518 Sino-Iranica 



se-se of the T'ang really were, that the T'ang se-se were apparently 

 lost in the age of the Sung, and that substitutes merely designated by 

 that name were then in vogue. 



Under the Yuan or Mongol dynasty the word se-se was revived. 

 C'afi Te, the envoy who visited Bagdad in 1259, reported se-se among 

 the precious stones of the Caliph, together with pearls, lapis lazuli, and 

 diamonds. A stone of small or no value, found in Kin-cou (in Sen-kin, 

 Manchuria), was styled se-se; 1 and under the reign of the Emperor 

 C'eh-tsuh (1 295-1307) we hear that two thousand five hundred catties 

 of se-se were palmed off on officials in lieu of cash payments, a practice 

 which was soon stopped by imperial command. 2 Under the Ming, se-se 

 was merely a word vaguely conveying the notion of a precious stone of 

 the past, and transferred to artifacts like beads of colored glass or 

 clay. 3 



The Chinese notices of se-se form a striking analogy to the accounts 

 of the ancients regarding the emerald (smaragdos) , which on the one 

 hand is described as a precious stone, chiefly used for rings, on the 

 other hand as a building-stone. Theophrastus 4 states, "The emerald 

 is good for the eyes, and is worn as a ring-stone to be looked at. It is 

 rare, however, and not large. Yet it is said in the histories of the 

 Egyptian kings that a Babylonian king once sent as a gift an emerald 

 of four cubits in length and three cubits in width; there is in the temple 

 of Jupiter an obelisk composed of four emeralds, forty cubits high, four 

 cubits wide, and two cubits thick. The false emerald occurs in well- 

 known places, particularly in the copper-mines of Cyprus, where it 

 fills lodes crossing one another in many ways, but only seldom is it 

 large enough for rings." H. O. Lenz 5 is inclined to understand by the 

 latter kind malachite. Perhaps the se-se of Iran and Tibet was the 

 emerald; the se-se used for pillars in Fu-lin, malachite. No Chinese 

 definition of what se-se was has as yet come to light, and we have to 

 await further information before venturing exact and positive identifi- 

 cations. 



In Buddhist literature the emerald appears in the transcription 

 mo-lo-k'te-Vo IP $1 ffrU P2, 6 corresponding to Sanskrit marakata. In the 

 transcription fifr /fc M cu-mu-la, in the seventeenth century written 

 JjJH. # $& tsu-mu-lii, the emerald appears to be first mentioned in the 



1 Yuan si, Ch. 24, p. 2 b. 



2 Ibid., Ch. 21, p. 7 b. 



* Cf. Notes on Turquois, p. 34. 



4 De lapidibus, 42. 



6 Mineralogie der Griechen und Romer, p. 20. 



8 Fan yi min yi tsi, Ch. 8, p. 14 b. 



