Feb., 1912. Jade. 337 



Vol. Ill, 1904, p. 238) with the words: "The Ju-i is found in the bi- 

 ography of King Fang who died in the first century b. c. At an au- 

 dience, he said to the Emperor Ytian-ti, ' I fear that though your 

 Majesty acts in this way you will still not obtain what accords with 

 your wish.' King Fang was a weather-prophet and a student of the 

 Book of Divination, the Yi king. Ju-i means ' as you desire.' " 



Dr. Bushell (Chinese Art, Vol. I, p. 148) stated that "the Ju-i 

 sceptre derives its peculiar form from the sacred fungus called ling- 

 chih, 1 the Polyporus lucidus of botanists, one of the many Taoist em- 

 blems of longevity." This is a reversion of the logical order of things. 

 The Ju-i was in existence, and the fungus of immortality was one of the 

 ornaments applied to it, but not instrumental in the production of the 

 shape of the entire object. There are many Ju-i where this ornament 

 is absent, as, e. g., the three specimens in our collection do not exhibit 

 any trace of it. Nor am I inclined to accept as evidence the passage 

 adduced by Bushell (Bishop, Vol. I, p. 49) from the "Biography of 

 Hu Tsung" where we read that "during the Wu dynasty, when digging 

 the ground, there was found a bronze casket in which was a Ju-i of 

 white jade. The sovereign questioned Tsung who replied that Ts'in 

 Shih-huang, on account of the existence of the spirit of the Son 

 of Heaven in Nanking (?), had buried precious things there in 

 several places to keep down the sovereign spirit. " 2 There is no reason 

 to adopt this personal interpretation of Tsung, and to credit the Ts'in 

 period with the existence in it of the Ju-i. 



The anecdote of Shih Ts'ung smashing a coral-t'ree with an iron Ju-i 

 (Petillon, Allusions litteraires, p. 240; Edkins, I. c, p. 238) is of little, 

 if any, historical value; but shows, according to Edkins, that the Ju-i 

 is, in this case, an implement of destructive power influenced by Bud- 

 dhist ideas. Edkins, referring to Eitel's "Handbook of Chinese Bud- 

 dhism" (p. 130), makes it a point that the Chinese Buddhist 

 term ju-i shin ("a body transmutable at will") relates to the 

 magical power of assuming a body without dimensions and weight, 

 and that the chief signification of Ju-i among the Buddhists is con- 

 quering power. If we stand on the solid basis of facts, we observe that 

 the first representations of Ju-i of the type known to us make their 

 appearance in the hands of Buddhist deities on paintings of the T'ang 



1 The same suggestion had already been proposed by Petillon, Allusions lit- 

 teraires, p. 241, Note. 



2 The passage, as quoted in Bushell's text, is much abbreviated, and in all 

 probability, not adequately translated. The complete text will be found in the 

 T'u shu tsi ch'dng, Section 32, Ch. 237, Ju-i pu ki shih. — Also Prof. Giles (/. c, 

 p. 320) refers to this passage as the earliest allusion in Chinese literature to the Ju-i; 

 according to Giles, Hu Tsung died in 243 a. d. 



