196 Chinese Clay Figures 



is unfortunately no description of this armor in any ancient text. In 

 the Li ki the word occurs several times, the rules of politeness excusing 

 the warrior clad with akiai from making a bow; * but nothing is brought 

 forward to add to the knowledge of the subject. 2 I have never seen in 

 China any suit of armor made of scales of leather; and they are not like- 

 ly to have been made at later ages when metal was available. In 

 Japan, such specimens have fortunately survived; and the one figured 

 by Bashford Dean 3 may give us an excellent idea of the appearance of 

 the ancient Chinese scaly leather coats. It is attributed to the Fuji- 

 wara period (around 1000 a.d.), and described as a primitive type of 

 Japanese harness, the single laminae being of boiled leather, cut and 

 beaten into pieces shaped like fish-scales. A suit of copper scale 

 armor obtained in Sze-ch'uan (Plate XIV) may be regarded as the 

 natural continuation of the ancient leather armor of the same type. 

 The scales are fastened by means of brass wire to a foundation of sack- 

 cloth, and overlap one another. This specimen, weighing 38^ pounds, 

 as evidenced by the effects of many blows and bullet-holes visible in the 

 metal, has actually been employed in warfare. 4 



Scale armor is distinctly mentioned in the Wan hua ku, a work 

 written at the end of the twelfth century; but this passage is taken from 

 the T'ang leu tien, and therefore refers to the T'ang dynasty. 8 The 



tionary, p. 49). In all probability, the Chinese and Tibetan words kiai (or kai) and 

 k'rab are anciently related, in the same way as Tib. k'rag ("blood") and Chinese 

 hiuet, Tibetan skrag-pa ("to be afraid of") and Chinese kiii (W. Grube, Die sprach- 

 geschichtliche Stellung des Chinesischen, p. 16), Tib. sgrog-pa ("to tie") and Chin. 

 kiao (Conrady, Eine indochinesische Causativ-Denominativ-Bildung, p. vn). Also 

 the Chinese word kia, "armor" (ancient pronunciation kiap, rhyme hiap), may be 

 allied to Tibetan k'rab. It will be seen below (Chapter IV) that scale armor repre- 

 sents the earliest type of armor in Tibet, Persia, and India. 



1 Couvreur, Li ki, Vol. I, p. 65; Vol. II, p. 13. 



2 The scales of hide armor were called kia cha (No. 127). This may be inferred 

 from a passage in the Chan kuo ts'e (quoted in P'ei wen yiinfu, Ch. 97, p. 5 b), where 

 Su Tai (third and fourth century B.C.; Giles, Biographical Dictionary, p. 682) 

 addresses Yen Wang, and says, "You cut the scales of the buff-coat yourself, and 

 your wife fastens them together by means of cords." The word siao (No. 4309), 

 which is here utilized and means "to scrape, pare, trim," indicates that leather is in 

 question, and that the leather strips were trimmed into a certain shape called cha. 

 Regarding the technical meaning of this word see p. 210, note 3. 



3 Catalogue of the Loan Collection of Japanese Armor, p. 39 {The Metropolitan 

 Museum of Art, Hand-Book No. 14, New York, 1903). 



4 Consul Bedloe {Consular Reports on Commerce, Manufactures, etc., No. 147, 

 p. 494, Washington, 1892) states, "Scale mail, at an early period, was carried to a 

 high perfection. The scales were applied to cloth or leather at first, as spangles are 

 to gauze, and later as tiles or slates are to the boards of a roof. They were composed 

 of iron, pewter, silver, gold, or of various oriental alloys. In making a suit, scales of 

 one kind were usually employed, but combinations were frequent, in which metals 

 of contrasting colors were used. A good suit of armor can be bought at prices rang- 

 ing from $10 to $150." 



6 Bretschneider, Botanicon Sinicum, pt. 1, p. 160, No. 330. The above text 

 will be found in the Chapter on Armor {kia chou pu) in T'u shu tsi ch'ing. Ko chi 



