Defensive Armor of the Han Period 211 



edition. Not being able to do so, I can give it only with all reserve: 

 "The holy men of antiquity made armor of rhinoceros-hide; now the 

 pen ling 1 have iron armor." 



The fact that the word k'ai, and the new type of body armor under- 

 stood by it, were actually employed during the Han period, is now 

 obviously brought out by the contemporaneous wooden slips discovered 

 in eastern Turkistan, and which have been edited and translated by E. 

 Chavannes. 2 As already mentioned, the word k'ai occurs there on two 

 of the wooden documents (Nos. 758, 794); while the ancient word kia 

 is preserved in three other cases. Both types, kia and k'ai, accordingly, 

 were in use among the outlying Chinese garrisons of the Han period; 

 and as explicitly recognized by Chinese authors, the k'ai differed from 

 the kia in the essential point that they were reinforced by metal pieces. 

 The foundation of the armor k'ai consisted likewise of leather or hide; 

 and in Chavannes' document No. 794 the question is of "four pieces 

 of hide, two halves being so connected as to make two suits of armor." 

 The "halves" seem to refer to two large pieces of hide covering chest 

 and back. 



The metal helmet appearing under the Han and perhaps under the 

 Ts'in dynasty (p. 175) is the natural accompaniment of metal armor; the 

 galea of ancient times gives way to the cassis (Figs. 32, 33). The word 

 ton mou for the metal helmet mentioned above appears, indeed, on one 

 of the contemporaneous wooden slips of the Tsin dynasty (2 6 5-3 1 3) . 3 



If the metal of the Later Han dynasty was iron, — what was the 

 metal employed during the Former Han dynasty? And what was the 

 shape of the r etal pieces attached to the hide foundation? 



It is not very likely, for technical reasons, that hide armor was im- 

 mediately followed by armor consisting of iron laminae. The latter 

 denotes a much more advanced stage of civilization, and presupposes 

 acquaintance with the art of forging iron; it is also a much more 

 complicated structure, its manufacture requiring a skill far superior 

 to the more mechanical mode of preparing a coat of hide. We are 

 fortunately in a position to show from both literary and archaeological 

 evidence that iron hide armor was preceded by copper hide armor. In 

 the work Yen fan lu quoted above, the observation is made that "in 

 the times of remote antiquity and in the period anterior to the Ts'in 

 and the Han leather armor named after the rhinoceros was much used 

 in the army, but that in the records of Se-ma Ts'ien's Shi ki mention 



1 Apparently the title of a military office at the time of the Han dynasty. 



2 Les documents chinois d£couverts par Aurel Stein dans les sables du Turkestan 

 oriental (Oxford, 1913). 



3 Chavannes, /. c, No. 794. 



