VII. HORSE ARMOR AND CLAY FIGURES 



OF HORSES 



Steeds shielded with armor are alluded to as early as the Shi king. 

 It appears that horses harnessed to the war-chariots were sometimes 

 covered at that period with a means of defence, 1 which, judging from 

 the use of the word kiai (compare p. 195) in this connection, seems to 

 have been of the type of scale armor, the scales being cut out of thin 

 strips of hide or leather. During the Ch'un Ts'iu period, the horses of 

 the war-chariots were likewise armored. 2 This horse armor of the 

 archaic epoch was a plain caparison, and widely different from the com- 

 plex and composite armor which, as we know with certainty, existed in 

 the Mongol period. 



As to metal armor for horses (ma k'ai), we hear it mentioned for 

 the first time toward the end of or shortly after the Han, in two small 

 compositions of the famed usurper Ts'ao Ts'ao, who died in 220 a.d., 

 and of his son Ts'ao Chi (192-232). The latter says that the ancient 

 emperors bestowed on their servants certain kinds of armor styled 

 "shining like ink" (mo kuang) and "brilliant lustre" (ming kuang), an 

 armor with double seat in the trousers, an armor with rings and chains, 

 and a set of horse metal armor (ma k'ai). This passage is very sus- 

 picious because of its retrospective character: the metal armor (k'ai), 

 while it existed at the author's time, had not yet appeared in the days 

 of the early emperors; and the word is here used thrice consecutively 

 with reference to them. The "ring and chain armor," as previously 



1 Legge, Chinese Classics, Vol. IV, pp. 131, 194. Legge translates in the one 

 case "the chariot with its team in mail," and in the other case "his mail-covered 

 team," explaining that the mail for the horses was made of thin plates of metal, 

 scale-like. This interpretation is erroneous. The same misconception occurs in 

 S. Couvreur's translation of the Shi king (p. 136), "les quatre chevaux munis de 

 minces cuirasses de m6tal," and is adopted by Giles (No. 1734); while in the other 

 passage Couvreur (p. 90) is correct in translating "les quatre chevaux munis de 

 cuirasses," provided cuirasses is taken in its literal sense of "hide armor." It is 

 impossible to assume that during a period when metal armor for the protection of the 

 human body was entirely unknown, it should have been utilized in guarding a horse. 

 Man of that age could conceive and employ no other armor for his horse than 

 for himself ; and since he was acquainted only with plain hide armor and hide scale 

 armor, these two types must have served likewise for the horse, the term kiai being 

 in favor of scale armor. The translations of the two passages of Shi king have to be 

 corrected accordingly. The frontlets on the foreheads of the horses (yang, No. 12,882) , 

 once mentioned in Shi king (Legge, Chinese Classics, Vol. IV, p. 547) and once in 

 Tso chuan, did not form part of an armor, but were metal ornaments which served for 

 purely decorative purposes, and emitted pleasing sounds when the animal moved. 



2 Legge, /. c, Vol. V, p. 345. 



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