July, 1913. Notes on Turquois. 67 



in the latter part of the ninth century ^Wylie, Notes, p. 194). Under the year 841 

 A. D. mention is made of a tribute sent to Emperor Wu-tsung (841-846) of the T'ang 

 dynasty by the country of Fu-yu. The latter were a tribe, presumably belonging 

 to the Koreans, residing in Liao-tung and in the valley of the Sungari, and are first 

 mentioned in the Annals of the Later Han Dynasty (Ch. 115, p. 2). Their tribute 

 consisted of two objects, three pecks of obsidian (huo yii, lit. fire jade, that is, stone 

 of volcanic origin; compare the discussion on obsidian at the end of these notes) and a 

 petrified fir-tree {sung feng shi, lit. fir-tree wind stone) measuring ten (Chinese) feet 

 all round and lustrous like jade. Inside of the stone substance the outlines of a tree 

 were visible. As an old fir-tree bends from the action of the wind, so a cold blast 

 came from the branches of that petrified tree. In the midst of the summer, the em- 

 peror ordered the tree to be placed in the rooms of the palace; gradually there arose 

 the sound of the whizzing of the autumn breeze; when the rooms were cooled off, he 

 had the tree brought out again. 



p. 23, note 2. According to a communication of M. Pelliot, the collected works 

 of the poet Lu Kuei-m6ng have been published under the title Li (No. 6957) ts^ 

 (No. 11,666) ts'ung shu (4 chapters and an appendix), of which there are several 

 modem editions. I find a biographical sketch of his embodied in the Pei meng so 

 yen (Wylie, Notes, p. 194), Ch. 6, p. lob (edition of Pai hai). 



p. 25. The first European author who treated of se-st was A. Pfizmaier (Bei- 

 trage zur Geschichte der Edelsteine und des Goldes, Sitzungsberichte der Wiener 

 Akademie, 1868, p. 210) in translating the two texts relative to the stone in the 

 Ming huang tsa lu. He did not explain it, though he was always ready to translate 

 Chinese names, even those being transcriptions of foreign words which are not ca- 

 pable of a literal interpretation. 



p. 25, note. M. Pelliot thinks that the source for the definition of Palladius is 

 K'ang-hi's Dictionary sub voce si (No. 9600) where after the Ytin hui of the thirteenth 

 century se-se is defined as a pi chu, while the foundation for Couvreur's statement is 

 the commentary to the Shi king (K'ang-hi, sub voce si. No. 9599) ; this, however, refers 

 only to the single word si, not to the later compound si-si which, as pointed out on 

 p. 47, is the Chinese transcription of a foreign word. No conclusions, accordingly, 

 can be built on the definitions of Palladius and Couvreur in regard to the nature of 

 si-si. 



p. 26, note 3. M. Pelliot remarks that the text of the Nan-chao ye shi is derived 

 from the older work Man shu of the T'ang period where the passage relative to si-si 

 occurs in Ch. 10, p. 48. The Man shu is the work of Fan Ch'o and was published 

 about 860; the history of the work is given by Pelliot {Bulletin de I' Ecole frangaise 

 d' Extreme-Orient, Vol. IV, 1904, p. 132). 



p. 33. The word si-si occurs several times in the Tu yang tsa pien. In Ch. A, 

 p. 3 (edition of Pai hai), its author, Su Ngo, speaks of a peailiar kind of silk threads 

 sent as tribute in 765 A. d. by the country Mi-lo in the Eastern Sea. These threads, 

 of great strength, wefe knitted into a kind of bag or sheath which on both sides was 

 perfectly translucent like strung si-si. It follows from this important passage that 

 the si-si were bright and lustrous stones, and therefore cannot denote the turquois 

 which is dense and non-transparent. Further (Ch. A, p. 8), there is described a 

 marvelous screen which originally belonged to Yang Kuo-chung, a cousin of Yang 

 Kuei-fei (above, p. 33), who died in 756 (Giles, Biographical Dictionary, p. 909). 

 On this screen the figures of the beauties and hetairas of the times of antiquity were 

 engraved, and it was framed with tortoise-shell and rhinoceros-horn. A filnge was 

 suspended from the lower edge and formed by genuine pearls and si-si, — the whole 

 of such ingenious workmanship that one could hardly believe it was produced by a 

 human hand. A screen having the color of si-si, thirty feet wide and a hundred 

 feet long, is mentioned (Ch. c, p. 9 b) as having been in the possession of Princess 

 T'ung-ch'ang, curtains and screens made from gold, silver, and si-si {ibid., p. 12 b); 

 Buddhist pennants or streamers composed of coral, agate, genuine pearls and si-si 

 {ibid., p. 14 b) to be used in a procession when some sacred bones of Buddha were sent 



