Defensive Armor of the Archaic Period 195 



a breast and a back sheet, 1 and eight below these for the protection of the 

 abdomen and loins. Combined with this leather sheet armor are 

 tasses consisting of six or seven horizontal rows, each composed of 

 small rectangular leather laminae, arranged in vertical position. The 

 leather sheets and plates are varnished red on the outside 2 and yellow 

 on the lower side. Mr. Mueller remarks that parallels to this armor are 

 hardly known, but that, as far as can be judged from the pictures 

 preserved, a certain relationship, however distant, with ancient Chinese 

 armor seems to exist. Unfortunately he does not state to what kind of 

 pictures he refers, nor in what the supposed resemblance should con- 

 sist. There is hardly any solid foundation for this opinion. This 

 type of armor, on the contrary, although it agrees in some features 

 with one represented on certain Chinese clay figures of the T'ang period 

 (Plate XXXI), does not meet with any exact counterpart among 

 Chinese specimens known to us; nor is such a connection at the outset 

 very probable, since the affinities of Man armor, as has been pointed 

 out, go with that of the Shan, and are accordingly focussed on another 

 culture-zone. 



Besides the word kia, another word for armor occurs in the Shi 

 king, and this is the word kiai (No. 1 5 1 8) . It is once used with reference 

 to great armor donned by a king; 3 and on another occasion it refers to 

 a team of four horses in a war-chariot, clad with armor. 4 Legge, 

 following the Chinese comment, is of the opinion that the meaning of 

 kiai is identical with that of kia; but they are two different words 

 written with two different symbols, and it is therefore justifiable to 

 presume that they denote two different types of armor. As the word 

 kiai is used to designate the scales of fishes, turtles, lobsters, and other 

 aquatic scaly animals, it is most likely that it was this notion of the word 

 transferred to a type of body armor, and that it related to scale armor 

 (lorica squamata) , the scales being cut out of hide or leather. 5 There 



1 Plastron and dossiere. 



2 In accordance with the ancient Chinese cuirasses, as mentioned in Tso chuan 

 (see above, p. 181). 



3 Legge, Chinese Classics, Vol. IV, p. 606. 



4 Ibid., p. 131. 



6 Legge (/. c, p. 194) states that the armor (not mail) for the horses was made 

 of thin plates of metal, scale-like. It is most improbable that the scales were of metal 

 at the time of the Shi king. See Chapter VII. The same semasiological develop- 

 ment as in Chinese kiai is illustrated in the Tibetan word k'rab and the Burmese word 

 k'yap, that in the first instance denote scale (scale of a fish), and secondly a body 

 armor, which is now the usual meaning; and it is further interesting that Tibetan 

 k'rab has also the meaning of "shield, buckler" (see Jaschke, Tibetan-English Die- 



