64 Field Museum of Natural History — Anth., Vol. XIII. 



The Hon. W. W. Rockhill,^ who passed through Si-ngan in 1889, 

 was given the information that turquois is found in Ho-nan. There 

 is no reason to doubt the correctness of this statement for the mere 

 reason that it was not confirmed to me in 1909; for even in China con- 

 siderable changes are bound to come about within a period of twenty 

 years, and I am incHned to think that it is quite possible that the mines 

 of Ho-nan have since been exhausted. 



man bodies but animal heads, they are clothed in costume of Chinese style and hold 

 objects as attributes in their hands. This iconographic composition is also traceable 

 to the T'ang period, as may be evidenced by a tombstone in the collections of the 

 Field Museum; this contains an epitaph (mu chi) yielding the date 861 A. d. The 

 twelve animals of the cycle are here arranged in four groups corresponding to the four 

 cardinal points, a group of three facing one of the sides of the quadrangular stone 

 slab, in the same manner as in the one published by M. Chavannes {T'oung Pao, 

 1909, p. 74) from a Chinese rubbing. While, however, the illustration of M. 

 Chavannes shows figures of men, that is, Chinese officials in official costume, holding 

 in their arms the respective animal, there are engraved on our tombstone figures of 

 men with human bodies clad in official robes and holding jade insignia of rank in their 

 hands, but each having the head of the particular animal. This is the same principle 

 as in the set of the Bishop collection in which each piece is an independent all-round 

 carving. In the rubbing of M. Chavannes the idea is brought out of the officials 

 presiding over the twelve animals, whilst in the two other series the animals are 

 themselves conceived as officials. The same ideas are expressed in the iconography 

 of the gods of the Twenty-eight Lunar Mansions, which will shortly give me occasion 

 for some remarks with reference to a group of masks in our collection representing 

 this series of deities. It is known that the origin and diffusion of this solar zodiac 

 based on a division into twelve parts of the celestial or ecliptic equator has given rise 

 to many discussions and theories. I was formerly inclined (T'oung Pao, 1907, 

 p. 400, and 1909, p. 71) to accept the theory of Chavannes (ibid., 1906, pp. 51-122) 

 according to which the cycle of the twelve animals would have originated among 

 Turkish tribes who transmitted it to the Chinese. Having meanwhile studied the 

 work of Franz Boll, "Sphaera" (Leipzig, 1903), and the same author's recent paper, 

 Der ostasiatische Tierzyklus im Hellenisrnus {T'oung Pao, 1912, pp. 699-718), I hold 

 that his arguments in favor of an origin of the cycle within the sphere of Egyptian 

 Hellenism are, in general, convincing to a certain extent, though much would remain 

 to be done in detail to prove the migration of the system from this centre to the Turks 

 and to China. There is, however, an objection to be made to the first piece of evi- 

 dence offered by Boll on behalf of the dependence of the Chinese cycle (p. 705): 

 "In the Chinese list sacred Egyptian animals have survived, particularly the monkey 

 which does not occur on the cold plateau of Central Asia." This is merely an old 

 European fable which seems to be inexterminable, and which has already been refuted 

 by me in T'oung Pao, 1901, p. 28; it would mean to shoot sparrows with cannon to 

 march up here the whole evidence known to every zoologist, to the effect that mon- 

 keys are propagated from the Himalaya through Tibet into the mountains of Yiin- 

 nan, Sze-ch'uan and Kukunor region, and throughout central and southern China. 

 Chinese, Tibetan, and all other Indo-Chinese languages possess ancient indigenous 

 words for several species of monkeys, and at the time when the cycle was received by 

 the Chinese, the monkey was very familiar to them and frequently represented in art. 

 Another more serious objection to be advanced to the essay of Boll is that he has paid 

 no attention to the arguments which induced L. de Saussure {T'oung Pao, 1910, 

 pp. 583-648) and A. Forke (Lun-htog, Vol. II, pp. 479-494; compare also the addi- 

 tional remarks of P. Pelliot, Journal asiatique, 19 12, Juillet-Aout, p. 163) to defend 

 the indigenous origin of the cycle in China. The Chinese tradition entirely unheeded 

 by Boll can not be so easily run down, and though he has stated the case clearly on its 

 historical side, there remains to be solved the psychological part of the problem 

 which has not yet been touched upon. 



1 The Land of the Lamas, p. 24 (London, 189 1). 



