188 Chinese Clay Figures 



conceal one's self," No. 12,241), and as the object behind which a man 

 hides himself in a kneeling position in order to evade an attack. Liu 

 Hi enumerates two kinds of foreign shields adopted by the ancient 

 Chinese, — a large and flat one, which originally was indigenous to the 

 country of Wu 1 and peculiar to the generals there, hence styled Wu 

 k'uei (No. 6499), "general of Wu;" and a high one, termed sti tun, 2 

 coming from the country of Shu (Sze-ch'uan), but termed by others 

 "shield of the K'iang (Tibetans)" because they asserted that it origi- 

 nated from the K'iang. Here we notice the ever-recurring Chinese 

 tendency toward imitating and appropriating the armaments of the 

 neighboring tribes. Liu Hi mentions also the long and narrow shields 

 used by the infantry soldiers in combination with the sword, — styled 

 "foot shields" (pu [No. 9485] tun); 3 and the short and narrow shields 

 employed on the war-chariots, — styled "small shields" (kie [No. 

 1505] 4 tun). As to the materials chosen for their manufacture, he 

 emphasizes boards and, what is of especial interest, rhinoceros-hide 

 (si p'i). The latter were termed "rhinoceros shields" (si tun); the 

 former, "wooden shields" (mu tun). The specimen of a circular buck- 

 ler of rhinoceros-hide, of Indian manufacture (secured by the writer in 

 Tibet), is illustrated in Plate XXVII. 



Culture-objects when once acquired survive through the ages with 

 persistent force, even after the introduction of innovations which seem to 

 be apt to supersede entirely the old material. We have already referred 

 to the fact that cuirasses have not yet wholly disappeared in modern 

 China. Indeed, we meet them in all periods of Chinese history, despite 

 new inventions of superior quality. 



From the wooden documents found in Turkistan, and recently 

 deciphered with admirable ingenuity by E. Chavannes 5 it becomes 

 apparent that hide corselets formed the defensive armor of the Chinese 

 soldiers serving in eastern Turkistan during the Han period. The 

 contemporaneous texts written out on wooden slips employ either the 



1 No. 12,748. Wu is an ancient kingdom comprising the present province of 

 Kiang-su, the southern part of An-hui, and the northern portions of Che-kiang and 

 Kiang-si (see Chinese Pottery in the Philippines, p. 42, note 10). 



2 Sti (No. 4716) is explained as a war-implement in K'ang-hi's Dictionary, which 

 quotes the passage in question. This interpretation is not quite satisfactory; for 

 the word sti must have a more specific meaning, as shown by the parallelism of the 

 preceding sentence and the following clause, in which it is said that these shields were 

 handled by the Sti of the country of Shu. The word, accordingly, parallel to the 

 preceding generals of Wu, must refer to a military charge or rank in Shu; and it is 

 doubtless derived from a language spoken in Shu, or from a language of the K'iang. 



s These were actually used in the Han period, as will be noticed in Chapter III. 



4 The word is explained by him in the sense of "small." 



5 Les documents chinois d£couverts par Aurel Stein dans les sables du Turkestan 

 oriental, p. xvi (Oxford, 1913). 



