I 



276 Chinese Clay Figures 



during the march they were rolled up and carried. l Scale, chain, ring, 

 and plate armor were all a great burden on the body owing to their 

 heavy weight, and a serious obstacle to the mobility of troops. The 

 reform is attributed to Ma Sui, who was president of the Board of War 

 under the Emperor T'ai-tsung of the T'ang dynasty, and who died in 

 796. 2 He conceived the idea of combining armor with the costume 

 (styled k'ai i, "armor clothing ") in three grades differentiated according 

 to length; and the soldiers thus clad were enabled to run, and to advance 

 comfortably. The helmets he made in the form of lions. 3 This in- 

 novation is illustrated by an interesting passage in the Ch'u hio ki,* 

 where some new names for the parts of armor are given, derived from 

 the names of clothing. "The skirt attached to the armor is called 

 shang (No. 9734, "the clothes in the lower parts of the body"); the 

 inner side of an armor is styled lei (No. 6843) ; 5 and the coat of the armor 

 {kia i, No. 5385) is termed kao (No. 5949)." 6 The general expression 

 for clothing, i-shang, finds here application to armor : the upper portion 

 of the armor is directly styled i ("upper clothing"), and the term kao 

 used with reference to it plainly indicates that a robe made of some 

 textile material was worn over the mail to cover it all round. 



This state of affairs is confirmed by the Wan kua ku, 7 where, besides 

 cuirasses and six kinds of iron suits, are enumerated armor made from 

 white cotton stuff (pat pu kia), that made of black silk taffeta (tsao 

 chiian kia), and even wooden armor {mu kia). s 



1 As expressly stated by Sun-tse (see L. Giles, Sun Tzii on the Art of War, p. 58, 

 London, 1910). 



2 Giles, Biographical Dictionary, p. 569. 



3 T'ang shu, Ch. 155, p. 1 b. 



4 Compiled by Su Kien in the early part of the eighth century (Bretschneider, 

 Botanicon Sinicum, pt. 1, p. 143, No. 76). 



5 Couvreur (p. 473 c) explains this word as mailles d'une cuirasse. 



6 Ordinarily "a quiver," but originally a case to place any arms in; hence Cou- 

 vreur (p. 304 a) enveloppe de cuirasse, de bonclier, de lance (see p. 176). In the above 

 case, the costume worn over the armor is thus called, because, like a case, it envelops 

 the armor. 



7 See above, p. 196. 



8 Wooden armor existed perhaps under the Later Han dynasty, though alluded 

 to only in a metaphorical sense. In the Chapter Wu king chi (Hou Han shu), ice- 

 crusts covering trees (mu ping) are likened to wooden armor (mu kiai) ; and the com- 

 mentary explains kiai as symbolizing military armor (P'ei wen yiinfu, Ch. 69, p. 42) ; 

 thus the existence of wooden armor at that time might be presupposed as being in- 

 strumental in this comparison. "Wooden armor" can be nothing but wooden slat 

 armor, as described by W. Hough (Primitive American Armor, /. c, pp. 632, 636) 

 among the North- American Indians. Another type is presented by the wooden armor 

 of the Thompson Indians described by James Teit (The Thompson Indians of 

 British Columbia, Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Vol. II, p. 265) as consisting of 

 four boards an inch and a half thick, two for the front and two for the back, which 

 reached from the collar-bone to the hip-bone; these boards were laced together with 

 buckskin, and the whole covered with thick elk-hide; while the same tribe made also 



