262 Chinese Clay Figures 



In the north-east of China, beyond the boundaries of Korea, in the 

 east conterminous with the ocean, the northern limit being unknown, we 

 find from very remote ages the habitat of a most interesting people, the 

 Su-shen, who have greatly stirred the imagination of Chinese and 

 Japanese chroniclers. They were the Vikings of the East, raiding on 

 several occasions the coasts of northern Japan, and fighting many a 

 sea-battle with the Japanese in the seventh century. 1 For a thou- 

 sand years prior to that time, the Chinese were acquainted with this 

 tribe and its peculiar culture: even Confucius is said to have been 

 posted in regard to them, and to have been aware of the fact that they 

 availed themselves of flint arrowheads, usually poisoned, which were 

 then preserved as curiosities in the royal treasury of China. From 

 Chinese records we can establish the fact that the Su-shen lived through 

 a stone age for at least fifteen hundred years down to the middle ages, 

 when they became merged in the great flood of roaming Tungusian 

 tribes. They had also stone axes, which played a role in their religious 

 worship. A mere supposition is that they belonged to the Tungusian 

 stock of peoples ; yet this remains to be ascertained. They may as well 

 have been related to one of the numerous groups of tribes occupying 

 ancient Korea, or, which is still more likely, to the so-called Palse- 

 Asiatic tribes of the North-Pacific region; but the whole ancient eth- 

 nology of north-eastern Asia remains as yet to be investigated. 



Under the year 262 a.d. it is on record in the Annals of the Three 

 Kingdoms 2 that the Su-shen presented to the Court of China a tribute of 

 a mixed lot of harness, altogether twenty pieces, including armor made 

 of leather or hide, of bone, and of iron, with the addition of four hundred 

 sable-skins. 3 On the iron armor, which was foreign to the culture of the 



certainly is not by any means so rigidly restricted as assumed by Ratzel and Hough; 

 it will be seen that it takes its place in China, western Asia, ancient Siberia and 

 Turkistan, where it is assuredly much older than in Japan. 



1 Compare Jade, p. 59. The Han Annals state that the Yi-lou, another name for 

 the Su-shgn, were fond of making piratical raids in boats; the Wo-tsu settled in the 

 north-eastern part of Korea, and bordering in the south on that tribe, "dreaded it 

 so much that every summer they were wont to hide in the precipitous caves until 

 winter, when navigation was impossible, at which time they came down to occupy 

 their settlements " (E. H. Parker, Transactions Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. XVIII, 

 1890, p. 201). In the same study of Parker (pp. 173 et seq.) a history of the Su-shen 

 will be found. 



2 San kuo chi, Wei chi, Ch. 4, p. 13 a (compare T'oung Pao, 1913, p. 347). 



3 1 am inclined to understand this passage in the sense that there were three dis- 

 tinct kinds of armor, made entirely either of leather, or of bone, or of iron. It is 

 impossible to presume that bone was used in connection with iron in the make-up 

 of one and the same suit of armor. The iron armor, we are forced to conclude, must 

 have formed an individual type in itself, and assuredly one alien to the culture of the 

 Su-shen, who, we know with certainty, were not acquainted with the technique of 

 metals for an extended period, and availed themselves of flint arrowheads. Before 

 going to press, I notice from the work of R. and K. Torii (Etudes archdologiques,. 



