper 

 face. The piece in Fig. 3 (14 cm long), of white jade, is a buckle of the 

 same curved shape as those in Plate XXXIV, with a stud on the back 

 which is decorated with a blossom diagram. The young dragon leaning 

 on its beard is standing in full figure undercut on the surface of the 

 buckle, a fungus of immortality at its side. 



Figure 4 of the same Plate represents an inkslab carved from gray 

 jade (12.5 cm X 9 cm, 2.3 cm high). We might call it an ink-well 

 in a certain sense because the outline of a well-frame is brought out in 

 the raised rectangle framing the surface, resembling the ancient form 

 of the written character denoting a well. The round cavity, the well 

 itself, serves as the receptacle for the liquid ink; the inkcake is rubbed 

 on the flat surface of the stone. 



Figure 5 of Plate LXV is not a real flower vase, as might appear from 

 the illustration, but only the relief picture of one cut out of a solid flat 

 slab of gray jade (16 cm X 6.6 cm, 1.5 cm thick). Pieces like this one 

 are mounted on wooden panels and arranged on them together with 



