206 Chinese Clay Figures 



coated with a red varnish to protect the material from the influences of 

 the weather. x They were turned out in the official armory of Nan-yang 

 in Ho-nan Province, 2 and in all probability were adorned with the tail- 

 feathers of pigeons fastened to the lower edge. The wooden documents 

 employ the word tun, 3 once formed with the classifier 'spear' (wao); 4 

 and in one passage 6 appears the word p l ai (No. 8574), which, as far as I 

 know, is thus attested for the first time in the Han period. 6 



In his Introduction M. Chavannes has given an admirable sum- 

 mary of the information garnered in these early documents, and has 

 drawn a vivid picture of the garrison life in those outposts of the Chinese 

 empire. 7 He has sounded also the sentiments by which those soldiers 

 were animated, by rendering several fine pieces of poetry of the T'ang 

 period. There is still another, contemporaneous source which permits 

 us some inferences as to the emotional life of those brave Han frontier- 

 guards. Chavannes 8 has ably described the function of the signal- 

 towers erected along the frontier at intervals averaging thirty li, which 

 served as optical telegraphs announcing the approach of hostile van- 

 guards by means of huge beacon-fires. In many cases the guards 

 stationed in these towers were kept alert in repelling undesirable in- 

 vaders. 9 In the burial pottery of the Han period, which is a microcosm 

 of the culture life of those days, we find a number of miniature models 



1 Compare above, p. 189. 



2 It seems to have been customary in the Han period to occasionally inter armor 

 and shield with a general. We learn that the son of the marshal Chou Ya-f u purchased 

 from an officer of the Imperial Armory a cuirass and buckler intended for the 

 funeral of his father (L. Wieger, Textes historiques, p. 448). This act led to an ac- 

 cusation against the old general, which resulted in his suicide; the illegal point of 

 the case, however, was sought in the step of purchasing imperial property, not in the 

 intended burial; and the charge was forced, as the Emperor was intent on causing 

 the downfall of the old officer. The Ku kin chu by Ts'ui Pao of the middle of the 

 fourth century relates that in the third year of the reign of the Emperor Chang 

 (78 a.d.) people dug up the ground of a burial-place at Yuan in Tan-yang (An-hui 

 Province) and found in it a piece of armor. It was a cuirass (kia). 



3 Chavannes, /. c, Nos. 77, 763. 



4 No. 75. 



5 No. 682. 



6 The Annals of the Han Dynasty employ neither of these words, but the word 

 shun. 



7 1 can only join Mr. L. C. Hopkins (Journal Royal As. Soc, 1914, p. 475) in the 

 wish that the substance of this essay may be made more generally accessible. Per- 

 haps the Royal Asiatic Society itself might undertake to publish an English transla- 

 tion of it in a separate issue. 



8 L. c, pp. xi-xiii. 



• To quote one example, in 108 A.D., the K'iang (Tibetans) with a force of over 

 ten thousand men attacked the watch-towers near Kan-chou fu in Kan-su Province, 

 and killed or captured the officers and privates occupying them (Chavannes, T'oung 

 Pao, 1906, p. 257). Beacon-towers in which lookout soldiers were kept, tun t'ai 

 (No. 12,205), were still in existence under the Ming dynasty, and are well described 

 by Persian travellers in the fifteenth century (see Bretschneider, China Review, 

 Vol. V, p. 34). Compare Fig. 31. 



