History of Chain Mail and Ring Mail 255 



envoys with a tribute of cuirasses made from rhinoceros-hide (si kid) 

 and iron armor (Vie k'ai). 



There is a somewhat vague Tibetan tradition relative to the period 

 of the early legendary kings, to the effect that armor was first introduced 

 into central Tibet from Lower K'ams (Mar K'ams) in the eastern part 

 of the country. 1 It is difficult to decide as to what type of armor is to be 

 understood in this passage, in which occurs the general word k'rab, the 

 original meaning of which, as we tried to show (p. 195), 2 must have been 

 "scale armor." It may be permissible to think, in this case, of a style of 

 hide armor, as it was in vogue among the Fu and the neighboring Shan 

 and Man; but the tradition which here crops out is somewhat weak and 

 hazy. 



Coats of mail are frequently alluded to in Tibetan epic literature and 

 historical records. In the History of the Kings of Ladakh they are 

 mentioned under the reign of the seventeenth king, bLo-gros C'og-ldan, 

 as being brought from Guge, eighteen in number; the most excellent of 

 them receiving individual names, as was the case also with swords, 

 saddles, turquoises, and other precious objects. 3 The usual types of 

 armor in Ladakh were chain or scale armor. The fact that they are 

 recorded as coming from Guge is significant, for Guge must have had 

 ancient relations with Persia; 4 and the chain mail of Guge was most 

 probably of Persian origin. The plain fact remains that the Tibetan 

 blacksmiths do not turn out iron chain mail, nor are they capable of 

 making it ; so that they are most unlikely ever to have made it at any 

 earlier time. The supposition of an import is therefore the only solu- 

 tion of the problem. 



The Wei Tsang Vu chi, a description of Tibet by Ma Shao-yiin and 

 Mei Si-sheng written in 1792, has the following note on the outfits of 



in many Lama temples. The Ming shi tells of a tribute of armor, swords, and products 

 sent in 1374 by the country of Ngan-ting in the territory of the Kuku-nOr, which 

 was classified among the Si Fan (Bretschneider, China Review, Vol. V, p. 32). 



1 Chandra Das, in Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1881, pt. 1, p. 214. 



2 B. Houghton (Outlines of Tibeto-Burman Linguistic Palaeontology, Journal 

 Royal Asiatic Society, 1896, p. 41), in pointing out the coincidence of Tibetan k'rab 

 and Burmese k'yap, remarks that each word denotes originally a flat, thin thing or 

 scale, and that hence they come to mean scale armor. "It is, of course, possible," 

 he adds, "that this was possessed by the Burmans in Tibet, but on the other hand it 

 is equally probable that the words have been applied independently on the introduc- 

 tion of this particular kind of armor, (? from China)." This view seems forced. The 

 words k'rab and k'yap are not loan-words from Chinese, but on equal footing with 

 Chinese kia and kiai, and speak in favor of scale armor having been a very ancient 

 means of defence in the Indo-Chinese group of peoples. 



3 Compare Marx, in Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. LX.pt. 1, 1891, 

 pp. 122, 123. Also among the ancient Arabs, excellent armors were named (Schwarz- 

 lose, Die Waffen der alten Araber, p. 69). 



4 Laufer, T'oung Pao, 1908, p. 13. 



