Defensive Armor of the Archaic Period 193 



a manner that one large piece covers the breast and another the back, 

 looking like the carapace of a turtle, and being as solid and massive as 

 iron. l Then small strips of leather are so combined as to form brassards 

 and nape-guards, made like the iron armor-plates of the Chinese, 2 and 

 all colored vermilion. Helmet and harness, both on the interior and 

 exterior side, are all colored vermilion. By means of yellow and black 

 mineral dye-stuffs they paint designs of flowers, small and large animals, 

 such as are now found on girdle-buckles, 3 — of admirable workmanship. 

 They string also small white shells 4 in connected rows, sew them on to 

 the harness, and decorate the helmets with them. Presumably they 

 are survivals of those ancient helmets adorned with shells on vermilion 

 strings mentioned in the Shi king." 5 



betraying, in opposition to the Chinese, a keynote of striking individualism. Every 

 adult was a soldier; and it is a surprising fact that there was compulsory military 

 service in the kingdom of Nan-chao, and that the army was highly organized. The 

 History of Nan-chao compiled in 1550 by Yang Shen (1488-1559) narrates that the 

 army captains used to wear cuisses, red helmets, and cuirasses of rhinoceros-hide, 

 and carried bucklers of copper; but they marched bare-footed (C. Sainson, Histoire 

 parti culiere du Nan-Tchao, p. 19, Paris, 1904). As to its historical relations, the pro- 

 tective armor of the Man must therefore be connected with that of the Shan; and the 

 Man apparently derived it from the superior culture of their neighbors. 



1 Virudhaka, one of the four guardians of the world {lokapdla) in Hindu mythol- 

 ogy, wears a helmet from the skin of an elephant's head (Grunwedel, Buddhist Art 

 in India, p. 138, and Mythologie des Buddhismus, p. 181). An armor of elephant- 

 skin overlaid with gold in the possession of a Mongol prince in 1573 is mentioned by 

 Sanang Setsen (I. J. Schmidt, Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen, p. 217). The Jesuit 

 Francisco Combes, in his Historia de Mindanao of 1667 (Blair and Robertson, The 

 Philippine Islands, Vol. XL, p. 179), reports that the Joloans on Mindanao in the 

 Philippines are armed from top to toe with helmet, bracelets, coat-of-mail, greaves, 

 with linings of elephant-hide armor so proof that nothing can make a dint on it except 

 fire-arms, for the best sword or cutlass is turned. As the elephant does not occur in 

 the Philippines (its presence on Borneo is presumably due to human agency), these 

 armors, in all likelihood, must have been importations from the Asiatic mainland. 



2 See Chapter V. 



3 The word employed here is si-pi (No. 9050), which in this mode of writing, for 

 the first time, appears in Se-ma Ts'ien's Shi ki (Ch. no, p. 6 b) in the sense of a 

 buckle to fasten a girdle. E. H. Parker {China Review, Vol. XX, p. 15), in his 

 translation of this passage, explains si-pi as a word of the Sien-pi language. See now 

 R. and H. Torii, Etudes arch£ologiques {Journal of the College of Science, Vol. 36, 

 Tokyo, 1914, p. 82, and Plate XII). The same word is used again by our author in 

 the description of the swords made in Ta-li; the sheaths are colored vermilion, and 

 painted in their upper part with a design like those occurring on buckles {si pi hua 

 wen). Similarly it is employed in the Ling-wai tai ta (published by Chou K'u-fei in 

 1 178) in the description of the saddles of the Man (Ch. 6, p. 5), which are varnished 

 red and black like the designs on buckles {ju si pi wen). This term is not registered 

 in the P'ei wen ytin fu. 



4 The Ling-wai tai ta (Ch. 7, p. 9), composed by Chou K'u-fei in 1 178, informs us 

 that the shells utilized in the kingdom of Ta-li for the decoration of armor and 

 helmets came from the island of Hainan; they are called "large shells" {ta pei), in 

 the works on natural history "purple shells" {ts'e pei). They are described as being 

 round on the back, with purple flecks, and with deep cracks on the surface. 



6 See above, p. 185. Such combinations are suggested to the learned Chinese 

 authors by their literary education, but certainly are no evidence for the shell decora- 

 tions of the Man being really due to a stimulus received from ancient China. The 



