210 Chinese Clay Figures 



an author who lived in the beginning of the third century a.d., and who 

 is known as the editor of the Taoist writer Yin W^n-tse. 1 He is quoted 

 as follows in the Yen fan lu: 2 "In days of old, war-chariots were em- 

 ployed in warfare, and the fashion of iron plates was not yet in use for 

 armor; at the present time, hide armor, though it can still offer sufficient 

 resistance to a crossbow, will needs lead to the loss of the army and the 

 destruction of the empire. Regarding this matter, it was at the time 

 of the Posterior Han (25-220 a.d.) that armor received iron laminae, 

 but it is not known what the state of affairs was at the time of the 

 Anterior Han (b.c. 206-23)." Here it is plainly expressed that iron 

 armor came up under the Later Han dynasty, and the expression Vie cha z 

 leaves no doubt that it was armor composed of iron laminae. 



In this connection another notice incorporated in Ko chi king yuan 

 (Ch. 41, p. 1 b) would be of interest, if any dependence could be placed 

 as to the value and the time of the source from which it is quoted. 

 This is a work called "Dissertation on Corporal Punishments" (Jou 

 king lun) by K'ung Jung, a descendant of Confucius in the twentieth 

 degree, who, according to Giles, 4 died in 208 a.d. Nothing is known 

 to me regarding this work; M. Pelliot, in his careful bibliographical 

 study of Chinese law, 5 does not mention it. In the present case, it 

 would be indispensable to know exactly when that work was composed, 

 as the author lays stress on a contemporaneous event, and to ascertain 

 whether the incriminated passage was really contained in the original 



1 Wylie, Notes on Chinese Literature, p. 156; L. Wieger, Taoisme, Vol. I, Le 

 canon, p. 184, No. 1159. 



2 Completed in 1175 by Ch'eng Ta-ch'ang (Wylie, Notes on Chinese Literature, 

 p. 160) and reprinted in the T'ang Sung ts'ung shu. 



3 The word cha (No. 127) refers to the wooden or bamboo tablets used for writing 

 and united into bundles of books before the invention of paper. The discoveries in 

 Central Asia have rendered us familiar with the form of these wooden documents. 

 The plates, as used in the manufacture of armor, have indeed a very similar shape; 

 and hence the transfer of the name of the latter is easy to understand. Couvreur 

 (p. 736 b) translates cha by " les couches de cuir ou les plaques de m6tal qui composent 

 une armure;" Palladius in his Chinese-Russian Dictionary (Vol. II, p. 379) by 

 "fish-scale, armor;" Giles gives the meaning "a layer" and "numerative of kia, 

 armor." There are some passages in the Tso chuan and Han shi wai chuan (see P'ei 

 wen yiin fu, Ch. 97, p. 6) where cha doubtless relates to the different layers of a hide 

 armor; but as a rule it originally refers, as stated above (p. 196), to the scales of a hide 

 scale armor. This is also the opinion of K'ung Ying-ta (574-648), who, in his work 

 Shang shu cheng i, gives the following definition of the word ye (No. 12,996),— 

 "metal lamina or plate in armor; the metal lamina of armor is the same as that is 

 called cha in the K'ao kung chi (in the Chou li)." The word cha, however, does not 

 occur in the text of the Chou li, but only in the commentaries. In the same sense, 

 the K'ang-hi Dictionary defines the word cha as kia ye, "armor leaves," that is, 

 plates or laminae covering the armor. 



* Biographical Dictionary, p. 401. 



6 Le droit chinois (Bulletin de VEcole francaise a" Extreme-Orient, Vol. IX, 1909, 

 pp. 27-56). 



