History of Chain Mail and Ring Mail 253 



rings"), and the chain armor (so-tse). 1 This naturally carries us to 

 Tibet and its relations to Persia in the matter of chain mail; but before 

 taking leave of China, it should be emphasized that chain mail remains 

 the only type of armor borrowed and imported by her directly from a 

 foreign country. With this exception, the making of armor, though 

 foreign impulses cannot be denied, is purely indigenous, and also Chinese 

 in its essential characteristics. From a negative point of view, its in- 

 dependence from the west is exhibited by several features that are lack- 

 ing in Chinese, but which occur in western armor: as, for instance, 

 the curious nasal (or nose-guard) , characteristic of Persian, Indian, and 

 Turkish helmets (Plates XXV and XXVIII); and gauntlets, absent in 

 China, but met in Persia, India, and Japan. 



The Persians seem to have had relations with Tibet at an early date. 

 In the " Histoire des Rois des Perses, " translated (from an Arabic source 

 composed between 1017 and 1021) by H.Zotenberg (p. 434), Alexander 

 the Great is made to undertake an expedition into Tibet, whose king offers 

 him submission and a tribute of a hundred loads of gold and a thousand 

 ounces of musk. The two products of Tibet most eagerly solicited by 

 the Persians are clearly emphasized in this legend. Among the wonders 

 possessed by King Abarwlz figured the "malleable gold" extracted for 

 him from a mine of Tibet (ibid., p. 700); this was a block of gold five 

 hundred grains in weight, flexible like wax; when pressed in one's hand, 

 it passed through the fingers and could be modelled; figures were fash- 

 ioned from it, and it would then assume its former shape again. 



The Annals of the Sui Dynasty 2 have preserved a most interesting 

 account of a country styled Fu, situated over two thousand li north-west 

 of Sze-ch'uan. As I hope to show in detail on a future occasion, the 

 question here is of a Tibetan tribe with a thoroughly Tibetan culture. 

 The particular point that interests us in this connection is that this 

 tribe of Fu possessed helmets and body armors of varnished hide, and 

 that armor played a significant part in its funeral ceremonies. The 

 corpse was placed on a high couch; it was washed, and dressed with 

 helmet and cuirass; and furs were piled upon it. The sons and grand- 

 sons of the dead man, without wailing, donned their cuirasses, and per- 

 formed a sword-dance, while exclaiming, "Our father has been carried 

 away by a demon! Let us avenge this wrong and slay the demon!" 



1 As the Tibetans, even less than the Chinese, can be credited with the manufacture 

 of chain mail, and as Tibetan chain mail is plainly stamped as a Persian import, 

 suspicion is ripe that also Tibetan (and consequently Chinese) ring mails are derived 

 from the same source; but strict evidence for the antiquity of ring mail in Iran yet 

 remains to be brought forward. 



2 Sui shu, Ch. 83, p. 8. 



